Marvel Legendary Review

What if I told you that this review of sort-of cooperative deck builder Marvel Legendary was going to be… Marvelous? How would you react if I said it might even be… Legendary? What would –

Everybody: Just shut up and get on with the review!

Matt: Oh-kay then…

marvel legendary

 

 

Players: 1-5

Time: 45 mins

Ages: 14+

 

 

 

So let’s start where the comic book art splattered cover naturally leads us: do you need to be a huge comic book fan to enjoy Marvel Legendary? No, but it helps.

I enjoy the Marvel Universe. I watched cartoons when I was a kid and I’ve seen many (not all) of the modern films and TV series. So I’d definitely call myself, if not a fan, then someone who enjoys the cinematic universe at least. But I’ve never read the comics. Or dressed up as anything. Still, I have a good grounding in the characters you’ll see in this game and that basic understanding of the theme really brings some of the mechanics to life.

If you’ve never watched a marvel film and don’t care for superheroes and their spandex fetishes then, firstly, thank you for reading this far! Secondly, you can absolutely play this game and just ignore the theme, but you might find it a little bit lacking. However, if the most you’ve done is watch the Avengers (which I’d recommend to just about anyone), you have enough of a starting point to jump into this game!

Marvel Legendary board

Of course, if you’re a rabid Marvel fan and have a collection of comic books taller than yourself then you need to get this game! In fact, you probably already have it, it’s been out since 2012 after all. So why review this now? Well every story has to start at the beginning after all, and every super hero has to have their origins story!

Oh yes, this is just the beginning.

 

I’m a billionaire super genius trained by a secret government organisation and I just got bitten by a radioactive spider

Marvel Legendary starts you off with homework. I know, right, what an opening. But before you can even start playing the game, you have to sort and separate all the decks of cards into the individual heroes, villains, masterminds and other paraphernalia. That’s a fun hour and you haven’t even started playing yet!

Marvel Legendary Sorting

It’s kind of the card game equivalent of punching cardboard chits but it still sticks out as something as a surprise. You’ll also want to write on all the dividers they supply you with so you have any hope of finding the cards you want before you play, or you can print off these damn cool ones from board game geek. Maybe I’ve been spoilt by games like Dominion who have things better organised or maybe I’m just getting lazy but this felt like a lot more effort than I necessarily expected. I have a great deal of sympathy for Nick Fury trying to get the Avengers organised now.

The effort extends to set up too. Each game you’ll choose a team of superheroes and shuffle together their decks to create a big heroic deck of heroes that will come rushing out into a market for purchase like your Ascensions and Star Realms. Then you’ll take a Mastermind, the nasty villain whose devilish scheme you will be attempting to foil, the scheme also being a card giving you scenario specific rules to follow, schemes like replacing Earth’s leaders with killbots or robbing the city bank. The final job is to put together the villain deck, a collection of baddies, scheme twists and other bits and bobs, who’ll be marching through the city and that you’ll be fighting. Finding and putting together all these cards takes a bit of time, sorting and putting things away takes forever. But it creates a huge amount of variety with even just the base game.

Marvel Legendary Cards

The city is flying and we’re fighting an army of robots. And I have a bow and arrow. Nothing makes sense.

You’ve got 8 different schemes and 4 Masterminds straight out of the box. There are 15 different and instantly recognisable heroes, and a slew of different sets of villains. In some ways, this isn’t as much variability as you might expect. The masterminds actually have a fairly small effect on the game, only appearing when a Master Strike card drops from the enemy deck to clobber the heroes and show the lackeys how it’s done. Likewise the henchmen and villains you’ll spend most of your time fighting only tweak your experiences. The different heroes and their card powers don’t tend to combine together that much either. It’s more about crafting the best deck from the limited market available on your turn than it is about finding the best combos from the hero decks you pick out at the start of the game.

The Schemes, though, are fantastic! Offering some fun twists on the mechanics and gameplay experiences, from simple races to beat the Mastermind to rescuing bystanders from villains or preventing killbots from escaping. Mechanically I suppose they come down to one or two small things but playing them feels different.

Marvel Legendary Portals

Take the scheme above as an example. Each time you draw a Scheme Twist card from the villain deck you put it in the leftmost city space, giving the bad guy in that space an extra pip of strength. But it’s the story that matters! The day starts out like any other with low-level villains running around. But then suddenly dark portals start opening across the city, the villains are drawing strength from them! And as more open the situation get’s more and more desperate as the city slips further and further into this dark dimension. I get really drawn into the story of the game.

That’s where the greatness of this game lies. You’ll begin with a bunch of rubbish Shield agents (classic deck builder) and steadily improve your deck. But while you’re doing that the enemy is hard at work. Initially it’s just the minions running around the city causing havoc. But then a Scheme Twist will fall out of the villain deck and everyone will be making “woah!” noises just like superheroes normally do. You’ll consult the scheme card and things will change. Get a little harder. As your deck develops you’ll be going up against the Mastermind. Beat them 4 times between you and the game will be won. Allow the game to go on too long though and the Mastermind will be victorious in whatever way the Scheme card dictates.

Except will they?

Marvel Legendary Gameplay

Hulk Smash!

The thing is, Marvel Legendary is not that tough. In fact, I’ve never lost a base game scheme (foreshadowing), which is not exactly a strong characteristic for a co-operative game. Now, this is a ‘gateway’ game. It’s intended for people who’ve never played deck builders, never played hobby board games even. So I can see why they made it fairly easy to win… but for any experienced gamer it is a doddle. Now, I know the good guys always win a superhero story but generally I want a co-op to leave me feeling like Loki at the end of The Avengers, at least occasionally.

Partly, this is mitigated by this being a semi-coop. When ever a player beats an enemy or rescues a bystander, they drop those into their own personal victory points pile. Heroes collecting the bodies of their foes is definitely not creepy, no. But this gives some friction between the players that makes the team play sub-optimally with the right group of players. Sadly, there’s not that many ways to mess with one another in the base game (foreshadowing!) beyond taking a hero your friend wanted or beating a high value hero.

The difficulty curve is a particular issue in the solo game where you just end up beating on enemies for points rather than worrying about surviving. Fortunately there are some advanced game modes available that up the difficulty by adding in more scheme twists (increasing the pace of the game) or boosting the strength of the Mastermind and combining the two together can make for some utterly brutal experiences that will really test your ability to build a strong a deck! In fact, it becomes a really great solo game at these high difficulty modes! The lesson here is to tweak your game according to player experience and preferences for cooperating (or not).

 

I’m a huge fan of how you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster

I mentioned at the start that if you’re not into superheroes at all then you might find the mechanics a bit lacking. There’s not much depth to the hero cards you’ll be building your deck from. They add more attack or more money and some extra ability, but typically these are basic abilities like drawing extra cards or if this condition is met, then get this bonus. These conditional abilities often require you to have already played a card of a particular colour (of the 5 types in the deck) and so reward you for carefully building your deck. But this is a simple degree of interaction compared to what you see in other deck builders. So if you don’t care for the theme and you’ve played deck builders before the mechanics of gameplay probably aren’t going to excite you.

If you know a bit about the theme though you’ll see some really nice elements in how the cards have been put together. Like how Storm’s attacks do more damage to enemies outside, how Rogue copies the abilities of other cards, how a Wolverine focussed deck can end up drawing tons of cards and whipping themselves into a brutal combat frenzy. Meanwhile Hulk smashes stuff, Captain America encourages you to have all the heroes working together, and Deadpool just screws around with everyone. It’s really great spotting these touches and you get the satisfaction of cards triggering one another and seeing your deck kicking villain arse!

MarvelLegendaryHand

Marvel Legendary won’t be for everyone, but I really enjoy playing it! It doesn’t have incredible card play, it doesn’t have that many fascinating mechanics and out of the box it’s a pretty easy co-op. It has some lovely thematic touches the fans will appreciate but not a hugely strong theme (who is the player supposed to be after all?). Yet what Marvel Legendary does have is soul. It captured my imagination and once I used the advanced gameplay rules, challenged me too! I will recommend Marvel Legendary to anyone who enjoys a superhero movie now and again, especially for introducing people to the joys of deck building. There’s enough fun in the base game to keep you going a while, but you know what? The expansions solve every problem I’ve highlighted here…

That’s the thing with origins movies. They just aren’t quite as exciting as the follow up.

 

Rating: Almost Legendary

 

Staring in order of appearance

Me
You?
Hugh Jackman’s recquired cameo
Tobey Maquire as the one and only Spiderman
Robert Downey Jr still in character
Black Widow’s breasts
Rogue’s breasts
Storm’s breasts
(seriously. I don’t care that it’s true to the comic art, they’re ridiculous)
Deadpool, as himself

Written and directed by Me

 

Oh look! It’s the post credits hint at the next part of the Marvel Reviewmatic Universe!

 

*sound of clanking metal footsteps over a darkened screen*

*light slowly filters across the screen, an old abandoned warehouse*

Iron Man: We can’t go on like this, Captain. Things have to happen my way…

*we see flashes of the detritus of battle*

Iron Man: Captain…?

Marvel Legendary Captain

Iron Man: My God what happened to you!?

Marvel Legendary Captain 2

Coming… Soon! It’s here! It’s here! Click here!

 

Our copy of Marvel Legendary was provided for review by Esdevium Games! You can get hold of it from your local games store for £49.99 RRP.

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