Marvel Legendary: Captain America 75th Anniversary Review
75 years of Captain America! Would you believe it? Why, it must be time for a song & dance celebration!
“Who’s strong and brave, here to save the American Way?
Who vows to fight like a man for what’s right night and day?”
“The Star Spangled Man with a Plan!”
I know, you had no idea I looked so good in a skirt did you?
Players: 1-5
Time: 45 mins
Age: 14+
So now that I’ve scarred you with that image, shall we kick off our review of the latest Marvel Legendary small box expansion? Focussing on Captain America’s best friends, worst enemies and notorious habit of saving people, Captain America 75th Anniversary box is an expansion that even those who don’t have the base game should read about…
I said in my review of Marvel Legendary that the game had two main shortcomings: the basic difficulty of the scenarios and the limited degree of depth in the deck building. Captain America, like the star spangled hero he is, totally solves one of those problems and goes a damn good way on the other. Which is why *spoilers* I’d recommend new players pick up this expansion immediately with the base game! It’s so cheap it’d be almost rude not to… and Captain America is never rude.
Now that we’ve made that clear, let’s take a deep dive into what these 100 cards adds to an already enjoyable game. (Note: this is the 1st expansion for this game I’ve played, so I can’t make comparisons to previous expansions).
Zola’s Creations and the Masters of Evil is my new prog-rock band…
The Captain America 75th Anniversary Expansion dramatically increases the challenge over the original game with a bunch of cool scenarios and two kick ass bosses: Arnim Zola and his monstrous collection of 1940s villains is an abomination… in rules as well as looks. His strength is increased by the combat value of all the heroes in the HQ – which can be utterly brutal! Of course, there’s an interesting balance to this: you need high combat to overcome this, or high money to buy those typically expansive high combat heroes… and the more combat you buy the less able you might be to buy such cards later (because the density of money cards in your deck has fallen). His band of favoured villains are truly the most horrifyingly weird, warped illustrations imaginable… the creators of the 1940s were definitely on something. Maybe it was all the lead paint? Rules wise they gain strength from the heroes in the space below them, leading to an interesting element of timing and manipulation of the HQ when playing them.
Your other foe is (once again) Baron Heinrich Zemo, highlighting the Captain’s dislike of the letter ‘Z’. Zemo and his purple hood seems to be quite the recurring baddy, between this, the base game and the Civil War expansion I’ll be reviewing soon I now have 3 different versions of him! Here he is in his fully artisticly evolved Mastermind form and not afraid of anything except the Power of the People. He’s a mere combat 9… unless you’re not a Saviour in which case, screw you! Combat 18! What’s a saviour? You ask, desperately. Why, it’s a player who has rescued 3 bystanders. Basically Zemo is afraid of fame… or the cheerleading troupe you must now have following you around. His bunch of baddies, the Masters of Evil (WWII), have an obsession with kidnapping bystanders so that you at least have a hope of achieving that people collection. But do watch out, with every Master Strike Zemo will swing in a snatch a bystander from your victory point pile in a manoeuvre that is left up to your imaginations to picture…
Oh save me, Captain! Save me!
That saviour ability crops up on many of the hero cards too, really giving you more reason to help out those innocent bystanders instead of pursuing the show-off kills like you used to. And I hope you take a long hard look at yourself when you realise a whole game mechanic had to be added for you to care about them! To help you collect a few more, many of the cards feature abilities to help you with rescuing them, particularly with Falcon (in his Captain America guise) swooping about.
Speaking of heroes, in addition to Falcon flying the red, white and blue (do you see what I did there…? Flying…? Yeah…?) we also have the ultra modern styling of Steve Rogers, Director of Shield, who has the exciting power to fire people – sorry – ‘reassign to civilian duty’ people. When I’m a manager I won’t fire people either, I’ll ‘reassign them to watching Netflix in their pants duty’. Appropriately this set also goes right back to original Technicolor Captain America from 1941, with the more than able assistance of Agent X-13 (i.e. Agent Carter). These mixed art styles are clashing if that kind of thing bothers you. Agent X-13 is much too practical for such concerns though and has the particularly interesting focus on abilities that trigger off of your common or garden shield agents, offering a nice alternative to trying to get them all KO’d as quickly as possible. Sorry, ‘reassigned’, my bad.
The other new ability that features heavily is called Man (\Woman) out of Time, which lets a card stay out for an extra turn (being used twice). It’s a carbon copy of the orange cards from Dominion Seaside, which is no bad thing since they offer up great scope for powerful turns. It’s a bit of a thematic let down (it’s not exactly the 1941-today time leap I was expecting), but is mechanically satisfying. Particularly with many characters having abilities that make use of it, whether it is the Captain’s desire for as many coloured cards as possible or the Winter Soldiers extra powerful cards that trigger only if you’ve played at least 7 cards already that turn. The heroes and abilities in this set alone have definitely upped the interest curve from the base game for me.
The baddies have time travel? Oh, what’s the worst case scenario?
The Schemes bring this theme of time travel to the fore, at least if you’re happy to use your imagination a bit. They also teach you the important life lesson: time travel is hard!
In “Change the Outcome of WWII,” the baddies are spreading their darkness across various major nations in roughly historical order. If a baddy ever escapes you lose that nation, lose 3 nations and you’re out, with each scheme twist changing the location of the battle (in theme at least), but more importantly changing the size of the city you are fighting over (represented by the number of spaces in the city). This is such a nice way of changing up the scenario with each twist and the lose condition, an enemy escaping, naturally only happening when it is completely full of bad guys – a true conquest. Once again a game that so many accuse of not being thematic succeeds in telling a great story.
In “Go Back in Time to Slay the Heroes’ Ancestors” Marvel Legendary goes full on Terminator with a plan to completely wipe the heroes from the timeline! It’s a dark scenario! When a scheme twist comes up you pick a hero from the HQ and every time their cards come out from that point forwards they are immediately KO’d. It’s effectively a race to beat the mastermind as so many scenarios are, but with the unique twist of a rapidly diminishing choice of heroes, forcing you to adapt when your favourite gets eliminated.
“Brainwash the Military” is the least interesting of the new set, seeing a bunch of now enemy Shield Officers trying to escape the city. It’s very similar to the base game’s Killbot scenario, just a little bit harder with grateful shield officers clogging up your deck. Not that I’d mind Maria Hill clogging up my deck, if you know what I mean.
The final Scheme, “The Unbreakable Enigma Code” is an absolute tour-de-force! Each scheme twist adds a random, unseen hero card face down to the side of the mastermind to create the Enigma Code (from the colours of the cards). When you fight a villain you can pay to look at one of the cards. When you attempt to fight the Mastermind, you must state the code correctly or you don’t reach him and the code is randomised again! It’s crazy! But also so cool! I’ve not played it enough to know how random the difficulty will be (probably a fair issue) but for shear imagination and ballsiness I admire it. Whoever came up with it is clearly a villainous Mastermind in their own right.
Captain America 75th Anniversary is a great expansion for Marvel Legendary (with the caveat that it is the only one I’ve seen so far). As I said right at the start, it goes a long way towards solving the main issues with the base game. I still think the deck building could be more than it is, but this is certainly a strong step forward and the game’s challenge has been really ramped up. A perfect purchase to make alongside the base game for new players, and a great addition to a growing collection for Marvel Legendary fans!
Rating: A diamond anniversary
Having saved the world, history itself, and punched evil in the face, Captain America takes a well earned vacation in the Great Lakes. Finally, a modicum of peace –
‘Ow!’
An acorn…?
What the…?
Coming Soon!
Our copy of Legendary: Captain America 75th Anniversary was provided for review by Esdevium Games. You can get hold of a copy from your local hobby store for a mere £17.99!
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