Crunchyroll and Toho have partnered with Washington-based Catalyst Game Labs to create a tabletop miniatures game around the popular anime franchise My Hero Academia. 

But prior to any retail launch, Catalyst will host a My Hero Academia: Miniatures Game Kickstarter campaign later this year that will allow users to crowdfund the game and get first access to new products. Specialty retailers will be able to follow the crowdfunding campaign to gauge interest in offering the game through their stores when it comes time for a proper retail rollout. 

The first SKU revealed is the Dueling Box starter set, which comes packaged with six miniature characters from across the anime series and all the accessories necessary for two players to play the game. 

Similar to the pioneer games of the genre, Warhammer and Battletech, players start by assembling a custom battlefield out of the included terrain pieces and picking out a team of three aspiring heroes or villains to play with. The goal of the game is to score the most points by completing various objectives around the board or knocking out the enemy’s team of miniatures by using dice to attack and execute special moves. 

As the campaign progresses, Catalyst will unlock supplementary items for Kickstarter backers to purchase, including more miniature characters, custom dice and additional terrain sets to enhance the gameplay. Each character’s moves reflect their anime counterpart, such as the series’ main hero Deku being able to power up for a risky one-hit knock-out punch that incapacitates him afterward. 

In recent years, several licensed miniature games have rolled out to specialty retailers worldwide, including Star Wars: Shatterpoint, Marvel: Crisis Protocol and Star Trek: Alliance. Meanwhile, one of the recent miniature games to get funded on Kickstarter is CMON’s Marvel Zombies game, which raised more than US$9 million throughout its 12-week campaign last year.