This Crisis Is Making Me Legendary

...when my brother bought Marvel Legendary, I was still clamoring for the DC equivalent thereof for myself. As the situation happened, playing Legendary first caused the DC Comics deckbuilder to seem paltry by comparison. Both games are enjoyable and have made it to the table multiple times. However, when friends come by, it is often Legendary that gets the most requests from casual gamer friends. Legendary features superhero and villain characters that everyone is familiar with and features a solid balance of casual atmosphere and deep strategy. Essentially, the game is easy to learn and challenging to play.

The DC deckbuilder from Cryptozoic simply does not offer the same game mechanics as its Marvel counterpart. Thematically, the game is on par with Marvel's every step of the way. It leans a tad heavy on the stalwart character set, but the game also features a wide array of lesser knowns such as Zatanna, Green Arrow and Swamp Thing. The art is straight out of The New 52 story arcs and the components are sleek, clean and effective. Where it was lagging behind was the game itself. Where Marvel featured a combat mechanic and multiple story elements, DC lacked both and felt more like a introductory deck builder.

This past Friday, I had wandered into my local shop seeking some new series' to investigate and the awaited Sons Of Anarchy strategy game. Rather, I stumbled upon the first true expansion to the DC deckbuilder called Crisis. The back of the box announced expanded game modes, story elements and impossible villains as some of the new features. I had read about this on Cryptozoic's website and had the expansion in my mind vault for future reference. As I held it in my hands, I began daydreaming of the possibility that this small box might contain the potential magic bullet that would elevate the DC game into Legendary territory.

Friday night arrived and I perused the instruction booklet to set-up for the new game modes. I had spent a bit of time earlier in the day looking over the new Crisis Mode cards so I was slightly familiar with what they were meant to accomplish. I followed the set-up instructions, dealt out the starting hands and we began to unearth what Crisis had to offer.

As we defeated the first Crisis and Supervillain, I instantly noticed that the somewhat basic challenge offered by the introductory Crisis did not give a full glimpse of what was to come. The Crisis expansion, put simply, ramps up the challenge and tension considerably. The line-up has to be dealt with combat tactics that continue to change with each new Crisis, increasing the number of villains when you are trying to get a grip and leaving the line-up bare when you really need to find some help. Each Impossible Villain goes further to increase the difficulty of the game, depending on which Crisis they are paired with.

A normal game of the DC deckbuilder would generally last about 45 minutes. With two players, the Crisis expansion gave us over two hours of gameplay and we came away in defeat. As I learned shortly after playing, I had overstuffed the main deck which means that the game should have been rougher. Having been thoroughly undone by this expansion, I nodded as I finally felt like the true potential of the DC deckbuilder was being realized. DC Comics now has a game that is drawing closer to being up to challenging Marvel in the tabletop gaming wars.