Growing up, I had been a huge fan of Collectible Card Games (CCG’s), and became pretty adept at many of the different ones out there — the original Star Wars CCG by Decipher, Star Trek, the original Marvel Card Game, Netrunner, and of course, the grand-daddy of them all , Magic: The Gathering. Being familiar with the CCG genre, as I came into my own as an adult, and started having some extra money to invest into my love of board games, I was really intrigued by the idea of a Living Card Game (LCG) and how it differed from a CCG, and why it would even be worth my time looking into them.
For the uninitiated, a CCG, is a game wherein players must invest in randomized decks and packs of trading cards, each of which has a different strength, strategy or value attached to it; and by value, I mean literal money. Some of the original Magic: The Gathering cards from the first set are going for thousands upon thousands of dollars on Amazon and eBay. Players buy, sell or trade cards, and then put together what they think will be the best deck with the best cards that will allow them to trounce their opponents. As much as I love CCG’s, a new player has an immediate disadvantage as they not only have to learn the system, but also must catch up in buying a large quantity (and quality) of expensive cards just to be able to play on a level playing field. The same could be said for someone who hasn’t played in awhile either, as frequent expansion sets require gamers to constantly be investing more money to keep up with the changing playing landscape.
A Living Card Game, is about the complete opposite. A gamer picks up a starter set that has all the cards they will ever really need to play the game, and that’s about it. As time goes on, the game manufacturer will release new expansions that add new villains, heroes and powers, but it’s not necessary to pick them up (although it is recommended to keep adding new facets to the game). What’s also a lot of fun is that each player starts the game with the same resources and builds their decks out of the same pool of cards, thus rewarding gamers who play strategically, since you really only have yourself to blame if you lose since you can’t say your opponent had access to cards you didn’t.
Legendary: Marvel is the new release from Upper Deck (thanks to oshing, friend of robots), and I can overwhelmingly say that it is the most fun I’ve had playing a board/card game in awhile.
I’m not going to bore you with a summary of all the rules, but I will explain the basic way players will go through a game.
Players all start out with a 12 card deck made up of S.H.I.E.L.D. resources they can use to recruit new heroes from HQ, and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents they can use to attack villains as they are revealed from the deck each turn. Every game also starts with a Mastermind, whether it be Loki, Magneto, Dr. Doom or some other Marvel baddie, alone with a Scheme, that sets the rules for the game and the conditions under which the villain triumphs over the players. Yep, in the same vein as other great games like Pandemic and Castle Panic, this is a cooperative game wherein everyone either loses or wins together. To those who want to have an actual winner, there is as victory point mechanic built in, but that will only take place if the players are able to defeat the Mastermind 4 times, which is no easy feat considering how much more powerful they are than the average henchman you’ll be fighting over the course of the game.
Start of a game.
Anyway, as you go through the game, you’ll constantly be drawing and discarding cards to purchase new resources, attack the enemy and recruit heroes to your cause. Since you discard and draw a new hand each time it’s your turn, it behooves you to use up everything you have available to you at the moment since you will have to wait until you shuffle your discard pile back into your deck to use them again. It is through this incredibly simple rule that makes the game fast paced and exciting, as you’re constantly trying to figure out what combination of hero and resource to use that will give you the edge on your next turn. Also, since heroes come in different varieties (read: card suits), playing more than one of the same ‘suit’ each turn earns you different perks and bonuses. Sure, Storm with an attack power of 4 could knock out the Green Goblin on the Bridge, but if you play your Spider-Man to recruit Rogue from your deck and THEN play Storm who gives the Mastermind a -2 to power if you played an agility character like Spider-Man first in the round, and finally use Rogue to mimic all of Storm’s powers, your team can take out the Mastermind and possibly win the game — or that could allow the henchmen to build up and escape the city, possibly with a few innocent bystanders that will fulfill the Scheme and cement the Mastermind’s victory.
End of a solitaire game where I beat the Mastermind.
If it sounds complicated, it’s really not, as the nuances of the intricacies of how the game works will easily be figured out through the first play through, so it’s nowhere near as daunting as most of the other LCG’s out there, and not even close to as complicated as Marvel Heroes, an excellent, but complex board game released a few years ago by Fantasy Flight Games that plays much in the same vein. It is due to this combination of simplicity and strategy that makes the game incredibly fun and one that any fan of the X-Men, Spider-Man, the Avengers, or any Marvel property will definitely want to pick up. Even if your group of friends aren’t really the board game playing type, I think that almost anyone will be able to get into this game, and if not, there’s a pretty fun solitaire version of it built into the rules.
Simply put, if you like Marvel and are even remotely interested in card or board games, go out and buy this right now; I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed.