Regicide Legacy review and photo book

I did a spoiler-free post about Regicide Legacy in April, giving a quick overview and showing the basic game components. This post continues from there. The first part of this post will contain no spoilers. If you have not played the game and you are thinking about it, it's safe to proceed. 

I played the Regicide Legacy campaign with younger daughter Chen Rui, who is back in Malaysia for her school holidays. We have played quite a fair bit of Regicide before and we both enjoy it greatly. We have been anticipating Regicide Legacy since I preordered it. The 12 missions in the game tell a story. It's a fantasy story about corruption sweeping the land. You are a mercenary band and you get involved in fighting this spreading evil and restoring the land to peace. For me the story is okay - just another fantasy story, but it is nice that the game makers spent the effort to write a story for the campaign. It gives some context and flavour to the missions you play. I did get a little attached to some of the characters in the game. 

Tons of content in the box!

Playing Regicide Legacy is like playing many different variants of Regicide. If you like Regicide, you'll probably like these new and creative ways to play it. There are many interesting card powers which get introduced during the campaign. Your deck will be altered in some ways. There is variety in the missions. They present different challenges and you have to think hard how to defeat the bosses. You will explore various strategies. 

The 12 missions

Usually for legacy games I'd recommend you play through the whole campaign with the same group of friends. The campaign is a shared journey and it is more meaningful when you go through it together. You will create shared memories. For Regicide Legacy, I feel this matters slightly less. I feel the story is not critical. Not that it's bad. Just that you can still enjoy the game experience without getting very involved in the story. You can swap players in and out, because each mission is a different and independent challenge to overcome. It may take a bit more effort to explain some card powers and rules a new or returning player missed, but that's not too bad. 

I have enjoyed my play of Regicide Legacy. Some of the missions took as many as 6 attempts to beat. I certainly got many plays out of this game. Our campaign took 25 games to complete, so on average about 2.1 attempts per mission. There were some late missions which Chen Rui and I managed to beat on the first try. In a way the campaign felt like playing 12 separate cooperative games in the same universe. Some were more interesting than others. As you progress through the campaign, you have more and more tools at your disposal, even though generally the bosses become harder and harder to beat, or the rules change to create hurdles for you. 

I think they should release an art book for Regicide Legacy. There is so much great art in the game! 

One thing good about the game is after you complete the campaign, you can keep on playing the game. There are game components provided to set up missions randomly every time you play. There are no more stories to tell, and your deck will not be modified any more. However for each game the rules and setup will vary. You get some elements which make it harder to win, but you also get some which help you. I think this is great. Some legacy games cannot be played any more after you are done with the campaign. Or they can be, but the future game doesn't look all that interesting. I have not yet played many of these future games for Regicide Legacy, but they look promising. It feels like the content created for the future games is even more than the legacy campaign. 

That's all I want to say about Regicide Legacy without spoiling the details for anyone thinking about playing it. This is just 10% of this blog post. The rest of this blog post will be more like a photo album than a blog post. Well, also kind of a session report. Word of warning - reading further means getting yourself into a spoiler fest. I'm going to spoil all your surprises for you. How important is this? I'd say it is not absolutely critical. Even if you know how the story goes and what the missions are, I think you will still enjoy the game. You still have to work out how to beat each mission yourself. Anyhow, proceed at your own risk. I personally prefer playing with no spoilers.

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One game mechanism introduced early in the campaign is corruption. 

The box labelled C is for the corruption mechanism. As you make progress through the campaign, some members of your mercenary party will be corrupted by dark powers. You will randomly draw a pair of cards. One determines the card value, the other a feature on the character. You have to find a character of that value who has that feature and corrupt him or her. If multiple characters fit the description, pick just one. Being corrupted sounds bad, but it is actually helpful. The important advantage is when you fight enemies immune to certain powers, if you send a corrupted fighter, that immunity is temporarily ignored. However the price you pay is a random card being banished. Banish means getting removed from the game. This can be painful if the card being banished is a strong one. 

These sea serpents are from Mission 2. They have immunity against two powers. They are not particularly strong though. When I played this solo, this mission was easy. However when I played a 2-player game, this was harder. 

Relics are special rules which help the players. The first such relic allows different players to contribute cards to the same kinfolk attack. A kinfolk attack means playing several cards of the same value together, as long as the sum is not more than 10. 

We met this guy early in the campaign. A strength of 25 is a big deal. Our fighters had strengths from 1 to 10. We were hoping he would be a big help, but he didn't participate at all in fighting. Also he turned out to be a villain. Sigh.

One of our corrupted fighters Theodoric

Belroth was corrupted too. And I just realised that the photos here are a mix from our campaign and also my solo play of the first two missions. Belroth was corrupted in my solo play, but not when I played with Chen Rui. 

Oooh stickers! I got to add powers to my characters! Some of my characters would have two powers at the same time. 

The mage is a new suit. Mages are powerful. When you play a mage, you get to draw a number of cards from the deck equal to the mage strength, then pick a card to add to your attack. You get to use both the attack value and the power (icon) of the chosen card. Cards not picked go to the discard pile. A mage can help you dig for a power you need. If you use a mage's power to pick another mage, you will dig again for yet another card to add to your attack. Mages can be very powerful. However, they also cause you to run through your deck quickly. You need to remember to heal (refill your draw deck). Also, all cards used in a magic attack are banished afterwards. If you use the mage to grab a powerful card, that card will be used this one last time in your current game. 

The mages appear in Mission 3

We had to fight a group of apprentice mages

Kauri had two powers now

Mekana is a powerful mage

We laid out banished cards like this so that we could see who were out of action

This is a mercenary. Mercenaries are in the M box. If you lose a mission, the next time you try again, you get one more coin, and you use your accumulated coins to bring in mercenaries like this. Mercenaries cost between 1 to 5 coins. If you keep failing a mission, every time you retry, you will have more coins to spend. For each subsequent attempt, you can choose to change the combination of mercenaries you bring in. 

In this particular mission, cards in the mission zone add strength to the enemy. 

Mission 4 box

Mages joined our party

We had to fight monster animals which were test subjects of dark experiments.

A mage attack. The card placed sideways reminds you to banish this set. 

King Kong?!

These mushroom monsters look scary.

This might give someone nightmares.

The mushroom power (official name is reaver) is fun. In many missions, you encounter some new friendly characters and add them to your deck. The new characters have a specific new power. After you beat the mission, usually only one of them joins your group and continues the journey with you. For these mushroom guys, Harore is the one who will join you. 

The mushroom doubles your strength, similar to the axe. If you have both mushroom and axe in the same attack, you quadruple your strength. When you use the mushroom power, you can decide how many cards you want to draw from the deck. Draw them, look at them, and banish all of them. Add the value of one of these cards to your attack strength, but do not use the power (icon) of the card. This works differently from the mage power. When you use the mage power, the cards you draw will mostly be discarded. Only the one you pick will be banished. Also, with the mage, the power of the card you pick does take effect. 

B means Beast. They work a little like the A's (Animals). You can play a Beast together with another card. The value of the Beast is the value of that other card. A Beast will have strength 10 if you pair it with a 10. Although there are four Beasts, every game you can only pick one to add to your deck. 

This is an enemy. This set of enemies are animated statues. 

Myla was a girl we picked up along the way, who later turned out to be evil too. She was a real pain in the neck. 

The stone guys are called guardians. Their power allows you to not defend against the enemy's attack for one turn. This can be a real life-saver, especially when the enemy has a high attack. 

As you play through the campaign, the boxes of completed missions are stored away showing the other side. This side of the boxes form a panorama. Nice touch! 

In one particular game Chen Rui played four 2's! That was amazing. 

At the time the top card of the discard pile was the last 2. What a coincidence. 

Goran is the Evergreen, an ancient being. He has been weakened by evil forces and he needs to regain his strength. When he first joins your party, he has no power. This axe power is added later. Notice it is a sticker. 

This set of enemies are merfolk 

The feather power (officially called druid) is very handy. You take the whole discard pile and deal it out to all players. From these cards, everyone picks one card to take in hand, one card to banish, one card to put at the top of the deck, and one card to put at the bottom of the deck. Cards not chosen are returned to the discard pile. This power when used at the right time can get you that exact card you need to save your neck or to perfect kill an enemy. 

At this point there were only three spaces left on the player aid not yet stickered on. 

Mission 7

We called Elkoshoth our MVP. He was corrupted, which meant he was still useful when we faced enemies that denied healing (red potion icon) and drawing cards (yellow violin icon). His combination of powers was convenient. We could first shuffle some cards from the discard pile to the draw deck, and then draw from the draw deck. Managing your supply of cards is sometimes challenging. You need to make sure you have enough cards in your deck before you draw. Drawing cards sometimes takes two turns, first to heal, then to draw. Elkoshoth's powers allowed us to do two things within the same turn. 

At this point we had three relics. The scarlet whistle allowed us to make joint Animal or Beast attacks. The azure emblem helped with mage attacks. Normally when you attack using a mage, you will draw cards from the deck to pick one to add. With the azure emblem, other players can add cards to the deck before you draw. This is very helpful if your teammate has a card that works well with your mage. 

The queens and the jacks of the merfolk enemies

Goran got his second power. Shadow received the stone (guardian) power. 

These are the pilgrims. Their values go from 2 to 7, four cards for each value. Pilgrims are not particularly strong, and they have no powers. For some missions, they fight alongside you. They are often not of much help. More liability than asset. 

The drum power (formal name is chanter) is a nice one. If you look at the colours of the new powers, you will find that they have the same colour as the basic power they are similar to. The mushroom is black, and it doubles strength, just like the axe power, which is black. The feather is red, and it allows you to take and move cards from the discard pile, similar to the potion power, which is red. The stone is grey, and it allows you to skip defending for one turn. The basic shield power is grey too, and it reduces the enemy attack. The drum power is yellow, like the violin (bard) power. When you play a drum card, you set a number, and everyone draws that many cards from the deck. Then you discard down to your hand limit. The drum power is not linked to the value of the card. You can decide to draw as many cards as you want, but everyone must draw the same number of cards. 

We met enemies with two powers again. These double headed giants were not too difficult to deal with.

However the dragons in the same mission were much more difficult because they were stronger.

This one was tough. We couldn't heal cards from discard pile to draw deck, and we couldn't draw cards. 

A lovely puppy! This card was used for just one mission. 

This is the combination I fear the most. We can't reduce the enemy's attack, which means every turn we must have enough high cards to discard to stay alive. However we also cannot draw cards. That means we will soon run out. The new powers like the drum and the stone can be very helpful. Since the enemies do not have such icons, these new powers can always be used. To beat Deathcries, the best strategy is probably to use the axe power. Kill it quick before you run out of cards. 

This was one of the missions which involved pilgrims. As you play, you can add cards to the mission area. Cards you add must be in ascending order, going from A to 10. Any non pilgrim card placed here adds to the enemy attack strength. Pilgrim cards go up to 7. That means if you move any 8 or 9 here, they will certainly add strength to the enemy. The reason for wanting to add cards to the mission area is for a one-time ability it triggers. Once you hit 10, you get to examine the whole discard pile to banish any cards you wish, and then what is left is added to the draw deck. This is important for banishing those weak pilgrim cards. Also you are refilling your draw deck. 

This was an interesting mission. In this particular game, we played this violin 3 (well, in proper game terms bard 3) and not a pilgrim 3 thinking that just a lowly 3 won't be too much trouble. We intended to progress to 10 as quickly as we could. It turned out to be much more headache than we expected. Instead of strength 25, our enemies had strength 28, and that often meant needing to discard an additional card to defend ourselves. Every damn turn. Eventually we lost this game. 

Myla was back! With a team! This was Mission 9, the toughest one for us. It took us 6 attempts to beat this, which means by that game we managed to win, we had 5 coins to employ mercenaries. We only paid for the 1 coin mercenaries, and we had five of them. 

Myla was hard to beat because she had two powers, and these powers could not be ignored by corrupted fighters. Violin means you can't draw cards, and shield means you can't reduce her attack. You must prepare yourself well before you face her. You will need some axes or mushrooms which help you deal double damage, because her health is a staggering 80. You probably need some high cards to be able to defend yourself. You need to defeat her quickly otherwise you will soon run out of cards. The drum power will be helpful, or the stone power. They are the stronger versions of the violin power and the shield power respectively. 

By now we had all four relics in play. The evergreen mother is a bonzai. It changes the corruption rule. When you play a corrupted card, instead of banishing the top card from the deck, one of your partners must banish a hand card. The good thing is you get to choose what to banish, because sometimes that top card from the deck may be a good one you don't want to lose. The bad thing is your team has one card fewer. Also if all your cards are good, you will be forced to sacrifice one of them. 

One very different thing about Mission 9 is you don't start with a full deck of cards. 30 of your cards are placed in the mission zone in three stacks of 10. You get those annoying pilgrims shuffled into your deck, and you will have to work with them. During play, you can banish a card from hand (preferably a lousy pilgrim) to bring a top card from the mission zone to the discard pile. That means this card will enter circulation later as you do healing. When you defeat an enemy by perfect hit, you put a top card from the mission zone directly on top of the draw deck. Mission 9 turns Regicide Legacy into a deckbuilding game! The story is your party has been broken up by the enemies, and some were captured. You need to rescue them while at the same time fighting the enemies. Banishing pilgrims is equivalent to banishing weak cards in deckbuilding games. Rescuing party members is equivalent to buying strong cards. 

Since Myla is the big bad boss you can anticipate, you will be tweaking your deck and your hand to be able to face her and win. You know what kinds of cards you need. While fighting the minor bosses, you have to position yourself to be able to face Myla. You save cards for the finale. 

At one point all three top cards in our mission zone were cats! Meow! 

This mission was tough and we had to use all four of the value 12 mercenaries.

This was my hand when we needed to face Myla. I was first to fight her. On our previous attempts, we never managed to even reach Myla. There was one game we lost even when fighting the third minor boss (out of eight)! We had too many pilgrims (who had no power) and not enough violin powers (to draw cards). I kept Lee for Myla, because he had the mushroom power. I kept two mages, because mages would let me dig into the draw deck to find good cards. I kept the 10 axe partly because it could help me cut down Myla's health quickly, and partly because I could potentially use it to defend myself. 

I played this campaign with younger daughter Chen Rui, and all our games were 2-player games. When facing Myla, this was her hand. She had two drum cards, which meant we could draw as many cards as we wanted from the deck, then discard down to hand size. She had a mushroom card too. She too had prepared well for the finale. 

We managed to beat Myla in one shot! Her health was 80. I played Lee paired with Quill. Quill was a mage, so I could draw 7 cards from the deck and add one of them to my attack. I wanted to find an axe, and the A axe was the only one available. Axe would be useful because when combined with the mushroom, I would quadruple my attack strength. By choosing Manuka, I would have the mushroom-axe combo, but it only added 1 to my strength, which was now 8. 8x4=32, which was less than half the health of Myla. Now I moved on to resolve the mushroom power. I could draw as many cards from the deck as I wanted. All these cards would be banished. If I wanted to defeat Myla straightaway, I needed to add 12 to my strength. We had four mercenaries which were value 12. We knew one was in the discard pile. I didn't have any in hand. Chen Rui only had four cards in hand. It was not likely that she had all three of them. I couldn't ask her because the rules disallowed that. I was pretty sure I could find a value 12 mercenary in the deck. I was a little conservative and wanted to draw just 8 cards, leaving about 8 in the deck. This way, in case we were very unlucky, Chen Rui could still continue to fight Myla. There were still cards she could draw. As long as she could survive her turn, when it came back to my turn, I was sure I could defeat Myla. Chen Rui said screw it, just draw the whole deck. She was positive our calculations were correct and we had mercenaries in the deck. So we went all in. Within the first 5 or 6 cards we already found Argo. Myla went down without firing a shot. 

This was one very satisfying game, after having made five failed attempts. This was a very deliberate game, with much strategising and planning. 

At the end of the game, we got a new version of Goran, woohoo! This tree power is a combination of axe, shield, potion and violin, plus it ignores enemy immunity. Normally only corrupted cards do that. So Goran has the advantage of a corrupted card, but not the drawback. 

Notice this is a foil card. You can't tell very well from a photo. You need a video or the physical card to appreciate it properly. 

Goran just before the final upgrade and Goran in final form. This is so Dragonball.

We had a new Beast, a mage type beast! This has Hayao Miyazaki vibes. I've seen something similar in Princess Mononoke (the movie) and Nausicaa (the comic series, not the movie). 

In Mission 10, brothers and sisters turn against brothers and sisters. Eight in our ranks who were corrupted turned against the party, and we had to fight them. Only now I realised we had so many axe fighters corrupted, five out of eight. 

The enemy summary card for this mission. Health is 5x strength. The enemies not only have immunity against your powers, they also have additional powers related to their icons. We managed to beat this mission on the first try. Fighting the number 9 Elkoshoth was challenging, but we prepared well and this helped. 

I forgot to take a photo of all the available mercenaries earlier, so here are the others I have not yet shown. Chen Rui and I mostly preferred to use the 12's. There are four mercenaries which are 2/5, meaning you can treat them as 2's or 5's. These help to create opportunities for kinfolk attacks. I suspect they will be more useful with more players. There are more cards in players' hands collectively. 

We never used the two value 19 wardens. They were tempting since they were so strong. But they had no power, only brute strength. We never used the jesters or the wild animals either. That's another pun I appreciate - wild not as in untamed, but wild as in they can be any suit. 

We beat Mission 11 on the first try, which surprised me a little. The biggest surprise in Mission 11 was how Goran was captured by the enemy and Esme died. Esme was killed when trying to save Goran. This was the first time we were asked to tear up a character card. For this mission we had to fight Goran. He was corrupted and turned against us. We had to fight four mutated justiciars first, and then Goran. We only had the fully restored Goran for one mission, Mission 10. What a waste. That Goran card was such a powerful card. 

Mission 11 required fighting the corrupted Goran

Esme died and we were supposed to tear up the card (but we didn't; we just set it aside)

After defeating Goran, we found that Esme didn't die after all. Instead she came back as the new Evergreen. So she now had all four powers, and also the Restored status. The Restored status ignores enemy immunity, and also saves cards from the banished pile. We examined the cards closely and found out that Esme had plot protection. Due to her character art design, among the 6's, she would certainly be the one who got corrupted, and also she would be the one who tried to save Goran and got herself apparently killed. The game designers pulled a fast one on us, making it look like chance that she was corrupted, and she got killed. It was all pre-planned as part of the story, and not left to chance. I can understand why. This is to keep some kind of balance in the game. 6 is an awkward number. Anything 5 and below can be used in kinfolk attacks. 6's cannot be in a kinfolk attack. It is not as strong as the big cards like 9's and 10's. So it is kind of weak. Fixing Esme as a story element means the variability will happen with other cards, which makes things more interesting. Also, for practical purposes, they only want to draw one Evergreen version of one of the party members. 

Old and new Esme

In this particular mission, you can't use Goran's Beasts. Instead, they become a mechanism for a random penalty at the start of every turn. They form a deck and every turn you must reveal a card. The suit determines the penalty you suffer. 

You will either discard or banish a card, and it can be from hand, from the discard pile or from the deck. In this mission, the top cards of the discard pile and the banish pile both add strength and power to the enemy. This is quite challenging. What is interesting is the start-of-turn penalty sometimes helps you. For example the top card in the banish pile is a powerful 10, and the penalty is you must banish a card from hand. You can then banish a low card to the banish pile, reducing the strength of the enemy and possibly changing their power to a different one which is less annoying. 

When all four relics were out, I thought that would be all the relics I would see. However, a fifth relic showed up, and it replaced the fourth. This is a restored version of the fourth relic. Cards in the party who were previously Corrupted now became Restored. The new ability to never get banished was important, because in the final mission, many cards were going to get banished. Having some which didn't get banished but returned to the deck was certainly helpful. 

The eight previously Corrupted members now had new pretty sleeves. They had the Restored status now. When you play a Restored card, you get to move the top card from the banish pile to the bottom of the deck. This is an important and very handy exception. Normally banished cards never return to circulation. 

These are the bosses of the final mission, Mission 12. Basically queens, then kings, and then the high arcana. The final boss has a health of 120! Crazy! 

Old and new evergreen mother, the final relic

Player aids when fully stickered. Previously I wondered why the two sides and how to use them. Now that I have completed the campaign, I understand. Since we had two players, I could use two player aids at the same time, each showing a different side. The side on the right is useful when I need to know which power resolves first. The side on the left is useful when I need to know precisely the actions that need to be performed at each step of a turn. 

In Mission 12, you must move the top card of the banish pile to the mission zone at the start of every turn. All cards here add to the strength and power of the enemy. This can be very difficult and you often need to intentionally manipulate what's at the top of the banish pile. When you defeat an enemy, cards in the mission zone, the enemy itself, and all cards in the discard pile, go to the banish pile. This is shocking. You have to actively manage your discard pile, moving them to the draw deck as much as possible before they get banished. You must try to slow down losing cards to the banish pile. In this photo above, the attack strength of the enemy was already 46, because we couldn't kill him fast enough. Surprisingly we managed to survive, even when this enemy was now immune to axe, potion and mage powers. 

Having three A's in Mission 12 is very bad news. A's are worth only 1 when discarding for defence, and in Mission 12 the enemies often grow to be very strong. 

Now we were at the final boss of the whole campaign, the high arcana, who had a starting attack strength of 25, and a health of 120. These were the cards I had in hand. I had saved the axe Beast, the 8 axe, and Lee (6 shield and mushroom) for this final fight. I also had many high cards to help me defend. 

These were Chen Rui's cards. She had Esme, which was certainly helpful. The Evergreen power meant she had all four basic powers, and any enemy immunity was ignored. We could still heal and draw. 

The final final boss

We managed to beat Mission 12 on the first attempt too. That was unexpected. I thought it would take at least 2 or 3 attempts. These were the cards in mission zone when we won. It took us five turns to beat the high arcana. There were only four cards in the mission zone because for the first turn we didn't have to move a card here. We defeated the previous minor boss with a perfect hit. One important thing we did right was the high arcana never got immunity for axe. That was what allowed us deal more damage to him. 

I was the start player when fighting the high arcana, and these were the cards I played over my three turns. Every one of our attacks involved the axe power. 

These were Chen Rui's cards played against the high arcana. Her second set dealt 42 points of damage!

It was highly satisfying to complete the campaign. The toughest mission for us was Mission 9, when we had to fight the strong version of Myla. It wasn't Myla herself who beat us. In the first five games, we didn't even manage to reach Myla. It was her lieutenants who defeated us. Our sixth attempt was the first time we managed to get to Myla. We prepared well for the showdown, and defeated her. 

Now that the campaign is over, we can still continue to play. A set of components is provided to create random missions every time you play. You draw a random location card, four bad cards and two good cards. The combination of these cards define the mission and the rules. The basic cards you will use are the deck of characters you have at the end of your campaign, and the basic enemies are four queen equivalents and four king equivalents. The mission setup might give you additional cards to play with, and these are cards you have used before during the campaign. So I am wrong to say that many cards are used only once. Some do come back in play in this future version of the game. 

This is how to set up a random mission. The E means Evergreen.

Some location cards

Some of the bad cards. That mental health card made me giggle. 

Some of the good cards. The puppy returns! And Goran too! 

The campaign is done, and the panorama complete.

This is one of the bad cards. That's a Star Wars reference. Somehow, Palpatine returned. That made me giggle. These fellas from New Zealand have my kind of sense of humour (the publisher Badgers from Mars is from New Zealand).

If you reach the end of this very long post, thank you for joining me on this journey. Hope you had fun!