Dice Tower Re-Roll: Marvel Legendary vs. Marvel Champions 

I own both but much prefer champions. It's thematic, has some deck construction, and is more interesting mechanically

Tom misses the whole point of what makes the Shield expansion so cool. It gives the shield officer stack unique shield officers! It adds a great new dimension to the game and gives players a reason to consider buying from that stack.

Two years after this video was made, I can say it's now much easier to find all of Champions' content when compared to even half of Legendary's.

Really enjoy these re-roll videos...looking forward to more!!

I'm with Legendary on this. After having a lot of time with both, i have felt i can play champions 2 or 3 times and then discover how to beat the villain. Legendary feels different every time to me since it feels more random.

I haven’t played Legendary so I can’t say which I like better. I have been enjoying Champions a lot though. Love the look and how easy it is to get started. I keep diving in deeper with switching up the decks to see how they play. Super fun!

Awesome to get 4 people's view in one video of 2 different games with a good amount of experience. Loved the caption on Roy😂

Now that I have both, I really have to go for Legendary which I played way more though I only bought it just two months ago. I agree that Champions might be the one more complex and thematic, but that doesn't help me getting into it - my attempts to play Champions proved ill-fated as I was just sitting there not knowing which card to play and which one to use as a resource, all the while being whipped by Rhino. And though I watched multiple Champions Playthroughs, I was left with a ton of open questions about card interactions that the rules did not have a lot to say about. So in the end, theoretically Champions might be the better game, but it's far less accessible and I think about even selling it in the future.

In Marvel Champions, if you’re playing as Thor, you can play Hammer Throw, and then, after the damage, Mjolnir returns to your hand (of cards). Mjolnir. Returns. To your hand. For me, that is one of the coolest small game mechanics ever. Champions all the way.

Thanks for the video. I love both games and see them both staying permanently in my collection. Both have their own pros and cons, and they feel different enough that one won't replace the other.

How did I miss this video … great job!

I own both and enjoy both, but Marvel Legendary is my all-time favorite game. This video didn’t address some things that I feel Marvel Legendary is far better at. Marvel Legendary has near infinite replayability. Also, the way Legendary’s Schemes change how you play the game is genius and keeps the game fresh every time you play. I feel like you can see everything in Marvel Champions after about 10 plays and then you’re waiting on the next pack to be released. Marvel Champions’ individual heroes are “solvable”, as Mike said. There is an optimal way of playing each hero. Iron Man is always going to want to ramp up his armor. Black Panther is always going to be diving for “Wakanda Forever”. After a while, the gameplay will feel repetitive. Marvel Legendary is also far more accessible. It’s much easier to teach. I also disagree that it is more onerous than Champions to set up or takedown. The difference is very minor in my experience. For me, Marvel Champions replaced Sentinels of the Multiverse. I don’t think I’ll ever play SotM again. But for my go to Marvel game, Marvel Legendary is still tops.

Haven't had a chance to play legendary yet, but I'm in love with Champions. I think the theme is pretty strong, but it does lack story when compared to some of the other LCGs. I really appreciate the thoughtful design of each hero. They all feel very unique which adds to replayability. I also love the deck construction prior to playing and the potential to have a hero to be built around 4 different aspects.

I like both games a lot. One thing that gives Legendary a slight edge for me is how easy it is to find the expansions.

I've got almost everything for Legendary but i have been noticing its lack of theme lately. I'm holding off until I can buy the captain america expansion for Champions, then I'll get that and try it out

Great video, thanks for the comparison.

Love both but I’m still a legendary head.

Legendary got 100% better for me once I downloaded the setup app. Click a button for number of players, and go... it tells you a balanced setup with villains and heroes, scheme and mastermind. it's great, and very fast.

Just FYI, there is a "legendary setup" app on Google play that is amazing. Not only does it cut setup time down to about 7-10 minutes, if you have labeled dividers for your cards that is. But you can exclude content as you use it, so for ocd people like me, you can know for sure after 150 games you've tried every single card you own. Highly recommended if you want a way to cut down setup time ALOT.

I really like both. If I had to choose it would be Legendary.

Legendary was ok... just never felt like I was playing a hero... just combos... Champions feels like you are playing the hero...

I feel like if you compare just the base games than champions would win, but if you played using all the expansions for both games than legendary is best in my book. As someone who has a little less than half of the legendary expansions, they add so many layers to this game and make it really something to behold, where champions expansions do not change the game as much I feel.

I prefer legendary. Same reason that Zee point it out. You don't have to know the deck as well. I also have a few friends that want to play competitively, so it is a point grab as well as save the world. (The contrived reason is each of us is the set of five heroes from different worlds, to see which world's superheroes are better)

In Marvel Legendary, you are pretty much a high level Shield agent, or director, ordering heroes to attack.

Awesome Spiderman on the back!!!

If zee says he doesn’t like a game. Means I will love it. I always notice that.

Awesome Mike. Finally a DC fan on the Dice Tower. Legendary came out in 2012 :O I like both but prefer Champions. I want DC Champions though

Where can I get the dividers seen@15:35 of the video? Been looking for some and can't seem to find any

Champions reminds me a lot of sentinels of the multiverse.

I liked the observation that Champions allows you to feel like you are playing that particular superhero, a very thematic element. I would argue that Legendary is stronger in theme in the schemes. I found the success of schemes in Champions to be entirely mathematical, whereas the Legendary schemes are much more thematic (see Clone Wars, Dark Phoenix Saga, Kidnapping Ruby Summers).

At the moment I would probably give Legendary the nod for replay-ability, but I feel like this may change a lot this fall when the story box comes out for Champions.

Champions feels like the theme matters and makes sense. Legendary just feels like its a system with Marvel artwork on top. "Let's throw a new expansion out, what haven't we done?" Plenty of my friends buy every single Marvel Legendary set so I never felt compelled to buy ANY of them. I own the Big Trouble in Little China Legendary game so I don't expect I'll buy any Legendary game every again...that one is enough for me. I also think that for an LCG Marvel Champions doesn't feel like its draining me of money. I don't need each character...I buy who I like so that means I'm spending $20'ish every...4 months or so. Also, I only need ONE copy of the core set opposed to needing to buy TWO of the core set to make what I want in Arkham Horror LCG. Compare this to Arkham Horror LCG where it feels like that if you want to play through a story you are going to spend something like $50-60. DC Deckbuilder is fun but I own 2 big expansions, the big box, and 2 small expansions...I think I have enough of it.

I'd love to see some discussion of Marvel Champions vs Sentinels of the Multiverse?

With one exception, I have always avoided CCGs and LCGs, because of the crazy (for me) amount of money that gets spent on them. I can own a whole bunch of phenomenal games for the same amount of money. The one exception for me is Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, because I love the theme. And even then, I only bought the base game and the eight saga expansions. I avoided the money pit of all the other big expansions, the 6 adventure packs for each one, and the nightmare decks.

In my honest opinion I like legendary because first of all there is more cards and second I just like the design of the cards better so yea

I love legendary but stopped playing regularly about a year ago (almost exclusively solo). But then I picked up Champions.....and it made me want to play Legendary again. At this point, I do feel more replayability with Legendary than Champions, especially with online league communities and homebrew legacy campaigns. When a campaign box for champions is released, I'll pick it up and might fully switch over

The way I understand it(Never played Champions), the big difference is you have to buy the heroes to create your deck in legendary. In champions, you start the game with a full deck?

I've loved the deckbuilding genre for a long time. My first deckbuilder i ever played was Thunderstone Advance and i thought it was such a cool concept. Every player starts with the same deck of cards and you make it stronger as you play the game. Legendary has been a fantastic game in my opinion. Champions however has been a very interesting ride for me since it's my first LCG and it was getting good reviews and i decided to give it a shot. Especially since you can play solo and i tend to play solo more. As a solo game, I think Champions is better. My main gripe at the current moment is that i feel that if i don't get every expansion, i'm gonna miss out on certain cards and deck possibilities whereas Legendary, i only got a few expansions mainly getting the characters i wanted. Legendary i wouldn't play with any more than 3 players, and Champions 2. I feel those are the magic numbers for multiplayer. End of the day though, both games are great and i'll play either depending on what mood i'm in.

Both are two of my favorites

I really don't want to support anything related to Asmodee at this time, so I'm staying away for now. The thing I worry about with Marvel Champions is each character you play has a specific way to play it efficiently. Yeah you can mix up some different cards in the deck but overall it seems each character has an optimal style. Once you know that path it's just a matter of playing the character that way over and over.

At 14:20 you say that Champions has more functionality in that the main bad guy can flip and do more damage in certain phases or you fight a team and that Legendary doesn't have that. Legendary has added those features. The X-Men set (and others that have the lower potential for this) has villains that become masterminds, there are some schemes that place multiple masterminds in play, the Hulk and S.H.I.E.L.D. sets have transforming/adapting masterminds. There are epic masterminds to change difficulty. So both games have those features if you choose to utilize them.

100% agree with Mike. I do not really like either game a lot. But Legendary felt better since I am used to deck builders and felt constrained with Champions deck tuning choices.

I’d like to hear Zee talk about marvel champions versus Arkham horror LCG.

Love legendary, it is Ben a gateway game for my play group. It's simple enough that my wife will play it with me. And I really like the cooperative nature of the game even if it ramps up quickly you can still recover. Also players getting to pick the heroes to add to the duck gets them invested in the game and I think that helps. Parentheses I often break the number of heroes rule if it is not affected by the scheme and print assays

I showed up very late to the party with Marvel Legendary (just a couple months ago) and only have the base set, but my wife and I both love it! It's great in that once people understand deckbuilding, it's a breeze for just about anyone to play, but generates more exciting moments than, say, Dominion, which we're also big fans of. It's a great game to draw newcomers in with the theme, and most people sort of innately get drawn in by the appeal of building up a stronger and stronger deck-engine. I do find we like to play competitively though, as the base game on its own is absurdly easy to win. If we played co-op there would be zero tension. I imagine people saying co-op only are playing with the harder expansions or variants?

Legendary is as thematic as you want it to be. Wife and I are currently playing through all the Avengers films (and Civil War) and it has been a hoot. If you use a randomizer every time I can see why it wouldn’t feel very thematic.

Love Legendary... Especially the X-Men expansion. Have only played Champions once but enjoyed it. Still waiting for one of my favourite characters for Legendary... Pixie!!

Legendary I own both... but I am with Tom with the format for Champions.

Champions, I love Arkham horror lcg. Is was like 2/3 the rules of that. Very easy to pick up and setup. Also clean up is easier

Bought and played Legendary as I like deck builders. After two playthroughs, I never touched it again and ended up selling it. I’ve been hooked on Marvel Champions ever since it released, and is easily in my top 3 games released last year

Is Legendary fun to play with 2 people? Is Champion?

I only own Marvel Champions and enjoy it a lot. I do own Legendary Encounters: Alien and play it occasionally but if Marvel Legendary is similar I don't think I would like it as much as Champions due to setup and teardown time. I also enjoy Marvel Champions compared to other LCG's like Lord of the Rings as you can at the moment pick and choose what you get but with something like LotR you had to buy each pack to get all the cards to complete the adventure.

Played Legendary several years ago and was just sort of ho hum with the whole thing, i REALLY like Champions for its ability to play as your own unique hero and attribute's. To me the customization is really enjoyable!!

I really enjoy both and have a few expansions of each. Champions feels more thematic but Legendary feels more epic and I like that it’s more casual so my less hardcore gamer family and friends can enjoy it too. For that reason Legendary hits the table more for me. Also the character selection is better in Legendary by far. I can play as my favourite heroes Punisher and Cable in Legendary but going to be years before I get them in Champions.

I own both but much prefer legendary. It’s thematic, has some deck building and is more interesting mechanically. I prefer playing Arkham horror LCG over Marvel Champions.

Own both and love both ..but if I had to pick one it’d champions easily

I love both games, but Champions has really swept in and stolen my proverbial heart. It’s just such a quick set up and play for a solo gamer, and it really captures the theme well. Legendary is a great deck builder and I really enjoy that game, but for me the theme doesn’t come out as much and that set up time really is just brutal.

Set-Up Time: is Champions so much less time? LCG's (and CCG's) tend to have a lot of deck-building time, just not at game night. Roy said you just need to hand everyone a deck and go, but how much time do people put into making those decks and is it longer than pre-making Legendary games?

I'll set up a couple of games for Legendary (prior to the event and take them with me) and it's a great evening. Liking Champions, but it's very different and a LOT more 'rules heavy' and is, in no way, as accessible as Legendary. I like them both, but they a very different games. Would I play other games instead? Yes, of course... but that's a different discussion. If someone says "play Legendary" or say "play Champions" my answer will be yes on both counts. No regrets investing in either :)

"Unlike Old Man Mike, I grew up on CCGs..." Or at least, that's what I heard in my mind. And it's not really wrong... :D

Legendary here but very curious about Champions

I like both quite a bit, but I am more likely to pull out Champions.

For a long while I called Marvel Legendary my favorite game. I loved the characters and the nearly infinite combos. Then about the time that Legendary Secret Wars came out I started to get bored with it. Now the game just feels too random to me to be fun. The strategy usually boils down to "Play all of your cards. Buy the most expensive hero card you can afford. If you have enough strength, hit the villain. Otherwise, kill the henchmen card that is the worst for your team." Champions has actual choices in what you put into your deck, and which cards you play. It may be thin right now, but lets see what people think about it after a year. They are releasing a 'story box' soon which might have a AH style mini-campaign, and the card pool keeps on expanding on a month to month basis. I'm also hoping that with the 'Aspect' part of each hero deck only being 20-25 cards, it will soon get harder and more up to personal taste which cards you use instead of being 'Solved' with the 'best' cards.

I wish I understood what they mean by theme. I find both games very thematic. Heroes vs villains,.good vs. evil...characters all act differently and act as you think they would. It's just a weird thing to me. I feel like not finding theme in games like these means a lack of imagination.

I want Marvel Champions so bad! It’s my next purchase for sure!

Legendary fan here but maybe would try champions

Marvel Legendary was released in 2012, which is eight years ago not five. It was the second game i bought after Pandemic. Still ML is my favorite game.

Really should have waited for Rise of Red Skull to come out before this video in my opinion.

Y'all getting pretty COSY round that corner! :D

I've been playing Legendary for a few years now, enjoyed it, but having just picked up Champions I find it has a better thematic feel - you KNOW that your are playing Spider-Man. I like that Champions has clearer organization and it really reminded me of Sentinels of the Multiverse in the set up and mechanics. Champions also felt more team play, even if playing Legendary co-op, there aren't many mechanics to help others. I will give a point to Legendary over Champions for the box set up. Legendary had decent room for the core, header cards (generic as they are), and a bit of room for expansions. Champions had no nifty board to organize the cards with (though one can be picked up as additional merch) or header cards (thank you BGG for links to those), and the cardholding insert is just generic and ill suited to the number of different ways there are to sort those cards. Enjoyed both, for their own reasons but have found that the deciding factor has been who I have at the table playing them. (side note - I'm a big fan of DC Crisis edition for that deck builder game over the standard DC Deck Builder play, I'm gonna search your archives for a review of that one).

LCG's all sound great ai love to play them but sitting down building decks really scares i feel i can never get them right and hence i don't play them as much

I prefer Legendary for the reason Zee gave at the end, it's been out long enough that I can just buy the characters/sets I want to include in my game based on who I know I like.

Champions is good but I like Legendary better. Legendary is my go-to solo board game, either one handed or two-handed. I like deck building games more than collectible card style games, the variety of combinations of setups in Legendary is insane, and I can easily setup and play a game of it in under an hour.

Two very different games to me, the only similarities are Marvel and cards.

Basically do you want a deck builder or a deck construction game. I'm more interested in deck building as I play the game so Legendary is the obvious winner between the two for me.

Ive played both games at great length and actually just repurchased Legendary after getting rid of it a while back because of playing Marvel Champions. While they both have their pros and cons, Champions feels decidedly more like a gamer's game since you build your deck beforehand and have to work out the combos yourself. Also, Champions is cool because of the combos you can pull off, but its a toss up whether you will be able to or not since the game isn't always very rewarding. Most games I felt like I spent more time playing the villain turn rather than doing cool things myself. Legendary is old. VERY old. I think there are definitely better deckbuilders out there. It does feel like its much more forgiving to someone entering in though as you don't necessarily need to do so much reading and you have much more you get to do on your turn. But this is just my opinion.

I like both so far. Legendary has a lot of the deep but superheroes these days, but hopefully Champions will catch up once its got all the MCU folks out of its system. I prefer the ability to ‘be’ a hero in Champions and put off buying Legendary for ages because it lacked that touch. Even so, the system for Legendary is good enough that it bypassed that concern. I have been more of a completionist of Champions because of the slow-ish releases and how early it is, while I’ve felt fine ignoring some Legendary releases like Deadpool, Fear Itself and Venom. I don’t know whether I’ll do the same in Champions or not... I guess they can test me by releasing an Inhumans expansion and I’ll see whether I still have to pick it up or not.

For the Legendary scaling maybe something like this: Rapid Action - You may at any time during your turn as many time as you wish look at the top card of your deck and either put it back or put it into your discard pile, this will not cause a reshuffle. 3 Player - The last player to act can do a rapid action on their first turn 4 Player - All players can do a rapid action on their first turn 5 Player - All players can do a rapid action on their first two turns It's not just worded to reshuffle before the draw, to not break wallcrawl. Haven't tried it, but it might be an idea. It _is_ a bit sad this is just a 2 or 3 players game for real. 10 villain cards before you even have a chance to draw any bought card is harsh!

Champions for theme and pregame deckbuilding.

Here I am waiting for a COMPETITIVE Marvel game. :/ Hoping Marvel Villainous is great!

Vs System!

Marvel champions is a game that I still break out probably once every two weeks for a couple quick matches.

Agreed Mike. I prefer DC much more than Marvel. Legendary is just so difficult to get on the table because the setup is just so tedious.... and at this point I don’t like any of the characters in champions

I think everyone has their own preferences and that's alright. I still love Marvel Legendary more than any Marvel board games, but only have some of the expansions because I just collect heroes / team that I like the most. Besides; I'm not a collector. Well, to each our own. :)

Tom: “I feel like this deck isn’t different from the others.” Me: wow. Welp check out Ant Man, Wasp, and Quicksilver. Those heroes add mechanics that we haven’t seen before. Quicksilver can ready a ridiculous amount of times. Ant Man and Wasp have 2 hero sides. I dunno. All of the heroes feel really fresh. The hook of the deck might be the same sure but each deck feels unique and feels like you are that hero.

These games are odd picks for a versus video. Deckbuilding vs lcg is so different that it is hard to compare what works best in either. A much better versus would be arkham horror tcg vs marvel. You can really get into the details of what makes them work well/not so well in comparison. The missing campaign in marvel is a detriment for me in that comparison. I think you should stick to games with a shared central mechanism.

Legendary is far cheaper for what you get, allows for fun and satisfying deck building, has nearly infinite replayability. LCG's have a deck making component which is less fun for me. I'd never invest in champions, and I actually got into legendary while they were both out.

I invested in MLeg around the first big expansion, and own about 80% of it, I think. I got a ton of mileage out of it, a lot of solo, taught it to a few friends for some 2 and a little 3 player. But lately I have to agree it does feel a bit tired and can play a little samey. Even so, I think it still fits the Marvel slot in my collection and I'm just not interested in what I've seen from MChamp. I like the single hero decks thematically, but LCGs just remind me too much of my MTG money sink days. I also disagree with Tom. I think the art (post-core set) is generally better in Legendary. Setup and breakdown does such though.

Legendary.

I love both of these games, I own everything for Marvel Champions and slowly building up to the full collection of Legendary. While I love them both, Legendary is the top dog for me. Both games are deck builders, just different deck building time. In Marvel Champions, you're building your decks before you choose a villain and character to play with. In legendary, you're deck building after choosing your villain and characters. Marvel Legendary is by far the easier of the 2 to build a deck for and way less time consuming. Yes, after each game you have to separate everything out, but it's far easier than having to revamp characters, or build decks in Marvel Champions when your getting the next set or next batch of characters and find cards in those sets that will really buff your favorite characters. It can take hours and hours building decks in Champions and even then you build duds because not all cards are good and not all characters are good. Some characters in Marvel Champions are just downright duds, while in Legendary at least the characters can be semi-good if you're able to pair them with good combos. Maybe I just prefer the more casual, simple play of Legendary, as Champions is vastly more complex, and a lot of times very dependent on your upgrades and supports. If you don't get the required upgrades/supports, you've pretty much lost within a few turns and that can be more daunting than getting a slow start in Legendary. Also, just advice to anyone that plays Legendary, when you're putting away your villains, go ahead and store them with their required villain group. It makes setting up games WAY faster than having to sort everything and find everything. I store all of my stuff in simple ways that makes setup take less than 3 minutes.

can someone explain to me why a game with Marvel as theme would need crowdfunding?

Legendary Marvel Champions United! boom.

Marvel Legendary is super fun solo, for me at least. I own and keep both!

this is wild. Marvel Champions is in Zee's top 10 now?

Marvel champions can be very casual. Do you want to win 90% of the time? Is that fun? If so, then buy Dr Strange and Captain America and play every scenario on Standard. I thinks it’s the best LCG for casual play. You can buy a $15 hero pack and use it to beat any scenario (outside of GMW expansion). The game can scale up in difficulty. It’s modular, so you can create interesting versions of the scenarios. And the card pool is expanding to the point where deck building is interesting. LOTR is just too hard and Arkham too complex. Champions feels balanced.

Shut up and Sit down did an excellent review of Marvel Champions. I personally think Marvel Champions has a lot more game and theme to it than Legendary, but I also think Legendary is not only boring, but the base game is pretty hideous to look at. Champions also has some amount of co-op to it and it really does feel like a cooperative game with more focus. However, as SUSD has said, it becomes a math problem the closer you get the the end and you know the game is won about a turn or two before it actually ends. I would have liked to see a bit more theme in the encounter deck and schemes, but sometimes they work really well thematically. That said, in comparison, I find the Cthulhu theme extremely boring, run down, an old beaten dead horse, and just unappealing, but the Arkham Horror LCG feels really good and makes me wish Marvel had something a bit more similar to it. So while I love Marvel and Hate Cthulhu, I find it easier to recommend AH LCG to gamers that don't have a bias to either one.

Did they change their minds since then ?

I do not feel that the set up and take down for ML is as bad as people make it out to be. Where is every one in a hurry to get to?

Legendary should be played 100% as a Co-op. Played the semi coop once and it just isn’t as fun. You’re a super hero team not a bunch of mercenaries. That being said I do like counting heads every game a la Legolas/Gimli.

Legendary felt slow, and boring to me. I know It’s not for me. I really enjoy deck builders, but that one didn’t hit. I love champions, great art, I love the way the game plays, and you actually feel like a hero doing stuff. Especially when you knock 15 health off a villain. I also like how each villain is unique, and I’m looking forward to the story box that’s coming out. That could really change the game. That could really add some depth of theme to it all. So I’m out on legendary, and I’m all in on champions