Back in the day, there was a curse on superhero games, none of them were ever any good. Fast forward a few decades and players are spoiled for choice. Do you like the DC Hero comics? Try Legendary: A DC Deck Building Game. Prefer Marvel? Go for the new: Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game (Second Edition). If you’re more into the villains, try the area-control/El Grande-esque Enemies of Gotham City where every player is a uniquely powered villain, trying to get rid of that pesky Batman. All three are new titles coming out (or out) from Upper Deck Entertainment.

Legendary: A DC Deck Building Game (by Devin Low)

Legendary has finally come to the DC universe. It’s the same deckbuilder idea where players purchase hero cards that provide fame (money for buying more heroes) and attack (for attacking the enemies on the board.) Each turn another villain is revealed, pushing any undefeated ones across the board. Any pushed off the end are considered “escaped” and bad things usually happen. There is a thematic Mastermind each game which must be defeated. Masterminds combine with a chosen Scheme card to slightly change up how the game is played, typically adding in more ways for the heroes to lose.

Money shot of the very nice neoprene playmat included in the game.

All the standard deckbuilder stuff is here, more cards for more money, drawing extra cards, and card synergies. Typically, cards have a “suit” that pertains to their powers (ex: strength, instinct, tech, ranged, or covert) and many cards will grant extra abilities if they are played after cards with those symbols. Thus, playing two strength cards in a row might grant you a bonus for the second one.

The new mechanic for this set is the idea of Fear and Hope. There is a tracker for the game that moves between the two sides. Villains will move this value up or down and players can sometimes use attacks to move it. In general, the Masterminds are more powerful when Fear is high while heroes are better off when things are trending towards Hope. As with the new revised Marvel core box, the Masterminds in this set are double-sided with one side available for a much harder game.

As for who’s in the deck, there are folks from the Justice League, Titans, and others. The whole list: Aquaman, Batman, Black Canary, Cyborg, The Flash (Barry Allen), Green Arrow, Green Lantern (John Stewart), Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter, Nightwing, Starfire, Superman, Wonderwoman, and Zatanna. The bad-guy Masterminds are Captain Cold, Circe, Deathstroke, The Joker, and Lex Luthor.

Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game (Second Edition) (by Devin Low)

There is now a new version of the original Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game, published 14 years ago. Since that time there have been many, many follow-ups and expansions to the Marvel line. This new, Second Edition, is an attempt to go back to the beginning and create a solid jumping-off point for new players. It takes some of the best bits developed over the years and adds them back into the base game to open up the options without adding too much overhead. Some cards and mechanics have been adjusted here and there for clarity and balance.

Note, this is a replacement for the original game but doesn’t change anything else. All the other expansions released should be fully compatible with this new edition. Players are only encouraged to not use heroes from the old base game. All the original heroes are here, except for Deadpool. Replacing him is Spider-Man (Miles Morales), so there’s now two Spidermen in this set. The idea is that Deadpool has his own dedicated set and the spider-friends group could use some support in the set.

Many of the changes are stolen from later expansions to the base game. This includes the addition of special bystanders, special SHIELD officers, and the addition of sidekicks (cost 2, 1 damage, draw a card, and the card is returned to the deck) which are kind of nice if you only have a little extra money in the late game. There’s more art (fewer cards with duplicate art), masterminds are now double-sided and have a Harder setting, and schemes have been rebalanced (with a few exploit fixes.) The other changes are to make the game better for different numbers of players. In a 4 or 5 player game there’s a warm-up round so everyone gets a turn before bad guys start escaping. The solo game is harder with two enemies starting out on the board, and if there are ever two or more 7+ cost cards in the hero tableau players can call a mulligan.

Enemies of Gotham City (by Daryl Andrews, Maximillian Dennis, and Morgan Dontanville)

Enemies of Gotham City is an area-control game based on the Batman animated series. The quick analogy for the game would be what if El Grande came with asymmetric special powers, played a little meaner, and sometimes had alternate ways to win. Every player takes on the role of a unique villain from the Batman universe.

Players place cubes around the board, occasionally banished to the handy dice tower (“Castillo”, IYKYK) and those that fall out get placed on the board. A player’s basic goon cubes are worth 1 while players’ character tokens have a strength of 5. The game board is broken into scoring areas – points for first and second place in area control. The game is played over a series of rounds, with some of the areas scoring during the middle of the game but all of them scoring at the end. Players use a hand of 6 cards to trigger their actions, but the cards are one use only. Everyone starts with the same 6 cards but then players will diversify from there.

Each villain has its own powers and abilities which change the way they play the game, sometimes even giving a new possible win condition. Poison Ivy gets extra goons if she controls a building, Phantasm is good at eliminating others’ goons, and Man Bot collects resources scattered around the board for points. There are 12 villains in the base game, The Joker, Harley Quinn, Mr. Freeze, Two-Face (he even has his own coin), Bane, Ra’s al Ghul, Clayface, Mad Hatter, The Penguin, Scarecrow, and Red Claw.

There are four more appearing in the expansion, Enemies of Gotham City: Knight on the Town Expansion. The expansion includes The Riddler, Man-Bat, The Phantasm, and Killer Croc. The Phantasm and Man-Bat are unique as they don’t have henchman cubes, they run around by their lonesome (they are technically called “Lone Villains” in the game.) They have custom ability decks and don’t use the normal ones that the rest of the villains use. Their goal usually includes running around the board and accomplishing specific tasks.

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