Tag Archives: legendary: dark city

Game Review: Legendary Secret Wars Vol. 1

Posted on by

secretwarsLegendary Secret Wars Vol. 1 is the fifth expansion of the Marvel Legendary base game, but also only the second big box expansion.  Thus far Marvel Legendary has been extremely streamlined, as every expansion has mostly built on the group of characters in the game while also expanding slowly but strategically on the base rules.  Inevitably though, anything which is Marvel is going to be compared to DC, and so the comparison to the DC Comics Deck Building Game is going to be discussed as well, and for the first time it would seem as though Upper Deck is taking on Cryptozoic with this new release.  What DC Comics Deck Building lacks in a concise gameplay experience, it makes up for in variety.  It already features a head-to-head option, as well as a wider variety of characters to play with, both as the main character and as cards to be acquired.  Due to the framework of the game, Legendary has always been a bit behind in this regard.  Not counting the Villains expansion, this represents the 60th playable character in the series, and even at that, three of those have now been a version of Wolverine.

There are some new rules for this game, some which work and some which don’t.  Potentially the most interesting was the Sidekicks group of cards, which could have been thematically different, just with the specialists in Legendary Encounters: Aliens, but they come off as identical versions of themselves.  More interesting is the ability to “purchase” Ultimate heroes by defeating them in combat.  Among others this includes the first time that Wasp is a playable character in the franchise, though evidently not directly as we might have hoped.  There are a couple of other interesting rules changes, including multiclass cards and the ability to bribe your enemies instead of attacking them directly, but the biggest change overall is that of the head-to-head option.  This is aided in part by the Ambition deck of cards, but evidently this does not work thematically as much as it should.  In this case one player can play as a mastermind and recruit heroes (by corrupting them).  This comes off as a bit disingenuous for the series which has tried at all times to keep the game experience as close as possible to the comics experience (as opposed to DC) and seems to be there only so players can have a true player-vs-player experience.  While this version of the game does come off as a bit weird, it ends up working pretty well when following the suggested rules for integrating both the Heroes and the Villains game.  This is also noteworthy as the cards are not only compatible with both games, but also help to incorporate them together.

The new cards are mostly impressive additions to the mix, though it is evident that Upper Deck is still holding back some of the bigger characters so that there will be interest in future expansions.  The biggest names that fans are going to be interested in are Kitty Pryde, Captain Marvel and Black Panther, although there are probably others happy to see Thanos, Doctor Strange, Black Bolt, Lady Thor and Namor.  The remainder of the playable heroes is a bit of a mixed bag, featuring another Wolverine, another Spider-Man, another Iron Man, and a few others to tie into the Secret Wars story line from Marvel.  Other noteworthy cards are new groups of henchmen, which have been notably absent since the first expansion, and a new bystander card, the banker, with an interesting mechanic.

This expansion also represents a move away from what fans might have though was going to be a closer tie-in to the movies, as last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy coincided closely enough with the movie.  For those that were hoping to see Ant-Man and Wasp show up any time, they will be disappointed.  At the very least though, Upper Deck seems to have a long terms plan for this series, and while there might be a bit of disappointment among fans for the releases here, it would seem likely that they plan something to coincide with next year’s Captain America movie, which could include Ant-Man, Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Vision and Falcon among others.  As well at some point a Secret Wars vol. 2 of the game is presumably coming, which could also help to fill in some gaps.  In the meantime, fans will have to be happy with this expansion, which contains a bit of what they wanted, but also a bit more which they did not.  It is not a disappointment, as the cards themselves are well conceived for the game experience, but they appeal more to the true gamers, not those who are are also comic fans.  It thus ends up being a solid expansion gamewise, but leaving a bit more to be desired thematically.

Score: 8.0  

Game Review: Legendary Dark City Expansion

Posted on by

darkcityThe Dark City Expansion for in Upper Deck’s Legendary games is perhaps an unexpected one for the franchise.  The base game introduced a number of different characters and scenarios, but it did not really go too far in either direction in terms of the scope of the game.  Comic book characters are roughly divided into two different camps, the street level and the planet busters.  Most of the “street level” masterminds and schemes from the first game proves easy enough to beat, while the few more powerful schemes proved to be more challenging.  This led to more experienced gamers mostly focusing only on the bigger and badder schemes as opposed to the smaller scale ones.  Despite this set of mechanics, for the first expansion the series seemingly decided to go smaller and to focus on the street as opposed to the skies.

It is likely due in part to fan service that the theme behind this expansion was released second, only after the base game.  After all the street level contains a lot of the more popular characters that fans would want to play, even if the track record is that it makes for a worse game play experience.  Although there are some more obscure characters such as Cable, Domino and Forge, there are also fan favorites including Angel, Bishop, Blade, Elektra, Ghost Rider, Iron Fist, Iceman, Jean Grey, Professor X, The Punisher, Daredevil and already the second implementation of Wolverine.

The expansion is designed to be more street level, but it also does better to address the fact that the street level encounters in the base game were a bit too easy.  Instead here there are more complicated scenarios, some of which incorporate in some famous story arcs from the comics.  It is also worth mentioning that the bystanders are expanded upon here.  While it might be nice to see some added variety in the starting decks or in the S.H.I.E.L.D. deck (of which there are 2 and 1 different kinds of cards respectively), at least the otherwise bland bystander deck is expanded upon with news reporter, paramedic and radiation scientist.  While it is somewhat unlikely to run into too many radiation scientists on the street, this at least adds a new dynamic to these cards which no one much seems to care about, as the specific type of bystander can now have different effects.  For instance rescuing the news reporter allows the player to immediately draw another card, which could have a big effect (or no effect) on the passage of a particular hand and could theoretically turn one’s luck around.

In the end this is not kind as good as the original, but more due to a lack of strong central theme.  As opposed to other expansions which help to refine a player’s interests in the game, this one could have just as easily served as another half to the base game.  There is little to distinguish this expansion aside from the individual characters included.  Certainly some gamers that are also fans of comics are going to want to pick up this expansion solely for the ability to play as their favorite characters, but equally this expansion does little to refine the game, only to make it bigger.  It is still a fun expansion, only that perhaps more could have been done.

Score: 8.2