The city is divided into four zones, with a fifth zone being the Rangers' base of operations. During each round, one of the players draws, depending on the difficulty, four or five cards from the Deployment Deck. These cards determine which enemy Mooks, Monsters of the Week and, later on, Big Bad will spawn and in which zone of the city. If a zone reaches its capacity, or a monster or boss spawns there, the zone is panicked. If all zones are panicked, the Rangers lose the game.
Off course, it is up to the players to stop this from happening. To do this, the players must work together to defeat the the enemies and restore peace in the city. Once the Rangers defeat two Monsters Of The Week and a Big Bad, they win the game.
The base game includes the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers team and their foe Rita Repulsa, four of her monsters and her army of Putties. After this release, the game has multiple expansion sets featuring other rangers and foes from the many seasons the show has to offer, along with supplemental material such as the comics from Boom Studios and Power Rangers Hyperforce.
The main draw of this game are the detailed miniatures included in each set. All Rangers, Villains and even foot soldiers are each represented in the game by a miniature of them.
Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid provides examples of:
- Action Initiative: Whoever gets first, either villain or Ranger, is determined by the Fast keyword on the villain cards. Whenever a villainous character draws such a card, they get the first turn. Otherwise, the Rangers are first.
- Adaptational Badass: Several villain characters who where The Unfought in the show actively fight the Rangers in this game. Examples are Squatt, Baboo and Rita Repulsa herself.
- Adaptational Wimp: Characters who played the role of The Dragon in the series, such as Ecliptor from Power Rangers in Space and Zeltrax from Power Rangers: Dino Thunder are placed in the same power tier as the standard Monster of the Week characters.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: This trope can be invoked with the Command Center Assault Mode. In this game mode, enemies deployed to Panicked locations are deployed at the Rangers' base instead. If any of them survive the round, the Rangers lose.
- Arch-Enemy: This trope is invoked with Nemesis enemies. These enemies attach themselves to one Ranger (mostly the Lead Ranger) to inconvenience them in some way. Most of these enemies held an obsessive rivalry to one of the Power Rangers in canon, such as Zeltrax from Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, Deker from Power Rangers Samurai or the Psycho Rangers from Power Rangers in Space.
- Asymmetric Multiplayer: The Rise Of The Psycho Rangers expansion introduces the Mastermind mode, which allows one of the players to control the villains. The villains control very differently compared to the Rangers, resulting in this trope.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Cyclopsis and Mega Goldar figures are about 3 times as large as the regular figures, as they represent already giant sized enemies.
- Attack Reflector: Both the Rangers and enemies have cards that deal damage to their attackers.
- Cast From Hitpoints:
- The lives of the Rangers are tied to their decks. If one of the Rangers' decks is depleted, they are defeated and the Rangers lose one of their lives. So drawing cards to acquire attacks essentially lowers their available life.
- Some Rangers, such as the Mighty Morphin Black Ranger, take this a step further, as some of their abilities require them to discard additional cards from their deck to reach their full potential.
- Character Level: It is not the individual character that levels up, but the entire Ranger team. Each time the Rangers defeat six foot soldiers or a monster, they gain one power level, which unlocks a new Zord ability for them to use. When they reach level 6, they unlock a Megazord, which is their strongest ability.
- Cognizant Limbs:
- This is how Monsters and Bosses are fought. Each battle, they draw four cards that each have their own health points. You need to defeat four of these for normal Monsters, but six of them with bosses, requiring a second battle.
- This is more obvious with the Cyclopsis and Mega Goldar boss fights. The gimmick of these bosses is that you assemble their cards in a specific way, as if you put together a puzzle. During battle, you specifically target their limbs and win when you destroy all of it.
- Competitive Balance: Each Ranger has their own play style, along with strengths and weaknesses.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: This is the core mechanic of the game. Multiple players team up to defeat the enemies.
- Critical Status Buff: Several Ranger abilities get stronger when more cards are in their discard pile.
- Damager, Healer, Tank: The different Ranger characters can be placed in the Damager and Tank roles. In the latter case, several Rangers have card effects that go off whenever they defend. The Healer role, however, isn't that prominent, as healing is something every Ranger can do to themselves.
- Difficulty Levels: Players can adjust the difficulty of the game however they want through several rulings. Examples include reducing the spawn rate, adding special effects to the location board and making the command center vulnerable to enemy attacks.
- Draw Aggro:
- Enemy cards with the Guard trait prevent adjacent enemy cards from being attacked. Therefore players must take them out before being able to hurt the others. Or they can use certain card effects to circumvent this trait.
- The Rangers themselves can use this trope too. Several enemies specifically target the Lead Ranger i.e. the Ranger who initiated the battle. Having a tanky ranger being the Lead Ranger is a good way to protect the rest.
- Dual Boss: Several monsters can be fought in pairs, reflecting how some villains almost always fought alongside each other. An example is Blaze and Roxy from Power Rangers Beast Morphers included in the Rangers United expansion
- Elite Mooks: Several sets of foot soldiers have Elite versions, which spawn alongside them, but are stronger than their regular counterparts. Their offensive power is comparable to that of a Monster of the Week. Examples are the Rinshi Beasts from Power Rangers Jungle Fury and the Bluehead Krybots from Power Rangers S.P.D..
- Evil Counterpart:
- The expansion Rise Of The Psycho Rangers features the Rangers from Power Rangers in Space as well as their evil counterparts the Psycho Rangers.
- The Light and Darkness expansion features several characters who started as monsters, but performed a Heel–Face Turn and became Rangers instead. Both their monster and Ranger forms are featured, with the monsters being the direct opposite in terms of combat strategy.
- Expansion Pack: This game features loads of these. Most of them only add up to 5 characters to the game, be it Ranger or villain, but there are also several big boxes that almost rival the base game in terms of content. One of the more notable expansions is Rise Of The Psycho Rangers, which adds the titular Psycho Rangers, the Space Rangers and the Quantrons, as well as a new game mode.
- Experience Points: The foot soldier figures themselves become experience point tokens when defeated. Gather six of them on the experience track to gain a level. Defeating a monster instantly gains a level.
- Healing Factor: Several enemies have the ability to resurrect all of their defeated cards. Examples of this is Bones from Mighty Morphin and Ecliptor from In Space
- Joke Character:
- There is an expansion that features Bulk and Skull as Power Rangers. It is as ridiculous as it sounds. Card effects include having to fist bump another player to get a bonus on your attack.
- A Christmas themed expansion introduces Santa Claus himself as a playable Ranger, whose strategy revolves around buffing the other Rangers in the form of presents.
- Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Several Rangers have the ability to reroll or otherwise manipulate undesired dice rolls.
- Magikarp Power:
- Zen Aku from Power Rangers Wild Force has several effects that are stronger when there are more Zords in play. He is therefore a more difficult opponent when faced later in the game. Without Zords, his damage is average at best.
- The effects of the Omegazords from the Rangers United expansion are subpar on their own. However, if you tap another Zord alongside them, their effects are much better. An example is the Omega Red Zord, which adds one die to an attack, which is half the effect of the original Tyrannosaurus Zord. The better version of the effect adds four dice to an attack, which is double that of the Tyrannosaurus Zord.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Due to the many expansions, Power Rangers and villains from multiple seasons are available in the game. Players can easily create unlikely Ranger teams, along with villain alliances that would never appear in the show.
- Mirror Match: Some of the featured Ranger characters started out as villains before turning into Rangers. When both good and evil versions of these are available, its very possible for Rangers to fight their evil selves, depending on who the players select as Rangers and villains.
- Official Game Variant: The official website of Renegade Game Studios has several free scenarios available for download. These scenarios feature alternate rulesets that are usually based on events in the TV show or other related media. Most of them require specific characters that are included in expansions.
- One-Hit Kill: The Black Lion Warrior from Power Rangers Jungle Fury has an ability that allows him to instantly defeat an enemy card with 4 health of less.
- Power Limiter: Several enemies have effects that either prevent the rangers from using certain abilities or make it more difficult for them.
- One of Rita Repulsa's passive abilities increases the energy cost to play cards.
- Cyclopsis' head outright prevents the use of Zord abilities.
- Promoted to Playable: The Mastermind Mode in the Rise of the Psycho Rangers expansion allows a player to control the villains, who are normally controlled by the game itself.
- Tabletop Game A.I.: In the default gameplay, the villains are controlled by specific decks representing each characters. The sequence of their attacks is determined by certain keywords on the cards. An inversion of this trope is the Mastermind Mode, in which a player takes the place of the 'AI'.
- Turn-Based Combat: The combat is divided between Ranger and villain turns. The villain goes through a randomly generated, but predetermined sequence, while the Rangers can choose which Ranger takes their turn whenever they are up.
- Turns Red: Cyclopsis gains more aggressive tactics the more cards you destroy of him.
- Weird Crossover: The game G.I. Joe Mission Critical uses the same system as this game, making the contents of both games compatible, allowing you to do a crossover between the two franchises. Needless to say, both franchises have little in common.
- Wolfpack Boss:
- The Psycho Rangers can be fought as singular monsters or all five of them in a boss battle as this trope.
- The "Triple Threat" boss fight introduced in the Rangers United expansion is a fight against three regular monsters teaming up against the Rangers.
