During 2022, we had a year-long challenge of weekly competitive “Clashes,” a battle for board game dominance within our household. We plan to continue these clashes into 2023 (and already started with last week’s Marvel: Remix rumble), but instead of weekly, they will become bi-weekly (every other week). We will be alternating the clashes with cooperative game challenges. Our reasons are twofold:
- These challenges will help us get to play more of our gaming library while not limiting us to only our competitive games.
- It’ll be nice to have the opportunity to work together and not just against each other in a public fashion.
And so, we bring to you:
CHAOS AND CONFETTI’S COOPERATIVE CHALLENGES!!!
The Premise:
Every other week, we will choose a cooperative board game to play. Then, we will craft a challenge from that board game and give ourselves one shot at overcoming it. No restarts, redos, or retries. We either rise as conquerors or leave as chumps.
While some of our challenges may be a bit more straightforward, others will come with twists or hints of inspiration. This is a test of teamwork.
The Game – Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game
This week we will be playing Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game. The basic concept of the game is that evil forces are trying to enact a terrible scheme and it is up to the players to assemble and coordinate a team of heroes to save the day.
While this is a semi-cooperative deck building game, we tend to play it a bit more cooperatively and the game itself has leaned more into its cooperative side as well in recent years. With more than twenty expansions released over the last ten years, there are a lot of potential elements to delve into, even before counting the spin-offs which are technically compatible with the original Marvel system.
The Challenge:
In honor of CMON’s recently launched Marvel United season three Kickstarter (Multiverse), we decided to build and play a Legendary scenario based on the Marvel United elements announced so far.
The Set Up:
Heroes:
- Black Knight (Ant-Man)
- Lady Thor (Secret Wars vol. 1)
- Loki (Villains)
- Nightcrawler (Dark City)
- Patriot (Civil War)
- Shuri (Black Panther)
- Spider-Man Noir (Noir)
Scheme: Break the Planet Asunder (World War Hulk)
Mastermind: Galactus (Fantastic Four)
Villain Groups:
- Heralds of Galactus (Fantastic Four)
- Timelines of Kang (Annihilation)
Henchmen: Doombots (Base Game)
We have included sidekicks and new recruits as possible buys.
Set Up Rationale:
Since one of the BIGGEST draws to CMON’s new Marvel United Kickstarter campaign is their Galactus expansion and giant-mini, making Galactus our mastermind seemed like a no brainer. Of course, Galactus had to come with his heralds in both games. Break the Planet Asunder felt like a good scheme because it fit Galatcus the world-eater thematically, but also because this kickstarter is sure to break some people’s budgets (we’re most likely be going all-in again).
It felt important to represent the villains of the season three base game. Doombots were our stand in for God Emperor Doom. The Timelines of Kang villain group came with two benefits. This allowed us to include Immortus who is a United base game villain and Iron Lad who is a free bonus for anyone backing the Galactus expansion.
Selecting our heroes was a tougher task. While Legendary has a massive library of heroes, it does still have some gaps, so the trick became finding the overlap between Legendary and the newly announced Marvel United heroes. Representing the new base game are Loki, Lady Thor (Jane Foster), and Shuri. By the time we started putting together our challenge both Black Knight and Patriot had been announced as unlocked stretch goals. Spider-Man Noir will be part of the Spider-geddon expansion dropping this summer. While it might not be part of this campaign, it is technically part of the new Multiverse line for United. Finally, I added Nightcrawler because for anyone who joined in on Marvel United’s season two campaign, you’ll recognize the oh so important question of “Where’s Nightcrawler?”
The Game:
The game started with a lot of high cost cards in the HQ which meant Chaos and Confetti were forced to grab the few low cost cards available. Being forced into limited buys may not have felt like the optimal strategy, but they both ended up with decent recruiting power very quickly. Suddenly their options became wide open.
Unfortunately, the bad guys weren’t just sitting around waiting. Some Doombots and Heralds popped up ready to run through the city. The Doombots were easily handled, but one of the Heralds threw most of the HQ to the bottom of the hero deck. This meant that as soon as Chaos and Confetti could actually afford some of the really large cards, they disappeared as buying options. They would have to settle for some smaller cards. Pivot and adjust.
Meanwhile, Galatcus started getting hungry. He gobbled up the bridge space, allowing a villain to escape and knocking out our first hero from the HQ. Thanks to our scheme, “Break the Planet Asunder,” 25 knocked out non-grey heroes would result in a loss for us.
Despite feeling like they were playing well, Chaos and Confetti constantly felt the pressure of loss looming closer. The scheme twists started off pretty inoffensive, only knocking out a hero or two, but then they became HQ clearing threats. Heroes were being knocked out en masse. Galatcus’ board eating ability made it harder to contain the villains and that much more important to beat them before they could escape and take down even more heroes. Of course, none of that would matter if Galatcus finished devouring the entire board. Every flipped card felt like a potential world-ender.
Chaos and Confetti followed two different strategies, which lead to them playing unique but essential roles in this game. Confetti ran a mostly Lady Thor and Shuri powered deck. This allowed her to build up quite a bit of power and buy. Confetti was able to continue adding good cards to her deck, while also keeping the city spaces pretty clear. She consistently had enough fight to knock out even the biggest villains, but would never quite touch Galatcus.
Confetti soon also learned that late game Doombots became their own special type of danger. Their top-deck KO-ing could end up placing non-grey heroes into the graveyard as well.
Chaos’ strategy became buy everything red (focus) and yellow (instinct). While his deck started to become rather impressive and very fight heavy itself, its main benefit was that it could be used to activate Galatcus’ cosmic threat. Every card of the same type took Galactus’ twenty fight down by an additional three. Chaos became the designated Mastermind fighter. It took a few turns to get his cards lined up right for four turns, but eventually Chaos delivered each necessary blow on Galactus.
The day was saved, but things could have easily ended differently. A single scheme twist or master strike would have ended the game. After the dust had settled, we checked the villain deck and saw that the next card was a master strike. Had we taken even one more turn, Galatcus would have finished us for dinner.
Final Results: Chaos and Confetti Win!!!
Chaos’ Individual Score: 62
Confetti’s Individual Score: 32
Chaos’ Final Thoughts:
That was an exciting game! Legendary can be a tough game, especially when different elements are thrown in with less balancing in mind. We ended up making this work though which was awesome. For a while I was positive we were toast. I’m happy to say our inaugural Cooperative Challenge was a success!
Confetti’s Final Thoughts:
I really like Marvel Legendary and this game came down to the wire. I never quite got my deck to where I wanted it, so I’m glad Chaos was able to hit his stride to help us pull of the win.
Wrap Up:
Chaos and Confetti overcame the forces of evil this week. Let us know what you think of our new cooperative challenges. Also be sure to check out Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game and CMON’s new Marvel United: Multiverse Kickstarter.
Chaos & Confetti 