Instead of entitling this thread Legendary Marvel vs Marvel Champions, I just wanted a less competitive starting point.

But I'll be asking some things to compare those two games though.

I've only played Marvel Champions so far. Never knew about Legendary or vaguely here and there without being interested enough.

I've watched a tutorial video of Legendary that didn't convince me about the deckbuilding part of it.

A guy had been playing Legendary for years told me He instantly stopped playing it when Champions came out because He prefers controlling His hero than a roster.

in a similar way, I read a blog article stating that Marvel Champions was "the winner" over Legendary, saying that in Legendary you could lose because there were too many details or variables that you could easily not control and then lose without knowing why or not because of your play style where, for the author of tht post, Marvel Champions clearly tell you what went wrong and you can figure it out and improve on it.

Many comparisons between the two games that I find online are quite old when you take the release of Champions. So I wanted to ask the following questions, now that we have some packs released (but maybe waiting for Red Skull before asking would be a better idea ?) :

1) For those who have played both games, how do they feel in terms of mechanics ? Are there big enough differences between them to keep both on the table or is one excluding the other like in the blogpost I mentioned ?

2) a guy I know on Discord finds Marvel Champions "too simple" for him but He's a hardcore gamer who looks for a brain burning card game so maybe He's an extreme. Would you say those two games are on a same level of difficulty or would you say one is more complex than the other ?

3) Finally, would someone like me who's already in Marvel Champions make a good move at getting into Legendary ? (of course I plan to test it here and there before actually buying it).

Thanks :-)

7 hours ago, Elrad said:

1) For those who have played both games, how do they feel in terms of mechanics ? Are there big enough differences between them to keep both on the table or is one excluding the other like in the blogpost I mentioned ?

I've played Legendary many times (couple hundred games). Own all the expansions from the first 4 years (there were a lot). The games do not compare in any way except both being Marvel.

Legendary isn't a constructed deck game, like champions is, but rather a Deck Building Game. This means that you don't build any deck before the game starts. Every game starts with you having the same starting hand, and then over the course of the game you add and remove cards from your deck that you play with. All players pull cards from the same place, so you have very little control over which cards you will have access to when your turn starts.

There are many scenarios, and although they do bring some variability to the game, the core way each scenario and mastermind works is the same. As far as deck building games go, it is pretty standard, and I don't feel like the game has aged that well (meaning that there are better deck building games out there now that fix a lot of the issues I didn't even realize were there originally).

I still bring it out to play every now and then, like maybe twice a year, but I pretty much stopped playing it ages ago, not because Champions came out. For me theme is just theme, and so the games don't really overlap much.

Speaking about the theme, it isn't near as strong as Champions is, more on this in question 3.

7 hours ago, Elrad said:

2) a guy I know on Discord finds Marvel Champions "too simple" for him but He's a hardcore gamer who looks for a brain burning card game so maybe He's an extreme. Would you say those two games are on a same level of difficulty or would you say one is more complex than the other ?

Then this guy isn't doing something right. I can get why people don't like different games, but "too simple" is not a complaing for Champions. I'm a hardcore gamer. I play boardgames around 5 times a week, and my group play pretty much everything. As far as mechanics go, Champions is brilliant in that it is accessible, and on standard, you can get by playing pretty much any way.

But when you play on Expert, and then Heroic, the game stops being "too simple", and I'm not only talking about difficulty. I'm addressing the mechanics. The types of plays that you have to make, and the engine that is Champions, really supports them and is well built. Add to that the deck construction part. I'm constantly reworking my decks, trying differences here and there, and as someone who plays a lot of deck construction games, Champions really does have a good meaty engine to make every card a decision. Even with the limited card pool that is out now (I have up until Hulk), decisions are hard. This is just going to grow and grow.

7 hours ago, Elrad said:

3) Finally, would someone like me who's already in Marvel Champions make a good move at getting into Legendary ? (of course I plan to test it here and there before actually buying it).

I wouldn't recommend the move if you're thinking about doing it because the games are similar.

If you want a nice and simple deck builder, then Legendary might be what you want, but you could do better with other deck builders.

Legendary is not going to give you that feeling of being a hero. Champions is incredible here. When you're playing a hero, you really feel like you have different strengths and weaknesses based on which hero you're playing. Black Widow and Thor both feel completely different, you have to play differently to take advantage of the cards, yet both are capable. The depth of Champions in trying to master the mechanics to come out on top is not in Legendary.

As an extra, if you build a deck, lets say Aggression Iron Man, and then decide to play Aggression Black Panther, and all you do is swap out the 15 Hero cards, then you're not taking advantage of your hero and building the deck for that hero. This level of depth that is in Champions does not exist in Legendary at all.

20 minutes ago, DarthofZA said:

I've played Legendary many times (couple hundred games). Own all the expansions from the first 4 years (there were a lot). The games do not compare in any way except both being Marvel.

I agree, they are very different experiences, don,t see how you can compare.

I also played Legendary Alien Encounters, which is a fabulous game, one of the best themed deckbuilders out there.

And Marvel Champions is it's onw thing. The more I play it, the more I love it.

At first I thought your were talking about the Marvel Legends Versus reprint, but that has the same issue (UDE).

Dominion is really the best (non-pvp) deckbuilder. The big complaint is you only get 1 buy, but that really is why its the best of them (because it makes you make decisions). There are also people who take that game way too seriously and miss the other thing that makes the game good, its quick enough to shuffle up and play again.

The down-side is that there are so many expansions now that storage and setup can take awhile.

I've played Marvel Legendary dozens of times, and honestly I don't really like the game (my friends used to always want to play it). First off, it's technically a competitive game. I know most people don't play it that way - but my friend who owns it plays it 100% competitively. He loves including Loki cards, so we can stab each other in the back.

But the main reason why I don't like Marvel Legendary is because sometimes I will have great cards, and I still can't do anything on my turn. I remember one time I had something like 17 damage in my hand, and the mastermind's health was 18. The person who went before me killed all of the other villains, except the mastermind. I had to just discard all of my damage because attacking is all or nothing in Legendary. Buying cards is similar. I might have $5 to spend, but all of the cards in the market might cost $6+. That's part of the problem with a constantly changing market in deckbuilders.

Thankfully for me, after introducing Aeon's End to my gaming group, we haven't played Marvel Legendary again. In my opinion, Aeon's End is similar to Marvel Legendary, but fixes all of my issues with it.

7 hours ago, IceHot42 said:

The down-side is that there are so many expansions now that storage and setup can take awhile.

Ha ha! I have a the LOTR LCG content... 6 000 000 cards in like 7 boxes!...

Thanks for all your answers guys.

Ok, I'll stick to our dear Marvel Champions :-)

Reading you, @DarthofZA makes it clear to me that Legendary might not be my cup of tea

@DarthofZA said almost exactly what I would have said. I loved Legendary and collected most of it, but since getting Champions I have zero desire to bring it out again. Champions is simply the better superhero game, and as noted Dominion and others are better deck builders. I plan to sell my Legendary collection eventually (after un-sleeving it all, so I can sleeve Champions instead), which is kinda sad since I won the local league and have a one-of-a-kind mat as a prize...

I bought nearly everything for Legendary Marvel and only really stopped buying it when this gane came out.

They are very different games but Legendary isn't very good. I mostly stuck with it because of the theme.

One of my biggest problems is all of the keywords. Each expansion seemed to toss a few new ones in and never revisit them. Find myself constantly having to look them up to see what they do.

I think people are not giving Legendary enough credit. It's super easy to teach, and in terms of mashing together your favorite heroes and villains to play some wacky scenario where Squirrel Girl, Spiderman Noir, X32, Hulk, and that one Wolverine from a single issue Elseworld face down evil Tony Stark it really has no competition. And the scenarios and heroes are surprisingly thematic given the design space they have to work with. It's a very fun casual game for the end of the night or you don't have time for something heavier.

That said, Legendary Encounters is a mechanically better set of systems that fixes a lot of the issues with original Legendary. But it is also more linear and limited compared to Legendary's sandbox, if that makes any sense. And certainly lots of even newer deck builders have innovated with lots of different gimmicks.

Dominion is a bloody archaic fossil compared to even Legendary though. 🙃

On 7/31/2020 at 5:15 PM, HamHamJ2 said:

I think people are not giving Legendary enough credit. It's super easy to teach, and in terms of mashing together your favorite heroes and villains to play some wacky scenario where Squirrel Girl, Spiderman Noir, X32, Hulk, and that one Wolverine from a single issue Elseworld face down evil Tony Stark it really has no competition. And the scenarios and heroes are surprisingly thematic given the design space they have to work with. It's a very fun casual game for the end of the night or you don't have time for something heavier.

Having a large cast of characters was a mixed bag for me. It was nice to get some strange choices but also got a bit tiresome to see so many variations of a single character. Especially when some characters never made it into the game or others desperately needed a redesign. Doesn't help that many of the cards did a poor job of creating the feeling of the character.

I have to disagree with the ease of teaching and play unless you stuck with the base game. Seemed like I have to constantly look up various keywords that didnt see much use.

Doesn't help that the Deadpool expansion had goofy rules just to be goofy. I refused to let any new players touch that expansion due to how confusing it was for them.

Legendary was fun at first but seemed to get worse over the years. I haven't been able to touch it since Marvel Champions released.

I play both. I love both, for different reasons. In Legendary, you run a team with your friends against a villain and a random scheme. It’s not as simple as just dishing out x damage over y turns while controlling z threat. Sometimes, the game just kills you but the combo opportunities are fantastic. The most balanced stuff is the theme packs like fantastic 4 vs. galactic guardian or the guardians of the galaxy vs. thanos.

In Marvel Champions, running one hero against a specific mission is fun and easier to manage, but sometimes I wish they had made this more like lord of the rings lcg where each player has 1-3 heroes and you can handle multiple situations without wondering if you are keeping pace with the other players in the group. It’s a lot easier to make mistakes in this game than in Legendary when you can’t be sure your one hero will pull his or her weight with the cards in your hand.

I’m a huge Marvel fan, but I passed on Legendary when it first came out. After spending time looking into it, it really didn’t feel like they’d got the theme right. It was just a deck builder with the Marvel theme papered onto it. I did not get that impression when Marvel Champions came out. It felt like the stories I loved from the comics coming to life through mechanics. The theme is everywhere and the depth is much more interesting.

I do like deck builders as a genre, but there are definitely other deck builders I find more interesting.

These are both extremely different games. The only reason they are ever compared is because of the IP, but they are entire different genres.

The true comparison for Marvel Champions is Sentinels of the Multiverse.

I have all two games and i play with all of them frequentlly.

Basically, they are different games that give you a different feel and game experience.

Leaving aside the fact that Marvel Legendary is an older game and you can find a tons of different characters (i mean IronMan, Black Panther, Hulk, Hawkeye but also Hellcat, Foton, Dazzler, War Machine, DarkHawk and others secondary heroes not so important but really fun to play), I found the most important difference (in my opinion) is the deck building system in these two games.

In Marvel Legendary you choose your characters (always a roster, never only one hero) but you *never* play with all these cards, from these deck you buy every round the cards you need (or the cards you can buy). As the game progresses you build your deck. It's like you are building your deck in realtime. That means you can change your strategy on the fly. In some point, you need more firepower and suddenly you get another mastermind and need to control de Scheme, if your needs changes, you simply can start to draw different type of cards than the ones you were drawing until now. You can adapt you strategy to the game.

In Marvel Champions you can't do that. You build your Deck before starting the game. You adapt your deck to your villain (is not the same battle against Klaw that battle against Green Goblin) but you can't make changes after deck is build.

If i build my deck plenty of aggression cards like 'Meele', 'Relentless Assault', 'Uppercut' or 'Tac Team' and start to appear on the table Goblin minions everywhere, there is nothing i can do to change these cards (those cards that i still haven't drawn from the deck) for something more usefull in these moment like 'Valkirie', 'Hercules', or 'Hulk'. You make invariable decicions on deck building phase previous to the game.

Another thing i think is a crucial difference, is the fac that the plans and the villains are not linked in Marvel Legendary as they are in Marvel Champions.

In Champions, Rino *always* tries to steal the vibranium shipment and Klaw *always* try to sell guns on the black market while in Legendary the Scheme (the plan) can be driven by any villain. Magneto can try to open portals to the dark dimension... and Apocalipsis can too... and Mojo can too... and Mandarin can too... In Legendary each scheme (plan) have his win condition and each villain have his own win condition, you must control both during the game. Change the scheme to the same villain will change the game difficulty. Now have to control things you didn't control before. These increase the replayability because with a small change, you feel a completlly diffetent game.

On the other hand, Champions have the aspect system that allows you to adapt the character you choose to the game. Maybe i'm gonna play with my brother using Hulk and i like Thor but we don't need more mele and i can build a thor+protection or maybe thor+justice to compensate for the defect of Hulk (he can't THW). In Legendary you can't do that, for these reason have 3 versions of Thor (one more agressive another more cooperative.....), 3 or 4 versions of Wolverine, 3 versions of Colossus, etc. If you want that a character designed for a rol play a different one, you need a hole new character deck.

Marvel Legendary have nothing like campings, it's a fact.

With Legendary you don't have the feel like you *are* a hero. You don't feel like Spiderman. You feel like leading a superhero squad but you are not the hero. The characters don't have these level of detail you found in Champions that make you feel like you *are* Spiderman (Vulture nemesis, Aunt May, Web Shooters...).

Marvel Legendary is played completlly with cards, you dont' have any marker or meeple or something while in Marvel Champions you use a toons of tokens, for plan for damage general ones, another little cards....

I don't think one is better than the other, they are simply very different games that share a theme