Legendary Campaign Season 1 Part 2

As previously blogged, I discovered a solo variant to Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game on BGG by BGG user Sky Zero. Today I continued into scenario #2

• Scenario 1: Negative Zone Prison Breakout
• Mastermind: Magneto
• Villains: Spider Foes and Masters of Evil + Red Skull
• Henchmen: Hand Ninjas and Masters of Evil

Interestingly, the campaign had Magneto, but not the Brotherhood (as defined on the Mastermind card). I debated for half a second and just went with it as defined. The first thing to decide was the three heroes I'd play with for the scenario. I really wanted to keep a matchup that thematically wasn't just odd. Because of the Spider Foes, I started with Spiderman (he also worked as an Avenger, at least  in my head). Because of Magneto, and to up the attack factor, I went with Wolverine. Because I had kept Rogue - Energy Drain (red) from the previous mission, I needed a hero with some red options or Rogue was going to be useless. I decided to go with another Avenger - Black Widow. An odd Avenger group, but one that matched up to all of the bad guys pretty decently and thematically.

This group didn't sound like it'd have the ommph I'd need to take out some big villains and the first couple rounds of buys felt like I was loading up on only really cheap cards. This particular scenario (prison break) also looked like it was going to go south almost immediately. For the solo play, you draw two villains a round. The scenario is a loss if 12 villains escape. Scheme twists? Each forces a draw of two more villain cards. It took only two rounds to fill out the city and for the first bad guy (Green Goblin and a bystander) to escape. The villains were also fairly tough and I wasn't sure I'd get to enough attack heroes before a bunch of them escaped. A couple turns in though, I had 8 attack and took out Magneto for the first time. In a huge stroke of luck, I rescued 8 bystanders with that! The importance of that being - the solo rules let you spend a bystander to avoid a villain draw. Using those cards to stymie the flow of villains let me quickly get to a point where I was pretty much drawing my whole deck each time. Black Widow and Spiderman were adding bystanders to my pile (and it turns out that one Black Widow card had attack equal to the number of bystanders you had rescued, so she was dishing out huge amounts of damage).

The game went from looking dire to suddenly over. In only 8 rounds (note, I mis-counted the previous game, forgetting that I played one more round than I had discarded heroes) I had wiped out Magneto. I scored 36 points (9 from bystanders). For the rest of the campaign I choose to keep Black Widow - Dangerous Rescue (red). With two more scenarios, my next couple heroes probably will need to be beefy attack guys, but my two ladies provide a decent way to thin the deck and slow down the villains. Maybe I can figure out how to go all Girl Power!

Be sure to check us out at PunchBoard Media and Excelsior!