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Upper Deck Entertainment had a stand near the exhibit hall entrance, and I was immediately drawn to ask about the status of Legendary Encounters, the Alien-themed deck-building game announced at Gen Con 2013 and teased ever since. Turns out that a demo of Legendary Encounters was not available at Origins, with UDE's Jason Brenner noting that the look of the prototype wasn't ideal for public consumption. Thus, we'll have to wait for this game's rollout at Gen Con 2014 in August.
That said, Brenner did state that two Predator-themed items are in the works for release in 2015, one of them being an expansion for Legendary Encounters and the other being a standalone game.
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One game from Upper Deck that was available for demoing was Legendary: Villains, which is both a standalone Marvel Comics-based deck-building game and an expansion of sorts to the existing Legendary DBG as (for the most part) the games use different thematic terms for items that function the same way in game terms: "Heroes" are "Allies", "Villains" are "Adversaries", "Masterminds" are "Commanders", etc.
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Gameplay works the same as in the original Legendary game: Each turn a new card is revealed from the Adversary deck, then the active player uses her hand of cards to recruit Allies or battle Adversaries. Depending on the game's Plot and Commander, certain actions take place when a Plot Twist or Command Strike card is revealed from the Adversary deck. As you recruit Allies, you strengthen your deck to enable you to recruit more expensive Allies and fight larger Adversaries. If you conquer the four Commander Tactics cards before the Commander completes his plot, then the bad guys win, and whoever has acquired the most points by defeating Allies and kidnaping Bystanders wins; otherwise everyone loses and you must slink back into an alley to prepare for a rematch.
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I was able to play a half-game of Legendary: Villains at the Columbus, Ohio airport with a local gamer before we had to head to our planes. Professor X was our opponent, and Command Strike cards pulled the most expensive (read, most powerful) Allies from the recruitment row and added one to Professor X's Attack value for each such card so pulled. You could still recruit the top card in this stack, but since they were the most expensive cards in the game, doing so was tough business and Professor X had risen from 8 Attack to 13 at one point. Each Plot Twist pulled a defeated S.H.I.E.L.D. agent from the active player's pile and put it back into play, with each Plot Twist adding to every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent's Attack.
More details on Legendary: Villains once I play this press copy of the game a few more times.
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Jason Brenner (l) runs through a test game of Firefly Dice Game to start the day at Origins
In November 2014, Upper Deck plans to release the Firefly Dice Game, designed by Scott Morris, who happens to be the VP of Arcane Wonders. How did that come about? I asked Morris via email about the history of the game, and here's what he said:
Quote:
I designed the game for my sons, Zach (8) and Wyatt (6), and I to play. I've designed a good handful of games, but never published them. I just never got to it and kept them for me, my family and friends to enjoy on a small scale. My boys and I play a lot of games, and we designed this to be something to fill a void we felt existed in press-your-luck dice games on the market today, that notably being that there wasn't much challenge in them from the get-go on the first turn or two. These games progressively get hard, but the first few turns are usually a cake walk. We decided that we wanted to make something more challenging, but that scaled, so we made Orcs vs. Goblins, the Dice Game.
After playing it for over a year with family and friends, I ended up in a discussion with Jason Brenner in the middle of 2013 and it was one of those "perfect timing" situations. UDE was looking for a dice game, I explained what mine was, and I took a "leap of faith" and spent a week re-tooling it to "Marvel Legendary: The Dice Game" before presenting it to him. I had rules for superheroes, masterminds, and a ton that aligned it to the Marvel Legendary system that UDE already had. I think this helped with the reception the game had from UDE, and after a few months of discussion, we inked a deal to produce it.
However, after all of that, the Firefly discussion opened. UDE had acquired the license and Jason knew I was a total Firefly geek, so he made the suggestion to see whether we could make it work; we re-tooled it once more, and viola, we now have the Firefly Dice Game coming out. I'm actually really excited as I think the Firefly theme fits it much better than Marvel, even though Marvel would have been a success, too, I'm sure.
Overall, I'm in Heaven working on this project with UDE, even if it is taxing on my personal time outside of my responsibilities with Arcane Wonders. I'm a gigantic Firefly fan, and I have a keen focus on making sure this is something gamers will love, as well as Firefly fans who may be only casual gamers or just collectors. In the end, I hope everyone enjoys playing it as much as I've enjoyed designing it. As a first-time published designer, it's a dream come true to have my design put to an IP I love and care about so much. From here, it's out into the 'verse and we'll see where the journey takes us.
After playing it for over a year with family and friends, I ended up in a discussion with Jason Brenner in the middle of 2013 and it was one of those "perfect timing" situations. UDE was looking for a dice game, I explained what mine was, and I took a "leap of faith" and spent a week re-tooling it to "Marvel Legendary: The Dice Game" before presenting it to him. I had rules for superheroes, masterminds, and a ton that aligned it to the Marvel Legendary system that UDE already had. I think this helped with the reception the game had from UDE, and after a few months of discussion, we inked a deal to produce it.
However, after all of that, the Firefly discussion opened. UDE had acquired the license and Jason knew I was a total Firefly geek, so he made the suggestion to see whether we could make it work; we re-tooled it once more, and viola, we now have the Firefly Dice Game coming out. I'm actually really excited as I think the Firefly theme fits it much better than Marvel, even though Marvel would have been a success, too, I'm sure.
Overall, I'm in Heaven working on this project with UDE, even if it is taxing on my personal time outside of my responsibilities with Arcane Wonders. I'm a gigantic Firefly fan, and I have a keen focus on making sure this is something gamers will love, as well as Firefly fans who may be only casual gamers or just collectors. In the end, I hope everyone enjoys playing it as much as I've enjoyed designing it. As a first-time published designer, it's a dream come true to have my design put to an IP I love and care about so much. From here, it's out into the 'verse and we'll see where the journey takes us.
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Non-final components used for demo games at Origins Game Fair 2014
Firefly Dice Game lasts three rounds, and whoever has the most points after three rounds wins. In each round, each player takes one or more turns. On your first turn in a round, you roll all fifteen dice — seven crew dice (blue), three passenger dice (white), and five bad guy dice (red) — then place them in the appropriate places on your display. Crew members and passengers all have unique abilities, some of which involve the option of rerolling dice.
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After any rerolls, you reveal your mission for the round. (Upper Deck is still testing various aspects of the game, including how much of your mission is revealed at which times. Treat all information here as preliminary, as you might anyway given that these cards have no art.) If you have dice on your board that match the numbers given at the top of the mission, then you're unaffected by the bold line — Bushwhacked, Gorram, etc. — immediately underneath. Otherwise, you might be forced to end your go after the current turn, forced to take an additional turn, or affected in some other way.
After revealing and resolving the mission, the bad guys strike:
• Each Badger die holds one supply die.
• Each Saffron die moves a crew/passenger die of your choice to the cargo hold.
• Each Niska die KOs a crew/passenger die of your choice.
After this, you then use any remaining crew and passenger dice to defeat the bad guys, which generally require one point of damage to defeat. Remove them all, and you score 1 VP for each type of bad guy defeated, with half-points for each supply delivered; fail to remove them, and you score no points for the defeated bad guys. If you clear the turn, you can opt to take another turn — rolling all the bad guy dice and all non-KOed crew and passenger dice — or end your turn. If you opt to continue, but then fail to defeat the bad guys, you lose all the VP that you earned previously on that turn.
Says Morris, "Fans of the show will be very familiar with the main characters, and I think they'll be thrilled with the choices made to include certain characters in the game." I tried a couple of turns of Firefly Dice Game, but not being familiar with the show — other than having people tell me that I really should watch it — I was doing double-interpretation, first trying to figure out who was depicted on each die, then cross-referencing the player aid to see what each character could do, and taking a long time in the process. I saw others familiar with the show playing much faster than me, and while I can appreciate the design in the abstract, I think those who know the show will get far more out of the experience than I did.
Don't get too excited by this banner, Legendary fans, as UDE's Jason Brenner said that Upper Deck has publication plans only for Guardians of the Galaxy trading cards to be released in 2014. As for a possible Legendary: GotG expansion, Brenner said that nothing is planned right now. I can imagine that UDE will wait for the movie to debut before committing resources to the development of any such expansion. After all, no one knows right now whether Guardians of the Galaxy will be received by viewers as a second Avengers, another Green Lantern, or something in-between.
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