Some of you may remember the Aliens Predator CCG, a collectible card game that was released over a decade ago. That game lasted 2 sets and was unfortunately cancelled. Since then, Alien hasn’t had a presence in the world of table-top card gaming. That time is now over:
“Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game is a fully cooperative game with original art. While based on the Marvel superheroes version of Legendary, the two games will be compatible but cannot be fully integrated. Legendary Encounters is a deck-building game in the same family as Legendary, but now players must cooperate in order to survive against hordes of aliens. Players take turns recruiting cards for their deck from a central selection in order to improve their deck and defeat enemy cards that are added to the central game board.”
You can find out more over at Board Game Geek. Thanks to Mr Domino for the news.
At first I didn't really like how their new codex rebooted their backstory, but the more I thought about it the more I was okay with the changes.
TBH, I'll never get rid of my Necrons. I may not like what they've become, but they were the first full-sized army I ever painted completely, and they have a special place in my heart. Plus, I love the glowy green bitz.
I still have a small Tyranid force. Probably gonna hang on to them since their new codex is just around the corner.
Indeed good sir. Indeed.
Happy to pay someone for a single card. Was a promo card not in the regular packs.
Used to play the game all the time, had very kick ass decks, especially a tough Marines deck to play against both aliens and predators.
Now those are definitely compatible, from what I remember!
The company which made those cards made some kind of systems and scenario for that to occur!
-Rakai'Thwei
Depending on the price, I'll definitely try and pick it up as soon as I can.
The way I ran it was essentially just each side plays by the rules of their respective game - all the Aliens, in HeroClix terms, automatically have Willpower, since there's no pushing damage in Horrorclix, but they still become vulnerable, so, in Heroclix terms, all the Green Lanterns essentially gain Penetrating Shot and Exploit Weakness against an alien with 2 action counters. You still put out Victim tokens, and the GLs count as Protectors (or whatever the Horrorclix term was for Good Guys), so they can rescue the victim tokens, but they don't get any benefit from doing so, aside from denying the Aliens. The Alien player also still gets a hand of plot twist cards, just as the GL player has access to any feats they want to use.
When I played it, we did 1000 pts. on each side - the full GLCorps box set with Ganthet, Katma Tui, Tomar Re, Ch'p, Gnort, Arisia, and Abin Sur, along with Kiliwog, Hal Jordan, Jon Stewart, and Kyle Rayner from outside of the box set. The Alien side had the complete Alien box set, along with the fully upgraded Queen and Egg Sac attachment. It was glorious fun. The Aliens made short work of most of the GLs, but then Ganthet strode in and started disintegrating the bugs at long range. In the end, it came down to a battle of wills between Ganthet and the Queen, and, well, in brightest day, in blackest night, no xenomorph will leave this fight.
The reason for the title is because Upper Deck has already secured the rights to the Predator and Firefly franchises to use in future deck-builders. From what I understand, the idea is for those to be standalone sets, but that can also be mixed together if the players so choose. So after a while, you'll have Legendary, which is a blanket name for Comic book properties using the Legendary engine, and Legendary Encounters, which is the same thing for Film/TV licenses.
Neither entirely. In Marvel Legendary, there are five locations in "The City". As a Villain comes out from the Villain deck, he enters "The Sewers". If another Villain comes out before he's defeated, that villain will enter "The Sewers", and the first Villain will be pushed into "The Bank" - and so on into "The Rooftops", "The Streets", and "The Bridge". If the city is ever entirely full (which will generally happen quite often - it's extremely difficult to keep the villain population in check, especially early-game), and another villain comes out of the villain deck, then the villain in "The Bridge" will be pushed into the "Escaped Villains" stack, and the players take some penalties, often dependent upon the scenario. There's no movement on the player side - you simply play down your heroes, spend your recuitment points on more cards into your discard pile, and if you have enough attack points, taking out a villain card from one of the City locations.
I don't think this game's title is doing it any favours, though. 'Legendary Encounters: an Alien card game'? Wouldn't 'Alien: a Legendary card game' be better? I worry about brand confusion scaring off the casual gamers. Ah, well... as long as I get a copy.
For the record, there's no mention of any predators being involved. And I, personally, really hope there won't be.
Mr. Domino, does Legendary make use of any sort of movement/locations, or do all the cards just sit on the table and duke it out, like Star Wars?
Mind sending me that campaign scenario for Green Lantern vs Aliens for the Clix games?
And really? So Marvel vs Aliens would likely be compatible with this? I can kill Superheroes with the Alien/Predator cards?! Shit, I am getting this deck even if I have no one to play with! Heh heh heh!
-Rakai'Thwei
Horror and HeroClix were never actually intended to be compatible (although it ended up not being hard to run the conversion - Alien Hive vs. Green Lantern Corps is still one of the most fun games I ever played) - these will likely be much like the DC and Lord of the Rings deck-building games - built on the same engine and fully compatible, but with different card backs and different terms, so you're really only a bunch of opaque card sleeves away from having Avengers vs. Aliens.
I'm excited. I play Magic weekly so it will be cool to try something new. And if this is co-op, then my gf should enjoy it too. She likes playing against me, but much prefers to play with me.
*John Hammond's voice*
DAMN!
-Rakai'Thwei
Essentially the way they tend to work is you start out with a small deck (usually 10 or 12 cards) that are all very low powered, but give you a little bit of whatever resources the game uses. You use those resources to buy other cards from a common pool, and those go straight to your discard pile. You play every card in your hand each turn, and redraw a new hand, so you cycle through your deck very quickly, and as you run out of cards to draw, you simply reshuffle (including the awesome new cards you've bought) and draw a new hand. Because of this, a large part of the game is in the actual deck-building process, trying to grab good cards that combo off of each other, and weed out starter cards, and cards that aren't working with your strategy.
There are a number of them that are competitive (the Star Trek Deck-Building Game and Core Worlds probably being my two favorites), but the cooperative mechanic works really well, especially in Legendary. In the Marvel version, you've got a number of different "Masterminds", which are your big bad that you're trying to defeat (Magneto, Doom, Red Skull, etc.) and a bunch of "scheme" cards, which define the parameters of the scenario (is the mastermind trying to steal a shipment of weaponized plutonium? Unleash the Legacy Virus? Open portals to the Dark dimension? Replace Earth's leaders with killbots?). There's a ton of different combinations of Mastermind and scheme cards to add to replayability, and it only gets crazier when you add in the fact that the lesser villains that show up in the villain deck will be different each time as well. Even though it's a complete game in a box, you get a lot of the "never the same game twice" factor that makes CCGs so appealing.
I'm really curious about this and will probably purchase. I've never played any of the new deck building games though. I understand you get everything you need from the box and there are no boosters or additional cards or etc?
Not too sure about it not being competitive play though...
Have you played many of these DBGs?