There’s no pure victory point cards that just clog up your hand (in exchange for victory points). If you have the Villains expansion some of the cards have a screw an opponent effect, but relatively minor (you might have to swap a card or force a discard). In general though, even with Villains, you want to take down the boss whenever you can (because they are worth the most points), and if you can’t do that, take down the strongest minion you can (because, again, points), or buy a soldier card to let you take down tougher minions.
There aren’t many ways to draw cards (unlike Ascension) so if you can’t kill anything you almost always want to buy the most expensive card you can afford from the stock pool, since that will generally give you the most soldier points to kill stuff with. Very few cards that you buy (if any) affect your opponent, they just affect the number of soldier points you have and the number of dollars you have to buy new cards with.
Taking down the boss or a minion almost always has a bonus effect, with the effect improving with the toughness of the card. The defeated minion / boss cards go into a VP card pile, not your hand.
As I recall, most of them, like this card, say “may”. There are also some effects when you hit the mastermind (big bad villain), or regular villains/henchmen, which will hurt everyone else but you. Most of the other negative effects are pretty mild, maybe causing other players to gain a wound or discard a card. Another example was a card we drew the other night that let you steal a villain from another player’s victory pile. There are also a number of cards which have beneficial effects, allowing other players to draw cards or discard wounds, etc.
In the end, unlike Dominion, the scoring has never felt to me like a core mechanic, but rather tacked on, which prompted my question. Other than a very few cards which seem to be designed to cause a little conflict between players (a lot of times thematically), it can be safely ignored.
From how players described it, though, Legendary always seemed to be designed to have the big bad guy lose, the only question being who got the most points on the way. Without that scoring, what’s the point? Does the villain actually produce a serious challenge like it can in Sentinels?
The base game of Marvel Legendary is not too difficult with a few caveats:
Bad draw from the villain deck can ruin a game very quickly. If you get a lot of scheme twists (basically villain progress) combined at the top of the deck, the game can end very quickly with nothing you can really do about it.
I use a randomizer app for Legendary that automates the selection of the mastermind, villains/henchmen, and heroes. There’s an option in the app to select heroes in a “smart” manner that makes sure there a hero team affiliations and/or traits that the bad guy effects require. For instance, I think Magneto has an effect on his Master Strike that is bypassed if you have X-Men members in your hand, so it would make sure to select at least 3 or so X-Men. I have this option enabled.
I’ve only played two games with expansion content, and both were brutal. It turns out I selected at least one combo (Apocalypse/Capture Baby Hope scheme) that is particularly difficult for the first game, but even the second (Kingpin/don’t remember the scheme) was much more difficult than what I’ve seen in the base game.
My understanding is Dark City is the major expansion to pick up first. The only other one I’ve grabbed at this point is Fantastic Four because it’s not getting reprinted (thanks to the war between Marvel and Sony). That said, the game is definitely enjoyable solo with just the base game if you want to try it before getting to deep into it. There are ways to adjust the difficulty if you find the masterminds too easy (simplest is to just adjust the strike value of villains up by a point or two).
I didn’t really address your comparison to Sentinels though. The gameplay of Legendary is much simpler compared to Sentinels. There is none of the effect tracking overhead, and the game is much less math-y. One of the great things about Sentinels villains is the really feel drastically different than each other. You don’t really get that same experience in Legendary. There’s a little bit of theme here, but theme isn’t really Legendary’s strength. Turns are much more straightforward and quick. So while it can be difficult, it never feels as tough as Sentinels to me, even when I’m losing early on. Sentinels, particularly solo, feels much more like a complex puzzle where you’re juggling a lot of pieces in your head and trying to make the best of the limited things you can do each round. Legendary feels more like, here’s my cards that I drew, what order can I play them in to get the best strike/buy values, and then using that strike/buy. Legendary also plays much quicker solo.
I agree with Gedd completely. At first Legendary didn’t grab me because I have Sentinels but as I have recently played it again solo it is a fun game. Solo games don’t take forever and there are a good combination of cards for fresh gameplay just in the base set. I am looking to get the Dark city expansion soon I hope. If you want a superhero themed deckbuilder that plays solo then it is a good choice.
I need to give the actual solo rules for Marvel Legendary a try. The two or three times I’ve played it solo I just did it two-handed. Is there much difference in the gameplay?
I use the golden solo (I think that is the name) variant on BBG. It adds some challenge, mostly through flipping two villain deck cards each turn instead of one. There is more to it then that of course but adds some more tension and risk of defeat.
Picked up Legendary Encounters: Alien last week and (after approximately 37 hours spent sorting the cards and referring to the very handy card manifest someone posted on BGG to ensure I wasn’t missing anything) I played a couple of solo games this weekend.
I love this one! Even solo the game works great. But I cannot wait to get in a full game with the hidden agenda and the possibility of an alien player making an appearance.
The mechanics for scanning a room (and the hidden hive cards that necessitates that action), and the extremely thematic objectives, events and hazards are the primary reasons this game works so damn well. In my first game on Friday (the scenario based on the first movie), I was surprised to find that the final battle duplicated perfectly the final scene in Alien by forcing me to try to move the xenomorph into the airlock before I could kill it.
I had avoided this one entirely because I was afraid it was simply a reskin of the Marvel game, but this game is very much its own game by all rights. Two thumbs up for this gem!
I also picked this up this weekend and got a first play in solo. Hepcat, did you pay with just one avatar or did you pay with more? I played with two so I’m curious if the game difficulty scales with more avatars solo. I lost while trying g to complete the third objective and never even saw The Perfect Organism but still had a blast! The theming in this game really is incredible as mentioned earlier in this post. I’m particularly impressed with the Coordinate mechanic. I love that I can assist another player with a card from my hand but because I hey a redraw I’m not punished for doing so. This also makes for some interesting tactical decisions as I have to choose if I want to potentially weaken my hand to help now versus risking a stronger hand against potentially stronger enemies.
Just really impressed overall after one play and can’t wait to get this on the table again!
I played my first game with two avatars (the synthetic and the technician) and it was a bit harder to win than it was with my next solo game using just the scout avatar. In my first game, it came down to the wire with the synthetic dead and my technician bloodied before I won. With the Scout, I was fine up until the final objective, then things got a little hairy for a bit thanks to a particularly punishing alien boss effect. But I would say the tension was more palpable, and the outcome more doubtful with two avatars.
Although I was two pilsners in when I started my first game, and had trouble remembering which deck I was discarding to at a couple of points. So factor in human failings in my response.
Ha yeah it also took me awhile to get the hang of keeping track of whose turn it was. I’m surprised you found playing with one avatar easier than two. I found I was relying on coordinate cards fairly regularly towards the end of the game.
It might just be that the scout is a bit overpowered with his avatar card that allows a free scan when it shows up in your hand. Combined with a character card that also gave me a free scan when played, I was scanning rooms quite a bit in that game.
But don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t complaining that it was too hard. I actually enjoyed my game with two avatars because it was more tense and thematic.
The difficulty of Legendary Encounters: Alien goes up with more players, because you have more decks to manage, and more people pulling the deck-building in multiple directions. New players tend to sink the group’s chances for not understanding the importance of coordinate cards and how you should focus on just staying alive long enough to get a couple of powerful combat decks going. It really is a collaborative multiple-deck-builder.
And, of course, when you’re playing the full monty, there’s the threat of a traitor and the potential for an alien player if someone gets face-hugged, at which point the game is effectively over. I guess more players do mitigate the impact of the traitor and draw out the time it takes for an alien player to wipe everyone out.
Ok so after 6 games or so over the last few days I think I’m ready to say this is my favourite solo game I’ve played in awhile. I finally beat the first movie last night with the synthetic and the medic. My medic was dropped by a brutal string of strikes just as I was hitting the second objective cards. My synthetic was still going strong and had a nice combat deck going but had been relying on a lot of coordinate cards for resources which made aquiring more characters difficult. To make matters worse the HQ had spit out all 5 or higher cost characters so to get any of those and break the logjam I needed the perfect draw to get enough resources. On what ended up being the last turn I had Ash and a double strike Alien in the combat zone and the hive draw pushed The Perfect Organism in there as well so basically I was looking at 5 strikes if I couldn’t win this turn! My hand had exactly 2 resources and a bunch of attack plus my avatar card to draw one more. I scanned the airlock which turned out to be an event, payed my 2 to move the Organism to the Airlock but I was still 1 attack short of killing it. Played my avatar card to draw one more and got…a grunt! The bare minimum but I got it done. I check the strike deck after and I definitely would have been dead had I not killed it that turn. Just an awesome moment to win that way.
Played the second movie this morning and win on my first try! I love how different the game feels already just between the first and second movies. The first scenario really is all about surviving long enough to get just the right situation to win, you never really feel powerful or prepared. The second movie though, I was just blasting through aliens with more firepower than I knew what to do with but I didn’t realize I needed to rescue captured characters until it was almost too late which was a great twist.
I must get this on the table with more players so I can see how the agenda/alien mechanic works! Extremely satisfied with this purchase!
I hope they release expansions that include more objectives with supporting cards. One of the biggest strengths of the game for me is in the theme and the stories that you generate while playing…and that’s largely driven by the smartly written objectives and the little twists in the gameplay derived from them. They can make each game feel significantly different, as agapepilot mentions.
