Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game

Today's review is of the 2012 release, Legendary: a Marvel Deck Building Game. For 1-5 players, it takes 30-60 minutes.

Overview

You and your friends need to fight villains, rescue bystanders, and take down the mastermind before too many villains escape with bystanders. This is a semi-cooperative game: you'll either win as an individual (if you have the most points if the team collectively wins the scenario) or all lose.

Game play follows the typical flow of deckbuilding: after choosing a mastermind, scheme, and set of hero cards [shuffling all heroes together to form a hero deck], each person starts with the decks of 12 cards (basic resource or damage cards), draws 6, and play begins. On a turn, the active player:

- draws a card from the villain deck and adds it to the city, shifting existing cards down the row and/or doing any effects as stated (which may trigger scheme or mastermind effects)

- plays cards from their hand to damage/defeat villains or buy cards from HQ to add to their decks (all purchased cards go in the discard pile)

- discards unused cards

- replenishes the HQ by adding cards from the hero deck to it

- draws 6 cards (shuffling the discard pile to create a new deck if needed)

The game board; image from here

Play continues until the winning (or losing) conditions are met. Once that happens, if the players collectively have defeated the scenario, the one with the most points (gained by defeating villains and rescuing bystanders) wins. If the players lost the scenario . . . everyone lost.

Other things to note: 

Some cards from the villain deck will trigger mastermind or scheme effects. 

Villains can escape the city if they are shifted off the board and may take bystanders with them (you lose if 8 total bystanders leave in this way). 

Masterminds can be defeated by doing damage to them equal to or exceeding their stated value, but you have to defeat them four times to win the scenario. 

Buying cards from HQ is key to winning. These hero cards have different abilities, which could mean doing more damage or gaining more resources than the basic cards or having a special ability.

You can see a more in-depth overview here at Watch It Played.

Review

I enjoyed this one. The semi-cooperative aspect is fun. Like any deckbuilder, the HQ can get clogged with higher-cost cards (that happened to us), and the villains can be clumped disadvantageously (that also happened), meaning some turns are wasted. But that aside, the game was intuitive and interesting. Recommended.

Rating: A

For Sale

Today's review is of the 1997 release, For Sale. For 3-6 players, it takes 30 minutes.

Overview

You are a real estate mogul, intent on buying the best properties—and selling them for the most profit.

Each player starts with 14 coins (each is $1,000), the two types of card decks are shuffled independently, and then the game is played over two rounds.

Round 1: buying buildings

There are 30 building cards, valued 1-30. Each turn within this round, X building cards are placed in a row (X= number of players). The players bid clockwise and can either raise the current bid or pass. If they pass, they take the lowest-valued building still in the row (and return half of their bid, rounded up, to the game box). That player is out of the rest of the turn. The other players continue bidding or passing until all buildings are purchased. (The last player standing must pay their entire bid.) Then the next turn begins, with X more buildings laid out in the row. Turns continue until all buildings have been purchased.

example building cards; image from here

Round 2: selling buildings

There are 30 "check" cards, valued 0 or 2-15 (and there are two copies of each). Each turn within this round, X check cards are placed in a row. The players secretly choose one of the building cards they received in the first round. When all have chosen, the cards are turned face-up, and the owner of the highest-valued card takes the highest-value check. The owner of the next highest-valued card takes the next check, and so on until all checks are taken. Then the next turn begins, with X more checks laid out. Turns continue until all checks have been taken.

examlpe check cards; image from here

At the end of the game, the player with the most money (total check card value + remaining coins from round 1) at the end wins!

Review

This game is a light, fast, and fun auction experience—both open and secret. Better with more people (5-6). Since you start the game with only 14 coins, you must bid carefully; run out of coins early in round 1 in the open auction, and you'll be stuck with low-value properties the rest of that round. And round 2 has that secret auction element, enabling you to get back in the game even with lower-valued properties if you can play your cards correctly. Overall, this is a winner.

Rating: A-

Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Matt Dinniman)

Picking up from last time, where Carl and Princess Donut made it through the first two levels of the dungeon that has become their world now that the Apocalypse has come (and is televised) . . .

Level three is the Over City—a sprawling world replete with ruins and echoes of a past calamity that have left its surviving inhabits in rough shape. But still dangerous shape—even the inhabited towns hold secrets and horrors that force our heroes to choose: will they help these pitiful souls and complete mysterious quests? Or is it really all about survival?

I enjoyed book one well enough, but I expected the sequel to be more of the same and grow stale. I was wrong. I liked this better—though the entire book covers just one level (remember, there are 18 total . . .), there is a surpising depth to this (on top of the endearing absurdity) that makes the tale thoroughly engrossing. The standard warnings from before apply: beware profanity/violence/crude humor. But if you can stomach that, this is a good one. And I'm hooked. 

Rating: A

Daredevil: Doing Time

Continuing from last time . . .

Daredevil is in prison, wrestling with his conscience and faith as friends try to talk him out of his decision to serve behind bars. Elektra has assumed his role as protector of Hell's Kitchen. And enemies abound . . . the Knulls have invaded.* The new Kingpin is asserting herself. And the prison warden wants Matt dead . . . 

This was a good story, looking at Matt fighting with himself on what it means to be a man of God. The art was great, too. The only detriment was the Knull storyline, that seem to burst in and disappear just as quickly. Apparently that is part of a larger story arc, and as I haven't read the other titles, I was lost there. Otherwise, this is solid.

Rating: A-

*Which is apparently part of the King in Black event.

Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman)

One minute, Carl is trying to coax his ex-girlfriend's cat (Princess Donut) out of a tree in the middle of a freezing night. The next, he finds himself one of Earth's few survivors as he is shepherded into a dungeon and told to fight for his life. Apparently, the apocalypse will be televised to an intergalactic audience, and Carl and Donut must find a way to survive by gaining new skills, leveling up, and finding a stairway to the next level of the dungeon before the current one collapses. If they can make it to level 18, they may just survive . . . but this game might be rigged.

This book—the first in a Literary Role-Playing Game (LitRPG) series—is all the rage, and I wanted to see why. I enjoyed it; its absurdist humor and clear parallels to video game RPGs were fun (but beware profanity, innuendo, and violence). There is also an overarching element of mystery involving those responsible for Earth's collapse and their motives/goals which was captivating and stays unresolved as the book ends. Speaking of—it ends somewhat abruptly, making it clear that the series is not a sequence of self-contained tales but one long story arc. With book eight due out this year and no end in sight, I am questioning if I want to invest in reading the rest of the series. But I do want to know what happens next . . . so I'll keep going for now.

Rating: B+

The Clay Pot Conspiracy (Dave Harvey)

In The Clay Pot Conspiracy, Pastor Dave Harvey argues that for those in ministry, "leadership was never about exactling out strengths. God's plan was always to deliver his strength through our weakness." He delivers an equation:

Our Weakness + God's Power = Resilient Ministry

and then discusses what he calls 'seven wonders' that collectively show this to be true:

1. Store Treasure in Clay (see 2 Corinthians 4:7)
• Our "weakness reveals our inadequacy," and reveals that "it's about God's power, not ours. It's about God's grace, not our grit." "The perfection of Christ is greater than the cracks in your pot."
2. Make Death Produce Life (see 2 Corinthians 4:8-9)
• "Paul's vision of leadership was to carry death in your body so that God can display the life of Jesus." "What if the heart of leadership is more about becoming living displays of broken vitality?" What if God is "silencing one brand of confidence to cultivate another"?
• "Your burdens and pain are not obstacles to resilience. They're the means of producing it."
3. Let Repentance Stoke Resilience
• We always need to repent. When we see more of Christ, we see more of our sin—and it never ends. "The biggest threat to leadership resilience is our unrelenting battle against indwelling sin."
• "Sin always subverts God's good things with the promise that vice will deliver a greater delight." "Sin cons, then consumes. It deceives, then devours." We fight and fail and keep fighting. Ultimately, "our brokenness moves us toward humility and dependence, not moral perfection."
4. Learn Love When the Church Wounds You
• "We are limited and fallible—flawed shepherds leading imperfect sheep." "To truly love the church, we must come to terms with her imperfections." People will hurt us (and we them). Our love will be "misunderstood or unrequited. Or . . . our own wins [will] blunt the impact or intent of our friendship or service." "The church will disappoint you in ways that attack your faith to love and serve her." "Yet even when she acts ugly, she is still Christ's bride. You must see her, not simply by how she fails but in light of who she is becoming."
5. Remember God Uses Enemies to Enlarge Your Soul (see Psalm 56)
• "Leadership is a call to come under assault." "God will use our enemies to uncover our idols. He will use foes to build our faith." "God will help you embody what you have said to others about grace and love."
6. Build Strong Teams Through Weak Leaders
• We tend to focus on the wrong things when building teams. Instead, we should "aim for HEALTHY practices:"
• Honor others
• Encourage more than you want to be encouraged
• Acknowledge weaknesses more than parading strength
• Look to the interests of others
• Talk less, and listen more
• Help the weak
• Yearn for Christ
7. Run Together to Finish Well
• "God made us relational, and he made ministry a shared endeeavor." Like Christian in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, we are "never a stunning specimen of determined law-keeping." We are prone to wander and stumble . . . and yet we are never running the race alone. The Lord puts people in our lives to help us, and empowers us with His spirit. We will finish the race well, but we will not do it alone. We must run together. 

This book's content was outstanding; the delivery was okay. It would have benefitted from more exploration and examples. Some things were powerful mentioned in passing but could have been moreso if more deeply probed. Nevertheless, check this one out. 

Rating: A-

Daredevil: Truth/Dare

Continuing from last time . . .

Things are returning to normal in Hell's Kitchen. Well, normal for Hell's Kitchen . . . the mob war has been quieted as Kingpin manipulates things to his liking. Matt seeks a way to save the residents from losing their homes as he wrestles with his past demons. Ultimately, he decides to turn himself in . . . Daredevil is going to jail. Who will protect the people now?

An excellent story continues . . . this one felt a bit like important backstory as the tale builds to a crescendo.

Rating: A-