A couple of years ago, Legendary, a deckbuilding game featuring Marvel's popular super heroes, was released to the gaming public. The game, the first real cooperative offering in the genre, proved to be very successful. Several expansions of varying sizes have been released, adding more heroes and villains as well as different mechanics to the already very solid base game. As a fan of super heroes, co-op, and deckbuilding card games, Legendary quickly became one of my favorite games.
However, one issue common to cooperative tabletop games in my experience is that they lose their luster very quickly. Legendary is a great example; I played the game every night for solid week, then once a week for a month or so, then only a couple times in six months. In the past year, it hasn't hit our gaming table a single time. Perhaps it was the long setup time, maybe it was the tenuous tie-in between the theme and the mechanics, or perhaps it was just burnout with deckbuilders in general. For whatever reason, Legendary has all but fallen off my radar.
Last week, I had the opportunity to play a new version of the game: Legendary Encounters. This is a new direction for the game, and despite the rather generic name seems quite promising. The first game in this new series takes out the tights and spandex, replacing them with xenomorphs and pulse rifles. Legendary Encounters is based on the Alien film series, and further games promise to add other famous movie monsters like Predator to the mix. I found this new version to be far superior to the original Legendary in almost every way.
The biggest advantage that Legendary Encounters has over its predecessor is the strong connection between the theme and the mechanics. The claustrophobic sense of menace and impending doom so masterfully presented in the Alien movies is flawlessly duplicated. Face-down cards from the Hive deck advance inevitably through the different zones of the Complex, moving closer at the end of each turn. By scanning, you can flip the cards over, revealing what type of alien you must fight. Characters like Ripley, Dallas, and Hicks can be added to your deck, bringing a whole host of special abilities with them. You will need luck and strategy if you hope to stay alive long enough to meet the victory conditions of the various scenarios included in the game.
A great example of the blend of theme and mechanics is the face hugger. When this Hive card is revealed, whether by scanning or simply escaping into the combat zone, the current player puts the card on the table in front of them. Any player can attack it, and it is usually very easy to defeat, but there is a time limit. By the end of the next player's turn, if the face hugger is not defeated, it is discarded, and the unfortunate owner adds a chest burster card to their deck. At some point, inevitably, deck is reshuffled and every draw becomes a potential "Game over, man!" scenario, as the chest burster card immediately kills the player when drawn. I was on the receiving end of a chest burster, and trust me, it's a delightful tension, a wonderful mechanical element mirroring the famous situation from the movies.
Another addition to Encounters that was missing in the original Legendary is Player Roles. These are special cards selected as the game begins that give each player a different power, like the scanning ability of a Scout or the healing of the Medic. Roles serve to differentiate the players from one another, increasing the feeling of camaraderie and teamwork. Healing is a new mechanic, too; each role can take a different number of wounds from the Strike deck before the player dies. Aliens, unlike Super Villains and their minions, actually fight back instead of patiently waiting to be defeated before escaping the board. It's far more confrontational, and again, adds to the tension considerably.
A wide variety of scenarios and play variants are included, which should extend the lifespan of Legendary Encounters over its predecessor considerably. The masterminds and schemes of Legendary were always a bit disjointed, and felt largely the same. (Exactly why would Loki and Spider-Man's foes team up to rob a bank?) In Encounters, the feel is much more thematic, with the characters and situations from each movie as well as others available. You can reenact the original encounter on the Nostromo, or the faceoff with the queen, without fear of being taken out of the theme when something that doesn't fit pops up. Variants for traitors and player-controlled aliens only add to the replayability of the game.
The cooperative aspects of Legendary Encounters are far stronger than the earlier entries in the series. The healing mechanic mentioned earlier is one good example. Killing face huggers before they attack your neighbor and spawn a chest burster is another. Perhaps my favorite is the ability of some cards to be spent to help other players. Often, a player comes up one or two wounds short of killing the target, but if any other player has one of these shared cards, they can use it to get the job done together. There's no penalty for doing so, either, since these shared cards replace themselves by allowing another card draw when played. These little touches add considerably to the feel of co-op in a genre often criticized as being "multiplayer solitaire".
I found Legendary Encounters to be a fantastic improvement over the original, and a very strong game in its own right. Such a tight blend of mechanics and theme is almost unheard of for a deckbuilding game. You really dread seeing what turns up next, and working together is the only way to win. I highly recommend Legendary Encounters to any fan of co-op, but especially those who enjoy the Aliens movies. I can't wait to see what they have in store for the Predator...