Marvel Legendary is a deck building game. 2-5 players face off against a Mastermind villain in an attempt to prevent them completing their evil scheme by recruiting Marvel superheroes and battling against infamous Marvel villains.
At least that is the core. The opportunity exists to play as villains battling against heroes as well.
I am a big fan of Marvel Legendary. I have all the expansions to date (currently waiting for my pre-order of the World War Hulk expansion to be delivered).
My sister and I play it regularly. The Legendary deck building archetype has been expanded to themes outside of the Marvel Universe, such as Buffy, Aliens and Predator.
But Marvel Legendary is great in part because of its maturity. Each expansion added new cards or dynamics to the core game. To varying degrees, that tend to line up with the expansion popularity. And new expansions continue to be released around 3 times a year with two smaller expansions and one larger one.
The range of Masterminds to play can be mixed with a wide range of Schemes, representing the evil scheme they are trying to achieve. The number of possible combinations of those aspects alone give more than anyone is ever likely to play. And if you are prepared to mix up the heroes and villains sets, even more. And why not? Comic book writers come up with any number of excuses to have super hero teams get into fights, as well as villains spending time walking on the light side.
So after a recent mini tournament testing different decks, that I played out with my sister over several weeks, we had three decks that were just a cut above the rest.
Deck 1 – Fantastic Five
Based on the Fantastic Four expansion pack heroes, but switching out Human Torch for Rogue. 
Rogue’s mimic abilities help’s with triggering combos, and this team combos well together.
Deck 2 – Heavy Metal
Built on a Tech Hero premise. Made up of Punisher, Domino, Forge, Vision and Iron Man Noir. Interesting because it has 3 different teams represented (Marvel Knights, Avengers, and X-Force) but still pulls out some fascinating combos.
We were surprised by how well this deck performed.
Deck 3 – Infinitely Dodgy
Initially based on Sinister Six, but with experimentation, this was distilled down to Dr Octopus, Green Goblin, Electro, Ultron and Wolverine (XForce).
Designed to be played with Hydra starting decks. With all the Dodge cards and card drawing, combined with some deck thinning, it is entirely possible to reach the point where you are dodging and drawing your entire deck, causing all the dodged card to be reshuffled and redrawn, allowing more dodging – in an infinitely loop. Followed by playing Electro’s Supercharge card:
At which point the player is also obliged to cackle and say
In conclusion, I highly recommend Marvel Legendary and may devote some time writing up reviews of individual expansions or other deck designs.
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