Doug's Dungeon - Legendary: Marvel Deck Builder

 

Okay let me ask you something. Do you play mobile games? Cuz I tell ya, the ads they play are something else. You couldn’t imagine a bigger mish-mash of almost-copyright-violating visual vomit pasted on a screen. I swear there’s this gambling one that straight up takes screencaps from that show ‘Dexter’. One of the big “What am I even looking at” titles is called ‘Legendary’.  If you take a minute to google that word, you’ll find it’s not just the mobile trash. Other properties use the name ‘Legendary’ to make them seem more, well… L E G E N D A R Y. But you know who got in there before anyone else? I’ll tell ya who. Upper Deck did. When they started churning out a series of deck-builder board games under the main title… Legendary. The first of which was Marvel themed!

 

 

Okay, most of that first paragraph was irrelevant but come on game designers. No one else should call their game ‘Legendary’ on any platform. It’s done.

 

Legendary (the board game) is a 1-4 player co-operative-but-not-really-but-yeah-it-is board game that focuses on using the ‘deck-building’ mechanic. I have previously detailed the genius of the format in my Dominion article, so we can skip talking about that. But we won’t, because I love deck builders. Real ones, of course. Lookin’ at you, Mage Knight. Players start with a small deck of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and troopers. These busy boys generate recruit stars and combat scratchies. You’ll spend the recruit on more heroes to power up your deck, while spending combat to give smackos to the bad boys. But who are the heroes? And the baddies? And who’s the mastermind behind the evil scheme??? AND WHADDAYA MEAN, EVIL SCHEME??? well, all of that is randomized.

 

Now, what you’re looking at is the base set of the game with a couple of expansions. I can’t fit any more in. But I want to.

 

To start a game of Legendary Marvel, you need to pick out a random evil scheme, like turning all world leaders into kill bots. Then, you need to pick out a random mastermind, like i dunno… Loki. THEN, you need to pick out the RANDOM villains and henchmen he has recruited for the dastardly scheme. These include jerks like the Brotherhood, and the Sentinels. THEEEENNNN, you need to pick the R A N D O M heroes that you will fight alongside to stop the bads. Like Iron man, and Thor. And Widowmaker, if you’re feeling like purposefully making things harder for yourself. THEEEEEEEEN you need to set out all the other piles like wounds, S.H.I.E.L.D. officers and bystanders.

 

JESSICA I DON’T CARE IF THE BUILDINGS ON FIRE. JONAH. JAMESON. NEEDS. HIS. COFFEE.

 

THEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNN you can start playing the game. I know. Setup is a bit crazy.

 

 

At the start of the game, the HQ area will be filled with heroes you can buy. Each time you purchase one, you’ll put it in your discard. Use all your cards, shuffle your discard back up and then wham, your hand is better now. But you can’t just go ahead and build your deck forever, because you’ll be ignoring THE VILLAIN ROW. When a player starts their turn, the top card of the villain deck pops off, and moves existing cards down the conveyor belt. If any of them make it off the far side, the players suffer. To stop this, you need to grab cards that give you more punch than the troopers. These cards don’t help you build your deck more, but the payoff is survival.

 

Play continues like this until players can achieve bigger and bigger turns. Turns large enough to take the fight to the mastermind. Beat them up enough before the villain deck runs out or the scheme finishes, and you all win! Well ALMOST. See, every recorded mastermind punch and villain you’ve chastised is worth points to the player who dealt to them. So when the game is over in a team win, you… need to… check to… see who won?

 

Gunna be frank here (But please still call me Doug). This whole ‘victory point counting’ is a super weird rule that my wife and I usually ignore. Now, you CAN go into this game trying to beat the baddies better than everyone else; buying heroes out of the buy row to hamstring allies. And you can purposely time killing enemies to hinder your ‘friends’. But really, what kind of person plays a co-op game competitively? I mean yeah, my brother, but I can’t think of anyone else.

 

Overall, Legendary is a decent game with a lot of replayability, especially once you start dipping into expansions. The variance in deck builder mechanics across the heroes means you’ll be building a different type of engine every game. You might be trashing your bad cards with Wolverine or going for big card draw turns through Iron Man. Marvel isn’t the only flavour of the game though. There’s an Aliens version, and a Predator one. And then you mash them together to make an Aliens vs Predator game. Sorta. Even that one show ‘Firefly’ has a Legendary title. This series is like a lesser Monopoly in that sense.

 

What I also like is how, in the Dark City expansion, Iron Fist doesn’t get a chance to speak.

 

Cuz he’s just cards. Not a terrible Netflix series.

 
 
 
 

 

Doug Moore





I'm an avid lover of all things table top. I also have a growing collection of board games which inspire me to create my own. I put my loud and expressive personality to good use as a dungeon master for my friends, having run many campaigns through 4th and 5th edition D&D. 

Follow him on Twitter 
@Dugggernaut

 

 

Back to Articles