1. Dark City 50:44 2. World War Hulk 48:16 3. X-men 46:12 4. Guardians of the Galaxy 44:17 5. Fantastic 42:48 6. Secret Wars volume 1 40:26 7. Core Set 37:52 8. Revelations 35:38 9. Shield 33:07 10. Civil War 31:17 11. Secret Wars volume 2 29:45 12. Noir 28:00 13. Paint the town Red 26:03 14. New Mutants 23:32 15. Heroes of Asgard 21:52 16. Captain America 20:10 17. Venom 18:43 18. Villains 15:43 19. Ant-man 13:48 20. Champions 12:18 21. Dimensions 10:09 22. Deadpool 8:06 23. Fear Itself 6:31 24. Homecoming 4:17 25. MCU 2:08 Why did I do this
Awesome video. I personally own the base set, Dark City, Paint the Town Red, Guardians of the Galaxy, Fantastic Four and X-Men. I don't think I need anything else. The possible combinations are endless at this point.
I agree but I'd find it hard to live without Secret Wars V1 (Sidekicks) or World War Hulk (everything!). But you have a pretty awesome set with those. 👍
I own every expansion, including promos cards and tournament editions cards and mat, and as a big fan of this game I loved every second of this video! Thank you!
This was an Interesting list, I didn't know there were 25 different expansions after the core set. I have the Core set and a few expansions, but I'm more of the unusual person as I also have the Alien and Predator Encounter Expansions and I like the idea of interchanging the set around to create new scenarios like the X-men fighting against the Xenomorphs or the Predators hunting Heroes from the Villains core set but that's just me.
Any chance we could get an updated video with all the new sets? The 35th expansion is about to come out, and with 4 core sets, that brings us up to 39 total sets.
I actually started with the MCU set. I do admit I wish they didn't add the movie titles to the cards, but it was a nice gateway for me, who has never played a Legendary game before and loves the movies. It's also great for playing with my friends who may only like the movies. The stills worked very well for the Buffy version though. Overall now that I own most of the expansions my next item is the original core set. I want some of the cards i've missed out on. Lol
Awesome run through Jonathan! It was very thorough and I can tell you love this game! I will definitely consider World War Hulk now and some of the other sets I do not own yet.
I don't have all the expansions, but with what I've got, I'd rank them like this: Dark City World War Hulk Civil War Ant-Man Revelations GoTG Champions Even with just those, storage is an issue. I got a wooden box insert for the game from Broken Token, and that's where I keep all the Heroes, in alphabetical order. I use one of the large set expansion boxes for the rest of them, organized of course. There are some really nice card dividers posted on the bgg forums that people have made. Makes keeping them sorted much easier.
I've got the Buffy and Big Trouble in Little China starter sets. I have the Noir, Captain America, Deadpool and Paint the Town Red expansions. I was going for a low power theme when I played. Dark City will be my next to get. Blade working with Buffy sounds cool. Egg Shen and Jack Burton fighting Vamps works well. Oz and Buffy fighting Lo-Pan too.
I own, fantastic four,world war hulk and recently dark city(was out of print until recently), and I could not be more happy for this choice, loot of fun and satisfaction. I get a little bit late to the game but videos like this one can help you a ton! to pick the best expansion for you, I saw the last top to pick fantastic four. At the end, you should pick the heros you love more and the most consistent boxes. Cheers.
I read you. 🤭 Good find and yeah it's rarer now, which is odd because it was seeing that particular box set - leaning towards 90's and 80's characters - which brought me to the game!
Good video - I agree with most of your rankings up to #18, though I would rate Villains higher and WW Hulk much lower. I think there are four classes of expansions (I have about half of these). I'm ranking them more on whether they're thematically essential in the Marvel universe than on mechanics: 1. Essentials: Dark City (big), Fantastic Four (small), X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy. 2. Mixed Bag, But Fun: Inhumans, Ant-Man, maybe Secret Wars II. These have more than one interesting hero. Paint the Town Red almost makes it. Villains for those with darkness in their souls. 3. Fringe (either chock full of filler heroes, or too obscure): Revelations, Noir, Deadpool, Cosmos, Shield, Secret Wars I (maybe), Civil War, World War Hulk. Most of the expansions after the first dozen fit in here or in the last category. 4. Shameless Cash Grabs: All the movie tie-ins, Captain America. With apologies to members of the Squirrel Girl Fan Club.
This video actually brought tears to my eyes one of the most draining videos of my life one of the best edge sessions of my life and i was able to bust
I own Base, X-Men, Revelations, Dark City and my neighbor has Villains and honest to god after playing Villains its easily the best value for the money. If it was in print I would buy it. However people don't give it enough credit because the "villain" heroes can be a little weak. But between the fabric mat which is easily worth 20 in itself, the Madam Hydra and new recruits its everything the base set should have been. Hard to play with the Shield Officers after playing Villains.
Holy Shit dude! Thank you so much! Following your advice and ranking loosely based on my own thoughts and feelings of the base game box, I ended up getting the shield expansion, but more importantly the DARK CITY one. Let me tell you, I am NOT disappointed, Shield is fine and the Hail hydra plot and undercover mechanics were great, on top of making those base grey cards feel more important and interesting for sure. However, just reading the cards from dark city has me in almost a tantrum or a hype meltdown of sort, words fail me. I am SO excited to try them out with my friends, I see 1-2 cost cards that are still significant, keywords that are shaking up the somewhat less stimulating base box Heroes that had me worried about the game becoming boring after some time... Different art for every card which really only does the base box a disservice, I am glad this game seems absolutely capable of taking it's concepts and game-play mechanics in a really good directions. While seemingly getting involved with the big Dis & Ney seems to produce some of the lowest point the game has to offer I can somewhat steer clear of it has my first thought before getting the base game was to order the phase 1, being a huge fan of the early movies that made me love Marvel so much. I am so glad I got dodged that bullet, plus the 70's OG comic looks are absolutely rad, I love how everyone is just spending 110% of their free time lifting weights in gyms man & women alike. Anyway, just a giant wall of text no one might read to tell you, thank you for making this video, I am glad I watched it in my hesitations before seeing if this was a dive worth taking, since base box was a little bit on the vanilla side for me who's in my comfort zone playing deeper games like MTG or closer to this style hero realms star realms, which theses higher ranked expansion really seem to be exploring as much depth and fun gameplay to me... Phew, thank you for your video, can't wait for another update if you ever take the time, seems like they release WAY too much content for my wallet, so I'll keep consulting your list to see what I'd like to see come into my own game night box that's gonna keep growing for sure! peace.
Thanks for writing that wall of text - I read it! Glad to hear you're enjoying the game. I've got reviews for the last couple expansions up separately on the channel, with one for Annihilation coming soon if you want more guidance. Good luck on the rest of your Legendary journey!
I have some of 'em, only bought sets I like the most. And I can only hope, or should I say waiting; for Dormammu to join the Marvel Legendary as the Mastermind. That'll be the day my life is finally complete. Here's hoping! :) Stay safe, stay healthy and stay smart everyone.
@@JeremiahEcks777 If this will be true in the near future, then I'll surely wait with maximum hype-ness and save some cash for it, starting now. I'm curious, though. Did Cable or Bishop the one's giving you this info? :)
@@baronleonard571 Upper Deck announced Doctor Strange set on their website and they said Nightmare is going to be a central part of it... hinting he could be the 'main' big bad. We don't know who the other Mastermind is. Could be Mordo, could be anybody. But it sort of makes sense for Dormammu to be the Mastermind and a group of general magic practitioners under his influence to be the Villain group. Mordo would certainly fit quite nicely there. But truth is we don't know for sure if Dormammu is or isn't going to be there at all... guessing by probabilities only at this stage, and only Nightmare is a dead cert. To be honest we don't know when it's coming out because their blog said they've had to move it back, possibly to 2022. Judging by their delays during Covid, I would say 2022 is most likely for a Dr. Strange set. Also they have two other sets to pump out this year and we're in the last half so... 🤷♂️ I'm Team Cable. 😇
@JeremiahEcks777 Yeah, just checked the BGG and there's a post of Dr. Strange and the Shadows of Nightmare, really hope the Mastermind besides Nightmare will be Dormammu. The Ancient One and Clea are also cool and I like them both. Well, hopefully they'll release it sooner than later. I'm team Psylocke, bub. Mostly often use X-Men than any others. SNIKT! :)
It's very interesting to watch this video a year later. Especially after playing more legendary than I ever anticipated (Thanks COVID). A year ago, I disagreed with some of your rankings. Now I completely agree with everything!
I'd like to add for the buying guide that the Dark City (big box) & other small expansions is on the original marvel heroes story line (heroic age). The other big boxes are the twisted story lines, where some heroes become villains. Just for consideration, cmiiw
Your video is very helpful, watched it multiple times since I started playing Legendary. Thank you 😁👍Not easy to get some of the expansions so I know which ones are worth hunting 😁 have to add that I like the MCU sets exactly because they help getting people into playing who are not into comics. Of course I keep them apart from the rest of the Legendary sets... With the upcoming Guardians expanding the MCU is getting more content too 👍
This is how I would rank all of the expansions I own before watching your video (I have 9 of them) 9. Deadpool 8.Noir 7.Civil War (sad I can’t be on Iron Man’s team to fight cap) 6. Guardians of The Galaxy 5.X-Men 4. Fantastic Four 3. Captain america 75th (not really sure where to put this one but I really like it so i’ll just stick it here) 2. Secret Wars Vol. 1 1. World War Hulk (Transforming is amazing) I plan on getting Shield and Ant Man next as those look the most fun for me.
I own everything in this game. And my number one is Villains. I mean, playing so much bad guys or mix and match them to play iconic and epic combats. Who doesn't want to be Magneto helping the X men getting rid of Sebastian Shaw or Apocalypse? It's so fun. And of course Dark City, for all these heroes and villains and new cool mechanics. And I have to mention too: the Fantastic Four, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Paint the town red. With only these few expansions, you got hours of very fun playtimes. Problem: they are all ancients expansions and some are out of print. What a shame.
I own all up until xmen or spiderman homecoming? trying to figure out exactly how many I am missing, and this serves a double purpose of letting me know, and ranking. Could not figure out how to load more posts on the site (also Kingpin is strongest, every time I use him I have gotten infinite attack). I had counted 11 I am missing before watching, so this served the dual purpose of telling me what I am missing, and also a fun ranking. I want all of them, except Phase 1. I also got Guardians twice because I kinda lost the shards. I look forward to having all of them and needing 4 or 5 boxes, rn I use base game box, villains box, and xmen box, it was civil war, but then I realized it contained mostly xmen so I swapped. I also have that custom playmat that has spaces for all cards both villains and normal and also sidekicks . For one vs all, I have tried it once or twice with the one getting their own deck, dont do that, it sucks imho
I never mixed Villains and heroes together. Treat them as different games. I do prefer Villains to play with some other people, and regular alone. The X-Men and Civil War big sets are my favorite additions, by far.
I'd nominally agree except future 'hero' sets (World War Hulk and Deadpool to name but two) re-use team names introduced in Villains, as if you're already mixing the two together. And without Villains mixing with the hero sets, you just can't include Magneto, Mystique or Sabretooth as X-Men, which they all have been at various times.
In case you don’t know they ARE still making expansions for this game, just very slowly (like once or twice a year). Example being that in 2022 the Midnight Sons and What If expansion came out
Ant-Man is a lot higher for me. While Size-Changing isn’t that exciting, Microscopic Size-Changing is amazing! Once you’ve played enough cards of a certain class, recruiting a card from the HQ could give you recruit. Combine with Focus heroes from Fantastic Four for some cool combos! You should take another look at this one, Jonathan!
Also Ant-Man is one of those rare sets where all five heroes are decent. I really enjoyed all five and would use all five in many set ups. The two Masterminds are also fun and challenging without being broken. And finally the keywords are all interesting, don't feel too unbalanced. One of my favourite sets by far!
You should reevaluate it anyway sooner or later 😉 Great video!! I would have changed the overloaded asymmetrical styled background though.. your shirt would have definitely do the job as is even with a simple monotonic background.
Thank you very much for making this colossal video, Jonathan! I also love Spider-man however the PTTR expansion makes me ONLY want to buy 2cost cards and then cycle through my whole deck every turn. It’s OP and boring for my teammate. GotG is so fun but has felt quite like a standalone so I’m excited to see whether it will integrate well with the upcoming set. 2 questions: do you think that they should release new versions of base heroes like they did with Thor? Are there any heroes/villains that you are still waiting for? Thanks again!
Thank you for watching! I would love it if they re-did more base heroes, although I don't think it's necessary. It is fun to see them get some upgrades. As for characters I still want to see, I'll say Anti-Venom and more Spider-Verse stuff in general. Will is hoping for Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.
I did a game with spider man noir, Peter Parker, Spider Man, Miles Morales and someone else. I got to a point where I was making about 30 - 50 attack in a turn, and the game was not fun at all.
@@RollforCrit :) sure but steal/borrow is always an option :D i think with the upcomming Midnight Suns Set there is now a lot of new content to review !?
Oh there is a lot. And some of the expansions only Jonathan played with. So there is a lot of ground for me to cover. But multiple people have asked about an updated list on either this video or expansion videos, so it might be time for a new edition...
Planet Hulk and World war Hulk is great comics and you should definitely read them. Dark City and Guardians of the Galaxy is unfortunate out of print ( they the two expansions I miss 😭) and cost a fortune on the secondary market.
Secret wars volume 1 is for sale still on upper deck store I just bought the game this month and used 3 different retailers to collect it. The only sets I wasn’t able to acquire were villains, x-men which I think are out of print and neither of the sites had paint the town red and captain America at the time I ordered which was unfortunate
As the Base Game is mandatory (or the alternative MCU base set, heck even the Villains base set), I wouldn‘t include them in this „best Expansion list“ as you could already include „Into the Cosmos“ or „Realm of Kings“ instead.
While Dark City is an excellent box for iconic characters and tough fights (including what _still_ has to rank as one of the toughest Masterminds in the game in Apocalypse), Secret Wars 1 edges out Secret Wars 2 in terms of just having GOOD, powerful heroes. Not that Secret Wars 2 doesn't have good heroes of its own (Illuminati Beast and Agent Venom are both worth having), but Secret Wars 2 indulges in a lot of box-filling chaff like Captain Britain, Dr. Punisher, Elsa Bloodstone (who is _not_ SHIELD-affiliated, by the way...), and the exceptional waste of cardboard that is Time Travelling Jean Grey, who is to dud heroes what Dark Phoenix is to tough Masterminds. (Ironically, both are literally Jean Grey. Huh.) Secret Wars 2 has a big problem of heroes lacking definition. Take Arkon, if you can even remember who that is. While Arkon's commons are decent and splashable, he doesn't really have much in the way of a win condition. Theoretically he can make Spectrums, but Arkon's unlockable abilities aren't really worth the trouble to activate. Maybe an extra point of recruit or combat here or there is nothing compared to drawing a card or KOing a hero. And so a hero whose cards are all decent in a vacuum (or, more to the point, a deck full of basic SHIELDs) loses out because nothing comes together right, and Secret Wars 2 does this a lot. By contrast, Secret Wars 1 is a who's who of Legendary's best powerhouses who all do what they do very well, where a favorite hero is less a matter of who sucks the least and more what playstyles you like best. Apoc Kitty Pride and Dr. Strange are both highly robust KO engines for being able to KO cards (not just heroes) from the discard pile. Jane Fosthor (Lady Thor) is arguably _the_ recruit hero of the set. Black Panther and Captain Marvel both draw a lot and hit _very_ hard. Magik and Miles Morales (Ultimate Spider-Man) are _phenomenal_ low-cost accelerants. Black Bolt and Proxima Midnight gave Dark City's Domino some of her very first double-symbol peers. And Maximus is _criminally_ underrated for being able to get your deck going very quickly in the early game by spamming the often very useful (and often KO-related) Henchmen effects. Seriously, try Maximus out against Mandarin's Ten Rings. It's hilarious. Admittedly Namor is a little lame. (As are all heroes who care about villains in specific city spaces... Blade... TTJG...) And Old Man Logan has no cohesion whatsoever. (He likes KOing his own wounds, but he has no way to wound himself, meaning the hero designed to be a loner literally cannot function in isolation; I have _no idea_ why OML made your hero of the set...). But that's two duds out of _fourteen_ heroes, which is an exceptional ratio beaten only by the Fantastic Four (where literally _all the heroes_ are good).
Love reading your detailed thoughts on these sets! Thanks for commenting. I think you're completely right about it. The reason my opinions differ are mostly just because I tend to look for heroes that I think are interesting and thematic over heroes that are more effective in play. But it's always good to have both!
While I don't know Jonathan's exact number, but based on his expansion review for Annihilation he enjoyed the villains but felt underwhelmed by most of the heroes. Based on his review I would guess somewhere middling, somewhere in the 17-14 range. Could be higher but I doubt it would beat Spider-man or Noir.
There are a few different apps/sites that will help randomize your setups! I use 'Smart Randomizer for Marvel Legendary' on Android. Otherwise, I usually just choose semi-randomly or try to have a theme of characters that make sense together. Also helps to plan types around your scheme/mastermind.
I am relatively new to the marvel legendary game and have tried it solo a few times. What's the best way to solo this game as I found the specific solo rules somewhat flawed?
I personally enjoy the Advanced Solo Rules included in the Dark City rules. But I know some people like to play two-handed with two different decks. And there's also the Golden Rules variant you can find on BGG: boardgamegeek.com/thread/1200976/golden-solo-ruleset-variant-reviews-final-legendar
I got paint the town red. My first expansion was shield and I loved that, but I dislike the paint the town red expansion. Maybe if I owned more Spiderman, but I dislike them since they can only be useful with themselves. It's too bad X-Men expansion is impossible to get atm
When playing the game, you use a specific number of heroes, henchmen, villains, and twists based on player count, mastermind, and the scheme you are playing with. They may ask for a specific group to be included, but after that, you can usually use whichever groups you think would be fun, regardless of expansion. Obviously, some groups will have better synergies, so some of the fun is creating a group of heroes that work very well or villains that combo together to give you a challenge!
Thank you for this video! I'm so mad at myself as I had the chance to by the X-Men Expansion, but now I can't find it. Are they going to put more copies out?
Functionally, they're nearly identical! The biggest issue is that the art doesn't look great and it doesn't blend with the other expansions. There's no reason to own it if you already have the original. But if you don't, and you're a fan of the movies or you just don't mind the look of it, there's nothing really wrong with it.
you're wrong aout ant-man: microscopic size changing is WAY different from size changing: the idea is that when it goes into the negative, it turns into a positive, and that stacks up.
Other than Villains (which is hard to find right now) and the MCU set, all the expansions require the base set to be playable. So the original game is definitely where you want to start. Hope you have fun with it!
Get the base set. See if you can find it used but new its around 50-60. Base set still comes with at least 20-50 play throughs as you get around 14 heroes and like 8 schemes.
Dont really understand how CMON games is publishing an almost identical game to Upper Decks Legendary. This really sucks to have to choose between Marvel United and Marvel Legendary.
Really hated Revelations, surprised it ranked so high, Mandarin is way too hard and the artwork and keywords are sub par. Secret Wars and Dark City are essential, I enjoy PTTR and FF too.
Art should match the primary source material. Marvel is better with comic art, Buffy was great with stills, Alien and Predator failed on this (still great games, though).
I gotta come back to this and make another comment. But FF small box is so overrated. People are listing this as the best small box set and unless you have a love obsession with Fantastic Four its really underwhelming. For the most part the heroes really aren't that great. I get they are the Fantastic Four but the art work on all of them aside from a couple Human Torch cards are bad. Also although the Master Minds are great in this set they are overly difficult and not very fun to play against even with the Focus of the base FF heroes. Schemes are copied as well. I think the Venom set is better or Paint the Town Red. In fact I think GoTG set blows it away. Also Revelations while for the money its the best set to own the mechanics are a mess. Locations muck up easily and hyperspeed is basically the berserk mechanic messed up.
Most schemes use the same art. If I recall correctly schemes that fall under the Marvel Cinematic Universe have unique art, but overall its more of a rarity.
1. Dark City 50:44
2. World War Hulk 48:16
3. X-men 46:12
4. Guardians of the Galaxy 44:17
5. Fantastic 42:48
6. Secret Wars volume 1 40:26
7. Core Set 37:52
8. Revelations 35:38
9. Shield 33:07
10. Civil War 31:17
11. Secret Wars volume 2 29:45
12. Noir 28:00
13. Paint the town Red 26:03
14. New Mutants 23:32
15. Heroes of Asgard 21:52
16. Captain America 20:10
17. Venom 18:43
18. Villains 15:43
19. Ant-man 13:48
20. Champions 12:18
21. Dimensions 10:09
22. Deadpool 8:06
23. Fear Itself 6:31
24. Homecoming 4:17
25. MCU 2:08
Why did I do this
Because you're a hero.
You took one for the team
Careful, he's a hero
Thx
@@RollforCrit how much recruiting do i need to get a Nathan?
2022 and I still find myself coming back to this game and craving more expansions 😆 truly an evergreen for me!
Love this game
As someone who just got base set (due to a prozd recommendation) this video was really helpful and an easy watch. Thanks!
ProZD got me into this game too! It's a blast.
Awesome video. I personally own the base set, Dark City, Paint the Town Red, Guardians of the Galaxy, Fantastic Four and X-Men. I don't think I need anything else. The
possible combinations are endless at this point.
I agree but I'd find it hard to live without Secret Wars V1 (Sidekicks) or World War Hulk (everything!).
But you have a pretty awesome set with those. 👍
Exceptional and comprehensive. I had no idea there was so much. Thanks.
I own every expansion, including promos cards and tournament editions cards and mat, and as a big fan of this game I loved every second of this video! Thank you!
What makes it worth buying and is it repetitive? Also is it better than marvel champions? Thanks in advance
This was an Interesting list, I didn't know there were 25 different expansions after the core set. I have the Core set and a few expansions, but I'm more of the unusual person as I also have the Alien and Predator Encounter Expansions and I like the idea of interchanging the set around to create new scenarios like the X-men fighting against the Xenomorphs or the Predators hunting Heroes from the Villains core set but that's just me.
Any chance we could get an updated video with all the new sets? The 35th expansion is about to come out, and with 4 core sets, that brings us up to 39 total sets.
I actually started with the MCU set. I do admit I wish they didn't add the movie titles to the cards, but it was a nice gateway for me, who has never played a Legendary game before and loves the movies. It's also great for playing with my friends who may only like the movies. The stills worked very well for the Buffy version though.
Overall now that I own most of the expansions my next item is the original core set. I want some of the cards i've missed out on. Lol
Awesome run through Jonathan! It was very thorough and I can tell you love this game! I will definitely consider World War Hulk now and some of the other sets I do not own yet.
This was so cool! Thanks for doing it.
I don't have all the expansions, but with what I've got, I'd rank them like this:
Dark City
World War Hulk
Civil War
Ant-Man
Revelations
GoTG
Champions
Even with just those, storage is an issue. I got a wooden box insert for the game from Broken Token, and that's where I keep all the Heroes, in alphabetical order. I use one of the large set expansion boxes for the rest of them, organized of course. There are some really nice card dividers posted on the bgg forums that people have made. Makes keeping them sorted much easier.
I've got the Buffy and Big Trouble in Little China starter sets. I have the Noir, Captain America, Deadpool and Paint the Town Red expansions. I was going for a low power theme when I played. Dark City will be my next to get. Blade working with Buffy sounds cool. Egg Shen and Jack Burton fighting Vamps works well. Oz and Buffy fighting Lo-Pan too.
I own, fantastic four,world war hulk and recently dark city(was out of print until recently), and I could not be more happy for this choice, loot of fun and satisfaction. I get a little bit late to the game but videos like this one can help you a ton! to pick the best expansion for you, I saw the last top to pick fantastic four. At the end, you should pick the heros you love more and the most consistent boxes. Cheers.
I know no one will read this but I just got myself a X-Men box from an arcade at the beach. Didn’t know it was rare 👀
I read you. 🤭
Good find and yeah it's rarer now, which is odd because it was seeing that particular box set - leaning towards 90's and 80's characters - which brought me to the game!
Good video - I agree with most of your rankings up to #18, though I would rate Villains higher and WW Hulk much lower. I think there are four classes of expansions (I have about half of these). I'm ranking them more on whether they're thematically essential in the Marvel universe than on mechanics:
1. Essentials: Dark City (big), Fantastic Four (small), X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy.
2. Mixed Bag, But Fun: Inhumans, Ant-Man, maybe Secret Wars II. These have more than one interesting hero. Paint the Town Red almost makes it. Villains for those with darkness in their souls.
3. Fringe (either chock full of filler heroes, or too obscure): Revelations, Noir, Deadpool, Cosmos, Shield, Secret Wars I (maybe), Civil War, World War Hulk. Most of the expansions after the first dozen fit in here or in the last category.
4. Shameless Cash Grabs: All the movie tie-ins, Captain America.
With apologies to members of the Squirrel Girl Fan Club.
Fantastic video. Thanks so much you've saved me a chunk of money.
This video actually brought tears to my eyes one of the most draining videos of my life one of the best edge sessions of my life and i was able to bust
Great video. An update, rating the new expansions, would be fantastic!
I own Base, X-Men, Revelations, Dark City and my neighbor has Villains and honest to god after playing Villains its easily the best value for the money. If it was in print I would buy it. However people don't give it enough credit because the "villain" heroes can be a little weak. But between the fabric mat which is easily worth 20 in itself, the Madam Hydra and new recruits its everything the base set should have been. Hard to play with the Shield Officers after playing Villains.
Holy Shit dude!
Thank you so much!
Following your advice and ranking loosely based on my own thoughts and feelings of the base game box, I ended up getting the shield expansion, but more importantly the DARK CITY one.
Let me tell you, I am NOT disappointed, Shield is fine and the Hail hydra plot and undercover mechanics were great, on top of making those base grey cards feel more important and interesting for sure.
However, just reading the cards from dark city has me in almost a tantrum or a hype meltdown of sort, words fail me.
I am SO excited to try them out with my friends, I see 1-2 cost cards that are still significant, keywords that are shaking up the somewhat less stimulating base box Heroes that had me worried about the game becoming boring after some time...
Different art for every card which really only does the base box a disservice, I am glad this game seems absolutely capable of taking it's concepts and game-play mechanics in a really good directions. While seemingly getting involved with the big Dis & Ney seems to produce some of the lowest point the game has to offer I can somewhat steer clear of it has my first thought before getting the base game was to order the phase 1, being a huge fan of the early movies that made me love Marvel so much.
I am so glad I got dodged that bullet, plus the 70's OG comic looks are absolutely rad, I love how everyone is just spending 110% of their free time lifting weights in gyms man & women alike.
Anyway, just a giant wall of text no one might read to tell you, thank you for making this video, I am glad I watched it in my hesitations before seeing if this was a dive worth taking, since base box was a little bit on the vanilla side for me who's in my comfort zone playing deeper games like MTG or closer to this style hero realms star realms, which theses higher ranked expansion really seem to be exploring as much depth and fun gameplay to me...
Phew, thank you for your video, can't wait for another update if you ever take the time, seems like they release WAY too much content for my wallet, so I'll keep consulting your list to see what I'd like to see come into my own game night box that's gonna keep growing for sure! peace.
Thanks for writing that wall of text - I read it! Glad to hear you're enjoying the game. I've got reviews for the last couple expansions up separately on the channel, with one for Annihilation coming soon if you want more guidance. Good luck on the rest of your Legendary journey!
Well done, Jonathan!
I have some of 'em, only bought sets I like the most. And I can only hope, or should I say waiting; for Dormammu to join the Marvel Legendary as the Mastermind. That'll be the day my life is finally complete. Here's hoping! :)
Stay safe, stay healthy and stay smart everyone.
Dr. Strange set us on it's way. Nightmare is one of the Masterminds... I think Dormammu is a safe second MM.
@@JeremiahEcks777 If this will be true in the near future, then I'll surely wait with maximum hype-ness and save some cash for it, starting now.
I'm curious, though. Did Cable or Bishop the one's giving you this info? :)
@@baronleonard571 Upper Deck announced Doctor Strange set on their website and they said Nightmare is going to be a central part of it... hinting he could be the 'main' big bad. We don't know who the other Mastermind is. Could be Mordo, could be anybody. But it sort of makes sense for Dormammu to be the Mastermind and a group of general magic practitioners under his influence to be the Villain group. Mordo would certainly fit quite nicely there. But truth is we don't know for sure if Dormammu is or isn't going to be there at all... guessing by probabilities only at this stage, and only Nightmare is a dead cert.
To be honest we don't know when it's coming out because their blog said they've had to move it back, possibly to 2022. Judging by their delays during Covid, I would say 2022 is most likely for a Dr. Strange set. Also they have two other sets to pump out this year and we're in the last half so... 🤷♂️
I'm Team Cable. 😇
@JeremiahEcks777 Yeah, just checked the BGG and there's a post of Dr. Strange and the Shadows of Nightmare, really hope the Mastermind besides Nightmare will be Dormammu. The Ancient One and Clea are also cool and I like them both. Well, hopefully they'll release it sooner than later.
I'm team Psylocke, bub. Mostly often use X-Men than any others. SNIKT! :)
It's very interesting to watch this video a year later. Especially after playing more legendary than I ever anticipated (Thanks COVID). A year ago, I disagreed with some of your rankings. Now I completely agree with everything!
I'd like to add for the buying guide that the Dark City (big box) & other small expansions is on the original marvel heroes story line (heroic age). The other big boxes are the twisted story lines, where some heroes become villains. Just for consideration, cmiiw
I know Jonathan isn't with Roll for Crit anymore but man I wished we could get an updated list from him.
Your video is very helpful, watched it multiple times since I started playing Legendary. Thank you 😁👍Not easy to get some of the expansions so I know which ones are worth hunting 😁 have to add that I like the MCU sets exactly because they help getting people into playing who are not into comics. Of course I keep them apart from the rest of the Legendary sets... With the upcoming Guardians expanding the MCU is getting more content too 👍
Coordinate is such a fun mechanic
This is how I would rank all of the expansions I own before watching your video (I have 9 of them)
9. Deadpool
8.Noir
7.Civil War (sad I can’t be on Iron Man’s team to fight cap)
6. Guardians of The Galaxy
5.X-Men
4. Fantastic Four
3. Captain america 75th (not really sure where to put this one but I really like it so i’ll just stick it here)
2. Secret Wars Vol. 1
1. World War Hulk (Transforming is amazing)
I plan on getting Shield and Ant Man next as those look the most fun for me.
I own everything in this game. And my number one is Villains. I mean, playing so much bad guys or mix and match them to play iconic and epic combats. Who doesn't want to be Magneto helping the X men getting rid of Sebastian Shaw or Apocalypse? It's so fun. And of course Dark City, for all these heroes and villains and new cool mechanics. And I have to mention too: the Fantastic Four, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Paint the town red. With only these few expansions, you got hours of very fun playtimes. Problem: they are all ancients expansions and some are out of print. What a shame.
You miss the, discard a hero from HQ part of switcharoo. Thats the best part.
I own all up until xmen or spiderman homecoming? trying to figure out exactly how many I am missing, and this serves a double purpose of letting me know, and ranking. Could not figure out how to load more posts on the site (also Kingpin is strongest, every time I use him I have gotten infinite attack). I had counted 11 I am missing before watching, so this served the dual purpose of telling me what I am missing, and also a fun ranking. I want all of them, except Phase 1.
I also got Guardians twice because I kinda lost the shards. I look forward to having all of them and needing 4 or 5 boxes, rn I use base game box, villains box, and xmen box, it was civil war, but then I realized it contained mostly xmen so I swapped. I also have that custom playmat that has spaces for all cards both villains and normal and also sidekicks . For one vs all, I have tried it once or twice with the one getting their own deck, dont do that, it sucks imho
i must have rewatched this video 10 times. i gotta restrain myself so hard to not buy all these. I mean, except the villains and MCU ones lol
I never mixed Villains and heroes together. Treat them as different games. I do prefer Villains to play with some other people, and regular alone. The X-Men and Civil War big sets are my favorite additions, by far.
I'd nominally agree except future 'hero' sets (World War Hulk and Deadpool to name but two) re-use team names introduced in Villains, as if you're already mixing the two together. And without Villains mixing with the hero sets, you just can't include Magneto, Mystique or Sabretooth as X-Men, which they all have been at various times.
We need an update with new expansions
In case you don’t know they ARE still making expansions for this game, just very slowly (like once or twice a year). Example being that in 2022 the Midnight Sons and What If expansion came out
Can’t wait for into the cosmos.
I was wondering when you would do this again
Have you thought about updating to include new expansions since this video was released?? That would be so cool!!
Ant-Man is a lot higher for me. While Size-Changing isn’t that exciting, Microscopic Size-Changing is amazing! Once you’ve played enough cards of a certain class, recruiting a card from the HQ could give you recruit. Combine with Focus heroes from Fantastic Four for some cool combos! You should take another look at this one, Jonathan!
For you, DarthEd, I will reevaluate the Ant-Man expansion. I could see it potentially moving up a few spots.
Also Ant-Man is one of those rare sets where all five heroes are decent. I really enjoyed all five and would use all five in many set ups.
The two Masterminds are also fun and challenging without being broken.
And finally the keywords are all interesting, don't feel too unbalanced.
One of my favourite sets by far!
You should reevaluate it anyway sooner or later 😉
Great video!!
I would have changed the overloaded asymmetrical styled background though.. your shirt would have definitely do the job as is even with a simple monotonic background.
Watching in 2023 and loving that this game is still going. Gotta get an updated list. 😁
It may take a while as this was more in Jonathan's wheelhouse, but I don't want to say never.
Thank you very much for making this colossal video, Jonathan! I also love Spider-man however the PTTR expansion makes me ONLY want to buy 2cost cards and then cycle through my whole deck every turn. It’s OP and boring for my teammate. GotG is so fun but has felt quite like a standalone so I’m excited to see whether it will integrate well with the upcoming set. 2 questions: do you think that they should release new versions of base heroes like they did with Thor? Are there any heroes/villains that you are still waiting for?
Thanks again!
Thank you for watching! I would love it if they re-did more base heroes, although I don't think it's necessary. It is fun to see them get some upgrades. As for characters I still want to see, I'll say Anti-Venom and more Spider-Verse stuff in general. Will is hoping for Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.
@@RollforCrit thanks for replying! Great hero suggestions :D
I did a game with spider man noir, Peter Parker, Spider Man, Miles Morales and someone else. I got to a point where I was making about 30 - 50 attack in a turn, and the game was not fun at all.
@@jacksonbrickmedia939 I now only ever play with a max of 2 spider friends and I purposely don't try for a n exclusively 2cost deck.
Maybe its time for a new Top ranking List? 😊
Might be a bit harder here without Jonathan, but maybe I can -steal- borrow his collection and make a new updated list.
@@RollforCrit :) sure but steal/borrow is always an option :D i think with the upcomming Midnight Suns Set there is now a lot of new content to review !?
Oh there is a lot. And some of the expansions only Jonathan played with. So there is a lot of ground for me to cover. But multiple people have asked about an updated list on either this video or expansion videos, so it might be time for a new edition...
Another super interesting video. Have you ever thought about reducing the number of cuts in the videos?
Planet Hulk and World war Hulk is great comics and you should definitely read them. Dark City and Guardians of the Galaxy is unfortunate out of print ( they the two expansions I miss 😭) and cost a fortune on the secondary market.
There was a reprint of them, if I understand right
those two are now in print, Secret Wars and X-Men are OOP
Secret wars volume 1 is for sale still on upper deck store I just bought the game this month and used 3 different retailers to collect it.
The only sets I wasn’t able to acquire were villains, x-men which I think are out of print and neither of the sites had paint the town red and captain America at the time I ordered which was unfortunate
As the Base Game is mandatory (or the alternative MCU base set, heck even the Villains base set), I wouldn‘t include them in this „best Expansion list“ as you could already include „Into the Cosmos“ or „Realm of Kings“ instead.
When this video came out, into the cosmos or realm of kings hadnt come out yet lol.
@@BtakaV true for normal consumers, but reviewers get early copies. However my main critique was to include base sets in an expansion list.
While Dark City is an excellent box for iconic characters and tough fights (including what _still_ has to rank as one of the toughest Masterminds in the game in Apocalypse), Secret Wars 1 edges out Secret Wars 2 in terms of just having GOOD, powerful heroes. Not that Secret Wars 2 doesn't have good heroes of its own (Illuminati Beast and Agent Venom are both worth having), but Secret Wars 2 indulges in a lot of box-filling chaff like Captain Britain, Dr. Punisher, Elsa Bloodstone (who is _not_ SHIELD-affiliated, by the way...), and the exceptional waste of cardboard that is Time Travelling Jean Grey, who is to dud heroes what Dark Phoenix is to tough Masterminds. (Ironically, both are literally Jean Grey. Huh.) Secret Wars 2 has a big problem of heroes lacking definition. Take Arkon, if you can even remember who that is. While Arkon's commons are decent and splashable, he doesn't really have much in the way of a win condition. Theoretically he can make Spectrums, but Arkon's unlockable abilities aren't really worth the trouble to activate. Maybe an extra point of recruit or combat here or there is nothing compared to drawing a card or KOing a hero. And so a hero whose cards are all decent in a vacuum (or, more to the point, a deck full of basic SHIELDs) loses out because nothing comes together right, and Secret Wars 2 does this a lot.
By contrast, Secret Wars 1 is a who's who of Legendary's best powerhouses who all do what they do very well, where a favorite hero is less a matter of who sucks the least and more what playstyles you like best. Apoc Kitty Pride and Dr. Strange are both highly robust KO engines for being able to KO cards (not just heroes) from the discard pile. Jane Fosthor (Lady Thor) is arguably _the_ recruit hero of the set. Black Panther and Captain Marvel both draw a lot and hit _very_ hard. Magik and Miles Morales (Ultimate Spider-Man) are _phenomenal_ low-cost accelerants. Black Bolt and Proxima Midnight gave Dark City's Domino some of her very first double-symbol peers. And Maximus is _criminally_ underrated for being able to get your deck going very quickly in the early game by spamming the often very useful (and often KO-related) Henchmen effects. Seriously, try Maximus out against Mandarin's Ten Rings. It's hilarious. Admittedly Namor is a little lame. (As are all heroes who care about villains in specific city spaces... Blade... TTJG...) And Old Man Logan has no cohesion whatsoever. (He likes KOing his own wounds, but he has no way to wound himself, meaning the hero designed to be a loner literally cannot function in isolation; I have _no idea_ why OML made your hero of the set...). But that's two duds out of _fourteen_ heroes, which is an exceptional ratio beaten only by the Fantastic Four (where literally _all the heroes_ are good).
Love reading your detailed thoughts on these sets! Thanks for commenting. I think you're completely right about it. The reason my opinions differ are mostly just because I tend to look for heroes that I think are interesting and thematic over heroes that are more effective in play. But it's always good to have both!
Thanks for the video! Where would the Annihilation expansion be on your list?
While I don't know Jonathan's exact number, but based on his expansion review for Annihilation he enjoyed the villains but felt underwhelmed by most of the heroes. Based on his review I would guess somewhere middling, somewhere in the 17-14 range. Could be higher but I doubt it would beat Spider-man or Noir.
awsome!
any advice how to make interesting balanced setups? any app available?
There are a few different apps/sites that will help randomize your setups! I use 'Smart Randomizer for Marvel Legendary' on Android. Otherwise, I usually just choose semi-randomly or try to have a theme of characters that make sense together. Also helps to plan types around your scheme/mastermind.
Into the Cosmos being a little too late for the party. Where do you rank it (if you've played it)?
I am relatively new to the marvel legendary game and have tried it solo a few times. What's the best way to solo this game as I found the specific solo rules somewhat flawed?
I personally enjoy the Advanced Solo Rules included in the Dark City rules. But I know some people like to play two-handed with two different decks. And there's also the Golden Rules variant you can find on BGG: boardgamegeek.com/thread/1200976/golden-solo-ruleset-variant-reviews-final-legendar
@@RollforCrit thanks! I have dark city coming very soon so I'll have to give that rule set a try.
I got paint the town red. My first expansion was shield and I loved that, but I dislike the paint the town red expansion. Maybe if I owned more Spiderman, but I dislike them since they can only be useful with themselves.
It's too bad X-Men expansion is impossible to get atm
So if i buy multiple expansions can i just throw them into the main deck? Or do i have to swap em out depending on what expansion i wanna play?
When playing the game, you use a specific number of heroes, henchmen, villains, and twists based on player count, mastermind, and the scheme you are playing with. They may ask for a specific group to be included, but after that, you can usually use whichever groups you think would be fun, regardless of expansion. Obviously, some groups will have better synergies, so some of the fun is creating a group of heroes that work very well or villains that combo together to give you a challenge!
Thank you for this video! I'm so mad at myself as I had the chance to by the X-Men Expansion, but now I can't find it. Are they going to put more copies out?
Haven't heard anything about it for anytime soon, but I would bet it'll come back eventually if you're patient.
Question to anyone: if you don't own the game yet, is the marvel studios phase one box worth it over the base game or is it still worse?
Functionally, they're nearly identical! The biggest issue is that the art doesn't look great and it doesn't blend with the other expansions. There's no reason to own it if you already have the original. But if you don't, and you're a fan of the movies or you just don't mind the look of it, there's nothing really wrong with it.
you're wrong aout ant-man: microscopic size changing is WAY different from size changing: the idea is that when it goes into the negative, it turns into a positive, and that stacks up.
I dont have the game but I would like to buy it, Do you recommend buying the main game or can I start with one ofe the expansions? Thanks
Other than Villains (which is hard to find right now) and the MCU set, all the expansions require the base set to be playable. So the original game is definitely where you want to start. Hope you have fun with it!
Get the base set. See if you can find it used but new its around 50-60. Base set still comes with at least 20-50 play throughs as you get around 14 heroes and like 8 schemes.
I don't own the base set :c I have Villains, Fear Itself, and Venom
spiderman is really strong. Its easier to pop off on him than people think you just need to hard commit
also shield officers are strong
Which are "less best" I dig it.
Noir should have been at least top ten, because it's the only set where all the schemes are fun to play
Dont really understand how CMON games is publishing an almost identical game to Upper Decks Legendary. This really sucks to have to choose between Marvel United and Marvel Legendary.
Aunt May 👀
Are you sure Thor is from Thor? Pretty sure he was in Winter Soldier. Some fans, amirite?
The deadpool expansion feels more like a munchkin expansion than a Legendary expansion.
Really hated Revelations, surprised it ranked so high, Mandarin is way too hard and the artwork and keywords are sub par. Secret Wars and Dark City are essential, I enjoy PTTR and FF too.
Art should match the primary source material. Marvel is better with comic art, Buffy was great with stills, Alien and Predator failed on this (still great games, though).
I gotta come back to this and make another comment. But FF small box is so overrated. People are listing this as the best small box set and unless you have a love obsession with Fantastic Four its really underwhelming. For the most part the heroes really aren't that great. I get they are the Fantastic Four but the art work on all of them aside from a couple Human Torch cards are bad. Also although the Master Minds are great in this set they are overly difficult and not very fun to play against even with the Focus of the base FF heroes. Schemes are copied as well. I think the Venom set is better or Paint the Town Red. In fact I think GoTG set blows it away.
Also Revelations while for the money its the best set to own the mechanics are a mess. Locations muck up easily and hyperspeed is basically the berserk mechanic messed up.
Why do all the schemes look the same? 😐
Most schemes use the same art. If I recall correctly schemes that fall under the Marvel Cinematic Universe have unique art, but overall its more of a rarity.
Too bad I AM a Squirrel Girl fan.
Squirrel Girl is really good. He made a big mistake on Squirrel Girl's description. Her big card gives OTHER cards you own switcheroo.
Movie stills ROCK bud. Sorry...
You don't actually understand humor. Fascinating.
I promise my next comedy video will be funnier.