Thoughts on… Lost Legacy: 2nd Chronicle
In the distant past, a starship from a faraway world appeared in the sky. Damaged in battle, it broke apart and traced lines of fire across the horizon. These falling stars spelt out a clear message to the men and women of the land far below:
YOU CAN BUY BATMAN LOVE LETTER NOW!
Lost Legacy is a series of games from Love Letter designer Seiji Kanai, and share that neat, 16 card micro game format that we so admire Love Letter for (you can check our our review here). As much as I love Love Letter, I loathe the endless re-skins that are being released, so I was excited to discover a different game in a familiar format! And immediately it’s interesting.
Initially, the game plays almost exactly analogously to Love Letter. You have a card you draw a card and then chose one to play. But when the deck runs out, the real, awesome part of the game begins: the investigation phase! Unlike Love Letter, where you just have a quick “whoever has the highest card wins” ending, Lost Legacy gives players a chance to guess the location of the Lost Legacy card. Get it right and you win. Get it wrong and you’ve blown your chance. This is an incredible element of gameplay, it gives each round a satisfying conclusion drives your decision making over the course of the game, and is incredibly tense! Let me explain.
Each of the Lost Legacy games is focused on a specific relic that you are all trying to find. This is one of the cards in the deck, while the other 15 cards are just a means to an end. As in Love Letter, each card has a value, either from 1-8 or an X, which is the worst possible value and not a card you want in your hand at the end of the game. The value indicates the order in which players will be able to guess in the investigation phase, so you want a low valued card at the end of the game. However, the Lost Legacy itself is number 5. This means you can have the winning card in your hand but if another player has gathered enough information and has a lower valued card, they can steal your victory out from under you! It’s incredible! There’s no guarantee that having the 1 card will win you the game either, as going first means you have the least information to play with. There is no best card to be! In an additional cruel twist, if two players have the same valued card at the end, neither of them gets to guess. Sucks to be them!
Another element that is changed from Love Letter is the inclusion of “the ruins”. This is the name given to the card that is discarded at the start of the game. In Love Letter that just ensured no one could have perfect information, but in Lost Legacy it becomes an integral part of the game. Not only might it be a hiding place for the Legacy card, many cards allow players to interact with the ruins in interesting ways.
With Lost Legacy, the simple core of Love Letter has been expanded on and improved, giving it a much stronger focus on information gathering and manipulation. However, that’s an overview. I said at the start that Lost Legacy is a series. In Japan, there are some 13 different versions available, and publisher AEG has so far brought 4 versions across to Western shores, with another 2 on the way soon. I have been playing the “Second Chronicle” box, containing not 1 but 2 whole games! So if they’re both half as good as Love Letter they must be worth having I guess? Is that how quality works…?
Vorpal Sword
Inhabitants of Kingdoms bordering the foul southern swamplands have been troubled by strange dreams of late. Vivid dreams of a gleaming sword, both weapon and key to greater power. These swamplands have long been suspected of harbouring Lost Legacies, but monsters haunt it’s depths too. Many a brave adventurer has not returned from their forays into this dark, decaying land.
The Vorpal Sword module has players exploring the fetid swamplands, meeting and possibly defeating it’s denizens, and hoping to discover the famed Vorpal Sword at the end of the game. It really brings the hidden information element to the fore, with Scout cards letting you look at cards players are holding or at cards in the ruins, and Seals that allow you to add additional cards to the ruins. You can try hiding the Vorpal Sword in the ruins, or you can bluff and dump rubbish cards in there. Since there are only 3 Scout cards in the game, no one is going to have perfect information come the investigation phase!
This module also features some delicious player elimination. While it can be sucky in longer games, a game of Vorpal Sword is short enough that it doesn’t hurt too much, just like in Love Letter. However, the Rotting Miasma cards that allow you to eliminate players harbour a trap (or an opportunity). The Lord of Rot card, master of this decaying swamp, will hand victory to his player if all three Rotting Miasma cards have been played. Therefore, players must always bear in mind this second win condition as they play.
Overall, Vorpal Sword is a really interesting, tactical game of careful information gathering and opportunistic play. The interaction of players with the ruins adds a fun element to gameplay, and the second victory route with the Lord of Rot adds a fun twist! It’s still quite luck based, and it’s certainly not as simple to grasp as Love Letter, but the increased scope for clever gameplay gives it that little bit more depth and intrigue. A very nice, fun module!
Whitegold Spire
The glittering tower known as the Whitegold Spire is one of the world’s most famous Lost Legacies. The unique material the tower is made of enhances spells and is sought after the world over. A powerful cartel controls the Spire and the surrounding lands, but now a brave group of treasure hunters have planned a daring heist. You will be infiltrating the tower at the height of a festival and attempting to get away with the most loot as you can.
Whitegold Spire is a completely different game to Vorpal Sword. The Spire is well known (I mean, who could lose a giant tower!?) so finding the Whitegold Spire card at the end of the game will no longer give you the win, though it is a significant bonus. Instead, the player who makes it out with the highest total value of cards in their discard pile will be the winner.
Players will want to be getting high value cards out in front of them, but it’s not going to be so easy. Many of the cards in Whitegold Spire, such as the powerful Income card, will have you flipping the cards in your discard pile. If a card is face down, it isn’t scoring for you. Turns out sneaking the gold out the Spire isn’t going to be easy!
The low value cards like the Street Performer, the Guard and the Phantom Thief have powerful abilities to damage other players, or to benefit you. The Street Performer, for instance, lets you steal a juicy card from one of your opponents. But do you want to use these cards now when they will give you a shot at guessing the location of the Whitegold Spire card during the investigation phase?
One problem card in this game is the Taxes card that returns all face down cards to the deck. These cards are a pain in the arse! They can dramatically extend the game, and while they act as a counter to the rather brutal effects of the Guard and Phantom Thief cards, and by extending the game mitigate some of the luck, they’re more likely to cause groans than cheers when played. It’s not game ruining, but in a 16 card micro game, one duff card has a pretty detrimental effect on the whole game experience.
When I was taught this module, I wasn’t told the heist background, which makes the victory conditions so much more meaningful, and also explains that you’re not all searching for a tower! When you teach the game to people, start with the background! Right, with that out the way, Whitegold Tower is an interesting module, but not as good as Vorpal Sword. It is more complicated, without making the game more tense or exciting. The damn Taxes card is an annoyance, but at least they named it appropriately I suppose. On the plus side, it doesn’t feature player elimination so any players that really loathe that can play this module. So is it time for an overall rating? Oh no. Not yet.
Vorpal Sword AND Whitegold Spire!
That’s right! With Lost Legacy you can combine two decks to play a larger game, allowing you to play with up to 6 players! Any two Lost Legacy decks can be combined (as mentioned, 4 are available in the west, with another 2 inbound), giving a huge variety of possible games to play. You choose a single Lost Legacy card to include (in this box, either the Vorpal Sword or the Whitegold Spire card), which determines your victory conditions, and mash the remaining 30 cards together to form a super deck!
Unfortunately, it’s a bit rubbish… Each deck is reasonably well designed around the form of gameplay that deck is trying to portray. Vorpal Sword has you exploring the swamps searching for the sword, Whitegold Spire has you gathering treasure without being caught. And they just don’t mesh all that well.
Playing the Vorpal Sword mission is particularly bad. The Whitegold Spire cards don’t tend to help with obtaining information, and the card flipping is just meaninglessly tacked on, although it can make the Lord of Rot slightly more interesting… in the combined game, you need three “X” cards face up in players’ discards to win with him. That is, precisely three, so with card flipping and 6 “X” cards available, it’s a tricky yet rewarding win to pull off! While flipping cards hides information in theory, the Legacy is always in someone’s hand or the ruins at the end of the game. At least the Vorpal Sword cards directly contribute to the Whitegold Spire victory condition with their values.
One interesting thing that comes out of this mega-game, is that there are now two of each low value card. This means having one of those is no longer a safe bet in the investigation phase. If another player has the same card as you, you won’t get to guess the legacy’s location. So has another player kept the same card back as you? Suddenly all those face down cards are an issue!
But at the end of the day, it’s the God damned Taxes cards that ruins this game. They extended game time too much in the Whitegold Spire module, and their effect is exponentially worse when you have a deck that’s twice as large! So each single round drags on far too long. The two deck game may be better with other combinations, using the previous 1st Chronicle games, but I’ve not had the opportunity to try them, yet.
Some kind of conclusion
So, this review has sprawled into quite the epic, rather like a Taxes heavy mega-game. Lost Legacy is no Love Letter. While it shares the 16 card structure, it is a more complex, but also deeper game. The decisions matter that little bit more, and the broad additions of the investigation phase and ruins are excellent, really improving on the Love Letter formula.
Neither Vorpal Sword nor Whitegold Spire share the brilliant elegance of Love Letter, but they don’t need to. These are gamers’ micro games. If you’re new to the hobby, I don’t recommend Lost Legacy. The fun here is in forming clever plays and thinking through your decisions and what everyone else is doing. The complexity of the rules and of what you are trying to achieve is too much to call Lost Legacy a gateway game.
For gamers, however, you have two very interesting, very different puzzles. There is still the luck element, but so long as you are only playing with one module, the game still plays quickly enough that any luck averages out over a full play through. Add to the fact that you are getting two games in one box, this is definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for a meatier experience than Love Letter can provide. Just enjoy it as a 4-player game…
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