Review: POWER RANGERS: RISE OF THE PSYCHO RANGERS

Power Rangers: Rise of the Psycho Rangers is an expansion for the board game Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid. The game is designed by Jonathan Ying with art by Dan Mora and is published by Renegade Game Studios. Rise of the Psycho Rangers brings new game modes, all six Psycho Rangers to be monsters, and the five core In Space Rangers. You can purchase a copy from your local game store, Renegade, or wherever you like to buy board games. Renegade was kind enough to provide me a copy to do this review.

If you know me, you know that I already love Heroes of the Grid. Rise of the Psycho Rangers provides so much greatness to add on top of a great game. The In Space Rangers are incredible, the Psychos are on a new level, Quantrons are added and they’re the coolest foot soldiers ever, and the new game modes provide even more ways to play. The Psycho Rangers can be used in a normal game as monsters with some twists or as a boss. When used as a boss, 5 of the Psychos serve as the enemy. The Psycho Rangers attach themselves to Rangers for possible continual effects and I love that. It really fits their theme of pairing off with a particular Ranger.

There’s also the new Mastermind mode which looks incredible. I haven’t been able to play this new game mode yet, but it allows for one player to be the bad guys and create more of an asymmetrical competition. This mode appears to introduce a ton of new strategy needed both as a Ranger and as the Mastermind.

I did take some time to try out the Psycho Assault Mode. This is a new game mode that pits the Rangers against the Psycho Rangers specifically. It’s a lot of fun to play and it feels very thematic and put me right in the middle of Power Rangers In Space. You have to fight off foot soldiers to keep locations from panicking while the Psycho Rangers hunt you down. You’ll face off against five Psycho Rangers and then they all come back as the Boss at the end. It is definitely very different from the standard game mode and worth playing. I will warn you though, it didn’t feel like a great mode for 2 players.

I love the new In Space Rangers introduced as well. They all are very focused on what they do and feel like they can stand pretty well with any other group of Rangers. Andros is all about getting around GUARD, Carlos is about having fewer cards in hand, TJ is your damage dealer, Ashley is about second chances, and Cassie is low energy damage and support. I feel like many previous Rangers are designed too much to work together in their team, but the In Space Rangers are really good regardless.

The miniatures improve to be pretty solid. The Black Rangers do suffer from their staves being curved more than other pieces, but that’s easy to fix with a hair dryer. The Quantrons also see warps in their weapon that can be fixed in a similar fashion. My one big complaint is that the insert is not very friendly for painting the minis. The Quantrons don’t have individualized compartments and are instead just thrown into a hole. I understand why it was done. It makes a lot of sense from a packaging view.

Rise of the Psycho Rangers really adds a lot of value to Heroes of the Grid. Six characters that can serve as monsters or the boss, two new game modes, five new Rangers, and even some new locations really shake things up. I definitely recommend grabbing a copy if you have the base game.