Kingdom Legacy

FryxGames are best known for their massively successful Terraforming Mars game. That was the breakout hit at Spiel Essen 2016 and it's since expanded into a behemoth of a game, with multiple expansions, promos and deluxified components.

Kingdom Legacy is at the other extreme - at least initially. It's a solitaire game designed by Jonathan Fryxelius, and it comes with short set of 'golden rules' that mean you can be up and running with it remarkably quickly. We won't give away any Spoilers but you'll find the game evolves and more rules will emerge as you play. The core game pack is just a thick deck of around 140 cards, plus a sheet of stickers. The word 'Legacy' in the games' title isn't just there for flavour – this is actually a legacy game where, over time, you'll be putting stickers on cards to modify and upgrade them, and you'll be encouraged to physically destroy cards that you permanently remove from the game! However, your initial draw deck is just the first 10 cards and the legacy element of the game doesn't kick in until you reach card #23.

The striking feature of the cards is that most have different values and effects when you upgrade them by rotating them, by flipping them and by rotating the flipped side; so each card has four possible orientations, values and effects; and that's before you reach for those stickers. Cards will typically give you resources that you can spend to upgrade, tho' upgrading a card in this way will end your turn. Cards can also be trashed (removed permanently from the game) to draw other specifically numbered cards. You'll also add cards to your draw pile each time you have to shuffle and recycle your discard pile; and some cards will introduce new rules and some may have a negative impact or effect...

Fully upgraded cards are worth points, and for these solitaire games you're trying to rack up the highest score you can; so over multiple plays you're competing to beat your personal best. This is also a game tho' of exploration, in that the choices you make over which cards to upgrade will affect the paths you get to take as your plays progress.

Once you trigger the legacy effects you can't readily restart and replay the game but if you're hooked like we've been, you can plough on to add the expansions. Kingdom Legacy: Distant Lands is another similar-sized box of (160) cards and is essentially two large expansions. The smaller Adventures (29 cards) and Merchants (26 cards) packs each add further dimensions to the game.

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