by StormKnight
It is odd to me that someone would dismissively refer to Legendary as a modified Ascension or Thunderstone in a thread comparing the game to DC.
First off, I'm not comparing Legendary to DC. I'm just talking about Legendary. :)
Secondly, whether you consider it "dismissive' or not is up to you, but Legendary is very much a bit of Ascension and Thunderstone. It does very little original. I have no idea whether that is because the designers simply copied existing formats or arrived at them independently; either is possible. The advancing villain track is from the Thunderstone co-op/solo variant, except that even though it was a "tacked-on later" part of Thunderstone, it's better implemented there for actual solo/co-op play.
There is a linear, fairly coherent story there.
You start with basic and ineffective resource producing and point scoring cards, and attempt to add more effective resource producing and point scoring cards to your deck while removing the less effective cards.
Sounds just like Dominion to me!
Shield deploys its agents against the rising threat and as the threat escalates, Heroes are recruited to join in the effort to stop the mastermind and thwart the scheme. (The stars represent the recruiting power ... a hard concept to represent with an icon. Presumably the stars represent Shield badges or officers' uniforms).
Doesn't resemble most of the Marvel comics I've read.
And let me get this straight. Emma Frost uses her psychic powers to produce STAR POWER! to recruit...Emma Frost?
And I certainly think it matters to rescue bystanders regardless of play style. There are cards powered by the number of bystanders you have rescued, such as Black Widow's.
Not "such as" Black Widow's card. Black Widow's card. ONE card, of which there are three copies, that won't usually be in play. I didn't feel I needed to pedantic enough to point that out in my original comment.
There's also the whole huge "no point to actually FIGHT the villains most of the time".
But you miss the point, those of us enjoying the game primarily as a cooperative experience aren't ignoring the competitive element altogether.
If you're counting points to see who won, you are playing a competitive game.
Marvel does try to incorporate several riskier design elements, from the co-op aspect, to the scenarios to the spatial components in an effort to be true to the source material, a storytelling art form.
Including a "co-op element" isn't a "risky" element, it's a buzzword used to generate additional interest, in this case without actually bothering to go through the effort of producing a playable co-op game.
I have no idea what this "narrative" stuff you keep talking about is. None. It's a game. You buy cards. You play cards. You score points.
I suspect that could certainly be true for some based on what they bring to a game and what they expect from it.
Or it could be true based on WHAT THE GAME IS. It violates the basic expectations of "this works as a game".
I don't even remember what this argument started about by now. :p
For me, what Legendary really did right was hit the right mix of play time and variety. Ascension is fast to play, but using the same deck every game means very little variety. Thunderstone games take a very long time.
Because the Legendary deck is customized for each game, you get a lot of variety. However, because the hero deck is randomized and you only use a small part of it, it's worth playing multiple games with the same set of cards, which tends not to be the case in Thunderstone or Dominion. If we didn't usually play two games of Legendary in a row, it probably wouldn't be worth the set up time, but it works very well to play two games with the same set.