I bought this after playing Dominion, because I like deckbuilders and superheroes.

So far I've played about half a dozen times and have not yet played out the basic set, so no expansions yet.

Mechanics are simpler than Dominion: you have a random Master Villain combined with a random Scheme, each of which imposes special rules on the game. Each turn you draw a new villain card, and villains run amok through NYC and must be defeated; to win the game, you have to beat the Master Villain four times.

Your hero deck starts with mere SHIELD agents, but each turn you can recruit from the hero deck - every game has five superheroes (from 16 total, in the basic set). Basically, cards are of two types: recruit cards, which allow you to recruit more and better heroes, and attack cards, which let you fight villains. Of course the hero cards each have some special ability - some are more thematically related to the hero they represent than others.

So, in a typical game you might see Red Skull trying to replace the world's leaders with robots, and being opposed by Iron Man, the Black Widow, Nick Fury, Rogue, and Wolverine. Or Dr. Doom trying to rob a mid-town bank (kind of low-rent for Vic - must be part of a greater scheme...), with the heroes against him being the Hulk, Hawkeye, Storm, Spider Man, and Thor.

Different heroes can combine to provide pretty good synergy (or not, depending on the combo), and there is definitely an advantage to packing your deck with as many of one or two heroes as you can get. (Wolverine and Iron Man can cycle cards like crazy; Black Widow becomes insanely powerful once you've rescued a bunch of Bystanders, which makes combining her with Spidey and Deadpool particularly potent.)

It's semi-coop in that if you don't beat the Master Villain, everyone loses. But if the players achieve the victory conditions, the one with the most victory points wins. In practice, while there are some opportunities to screw with other players, I have yet to see a game get particularly cut-throat. Usually we're more worried about letting villains escape or the Master Villain running out the deck.

Superhero Civil War is a particularly brutal Scheme. We learned the hard way that the usual tactic in other games (everyone buys as many heroes as they can every turn) will lose you the game with a reduced hero deck that gets depleted even faster with Scheme Twists.

It is a lot of fun, though I can definitely see the need to buy expansions soon to keep it fresh. As far as game play goes, Dominion is probably superior, but Legendary is sufficiently different that it's not just Dominion with a superhero theme pasted on. That said, you'll obviously like it a lot more if you are actually a fan of Marvel Comics.

The first expansion really helps solo play. Without it, the base set is honestly way too easy.

Interesting!

So, I have now acquired the Dark City and Fantastic Four expansions. They definitely make the game more challenging, and add lots of variety. The FF adds the FF, of course, plus the Silver Surfer as heroes, while adding Mole Man and Galactus as new Mastermind villains.

shinygobonkers, who refuses to play a game unless there's at least one female hero in the deck, has pointed out that in all the expansions, there isn't a single female Mastermind. Which is unfortunately reflective of Marvel Comics not having a lot of really noteworthy female Big Bads. Quick, name one besides Dark Phoenix (who's dead...).

Also, thanks to Dark City, we now have two Wolverines, but still no Kitty Pryde or Dazzler.

Amadan, thanks for mentioning Dazzler She was always one of my favs, though usually overlooked by a lot of people.

And Kitty one of mine!

I always liked Dazzler. Even her disco incarnation. I still have the complete run of her original series, and the old Dazzler graphic novel.



Just played Legendary again last night - with 5 people it takes a lot longer! Also, if everyone insists on recruiting a new hero or two every turn (no one I play with seems to understand the concept of trying to get a lean, fast-cycling deck) you will tend to end the game by exhausting the hero deck.