A Look at the LEGENDARY RANGER: TOMMY OLIVER PACK Expansion for POWER RANGERS: HEROES OF THE GRID

If you’re a fan of Power Rangers, you’ve probably at least heard of the board game Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid. The game comes from Jonathan Ying and Renegade Game Studios and has a fair number of expansions to allow more fun to be had.

Renegade was kind enough to send me a copy of Legendary Ranger: Tommy Oliver Pack which includes four new playable characters and one new monster. All five of them are based on Tommy Oliver, who has been five Rangers across six seasons of the show. Inside you get Mighty Morphin Green, Mighty Morphin White, Turbo Red, and Dino Thunder Black to play as and face off against Evil Robot Tommy.

Also, the game introduces the Legendary Ranger mode of gameplay that allows you to create a custom combat deck using cards from various Rangers. Think of it like using the Master Morpher. You can easily and quickly change which Ranger you want to play as. It’s a cool idea, but seeing as I haven’t been able to play with this game mode yet, I can’t comment too much on it. It’s very intriguing though.

Let’s get down to looking at the different Rangers now. MM Green comes with two character cards. One was new for this expansion, and the other comes from the Kickstarter exclusive expansion Green with Evil. Gift of the Dragon lets you share cards from your hand with other Rangers (like transferring the Dragon Shield). It’s pretty cool, and with the right card could be very useful, especially since then the card goes to the bottom of your deck instead of your discard pile. Meanwhile, Loner gives you an extra die on attacks if you’re fighting alone. Dragonzord is really nice as it allows you to put excess damage on another enemy card. That’s really nice! Dragonzord Battle Mode just lets you potentially do a bunch of damage. MM Green is mostly about doing damage so that his Loner ability can really shine. He even has some support cards that would be really nice when working with other Rangers. He’s a really solid Ranger. I’m just a little confused why he has a Blade Blaster.

MM White also comes with two cards with one of them being from the Kickstarter White Light expansion. Rallying Light helps you get energy and Guardian Light helps boost the defense of a card. Both are pretty useful. White Tigerzord makes it easy for you and the other Rangers to combo off each other after using Maneuvers. The rest of his cards are interesting. They tend to be all about recycling themselves, comboing with others, or doing AoE damage. It feels a little scattered if I’m honest, but they also seem very useful. Especially since the cards tend to do pretty good amounts of damage.

Oh Turbo Red. He has an OK ability that lets any card that costs X to deal an extra damage and a lot of his cards fit that bill. Something tells me that this is also foreshadowing when the other Turbo Rangers are released. That being said, I’m still weirded out that his Zord is Lightning Cruiser. Lightning Cruiser is a vehicle, not a Zord. It’d be like giving MM White a Shark Cycle. It’s just weird. Lightning Cruiser is nice though since it lets you go first, ignoring the FAST keyword from enemies. Turbo Red’s strategy is to gain energy and then use X energy to either deal lots of damage or to help your fellow Rangers. Not my favorite of the bunch, but not useless.

To finish the good guys, we have DT Black. This one I have played a game with someone else using this character. Legendary Mentor is all about buffing other Rangers, and the Brachiozord is pretty cool since it can use any unused Zord’s ability. The strategy for DT Black is support. All of his cards are all about working with other Rangers either giving them buffs or getting buffs for things other Rangers have done. He’s pretty good in practice too. He’s powerful, but that power has drawbacks like skipping a turn or having to spread damage out.

The last thing to talk about is Evil Robot Tommy. This is a new Monster for you to face off against and he does not look fun to mess with. ERT is all about taking out the Lead Ranger. His cards do more damage to the Lead Ranger, specifically target the Lead Ranger, or make it so only the Lead Ranger can fight. That’s nasty.

There’s a lot that the Tommy Oliver Pack has to offer, and that makes it a pretty good value for anyone who enjoys the game. Plus, the minis look pretty awesome. I think any group could find use for at least one of these Rangers. Who’s your favorite to use from this expansion set?