Misfits & Menaces: Archenemies proves that there are no original ideas anymore, just uncreative uses o them here and there.

Archenemies is a collection of supervillians for your Mutants and Masterminds 2nd edition campaign. The villains in Archenemies are connected by a loose thread; that is they are all major level villains that will take a well oiled team to take down. Each of the nine villains consists of a stat block, description, brief bio and adventure hooks. They are all quite powerful if not very generic. Most of the villains presented have been seen many times over in superhero supplements. Because you only have a limited number of powers in the superhero universe, it is expected that you will run into super powered villains who resemble others.

Where Archenemies stumbles is that each villain lacks a power section, and each of their adventure hooks sounds like they were spit out of the generic comic book idea machine. One-third of the villains are pulled from fantasy and horror folklore. Also weighing the book down is the lack of explanation of the powers of each villain. Instead they depend on the game master to inspect in detail the stat blocks, instead of including a brief power section. With some of the villains you do not gain a clear understanding of their power until you read the adventure hook. The book attempts to separated itself from others by including a threat level with each villain. In concept it is a great idea, but trying to remember the Greek alphabet order became more of a distraction during preparation. A simple system that involved alphabets, numbers or colors would have been so much better.

For the Gamemaster Hiroshimas is the brightest spot of the villains. A well crafted nuclear supervillians bitter about a 70 year old war. Also the entire write-up of Autocrat, the cold war engineer turned terrorist has an adult theme that feels fresh.

The Iron Word Archenemies is a decent set of supervillians, we have just seen them in other places before. Bypassing the duds, a skilled game master can pull out enough material to produce some fun, world dooming game sessions.