A Legion of Legacies, Part Three: Legacy Mechanics

I’ve written two previous articles on Legacy games. The first, on Legacy Play, overviewed the form, its advantages, and its controversy. The second, on Legacy Venn, examined which gaming elements combine to create the Legacy category. What I didn’t talk about in those articles is the specific mechanics that support Legacy play.

There’s a good reason for that: Legacy games are largely black boxes. There are two reasons for that. First, many of the mechanics of a Legacy game are explicitly boxed up in cardstock containers that you only break open as the game proceeds. Second, a strong anti-spoiler culture has arisen around these games, making casual discussion of their Hidden Secrets entirely verboten. As a result, it’s hard to really know what’s in these games, and it’s also hard to talk about them. Continue reading

New to Me: Spring 2018 — A Last Look at Co-ops

This quarter finally ends my work on the book on cooperative board game design by myself and Christopher Allen. That’s because today marks the hand-off day for Meeples Together, which I’ll be talking about more in the next months. Meanwhile, that means that this was also my last chance to look at co-ops for the book, so whenever one came near me I leapt upon it. There were four more total. I still do plan to play co-ops in the future, as I’ll be starting a long running series of case studies related to the book sometime in the next several months … but it’s a bit of a relief to not have to at this point. 

In any case, this is everything I played this quarter that was new to me. As usual it’s rated by how much I like it (or not) as a medium-weight eurogamer. And, there was a lot of middle this month: not the best and not the worst.

The Great (“I Would Buy This”)

Majesty: For the Realm (2017). Sometimes a very simple little game can really hit the spot. This is a simple Dutch-auction game where you purchase colored cards that you place in corresponding places in your kingdom. Most of the cards give you victory points in an exponential progression, increasing the valuation the more tiles you get. Some of the various areas in the kingdom also interrelate in interesting ways. A few of the cards further allow attack of your opponents, defense from their attacks, or recovery of the cards they destroyed.

There’s just enough color to be evocative, and there’s just enough choice to be interesting. It’s also very fast, allowing quick play, and very variable, as each of the locales in your kingdom has two variants for how it works. My only complaints are production related: the box is too big; the scoring components are simultaneously overproduced and not in the right denominations; and the game is overpriced because of that overproduction. Still, it’s on my “perhaps buy” list. Continue reading

A Legion of Legacies, Part One: Legacy Play

Six years ago, Rob Daviau come up with an interesting new idea that would form the basis of RIsk Legacy (2011). Imagine a game that can be played multiple times, forming a campaign; but also imagine that game changing over time, with secrets being revealed from game to game, while the game itself is irrevocably changing. Cards are destroyed and stickers are applied to various components; the board, the cards, and the player roles all mutate, both improving and degenerating over multiple plays. It turns out that this second element, of dramatically changing game elements, bolsters the first element, of multiple plays, creating a real gaming innovation.

Risk Legacy was immediately a hit, but it took several years (and a few more outings) for the “Legacy” idea to catch on more broadly. It’s only recently that it’s blossomed, with multiple Legacy games coming out in 2017-2018. Continue reading