Hey, Bub! ‘Legendary: A Marvel DBG’ May Not Be the Best There Is At What It Does.

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8 Responses

  1. Jeff says:

    Well done JM. Couldn’t have said it better. For reals.

  2. Jimzik says:

    I actually like the same art on heroes for easy separation. What I don’t like is the very hard to read print! This becomes a problem when trying to separate villains who DO have differing artwork back into their own piles. It’s also hard to read what the title of the Hero cards are. Did anyone over 21 proof read these cards? Still love the game and look forward to some Spidey expansions.

    • jmgariepy says:

      That’s a good point. I probably would have been much kinder about the art if I had a chance to read the card’s text while it sat on the table in front of me. Legendary has some very nice artwork. It’s a pity they valued the artwork over gameplay, though.

  3. Rayman says:

    Just started playing Legendary about a week ago with my friends. So far we have played 10 games and the one point of your review that really bothers me is the line “When you buy a Black Widow card and a different Black Widow card flips into HQ, you’re more likely to buy that other Black Widow card because it probably works well with the Black Widow card you previously bought, and you don’t want to read what the other cards do.” You mentioned magic earlier and 3 of my group were all tournament players, the other never played. But all of us really cared about what the cards said and didn’t just look at who it was. From the first game to the last game we had players comboing cards off one another especially ones that were of different characters (Emma Frost+Storm+Gambit=drawing your entire deck every turn)

    • jmgariepy says:

      Good on ya, Rayman. If I remember correctly, that comment was about how the artwork was all samey, and tended to lead players into not reading their cards. I’ve seen that lead to card text fatigue in some players where they just stop caring what they buy. It certainly doesn’t represent every player, though, as your play group demonstrates.

      This article is a little dated and probably needs an update. The biggest change is that expansions made after the first Legendary set got different artwork for different cards. Upper Deck apologized for this major gaffe. They took a lot of heat for it. If the card art bothers you, I’d suggest getting Dark City as soon as possible. It roughly doubles the number of heroes, and the repetitive artwork problem shifts away from an annoyance to just an odd quirk.

      If you like Legendary, I’d also suggest Legendary Encounters which takes the core engine and turns it into one of four movies from the Aliens franchise. It’s really interesting to see how a game can be so different while being the same… and there are plenty of opportunities for crossing one game over into the other (Having the Avengers fight through the plot of Aliens, or sending Ripley and her team to fight Magneto.) I don’t have a written review, but we covered it and every other Deck Building Game ever (really) in Nerd Fountain episode #2. If you’re impatient, the review comes at the end of the podcast. Here’s the link: Nerd Fountain Episode 2

  4. Alex Shamis says:

    Got this about a week ago and got the first game in yesterday. Yes, the $60 price tag is a bit high considering the DC deck building game is $40, but there’s a bit more in this game then the other and the production value (the board, the high quality cards, the molded box) make up for the extra cost.
    Game-wise, it was great. I played for the first time yesterday and today went and got 3/5 expansions. We didn’t even finish the game and I still felt good enough about the game to drop $80 for 450 more cards.
    As far as sleeves go, yeah that can add up but you don’t have to sleeve them. You also don’t have to sleeve them with the 50 for $5 packs. These cards fit perfectly into the slightly smaller sleeves (i think they’re 64×89? not exactly sure) but those come in packs of 100 for $3. Still adds up, but more manageable. You give up the solid back and some of the sturdiness of the higher end sleeves for 3rd of the cost. I have my entire set of Sentinels of the Multiverse in those sleeves now and that’s over 1500 cards which adds up to a huge extra chunk of cash.

    One more note:
    “A few reviewers have mentioned they would have liked to play one hero, or play a group of heroes while their friends play with other heroes, instead of everyone having a deck full of the same five heroes and S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents, but that would be a hard game to design … but my impression is the end result would be a weaker game.”

    I haven’t tried it yet, but apparently that’s exactly what they did for Legendary Aliens Encounters, you get a specific deck (like Heavy or something) and proceed from there instead of starting with generic SHIELD agent or whatever cards. So they could have designed it more like Sentinels, you start as Spiderman, you get these 12 action, effect or ally cards and then buy up more. Hey that sounds like a good game to make 😀

    • Alex Shamis says:

      forgot. The first comment my friend made when we were sorting the cards and labeling the separators was “oh they cheeped out and didn’t do different artwork for the hero decks!” But for me that was alright, it made it easier to sort stuff later.
      I have to agree with Jimzik, the font made it more annoying for me then anything. Splitting up villain groups at the end was tougher then heroes because, while the different art work was great, the font they used sucked and blended with the cards. But that is really the only problem I had with the game.
      Love that board! I think I’m going to put two stickers onto the escape section for quick reference as to what happens when 1) a villain escapes 2) a villain escapes with a bystander

  1. January 16, 2013

    […] Michael Gariepy reviews one of the newest entries into the deck-building genre, Legendary, based upon the Marvel universe. […]

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