Category Archives: marvel legendary

marvel legendary

Fantastic Four Return

marvel legendary, news

While I was at the UK Games Expo this story hit that the out of print Fantastic Four expansion for Marvel Legendary will be back in print.

That’s huge news. This is an additional product to the Marvel Legendary plans for the year. It is also an exact reprint of the original expansion so no new content, and no first print promo card included (this was confirmed on their Facebook page iirc).

So expect a mad dash by those that have been holding on to their copy trying to sell it in hope of getting the inflated price it has been going for before the market totally disappears. It’s good news for fans of the game that wanted this expansion but couldn’t afford or justify the inflated prices being asked for it.

Now we need Days of Wonder to relent like Marvel (although things on the Marvel end were a bit complicated) and republish some of the out of print expansions for Memoir ’44. If Days of Wonder are unsure of demand, they could run a Kickstarter campaign for the expansions, and then just keep the supply topped up from time to time so that prices don’t get silly again and people who love playing the game can get the expansions and play them. Do Days of Wonder not like money or something?

Read the full icv2 article here.

Expanding the collection Weekending 2Apr16

elder sign, expansions, marvel legendary, new arrivals

I don't know why it took me so long to get this expansion in for Legendary. Especially considering it has Captain Britain in it. My main problem now is storage, and I want to sleeve the cards. There must be over two thousand cards to sleeve now, yep that's a lot. I'd love to use the official sleeves with the cool Legendary logo on them. But that would cost an arm and a leg, and probably a major organ. The official sleeves are so expensive in the UK. So clear penny sleeves are my preferred option, I just need to find the ones that are correct size and fit snugly. The other problem is the official card dividers. I've run out and they are not that easy to get in the UK. That seems a common problem, and theme with the industry.

Now I'm just waiting for the Captain America 75th Anniversary expansion to come out. Can you guess what that is all about? Then finally and I'm not holding my breathe for these, despite Upper Deck saying they will release them, the 3D Legendary cards that came out as promos in the 3D card packs (sold in the US) last year. I so want Howard the Duck, but not enough to pay eBay scalper prices.
The new expansion for Elder Sign Omens of Ice arrived. Its origins seemed a little unusual to me, where the app version of the game is influencing the original physical game. I'm not sure I've seen this before. This expansion is based/inspired by an expansion in the app. Plus the Atlanteans expansion for Imperial Settlers arrived. This adds a new fifth race to the game, plus more cards for the existing races.
It's funny really with a mini expansion, plus this one, there are more deck building options in this game than there is squad building in Arena of the Planeswalkers, where that is a main focus of the game!
I also received the final delayed (was originally targeted for Christmas) expansions for the Thunderbirds boardgame that came as part of my Kickstarter pledge.
In the box was a nice card holder, the three expansions (no expansion boxes), plus the role playing game! Yep there is a set of light rules and cards for setting up a scenario that uses the game board and pieces. Which I think is cool, and offers more game play.
So having just got the following awesome playmat for Star Realms, my very good friend and the Scottish version of me as he is known as, Duncan stumbled upon the fact that Gameslore now have in two Star Realms playmats plus two Epic playmats. Mental note must get the Epic ones for Nath.
The Colony Wars expansion/stand alone game for Star Realms also arrived. Every card is sleeved and shuffled in to make one MASSIVE deck to play with. This gives me enough starting cards to have four people play at once without proxying cards now.
 

I can't see how much more Star Realms can be expanded, and once the year ones promos come out (sooner than later I hope) surely that must be it for Star Realms. Which would explain why they announced Hero Realms the fantasy themed version of Star Realms. On a side note it's basically what Cool Mini Or Not did with Zombicide, couldn't take the modern theme any further after the third season, so reboot with a different theme. Oh which was fantasy also!!!

Top Deck

marvel legendary, run,fight or die

Last night I got to play a couple of games of Run, Fight or Die! with two friends while sharing an alcoholic beverage (ok I was on orange and lemonade not very rock and roll I know). One of the friends was new to the game but picked it up really fast.

I won the first game but it's how I won that matters. Friend number one playing as The Country Girl had died, swept away by a zombie horde. I was playing as The Street Kid and had a couple of wounds, while friend number two (noobie) was playing The Silent a Rancher and had his full seven health remaining when friend one left the mortal game board.

Luckily we weren't playing the co-op expansion so friend one dying was good for the rest of us. One down, one to go. Into the mix the Mutant Boss decided to make an appearance. Just what we needed more pressure. The way the boards were building up there wasn't going to be much chance to take him out.

It wasn't looking good for me, in a couple of turns I too would be on the receiving end of a zombie horde that had built up in zones three and two unless some miracle happened. My rolls allowed me to clear zone one, but that was delaying the inevitable. I needed a miracle.

On my next turn I now had a packed zone one, the rolls of the dice hadn't gone my way.

And low and behold one did occur. I had to draw a follower. I drew the card, and looked at it. I had drawn Hit Girl. Hit Girl was worth two victory points. But if I sacrificed her I could remove all zombies in any one zone. OMG I had just top decked a card that was going to keep me alive for another turn. There was no soul searching, no how could I sacrifice a little girl to survive. I was cold and brutal and sacrificed Hit Girl in a blink of an eye. Zone one was clear I would life another turn. Although that wasn't looking any better, because once more a horde would be knocking on my door.

Luckily friend two although having two more hit points to start with, had been slowly building up wounds with poor draws of the mutant cards. They were now only two wounds away from defeat. While I was slightly better off with being three away still.

My turn again. I needed to be lucky again or get overrun and become a zombie snack. I had to draw again, I can't remember the card type. But I had top decked again! The drawn card stopped all zombies advancing this turn. Wow why can't I be this lucky in Star Realms?

I was still alive somehow. Friend twos turn ended up being their last. With the Mutant Boss doing the final two wounds to kill them off.

Somehow I had hung in there long enough to win! If I hadn't top decked there was no way I'd be celebrating this victory.

Game two was a shorter game with friend one winning. Although I did manage to do three damage to the Mutant Boss before dying a couple of turns later, when I was overrun by a horde.

A great evenings gaming with two good friends. Doesn't get much better than that.

Oh while I remember I've pre-ordered the Big Box expansion for the game, which is mainly a large storage box for the game and all the expansions I believe. But it also comes with the new Running Late expansion, plus some kickstarter promos. Which pushes up the value for money factor. While I was pre-ordering that I also pre-ordered the mutant boss 2.0 model. It's so hard to get the mutant boss model 1.0 because it was a kickstarter exclusive I believe, and they rarely come up. So I was relieved that the publisher is doing this limited release model.

Upper Deck Legendary News

 

I don't know how I missed this news from GenCon but I did. Luckily I've found out now, and this news is blooming awesome.

Upper Deck are going to be releasing two new Legendary games based on two very popular ip. I think it would be fair to say they have big cult followings.

Both of these games will be using the Legendary game engine. Which means these will be deck building games. I'm assuming here based on previous products in this line that they will be co-operative, possibly have a competitive mode of some sort, be really thematic (Legendary Encounters Alien did win the best themed game award in the Dice Towers Awards this year) and finally interchangeable with the other Legendary games.

The first ip that will be joining the Legendary world is Big Trouble in Little China. The eighties cult classic staring Kurt Russell as Jack Burton.

There is no release date at present. However considering that next year is the thirtieth anniversary of this classic cult movie (god I feel so old typing that) and there is a remake/reboot apparently in the works and in some stage of development with apparently The Rock involved. With that information in hand I would hazard a guess that we will see Big Trouble in Little China in 2016, I'm not sure when the exact date of the anniversary is, but if I was in marketing at Upper Deck I'd be trying to release as near to that date as possible. However my gut says because of the next ip to be announced and that's release date we will see this game in the first half of 2016.

Will we see Upper Deck pick up another cult classic starring Kurt Russell, Escape from New York?

The second ip taking the Legendary world to a new world of awesome is… No before I tell you, you had better go to the toilet because you are going to soil yourself in excitement…

Right now you are back…

The second ip joining the Legendary world is…

Are you ready for it?

The second ip is… get this… Firefly!!! OMG!! How amazing is that news? There are a lot of fanboys wetting themselves at the moment because they didn't listen to my advice. Yes there are already Firefly games out there, including the just released Firefly Shiney Dice game. But this one has the potential to put all those others in the shade.

Oh yes a chance to play the crew of the Serenity using the amazing Legendary game engine. If the reavers aren't in the game I'd be really really shocked.

So when can we expect to get our dirty sweaty nerdy fanboy mitts on this new member to the Legendary stable? Currently (and I say that because things can happen in the meantime that could delay it) Upper Deck are aiming for GenCon 2016 for its release. Which basically means we have a year of trying to manage our excitement.

I do have one concern with this news, by the time these come out we will have three (four depending on how you want to class Villians) games out on the market using the Legendary engine. Will the games start feeling tired? How will Upper Deck make sure that the games remain fresh, but at the same time compatitable with the existing games, and not just a retheming of an existing engine? Maybe I'm just worrying over nothing. I know I'll be buying both I'm such a predictable sheep sometimes. What do you think of this news or my concerns? Are you excited as me about it?

 

 

New Imperial Assault Skirmish Rule

imperial assault, marvel legendary

Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) purveyors of addictive Star Wars related miniature based games (some other company has the rights for boardgames) has released some rule “tweaks” for the super amazing game Imperial Assault. Which would explain why I've put the logo of the game at the top of this post.

The main change they talk about is for the two player skirmish mode of the game.

“The new rule is: “During a skirmish, if your opponent has more ready Deployment cards than you, you may choose not to activate a group and pass play to your opponent.” This rule goes into effect on August 15th, 2015, and will not be used at the Imperial Assault National Championships at Gen Con Indy 2015.“

The new rule hasn't been added to the PDF of the rules yet. I'm assuming it will be around the 15/8/15. But I suppose for casual games we might as well assume the new rule is live.

The Tournament rules have also been tweaked also. There is some gibberish about their software TOME. But the main thing that will affect tournament players is the following:

“In addition, with a new season (National Championships) comes a new set of legal skirmish maps, starting July 29th, 2015. We are keeping the Moisture Farm map from the core set and rotating out the other two. To fill the gap, we are adding the Kuat Space Station and Ord Mantell Junkyard maps.”

Plus FFG have changed some of the language so that it's consistent between all the tournament rules for Imperial Assault, X-Wing and Armada.

There is also an FAQ update, and also talk of monitoring certain characters (which they don't name). So I'm waiting with baited breath to find out which characters and what the outcome of their monitoring is. If I hazard a guess from stuff I've seen on line they are going to focus on the imperial officer.

You can read the full announcement here.

Like a lot of my games I just need to get Imperial Assault to the table more.

Upper Deck have been previewing some of the cards from the impending Marvel Legendary expansion Secret Wars Part One. Yep Upper Deck has soooo much stuff that they had to split it between two expansions! Or maybe they like to milk us fans of the game for even more money. Either way they are getting my money.

Yes I've blatantly ripped off their images from the Facebook page so that you dear reader can get excited about this new expansion as I am.

I have to admit that Zombie Mr. Sinister looks nasty. I can't wait to duke it out with him. I'd be half tempted to let him escape so there are two Masterminds to fight at the same time. That will be awesome and suicidally stupid at the same time.

You can read the new rules and see the information sheet for this much anticipated expansion here

 

Excelsior!

dice masters, marvel legendary, new arrivals, pixel tactics

What would a Marvel Cinematic Universe film be without the cameo from Stan Lee? A lesser movie that's what. So when I found out that there was a Stan Lee bystander card for Marvel Legendary, well I just had to have it. Guess what came today?

So now when I play Marvel Legendary I can simulate that cameo appearance from the Generalissimo himself by shuffling in these two bystander cards into the bystander deck.

And for me the awesome thing will be when I'm playing with some-one who doesn't know I have this card and it appears. I'm hoping for a little “OMG! That's awesome” moment.

Tomorrow im going to see Ant-man at The Luxe cinema, and hopefully before the film two or three of us will have a chance to be uber geeks and play a game of Marvel Legendary before hand with Stan Lee shuffled in the Bystander deck.

Also today the two Dice Tower Pixel Tactics promos arrived. I only got them yesterday off that UK Facebook trading page. So dam good service.

Finally the other day the rare Constantine dice masters card arrived. It appears to be a popular card especially in control teams I think. I'm not fully up on the current meta. It's changing again now that the Age of Ultron set has hit stores in the U.S. and any day now in the UK.

I've not played nearly enough dicemasters this year. I really enjoy the game. But this release schedule Wizkids has for sets is brutal. It's almost a new set every two months. Which if you want to be a completionist makes the game expensive. If you want to be competitive at tournaments (which I like to think I'm capable of being) then you need to be living this game, which makes it a life style game. And I have too many games in my collection that I enjoy playing that fall into this category. But I think this is a topic that I will explore in another post in the future.

 

It’s Going To Be Legendary!

marvel legendary, tabletop

This morning (US time or afternoon/evening for the rest of us) at Dice Tower Con Upper Deck did a presentation of up and coming products.

Upper Deck is the company behind Marvel Legendary and Legendary Encounters Alien. I love this game. It’s great with other players and as a solo game. Both carry the theme really well.

In the presentation today the big news was (for me) that in the new big box expansion Marvel Secret Wars you will be able to add a sixth player who will play as the mastermind with their own mastermind deck! There is also a very high chance this is also backwards compatible so you can play with the original core set masterminds!

Going from the box art I’m making a big assumption here but I think Doctor Strange (one of my fav characters – yes I’m looking forward to the film coming out in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Wave 3) will be a character I can choose. Also I’m crossing my fingers here Captain Britain. Yep I’m a Captain Britain fan too. I am so excited about be able to play teams with those two characters in.

I think it was last year Upper Deck released a collectable trading card set called 3D which was Marvel character based. Within the packs were some character cards for Howard the Duck and Man Thing to use in Marvel Legendary along with a Stan Lee Bystander card. Not sure if they did any other characters like this for the game. However one of the questions asked from the audience was about these cards. The good news, Upper Deck will be making these available however they weren’t sure how yet. But they did say they didn’t like seeing fans fleeced on eBay for this sort of stuff, and that’s why they were going to make these cards available. I’m not sure if the Stan Lee card would be included but hey I hope so.

I’m a really big Howard the Duck fan. I have the original 70’s comic run, which has the very first comic book appearance of my favourite group KISS in. One of my guilty secrets is and I feel ashamed to admit this, but I enjoyed the Howard the Duck movie. There I’ve said it. I’m not saying it’s a great movie. Just I enjoy watching it. Boy did a get a little fanboy tear of joy when I saw Howard’s guest appearance at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy movie. I so want Howard in my Legendary games.

The new Legendary Encounters Predator game is 700 cards, co-op play and pvp. Super hyped over this.

There was one mistake on the slides. It said that the Alien expansion was coming out this year. But earlier in the week a person from Upper Deck more in the know said that it had been put back to first half of next year.

Not sure what to make of the announcement about the reboot of VS. Never played the original. Like the fact that they have moved away from a collectable game to the more democratic everyone has the same cards. They are calling it a 2PCG or two player card game. The initial set will be Marvel based, however they said they would be using other IP like Alien and Predator, Firefly and The Crow. So I calling it that they have gone to a similar format as FFGs Living Card Game format. Which I prefer to that collectable format of Magic. My question will be once I’ve this game in action is do I have room for another game like this in my life?

Which segways nicely into the announcement of The Crow boardgame. Sadly no photos of the game setup. However it does sound interesting with one player playing The Crow trying to stop the bad guys that killed him and the love of his life. While the other players play the bad guys. I know I said this so much this post but I LOVE The Crow movie. Apart from being an awesome movie and fitting tribute to Brandon Lee, the soundtrack for the movie is AMAZING! So I’m really hoping that Upper Deck nail this one.

You can watch the Upper Deck presentation here : http://youtu.be/wfhDA-e5eig

Finally if that isn’t enough excitement around this awesome game next Thursday the game they are playing will be Marvel Legendary. If you were going to buy it, I’d do it now before the episode airs, because afterwards the Tabletop effect kicks in. Which basically means it will be flying off the physical and virtual shelves and in all likely hood be hard to get for a while.

On a different note if you play Dead of Winter and missed out on the Felcia Day promo character from this years Tabletop Day, and quite rightly shocked and disgusted by the price this goes for on eBay (due to a small number of these in the kits sent to stores). Have no fear, Plaid Hat Games are selling it on their website for $5 plus postage (which I think I may of mentioned already). However I ordered one a couple weeks back when they were being re-ordered. Today I got the good news is mine got shipped today.

I do have to take my hat off to Plaid Hat Games for making promos available for a reasonable price for those that failed to get them.

 

Things Get Legendary

marvel legendary, tabletop
 

Yesterday an idea hit me, wait Avengers: Age of Ultron is out this week. We were due to celebrate this fact by playing Marvel Legendary on Thursday but due to unforeseen circumstances our host has had to cancel the themed evening of game playing. The idea that hit me was more a question, “is there an Ultron mastermind card in Legendary?” I was hoping so, I couldn't remember who the masterminds were. If Ultron was a mastermind I could play solo on Thursday and play the movie!

So I pulled out the Legendary box with everything in, opened it up. Then thought I really should sleeve these cards. Which then saw me get sidetracked looking for official sleeves. I had a heart attack when I saw a place on Amazon (UK for any international readers) selling a pack of fifty sleeves (I'm assuming that was one pack it didn't say otherwise) for twenty six pounds plus postage. That wasn't just daylight robbery, it was a mugging that ends up with the victim dead, and then the mugger peeing on the corpse. I think this South Park clip of Cartman quotes from the Humancentipad episode sums it up. BTW this is definitely NSFW!

 

These are sleeves that should not cost more than three or four pounds (yes twice the US price, yes that Cartman stuff is relevant for this as well too about us in the UK). To sleeve all your cards you need an aweful lot of sleeves. At the price on Amazon I'd have needed to become a mastermind myself and come up with cunning scheme to rob the Bank of England to buy enough to sleeve all the cards.

I could get generic sleeves, but having official sleeves with the art work on is just nicer. Maybe my FLGS might get them in (if the monopolistic UK distributor that has sewn up distribution for the majority if not all the major game companies has decided we in the UK are allowed to buy them, the seem to have deemed us unworthy on many accessories).

Any way I managed to focus again and looked through the masterminds for Legendary. Ultron wasn't one of them. Bugger. That poured cold water on that idea right away.

I think Upper Deck are missing a trick in not selling mini expansions that tie in with the movies and shows. The expansions don't have to be packaged anything more fancy than the foils packets similar to the ones used by the likes of White Wizard for the Gambit and Crisis expansions.

For the soon to be out Avengers: Age of Ultron they could of introduced a mini expansion containing Ultron as a mastermind, one or two scheme cards, and henchman cards, all for five coins of the realm or five pound. Then we could have been playing Marvel Legendary this week recreating the movie by going up against Ultron.

Later in the year Upper Deck could of released a couple of Antman related packs to tie in with (what looks promising in the trailers) Antman movie. Or we could of had a Winter Soldier pack. I do hope they do something for Civil War.

But nope Upper Deck havent announced anything like this, however we are getting a Secret Wars expansion in the Summer.

I missed a trick last weekend or did I? Well as I have pointed out previously Daredevil hit Netflix last week. Thirteen episodes in a Netflix exclusive series tied in to the Marvel cinematic universe. Just don't go watching it expecting guest appearances from Captain America or Thor. This is set at the street level with our heroes living in the world they are defending, and not operating on some grand scale alien invading level that Capt and Thor live in. Daredevil is darker, grittier and it's fantastic. Being on Netflix we benefit from their binge model of watching, so we got all thirteen episodes available to watch at the same time.
So last Friday I watched eight of the episodes and then finished off the final five episodes on the Saturday. It is such a great series. The look, the way they portray the characters, the story arcs, the character interactions. Everything about this series is just miles ahead of the other superhero tv series on at the moment or before it.
Don't get me wrong I love Gotham (and wow the penguin is amazing in this series, the actor playing him has created a performance that defines the character for me as did Heath Ledger for The Joker), I love The Flash and it's fan service and nods to the eighties series. I'm a very loving person and that love carries over to Arrow and Marvel Agents of Shield.
I even liked Constantine, the actor who played Constantine was really good. However Constantine although so much better than the Keanu Reeves Constantine movie, needed to be darker and grittier. It had thirteen episodes but failed for me to achieve the same impact and development that we have seen with Daredevil.
In Daredevil the stand out casting for me has to be Vincent D'Onofrio (he of Law and Order Criminal Intent fame) as Wilson Fisk or not called by this name yet in the series King Pin. The performance as Fisk is nothing but amazing, and for me steals the show. Vincent plays Fisk so well giving the character a menacing threatening presence however he also brings a vulnerability to Fisk. This is a character defining performance, that if anyone else plays King Pin will have a hard time topping.
I'm looking forward to the other four series that Netflix have the licence for hitting their streaming service. And I've crossed everything hoping that we will see more seasons of Daredevil.

So what was the opportunity I missed? Playing Marvel Legendary with King Pin as the mastermind with Daredevil and other street level heroes hoping to foil his scheme. But have I missed it? Nah I can play it today while re watching the series.

I'm going to finish this long post with a warning for those that have Marvel Legendary but not bought the Spider-Man Paint the Town Red and/or the Fantastic Four expansions. BUY THEM NOW! Upper Deck have said these will not be reprinted. The Spider-Man one surprised me, but not the Fantastic Four one. Well Marvel are going nuclear with the film studio that hold the rights for doing Fantastic Four movies, and that side of things will just get uglier.