Reviews written by lj1983

It is a engine building game with a sheen of sci-fi pasted over it. I don't remember if its the first one to use the 'pay with the same thing you are building' schtick or not, but its fairly early. It is better than San Juan, due to the ability to pick your own role. This speeds things up significantly, while lowering player interaction alittle. This doesn't quite have the crazy combinations that things like Glory to Rome have, and it ends right as your 'engine' feels like its starting to work.

another user said the following:

"I didn't like Ascension for deck building, but Legendary works despite being the same game mechanically. However, Legendary's synergies occur in multitude, as you would want from a card game like this. Hero skills and team affiliations trigger combos, and heroes (unsurprisingly) combo fantastically with themselves, making it very easy to build functional decks. Legendary also hits it out of the park for diversity: the sheer number of heroes, masterminds, villains, henchmen, and evil schemes that can be mixed together in absurd variety make for fairly fresh gameplay each time. Finally, the comic book theme shines through: the characters are incredibly clear, to the point that sometimes I'm buying heroes just because I like them, rather than if they work well in what I'm building. Good game."

This is very nearly my opinion exactly. I've played many deckbuilders by now, of various types and pedigree. ultimately deckbuilding works best as a part of a larger game, and pure deckbuilders are limited by being a "deckbuilder". Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in this one, which is why it stays and around and I keep expanding it.

Legendary "Encounters" games are technically better games. they have more depth to their 'schemes' and more cooperation. but the crazy combinations are why I play deckbuilders, and Marvel Legendary blows all the "encounters" games out of the water. I have played Encounters - Firefly, Predator, Alien.

Is a large thematic disconnect due to different players buying different cards from a the same hero...yup there is. but if you can overlook that, all the different heroes and combos can make for a fun little puzzle each turn.

Most deckbuilders have an issue where there isn't enough variety in the base set, and they really require 1 or 2 expansions to really take off. Marvel Legendary has this, with the base set having a decent set of characters, limited/weak villains and relying too much on the semi-coop aspect. Later expansions make the villains much harder and bring in some fun abilities. This is disappointing, as I have a hard time recommending base legendary to anyone, as I think it needs at least Dark City to be a decent game. and the more difficult villains are really needed to move Legendary above the "deck plays itself" style of deckbuilder.

The art in the base game is limited, with the same image on each of a hero's card. at this point I don't think there will ever be a 2nd edition with new art, but it sticks out when you use the base heroes.

Saying that, Legendary has done a good job of avoiding power creep, with most of the base heroes still plenty powerful enough to be used right along side new heroes.

Argent. What a game. Why do I love argent? I love the idea of worker placement games. And I’ve played more than a handful, keeping some and moving on from others. But generally, most of the interaction in WP games is fairly passive. “I take this spot so that you can’t” is the classic example. There are other paths for player interaction among various games. But generally, WP fall on the shallow end of this pool.

Argent doesn’t. This is a game of blasting your opponents students, of locking areas so they can’t get in there, of sneaking around behind other people under a cloak of invisibility. There are enough spaces on the board that everything you do is NOT at the expense of others. You can play a passive, nice game if you’d like. But so much of the game is geared to giving you tools to allow you to mess with other people’s plans. If it then helps yours as well (and you should try to make that happen!) then so much the better.

There is a ton of stuff in argent (and I’ve got expansions to make that number larger!). The argument that a good editor could probably have reduced the bloat a bit is very valid. The process for ‘learning spells’ while not difficult, involves 3 different resources, one of which has no token. I think it is needlessly convoluted….though it is not complicated. And the stacks and stacks of cards….supporters with no abilities shouldn’t exist(though the ones with two schools can stay). Items that repeat starting spells, or spells that are simply variations on a theme….could probably be removed. Using mini-cards for most of the items/supporters would have been an easy change. Legendary spells need to stand out more from regular spells.
Argent at its heart is not complicated. Take a quick action, take a regular action. But those actions can have so many different results, that there is always something new to look at and do.

The 2nd edition changes push this even higher for me. The new bases eliminate the annoyance of putting the stupid headstones into the stupid bases where the stupid miniatures wouldn’t stay in. The new rule of marks breaking ties first instead of influence is a perfect example of tweaks that work, without changing how the game plays.

just the right mix of randomness and planning for a space-based Pickup and Deliver