Saggyhead has got her measuring stick out in a brand new feature where she rates her top 3 games in board gaming mechanic fashion starting with legacy games!
SAGGYHEAD’S TOP 3
A legacy game is a game where the game starts off simple with a few rules and usually a lighter amount of strategy, and as each game is completed, more rules and more complexity are added. The game builds with you as you play. These games are more of an experience than a game in their typical sense and they are the thing I find most difficult to explain to non-gamers who inherited their parents’ copy of snakes and ladders and monopoly who are 40 years old.
Legacy games are something that I originally really shied away from, I didn’t like the thought of everything being over and done with after I had played. However when I had the chance to try My City, I knew that I had been wrong. These games were so much more than a “one and done”, the experience more than justified the price tag. In fact I now always have at least one of these games on my shelves and underway because the memories these games create are so very worth it. I have yet to be able to tear up the components no longer needed, and instead I place them under the game insert. There is absolutely no reason for this or benefit, but it seems to sit better in my brain…
- Clank! Acquisitions Incorporated
Clank! Acquisitions Incorporated is a deck building legacy which builds on that game system from its predecessors Clank! and Clank! In Space. In this game you are using your deck building skills to allow you to explore the map. Your starting hand is dependent on which character you decide to play as but generally these cards will allow you to move around the map and offer you currency to buy better cards from the market. These market cards are significantly more powerful than your basic cards and so as the game progresses you will build up to more and more powerful turns. This version of the game starts with a relatively empty board and as the game progresses you are encouraged to explore the zones and read from the book of secrets and get the story moving. The excitement and enjoyment of a legacy game is the twists and turns of the story and so I will ensure not to give you any spoilers or ruin the experience for you in any way.
The story in this legacy game is really what makes it. As you reveal new quests and challenges and places to explore, you will find yourself forgoing the short game for the exploration. This encourages you to really push your luck further and dive deeper and stay there. The element of pushing your luck and danger is really dialed up to 11 in this one. I love the comedic nature of the tone of narration and the twists and turns of the game really keep you on your toes. The core experience of Clank! is just enhanced by the story and the excitement of completing quests and gaining more stickers to the board. As the game progresses, you will gain accolades as employee of the month although winning the game does not always guarantee you the best rewards. Each game, although with the same basic premise will feel very different as you build up your deck and as the exploration unfolds. Some of the games take place on an additional board as well instead of the standard one.
Without spoiling anything, there isn’t much in the way of specifics I can say about why I love this so much. But I really think that this is one of the most loved legacy games and the highest rated version of Clank! for a reason.
- My City
My City is a polyominal tile laying game where you are developing a city from a grassroots through the ages. Each player starts with a blank board and their own set of building tiles with their player icon on the back; stag, eagle, bear or fox. These buildings come in red, yellow and blue varieties of shapes. The placement of the tiles is determined by the shared deck. As a card is flipped, everyone must find that tile and place it onto their board orthogonal to a tile already placed. The first tile must be orthogonal to the river, and then the game of Tetris begins. Your board will have rocks worth negative points which you want to cover over and trees that are worth a point if left uncovered at the end.
The game consists of 8 envelopes each containing three games that make up a chapter. Each chapter represents quite a significant change in the rule set, for example a gold rush, or the industrial era starting. Each episode has slight changes to the rules, usually changes in scoring or restrictions on placement. We found it so addictive to play this game and rattled through the games so quickly because we were having such a blast! I felt like the game was tense until the end and although I took a definitive victory in the end it all came down to the games in the final envelope to create that swing for the win.
Winning each game will result in you gaining points which are recorded by drawing onto your score track. But whether you win or lose, you will be placing stickers out onto your player board which will permanently change the way you place tiles onto your board. Winners will often get a benefit and hindrance at the same time, and losers will gain help for later games which will maintain that close feeling of games through the whole campaign.
For me this takes spot number two because it is such a great value game at around the £20 mark for a legacy experience and it also provides a great eternal game that you can continue to play. This is complex enough to be fun but not so complex that you cannot teach it to new players easily.
- Charterstone
Charterstone is a legacy village building game. Each player embodies a character, you have a choice of women and men and POC each with their own coloured symbol. This is a worker placement game where at the start of the game, the board is almost completely blank. In each players starting cards, there will be stickers to remove and place onto the board which are new worker placement spots. Each of the six villages has its own theme and will allow you to focus on different resources. As the game progresses you will be able to collect resources to unlock crates and gain new cards from the cardporium. These will give you new special abilities for later games, and often new rules and components to play with going forward. The game will open up both during the game and between games. As the game goes on you can use your actions to place new stickers onto the board for points and to open up new actions for everyone to use.
I really enjoy the way that this game builds up the board using stickers. Although the rules overhead was hard for newer players, I found game one pretty straight forward with not too much going on which was lucky as the sticker and crate opening was enough to keep my brain occupied. As more and more rules come out the game builds a lot in complexity of scoring and strategy although the accessibility of the board still remains the same.
Typically Legacy games are one and done but as you’ll see on this list, my picks flout this tradition. The board in Charterstone is double sided, and with the purchase of the recharge pack from Stonemaier, you can play the whole game again. The cards and written on components are refreshed and you get instructions for how to reset the components correctly. So this is kind of a two-in-one which I think in a while I would love to do. Perhaps I can get the full complement of 6 players this time!
