Upper Deck's Legendary has been quietly chewing through licences for over a decade, and it has finally landed where a lot of players assumed it would start. Legendary: A DC Deck Building Game drops Superman, Batman and company into the deck-building engine that made its name on Marvel, and Upper Deck's own sponsored preview copy puts the launch this month.
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See how it worksThe shape will be familiar if you have played any Legendary box. You start with a plain deck of Attack and Recruit cards, spend Recruit to buy better heroes, and hunt for combos while an Evil Mastermind such as Lex Luthor, The Joker or Deathstroke works through a scheme. The Mastermind picks a different scheme every game, which is where Legendary's replay value has always come from. Heroes are drawn from the Justice League, the Titans, Justice League Dark, the Birds of Prey and the government espionage outfit Checkmate, so you can put Zatanna, Cyborg and Black Canary in the same hero pool if you fancy it.
The new bit is the Hope and Fear Tracker, a mechanic Upper Deck says has never appeared in Legendary before. It is a single dial measuring how the city's population is feeling. Push Hope past 3 and you draw an extra card, let Fear climb past 3 and you discard one, and either way the dial snaps back to 2. If you have three spare attack and nothing to punch, you can spend it to Fight Crime and nudge the track whichever way suits you. That turns leftover resources into a decision instead of waste, which is the sort of small fix that pays off over a full game.
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Find events near youThere is also a Transform keyword. Draw Bruce Wayne, meet the conditions, and you can flip him into the Dark Knight while taking the benefits of both cards for that turn. Very on-theme for a game about secret identities.
Upper Deck lists the box as 500 playable cards, a rulebook, a metal tracker, a playmat and 60 dividers, which is a serious amount of game for a first DC outing. Time to rally your group.
Sources: Upper Deck | Upper Deck Legendary Marvel | ICv2 | ICv2
