Hello, and welcome to our little corner of the internet.  I go by Frost, and I’d like to share some of my passions and interests with you.  I’ve played many games over the years, and I would like to share one of my favorites with you today.

Raise aloft your mighty hammer, slip into your armored suit, and grab your shield, because this is going to be Legendary. Who knows… You might get to thrash a Puny God as well…

I am, of course, talking about Marvel Legendary, a cooperative deck building game that was released in 2012 by Upper Deck Entertainment.  Over the years, there have been many expansions added to the game, some massive and some minor.  Today, though, I’m going to look at the base game, the one that started my obsession with this type of game.

What is it?

What is Marvel Legendary?  It’s a cooperative deck building game where you assemble a deck of heroes, sidekicks, officers and other allies to confront a powerful Mastermind and stop them from achieving their evil Scheme.

Who are the Heroes that you will build your deck out of, and use to defeat the Mastermind and save the City?  Only Earth’s mightiest Heroes, the Avengers along with the premiere team of the X-Men, backed up by the director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow are the Avengers for the base game, joined by Cyclops, Rogue, Gambit, Storm and Wolverine from Xavier’s X-Men.  Nick Fury and Spiderman round out the Heroes available. Then…. There is Deadpool.

To save the day, you must defeat the Villains that are attacking the City, and build your strength to confront the Mastermind themselves.  How you work to achieve this is by recruiting Heroes from the HQ using the Recruiting points from your cards so that you can have enough Fight to handle the threats that you will face.

While doing this, you have to watch out for the Scheme that is ever moving towards a defeat for the Heroes.  The Scheme can take many forms, from blowing up the Helicarrier to replacing the leaders of the world with androids, or even wiping out all the mutants in the world.

The Masterminds that you will be confronting are some of the most classic, iconic foes that these groups have fought.  Dr. Doom, Loki, Magneto and The Red Skull lead the forces of evil and villainy, in their quests to carry out their Schemes.

The Good, The Bad, and the Legendary.

What are the good and bad things about this game?  Let’s start with the good points. You get a very straightforward, streamlined turn sequence, with easily managed resources.

Flexibility, with the ability to mix five Heroes, one Scheme and A Mastermind from the base game or any of the expansions to have a different experience every game. 

A player vs game experience for 1-5 players.  The fact that it is a true cooperative game where the enemy really is the game itself is one of the aspects.that drew me to this style of game in the first place.

Now, the cons of this game.  I’ve always found it helpful to look at the high and low points.

The set up and tear down can be time consuming, which is one of the biggest issues with this style of game.

The innately random nature of card distribution in the Hero deck can leave a player struggling to remain relevant at times.  It can also cause the game to spiral out of control in ways that the players can’t control or interact with.  This is not unusual in this style of game.

Once you start to expand the game, the interactions get more complex, and the fact that some situations really do need a particular class or faction of Hero to handle can make truly random builds a bit harder to deal with. 

Final Thoughts and Experiences.

I’ve been playing this game for years with my usual gaming group and it’s been a favorite since the first game.  We’ve had incredible games, and ones that have gone horribly sideways. We have crushed our foes, and tasted the bitter pill of defeat, some of them in ways that were incredibly entertaining.  

We’ve played a great many games with just about every combination of heroes and masterminds that we could think of, and continue to look forward to new expansions so that we can try new and different things in this amazing game. We have also gone back and replayed old combinations over again, to experience a new look at a classic game session.

It’s definitely a game I would recommend for anyone that is looking for a good cooperative game, whether you are fans of superheroes and the Marvel fanboys or not!

Stay Frosty and have fun!

And stand tall, Heroes.  Be Legendary!