Marvel Legendary: Deadpool Review

Deadpool: And we’re pleased to announce that this is the best Marvel Legendary box ever, because it has ME in it!

Matt: Wait, what, you can’t do that! I’m the reviewer here.

DP: I know I’ve read your articles, it’s awfully lonely around here isn’t it?

Matt: Huh? Wha –

DP: Yes! What you really need is another, more dynamic, voice! Also, what’s with all the blue and white? This will all look so much better in red…

Matt: But maybe I don’t agree with you!

DP: What!?

 

Players: 1 – 5

Time: 30-60 mins

Ages: 14+

 

 

 

 

Matt: Deadpool

DP: Yes?

Matt: Is the latest Marvel Legendary expansion in a very long line

DP: Why did it take them so long to get round to me?

Matt: You were in the core game too

DP: Yeah but so was Wolverine and that guy sucks.

Matt: This expansion adds the eponymous Deadpool

DP: Ooo, eponymous! You do like long words don’t you?

Matt: Look, are you going to let me write more than a sentence without interrupting me?

DP: That’s not really my style…

Matt: Let’s just explain the heroes shall we?

Mercs for Money

Matt: The first thing you’ll notice about the hero cards is that you probably haven’t heard of any of them.

DP: Except me!

Matt: Except Deadpool. The band of “heroes” in this set are drawn from Deadpool’s Mercs for Money gang whose comics only started in 2015, though many of the characters had been kicking around for a few years before. If, like me, you are confused by many of them appearing dressed as Deadpool on the card art then don’t worry, pretending to be Deadpool to get jobs was kind of how they got hired into the Mercs for Money in the first place.

Firstly, you’ve got Solo, who has a rather unhealthy obsession with guns.

DP: Unhealthy for the bad guys! Wait, aren’t I one of the bad guys too?

Matt: We’ll get to that. Stingray seems to be able to fly, swim, and shoot fricking lazer beams from his hands.

DP: Dr Evil eat your heart out.

Matt: Then we have the extremely weird Slapstick.

DP: I’ll tell him you said that.

Matt: Slapstick looks like a clown and runs around smacking people with a massive hammer. I’m not surprised he hasn’t turned up in the movies just yet. Still, the shear amount of damage he puts out certainly makes him fun to use. Lastly,

DP: But certainly not least-ly

Matt: We have Bob, agent of Hydra. Oh Bob.

DP: Poor Bob.

Matt: The one guy without any powers.

DP: Bob’s the real hero.

Matt: So! New rules. ½ a rule, even. You may have noticed all the half values dotted around the cards.

DP: Half sane, half-cocked.

Matt: Half attack, half money. These are just added up like any other value but you’ll need two cards giving halves to get a benefit and they make all the math that little bit slower.

DP: It’s not that hard! Even Bob can do it.

Matt: Yes, but it doesn’t add anything or mean anything either. It’s basically a joke, but one that makes everything more annoying. Actually, maybe that is pretty thematic…

DP: Hey, wait a minute…

Matt: Fortunately, other Deadpool jokes work really well. These are the 4^th wall breaking elements that Deadpool is so famous for.

DP: Who? Me?

Matt: Many of the cards in this set have conditions that depend on things you don’t expect. Slapstick has a card that gets you money if there are other players who are taller than you. Deadpool has a card that gives attack if the time is between 8 and midnight, but money otherwise. They are undeniably silly rules, but I do like them.

Others really do make you build your decks in unusual ways if you want to make the most out of them. Deadpool has a card that gets better the more cards with flavour text you play. Solo lets you draw a card if that card has a picture of a gun on it. They make you look at the cards you buy in a very different way and that’s the kind of things expansions should do.

The other new addition is, perhaps unsurprisingly a rule called ‘Excessive Violence’. Actions tied to this trigger when you’ve caused at least one damage more to a target than you needed to kill them. It’s… a… rule? Some cards seem to make poor use of it. Typically, Excessive Violence can’t be used to engine build and only occasionally makes you chose between taking out 2 enemies or only 1. For example, Bob’s card only lets you draw a card but only after you’ve committed Excessive Violence, by which point you’ve probably spent most of your attack unless you’re facing off against a mass of weaker enemies. And the enemies in this set are far from easy.

Bad Guys

DP: Hey, I’m not such a bad guy…

Matt: Well you sort of are in this set with a whole set of bad guys that, from the name at least, appear to be reanimated Deadpool corpses. Care to explain what’s going on?

DP: Comics!

Matt: Right. The enemies in this set all have a desire for Revenge for their other members of their set.

DP: I’m very loyal to myself.

Matt: Quite. This, rather like the Mandroids from Civil War, means they get tougher for every defeated enemy of that type in your victory point pile. Coordinating with your friends gets more important here. However, unlike the Mandroids, these enemies start with pretty solid damage! After beating a few, the rest are as strong as some Masterminds!

Speaking of Masterminds, this set has the bizarre “Macho Gomez”, who looks like something from a Mighty Boosh sketch. On the bright side he has an awesome Master Strike in the form of bounties. The Master strike cards themselves, placed in front of the player that drew them, represent the bounties. Every Master Strike also makes every player with a bounty draw a wound, but the cool bit is that you can pay to shift the bounty on to the next player around the table. If they’re playing a high wound strategy they might even thank you for it! (But they probably won’t).

The other Mastermind is, oh, what do you know? Evil Deadpool.

DP: Man, I hate that guy.

Matt: Me too! Evil Deadpool is just hard as nails. He starts with a health of 11 but has revenge for himself. Trying to beat him solo is a real toughy! To make matters worse, one of his tactic cards gets put back if its not the last one drawn, meaning you might end up having to beat him even more than normal! Not easy when you’re dealing with the scenarios in this set.

DP: Maybe you just suck?

Matt: I…

Schemes

Matt: As normal for a Marvel Legendary small box expansion, you get 4 new schemes to play against and these ones are… fine? They’re amusing concepts, they are challenging, particularly when combined with the enemy sets, but they don’t do anything clever. I look back at the Captain America expansion with a real sense of nostalgia.

DP: Urgh what!? That dweeb?

Matt: Deadpool Wants a Chimichanga has you rescuing

DP: The world’s most delicious food!

Matt: Yes, from the villains. It’s a classic rescue the bystanders mission, with the added zing of putting rescued bystanders

DP: Chimichangas!

Matt: Chimichangas back into the villain deck with each scheme twist. Deadpool Writes a Scheme

DP: Is magnificient

Matt: Is a race against time and you lose

DP: 6 times!

Matt: when the 6^th twist comes out. It’s certainly an appropriately ridiculous scenario, depleting almost the entire bystander and wound decks under the right conditions. In Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, Deadpool is, just for a change, being a bit of a dick. In every scheme twist you draw heroes from the hero deck until you draw a Deadpool card and then KO all those cards. It’s a don’t lose all the heroes scenario, and certainly makes you think twice about buying new heroes. You want to keep that deck full of Deadpools if you can! Finally we come to a scheme I think we can all agree on: Everybody Hates Deadpool!

DP: Hey!

Matt: It’s a don’t let villains escape mission and everyone has “revenge” (or double revenge) making it a real challenge and demanding some serious collaboration amongst players. Good luck if you’re playing solo!

Matt: Deadpool is an ok expansion. The 4^th wall breaking cards are a lot of fun, Revenge makes things pretty challenging, but most of the other additions are just fine. As usual, the mechanics do a pretty good job of capturing the theme of these characters in the comics, but unless you’re familiar with them there is little to latch on to. Deadpool’s expansion releases to capitalise on the recent film’s success, but then hands you a pile of characters you’ll have to go out and research to understand. Not bad, but mostly one for fans.

DP: No! You can’t do that! This is the best expansion! An ess-

Matt: Sorry Deadpool, it’s all over. You’re just a writing construct for comedic effect after all. Look, now you can’t say anything.

DP: !!

Matt: How’s that for 4^th wall breaking?

Rating: Dead-puddle

 

Our copy of Marvel Legendary Deadpool was provided for review by Esdevium Games. You can pick it up for £19.99 RRP from your friendly local game store.