If you didn't get enough Captain America in Marvel Legendary: Civil War, here he is again dusting off the shiny vibranium shield for his very own small box expansion to celebrate reaching the grand old age of 75. That's a lot of candles...
There's a lot packed into this little box (including a bit of time travel, which can never be bad), so let's have a look through what you get in your 100 cards:
Good guys
Not one, not two, but *three* Captain Americas? Original Cap, modern day S.H.I.E.L.D Director Cap (okay, not technically Captain America any more, but he's still wearing the stars and stripes!) and Falcon-becomes-Captain-America Cap are all available to pick as Heroes.Rounding out the team we have sidekick Bucky Barnes as the Winter Soldier and Betsy Ross, Agent X-13.
I love the colourful artwork on the original style cards and how this contrasts with the more gritty modern cards to highlight the expansion's time-bending theme.
Bad guys
Cap gets two new Mastermind decks to take on, with a choice from this very Z-themed selection:
Zola and Zemo have also brought along their respective sets of pet Villains: Zola's Creations and Zemo's (optimistically titled) 'Masters of Evil'.
The Masters all capture a Bystander on their way into the city; this makes them important to deal with for Zemo's Master Strike which is effected by the number of Bystanders in a player's Victory Pile. Zola's Creations all have the Abomination keyword ability which I've described a bit further down, but basically can make them horrible to kill!
Schemes
The expansion comes with four new Scheme cards. Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey action has you trying to foil plots to change the outcome of WW2, brainwash the military or kill off your ancestors. You could even have a go at cracking the Enigma code in one of the most interesting schemes I've seen so far.
Keywords
Even in a small box expansion, we still have some new keyword abilities to learn:- Man (and Woman) Out of Time lets you re-use a card. Once you've used a card's abilities, you can set it aside until your next turn and then play it a second time before finally discarding it.
- Savior rewards you for saving Bystanders. Having three rescued Bystanders in your victory pile allows you to use various Savior actions described on cards, for instance drawing an extra card.
- Abomination varies the attack level of a Villain depending on the Attack value of the Hero in the HQ space under the Villain's city space. This means an Abomination Villain's Attack can go up or down as they move through the city, so you need to plan your purchases and attacks carefully.
Overall this is a great little expansion, with some clever new schemes and interesting new keyword abilities. If it weren't for these I might be tempted to say that this was an expansion only for die-hard Cap fans, but as it is this adds a good amount of extra variety and will make a great addition to our base game.
Marvel Legendary: Captain America 75th Anniversary
Designer: Devin LowPublisher: Upper Deck Entertainment
Players: 1-5
Age: 8+
Cost: RRP £17.99 [Take a look at Esdevium's store locator to find a local brick-and-mortar retailer in Europe]
Thanks to Esdevium for sending me a copy to take a look at.If you enjoyed this post perhaps you could take a look at my Facebook page and leave a like or come and say hello on my Twitter or Instagram feeds!
