Hello again, friends. I had to give some thought about what I wanted to talk about this week. I’ve covered a lot of stuff, and there is always something board game related to talk about. After some time, I decided upon legacy games. Number One and I are currently in the midst of a legacy game at the moment with some of Number One’s cousins.
A legacy game is a game that you play with the same group of people over a set number of weeks. Each session builds on the previous session until you reach the ultimate conclusion at the end of the game. You’ll sometimes hear legacy games called campaign games.
The first legacy style game that I’d ever heard of was Pandemic. And, I believe that Pandemic has actually created a second legacy version of the game. I don’t play Pandemic often, so I’m not up to date on this particular game.
Number One and I are currently playing Scythe: The Rise of Fenris. The Scythe legacy game is a series of eight episodes that are played over a number of weeks (or months, as may be the case). As of this writing, we will be playing episode 7 this week. I won’t post any spoilers or discuss the particulars of the game just in case anyone reading wants to play the game. Just like movie spoilers, it’s not nice to do that to other players.
Here are my thoughts about legacy style games. So far, having only played this one specific legacy game, I like it. It’s neat to build on the things that you unlock each episode. I like seeing the progression of the game. It’s nice to see how the game progresses and how each play plans out their strategy based on the new information that comes to light with each game. With Scythe, there are some specific articles and advantages that, once opened, can be used in regular play with the base game. I really enjoy opening all of the boxes. Opening the boxes, for our group, is a driving force for playing each episode.
There are some things that I don’t like as well, but I think they more personal things rather than anything related to the style of game itself, and my thoughts may change based on the individual game. With Rise of Fenris, I feel that after a couple weeks of playing the “same game”, your brain needs a break. Scythe, in and of itself, is a pretty hefty game that can take a couple of hours to play. If you are playing that every single week with all of these adaptions and changes and new information, I feel overwhelmed. The other thing that is difficult with legacy games is avoiding spoilers for the upcoming episode of each game. I’m not one of those people who actively avoids spoilers or gets upset if I hear one, but I know there are people who don’t want to know before they reach that point.
Legacy games does seem to be a new trend in board games. I’ve seen some game makers hinting that there will be legacy games for some games. I’ve heard a rumor that Terraforming Mars may have a legacy campaign game in the future. I’d probably play get it, if that is the case. I’ve bought all the other expansions for Terraforming, so what’s one more for the game, right?