Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game – Secret Wars, Volume 1
Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game – Secret Wars, Volume 1 Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
New Heroes
Illuminati: The 2015 Marvel mega-story Secret Wars begins with a terrifying discovery: all the parallel dimensions in the Marvel Universe are hurtling towards each other! Wherever they collide, only one dimension will survive. The other will be utterly destroyed! The smartest genius Heroes in the world band together as the Illuminati, in a desperate search to stop it.
Cabal: Meanwhile, a group of evil geniuses form the Cabal with a different plan: stop other dimensions from colliding with ours…by destroying them all with antimatter bombs!
Multiclass Cards
New to Secret Wars, a card with both the Instinct and Tech icons counts as both an Instinct card and a Tech card. These cards are great at enabling your Superpower Abilities!
Villains You Gain as Heroes
The Ultimates and Thor Corps start as Villains, but when you fight them, they become Hero cards and join you. If a card effect wants to know their cost as Heroes, use their old Villain Attack value.
Teleport
“Teleport” means “Instead of playing this card, you may set it aside. At the end of this turn, add it to your new hand as an extra card.”
Bribe
You can fight villains with the keyword “Bribe” by spending any combination of Attack and/or Recruit Points.
Rise of the Living Dead
“Rise of the Living Dead” means “Each player checks the top card of their Victory Pile. If that card is a Villain with a “Rise of the Living Dead” ability, that Villain reenters the city.”
- (Mastermind Tactics never return this way.)
- If you put a Villain with Bystanders into your Victory Pile, you choose the order.
Cross-Dimensional Rampage
As different Hulks storm across parallel realities, only another Hulk can stop them!
“Cross-Dimensional Hulk Rampage” means “Each player reveals one of their Hulk Heroes or a Hulk card in their Victory Pile or gains a Wound.”
- This counts any card that includes “Hulk” in its card name or Hero name, plus the alternate Hulks “Maestro” and “Nul, Breaker of Worlds.” (from Legendary: Fear Itself)
- Likewise, “Cross-Dimensional Wolverine Rampage” counts any card with “Wolverine,” “Weapon X,” or “Old Man Logan.”
Multiple Masterminds
When some powerful Villains in this set escape, they ascend to become new Masterminds, so there are multiple Masterminds in the game! Schemes can do this too. Players must defeat all the Masterminds to win. When a Master Strike occurs, each Mastermind does its Master Strike ability. The player whose turn it is picks the order.
Sidekicks
Secret Wars adds a new Sidekick Stack to the game. Players can pay to recruit up to one Sidekick per turn. When card effects tell you to “gain Sidekicks,” that doesn’t count against that one-per-turn limit.
"A Player is the Mastermind"
Secret Wars introduces an intense, new, optional mode where one player takes on the role of the evil Mastermind. That player plots against the other players, using powerful “Ambition cards” to help Evil win! This mode makes the game dramatically harder for the heroic players to win. To use this mode:
- Choose who will be the Mastermind Player before the game. That player gets a starting deck like every other player.
- Put the “Pure Evil” Ambition card face up near the Mastermind player to start an “Ambition Row.”
- Shuffle other “Ambition” cards into a special Ambition Deck near the Mastermind Player.
- Use a number of Heroes, Villains, Henchmen, and Bystanders based on the number of “Heroic players,” not the Mastermind Player.
- However, the Scheme does count the Mastermind Player as a “player”, including its “Setup,” “Special Rules,” & “Evil Wins” rules.
Playing “Ambition” Cards
- At the start of the Mastermind Player’s turn, that player doesn’t play a card from the Villain Deck. Instead, that player adds the top card of the Ambition Deck to the Ambition Row, face up.
- There can be a maximum of 4 Ambition cards face up at once in the Ambition Row. If there are already 4 cards there when a new Ambition card is revealed, then the Mastermind Player must discard one of those Ambition cards or the newly drawn Ambition card to make room. That player can see the new Ambition card before they decide what to discard. Discarded Ambition cards always go to a special Ambition Discard Pile next to the Ambition Deck.
- During the Mastermind Player’s turn, that player can spend the Attack points shown on an Ambition card in the Ambition Row to “play” that Ambition card. That player uses its ability immediately, then puts it into the Ambition Discard Pile. These abilities can hurt the other players in a variety of ways.
Other Mastermind Player Details
- The Mastermind Player takes the first turn.
- The Mastermind Player can still recruit Heroes from the HQ as normal, corrupting them to the side of Evil. The Mastermind Player and the Heroic players should look to steal Heroes the other side might find useful!
- The Mastermind Player can also fight Villains as normal. For example, if they want to grab beneficial “Fight” effects from Villains, or stop Heroic players from getting them.
- Master Strikes, Ambush effects, and Escape effects don’t affect the Mastermind Player. That player doesn’t discard when a bystander is carried away by an escaping Villain.
- However, other card effects (like Schemes, Heroes, & Villain “Fight” effects) still work on Mastermind Player and Heroic players alike.
- For a truly epic Good vs. Evil experience, if you have the Legendary Villains set, make a Lair Deck of 3 Villainous Allies from the Villains set shuffled together, 42 cards total. Then the Mastermind Player recruits Villainous Allies from their own 5-space Lair, while all the Heroic players recruit Good Heroes from the HQ as normal!
- Or flip it around, with several Villainous players using Allies from the Legendary Villains set against a single Good “Commander Player” recruiting Heroes!
Game Contents
Rules insert and 350 cards:
- 14 New Heroes of 14 cards each (Each Hero has 1 rare, 3 uncommons, 5 of one common, and 5 of another common).
- 6 New Villain Groups of 8 cards each
- 3 New Henchman Groups of 10 cards each
- 4 New Masterminds, each with 1 Mastermind card and 4 Mastermind Tactic cards
- 8 New Schemes
- 30 New Ambition cards
- 15 New Sidekick cards
- 1 New “Banker” Bystander card