Probably a bit weird to be starting with legacy games but here we are! Maybe it’ll encourage me to keep writing? I mean, that’s the point, right? To keep going?
A legacy game is a game that changes with every play, one game affects the next, telling a story…. a bit like a choose your own adventure book, but more based on luck and a bit of strategy and desperately praying that the next card off the deck doesn’t kill you. Most legacy games are designed for three or four people, but I’ve found a few that work pretty well for two, even if they’re pretty tough, and we’re still married after playing them all so, they’re at least that good!
Pandemic Legacy.
This sounds bad right now in a pandemic, but we started season one well before the pandemic started, and somehow a game about a pandemic took our minds off the ongoing pandemic that meant we were locked in playing a game about a pandemic, called Pandemic, which has a disease that is named suspiciously similarly to the ongoing pandemic…
Anyway, we played the regular version of Pandemic a good bit together and with friends, so I figured I’d get this version thats a bit more expensive but would give us a good story to play through, and it was VERY hard to get the regular expansions at the time. Pandemic is a cooperative game where everyone works together to keep diseases contained and cure them.
There’s two versions – but they’re identical. They really want you to buy both, either as collectors items, or so you can play with two groups at once without getting confused. You can’t replay it. Once you’ve played through 12-24 games, thats it. No more. You permanently change the board, possibly destroying cities, cards, and even your characters. Destroying cards is hard for some of us. Much easier for others!
So, we started it when we’d only been married a few months, Charlotte had only played a few games, Pandemic being one of them, so this was probably the most complex game I’d convinced her to play so far. We picked our characters – mine a plucky scientist, ready to cure diseases, and her a brave medic, ready to storm into hotspots and heal.
I can’t say much on it without giving away spoilers for the whole game, but I can say we both really enjoyed it, playing a few games in a row, and even when we lost we carried on, fighting the disease, and hating the oncoming epidemics… but it was a good game! Think it helped us learn work together too!
Pandemic is a bit of a weird one where it probably would have gotten harder with more players – as we’d be driving through the cards faster and hitting the epidemics much quicker, and everyone gets less turns, so two players works pretty well to give us more time to win. I’d say its a pretty good game for couples – especially if you don’t want a competitive game and to be happy/sad when you win/lose together! Make sure you read the rules fully too.
Pandemic Legacy Season 2
Season two is set a few decades after the events of season one, and its just as good for us. Its a pretty similar setup to season one – but much smaller. We did find it definitely wanted more players, and it was a bit harder – we had to replay 4 games in a row at one point, and we did lose one of our characters, so it is a little more brutal, but we still found playing through the story a lot of fun.
Machi Koro: Legacy
This one is different. In Machi Koro, you’re building a city, from the ground up, and you’re competing to complete as many landmarks in your own city as you can, before the other player completes all theirs. It can be a brutal game, where a roll of the dice might mean getting rich from the bank, or getting rich from stealing from other players. The richer you get, the more landmarks you can build – and so win the game. As a more luck based game it can lead to dice resentment, and the stealing doesn’t help!
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The legacy version changes things up a bit – there’s less stealing for starters, and a few interesting new mechanics. There’s no working together, and you can still end up hating the dice, but it is less likely to make you fall out with the other player… even so, there’s a few games you might feel a little annoyed with the game itself. Like the inanimate objects that are the dice have a distinct hatred towards you and try as you might you can’t get them to forgive you…
Anyway, out of ten games we each won one each so it was a love/hate relationship with the treasonous dice, or a hate/hate/love/hate/love/hate/love/hate/love/love relationship… we do wish it was a bit longer though – we burned through all ten games in less than three weeks, although the game can be played again and again, when the campaign is finished, as a slightly quicker variant of the regular Machi Koro.
The game can also be sort-of reset, so you can play through the ten games again. You never destroy anything, you only write on a few cards, the player board, and the manual. There’s a set of stickers, but they don’t hugely change the game. All you have to do is remember what was in each mystery box.
The story is a little bit bonkers, but its a good game, especially if you like competitive games together more than co-operative ones, but I would say it would beneft from having at least one more player to add some uncertainty.
Space Base: Shy Pluto
Definitely the most complex game we’ve gotten to play together – its an expansion to Space Base that’s not as much of a legacy game as there is no writing or destruction of cards, there’s only five ‘modules’ that lead to five to eight games, and the story is fairly simple.
Space Base is similar to Machi Koro as a ‘dice chucking’ game, but it’s based on building up a space fleet, with special charging abilities on some cards, and there’s significantly less thieving from each-other. The goal is to build up points, which you’ve no ability to get at the start of the game, but buying cards will help you do that. All the cards have different space ships on them with different names, and different designs.
As a two player game, Space Base works really well, and the expansion builds on the original’s strengths, but adds a few options that can extend the length of the game a good bit. The story is pretty basic, and doesn’t add much – it was pretty clearly designed to gradually introduce the new elements in a more interesting way than “here’s a rulebook. Hope you can understand it!” so its not as compelling as the others, but the new modules are good fun.
We enjoyed the original game without the expansion, and although I could probably have learnt the expansion with the traditional rulebook method, I think the story based way of doing it really helped build up an understanding of how the new elements worked. Like Machi Koro it would probably be better with more players – up to 7 with a further second expansion. It could lead to very long games though!
The end bit where I sum up.
These are all brilliant games with or without the legacy elements, but the legacy bits gave us a drive to keep playing, and stopped them getting too repetitive. I’d recommend playing through the original versions a few times first though, there’s too much to immediately absorb and maybe get wrong, particularly with the Pandemic games that could ruin the experience.
Price wise the original, non-legacy versions all similarly priced, usually below £30 each, however Space Base’s Shy Pluto expansion would be the cheapest, at around £15. Machi Koro Legacy is around £40, and Pandemic Legacy, when you can find it, is around £45-50 per season.
If you and your partner like to work together (or are scared of your partners competitive side) start with Pandemic.
If you’re ok with losing to your partner, then Machi Koro would be the best option.
We own Risk Legacy too but sadly it doesn’t support 2 players. As the first ever game in the legacy style its disappointing we haven’t had the opportunity to play it, but hopefully we can get to see how it plays soon!
There’s a whole bunch of other legacy games, like Charterstone, Gloomhaven, Betrayal Legacy, Seafall, and First Martians, none of which are particularly cheap! But I’d hope to get to play them soon too!