Published by Brookspun Games
Designed by Jason Brooks
Art by James Churchill & Yoma
1-6 Players | 90-180 Minutes
Life moves by pretty fast… We work hard, play hard and wrestle to find our place in the world, yet it all comes to an inevitable end for both the rich and poor and weak and strong. The only proof we were here and the lasting impact we can give is in the legacy we leave. I love the idea of living for a legacy because it’s the opportunity to shape the thoughts, values and lifestyles of people generations from now. Living not just for today, but to have our voice echo hundreds of years from now gives each decision we make so much more credence in both our personal lives and business ventures.
The idea for Legacies from designer Jason Brooks began while watching the movie the Greatest Showman. The fictional relationship between Hugh Jackman’s P.T. Barnum and Zac Efron’s Phillip Carlyle, who would serve as the successor to the Barnum’s Circus, sparked the concept of a game centered around passing along a business empire over a long period of time as it changes hands. In the game, players will grow their fortune, build valuable relationships and achieve fame over 3 centuries and 6 generations of successors.
In this economic-focused game, players will be investing in industries, developing relationships and earning fame in a dynamic environment where friends and enemies mean leverage, harmony with your successors can spark growth and private foundations and heirlooms build reputations. Turns are limited and choices are plentiful, but can you make the right decisions to build the most successful lasting legacy?
ON YOUR TURN
Players begin the game by choosing from 1 of 10 unique characters. These characters serve to define the identity of the legacy you’re looking to build. You might choose the Politician, the General or the Corporate Mogul. Or you might decide to play things a bit more deviously by choosing either the Master Thief or Underworld Boss among others. Each character is equipped with their own special abilities, starting resources and list of friends and enemies. In addition to the character choice, players will also have the opportunity to choose between playing aboveboard or underhanded. These choices determine how you will interact with other players during the game (harmony or cutthroat).
During a turn, players will initially choose from a hand of cards defined by the current game century. Each card provides multiple choices for the player. Players may choose the opportunity to purchase investments in 1 of 10 different industries, develop relationships with other players, gather gold by exploring the city, obtain resources or acquire an heirloom.
While each of these choices can lead to complicated, long-lasting implications, I’ll try to summarize them conceptually so you can get a good feel for the decisions you’ll face.
Investing in industries is a major source of both funds and fame throughout the game. There will be multiple “scoring” points where players will receive gold or fame based on the position and value of their investment in particular industries. Players will also have the opportunity to influence industries directly connected to their business for better or for worse as the game progresses. This is such a vital hub for the game’s play because it can not only mean benefits from investments you directly influence or own, but other players’ choices can directly affect your success. Players can invest different sums for larger shares and the value of the stocks fluctuate as it’s bought and sold.
The other primary card option is to build strategic relationships with other players. Each character comes with a handful of opponents defined as friendly and others serving as enemies. Building relationships with friendlies provide discounts to the cost of the relationship while enemies are going to cost you more. Each character has a bonus track that can be activated through these relationships. Each track is completely different, but will offer benefits such as gold, fame or resources. As the game progresses, players’ relationship tokens advance along these paths earning additional bonuses until they are eventually exhausted.
Exploring the city and obtaining resources both serve as ways for players to gather much needed tools such as gold or items to purchase heirlooms.
Heirlooms are another prominent piece to the game. Each player begins the game with 7 family heirlooms. These heirlooms can be purchased by any player (including yourself) during the game if they meet the resource requirements. These heirlooms earn players gold or fame depending on the heirloom’s owner and the value of the industries that player has influence over.
This brings me to the game’s global actions. In addition to generating heirloom income or fame, players will have access to 8 different global actions that allow you to gain benefits such as collecting dividends from your investments, contribute to your private foundation or host trade conferences. These are divided into mandatory and non-mandatory global actions and will ultimately trigger the end of the generation. All players benefit from these actions, but players triggering the actions earn bonuses.
I’m getting a little long-winded here, but I can’t forget identifying a successor to your business. Each generation, players will choose a successor. Each successor provides some type of benefit, but not all are beneficial to what you have going on. Choosing the right successor can expand your ability to build relationships or invest in business as well contribute to your foundation or protect your heirlooms (along with many other benefits).
This is probably a good point to emphasize the game’s variability. Along with 150 unique player cards to choose from, there are 60 successor cards—each with their own illustrated character and ability. I haven’t even discussed the 8 legendary characters you build relationships with or the 45 event cards that take effect at the end of each generation. Considering the 10 different starting characters, you can realistically play a completely different game of Legacies each time it hits the table.
Not only do the players progress over 300 years, the board evolves during that time as well. Relationship tracks add new tiles that change their value and the industry tracks evolve to reflect inflation over that time. These are neat little additions that bring the game board to life and prove to me that a lot of thought went into this.
The game plays 1-6 players and there is a couple different AI modes that can be implemented solo or added to spice up a 2 or 3 player game.
COMPLEXITY
Legacies is a fairly complex game that has a lot going on. It can definitely be punishing during your first couple of plays if you don’t have a solid teacher. The iconography is fairly easy to pick up on, but there are little rules here and there that can derail your gameplay. If you’re not careful, it’s really easy to miss some of these details. Like any heavy-weighted game, once you grasp the concepts and functions, you’ll come out on the other side feeling good about everything, but it may take 2-4 plays before you get there. The rulebook isn’t bad, but it did seem a little vague in a few areas and that did add to some of the challenge.
COMPONENTS AND ARTWORK
I had the pleasure of reviewing the deluxe edition of the game and I can’t say enough about the premium pieces.
The artwork from James Churchill and Yomo is fantastic. There are SO many different character illustrations and elements giving this production loads of personality. The main board is beautifully illustrated and engaging while the character boards really draw you into the world of each character. I loved how all 60 successor cards had a uniquely illustrated character and name… and they’re all incredibly distinct and fun. The board’s relationship track upgrade tiles that show up after the end of the first century bring a lot of life to the board and the game.
The graphic design is pretty strong throughout. The icons are easy to make out (maybe minus the tiny explore the city icons on the player cards) and clearly communicate their purpose.
One area that could have used some improvement was the rulebook. I didn’t love its layout and presentation. It often felt more like a list of bullet points rather than a guide to helping me engage the game. There are some decent examples that help, but I often found myself struggling to locate rules on specific topics. It does the job—just wondering if it might be a better resource if it was reorganized a bit and cleaned up.
Finally, let’s talk about the components: For the most part, they are WOW! The metal, gold coins and bars are worth your time alone. The wooden, silk-screened player tokens look and feel great as well. The boards are double layered making them a real joy to use. I did have some trouble with the primary player board once it interacted with the humidity in my house—slightly curling up. I really appreciate the ambition here, so I don’t want it to hold it too much against them. I’ve actually been able to work it out for the most part. The cards, tiles and additional tokens all feel great. The production of this one is one of the better ones I’ve seen in awhile.
MY THOUGHTS
I was immediately drawn into the theme and charm of the production. There is so much personality in this game. I’m also a sucker for economic games—so this had me pretty hyped from the get-go… but would it be fun and engaging?
This is a heavy, and lengthy game that requires both your attention to detail and a deep strategic ambition.
So many of the game’s mechanics intertwine in almost a tug-of-war feel beginning with the investment track. Everything in the game seems to pull from the position of each industry, how they’ve been manipulated and where you’re at in the flow of the game. This will trigger your income and fame, but it’s not as clear cut as it seems. On my initial play we bought and pushed prices higher without any regard or restraint. More is more, right? And why in the world would anyone ever sell an investment? Yes, there were repercussions, but it wasn’t until my second game that I considered a more balanced approach with timely stock sales.
I can only hint at the complexity here, but owning a certain stock can potentially earn you dividends, funding and fame. The higher the stock goes, the more benefits you receive. On the flip side, growing stock, especially those you hold influence in can come back and bite you in the rear. As players obtain your family heirlooms, they will potentially receive fame—and a lot of it–if you aren’t careful with your own industry levels. On top of that, your opponents can jump on board sending your industry stock even higher. Balancing these pursuits to optimize your gameplay really requires proper timing based on your own strategy as well as your opponents actions.
Where the game really succeeds is in its attention to detail. I mentioned the unique card illustrations, but each character has its own name and each player card has a (often witty) thematic title given to it—100% unnecessary, but still fun. The characters feel very fleshed out despite not having any backstory or flavor text. For example: the 6th and final heirloom for each character represents some deep, dark secret they’re trying to hide. The socialite has a forged birth certificate while the scientist has knowledge of an alien spacecraft. It’s these details that really brought the story to life for me.
As I mentioned before, the components are a lot of fun and the artwork shines.
The weight of each decision can get hairy and lead to a fair amount of down time. As the game progresses, you feel that weight escalates only leading to longer turns toward the end. Part of this can be attributed to having a lot of good choices with limited actions. This is really a strength of the game, and I’d imagine gameplay speeds up as you get more plays under your belt.
I really stumbled early on trying to remember all the little rules and additional pieces. This is where a lot of the game’s complexity lies… and it probably wasn’t all necessary. Each end of round triggers 2 or 3 additional actions while each end of century has 5 or 6 different scoring points. Nothing in and of itself is overly complex, but everything together as whole can feel a bit much. It was really easy to forget certain details… a few of which the game could have done without.
I really did appreciate the player cards and the many choices available. There is some luck with what’s available, and I did find myself wanting to build a relationship or trade an industry and the option just wasn’t there… But, there always seemed like there was something beneficial to do which was nice.
I’m also a fan of the relationship tracks. Every round you move forward and gain much needed resources. There is also a nice strategic/planning approach here as each track is unique earning you different resources in different increments each round so you can almost choose the track that best harmonizes with where you plan to be 2, 3 or 4 rounds from now.
It took me 3 games before I really began to appreciate the depth of the game. By that point, the primary strategy was clear, but achieving it wasn’t always as straightforward. I”m not sure how that will affect replayability, but as long as you have strong opponents, I don’t see anyone “mastering” the game anytime soon.
I think my main complaint about the game is that it runs pretty long. I really wish it was about 30 minutes shorter. As you hit the 3rd century and everyone’s game moves into that “turn maximization” mode, the AP starts to kick in. I appreciate that the decisions at that point in the game feel heightened, I just think if the game was 30-45 minutes quicker I’d be more likely to get it to the table more often.
FINAL TAKE
I really enjoyed my experience with Legacies. The theme and production really hit a lot of the right notes for me. This is a heavy game that’s going to require you to think through your choices, consider your opponents actions and plan ahead if you hope to be successful. There are a lot of rules and small details to consider during the game… a few they could have left out to quicken the pace and it still would have been just as good. There is a ton of replayability here—I just hope the length of the game doesn’t limit how often I break this out. While Legacies isn’t the best economic game on the market, it does have a lot of unique parts and it all adds up to a pretty solid and fun experience. Fans of theme, variety and details are going to get the most out of this challenge. For me, I had a good time with Legacies and look forward to playing this with my more serious gamer friends.
