Legendary: Game of Thrones

Gameplay

Objective

Earn the most Victory Points! Defeat enemy allies, support friendly allies, and capture bystanders to earn Victory points. When one player has lost three of their masterminds or a total of six masterminds have been defeated, the game ends. The player with the most Victory Points wins.

Set Up (2-player)

You need the main playing board (the one that has a map on it) and two personal playing boards. Choose one player to be the Starks and one player to be the Lannisters and insert the representative house crest into your personal playing board.

Decks:

• Personal Decks
  • Each player’s personal deck is made up of 6 Merchants, 4 Soldiers, and two minor hero cards, selected randomly.
• Hero Deck
  • There are 18 different Heroes that each come with a deck of 14 cards: 2 Uncommon cards each with 5 copies, 1 Uncommon card with 3 copies, and a Rare card. Each player gets 4 Heroes and their corresponding 14-card decks
    • Starks: Kingdom of the North; Lord Eddard Stark; Winter is Coming; Young Arya
    • Lannisters: Hound & Mountain; Jaime Lannister; Queen Cersei; Tyrion Lannister
  • Ally Deck
    • Each house has a few different Allies & Henchmen. To make up the Ally Deck, each House sends in an Ally group and a Henchman group. In a two-player game, you also add in one ally or henchmen group from each of the other two houses
      • Starks: The North and Stark Bannermen
      • Lannisters: Siblings & Comrades and Redcloaks
      • From other houses: King’s Law and King’s Guard
    • Also add: 12 random cards from the Event deck, 8 master strike cards, and 4 bystanders (drawn from the Bystander deck)
  • Bystander Deck
    • Shuffle together the Bystander cards and the remaining minor hero cards

Main Playing Board

• The Bystander Deck, Wound Deck, and Maester deck go face up in their respective spots. The Event Deck is face down, as well as the ally deck

Personal Playing Board

• The 5 Mastermind cards go face up in the Mastermind spot
• The bottom two Defender cards should be face down, with the remaining three face up directly on top.
• The Hero deck goes in the Protagonist pile spot
• Flip the top 5 cards from your hero deck and place them face up in House spots

Draw six cards from your 12-card personal deck to make up your starting hand. Each player starts with three Victory Point Tokens. You are now ready to play.

On Your Turn:

On your turn, you can use the cards in your hand to attack and/or recruit.

Take stock of your hand. Initially, it will consist of merchants (which offer recruit points), soldiers (which offer attack points), and minor heroes (which can offer both recruit and attack points, and usually a special ability as well). As the game goes on, you will have heroes, Maester cards, event cards, and wound cards in your hand as well.

Flip over the top card from the Ally deck and place it in the Bow section of the battlefield. It will be one of the following cards: friendly ally, neutral ally, enemy ally, master strike, bystander or minor hero, or event.

• If it is a friendly ally, you can spend attack points to move it down the battlefield towards the escape.
• If it is a neutral or enemy ally, you can spend attack points to defeat the ally and add it to your victory pile, earning a Victory token.
• If it is a master strike, move the top Mastermind card of the player whose turn it is to the bottom of their Mastermind stack. Then read the “Master Strike” effect of the Mastermind that is now on top. Do what it says and put the Master Strike card in the KO pile (general discard pile, which is separate from your personal discard pile)
• If it is a bystander or minor hero, it gets captured by an ally. Put it under the ally in the range space that is closest to the ally deck. If there are no allies in play, then the bystander goes into the victory pile of the player whose turn it is.
• If it is an event, you must first address the lineup cycling effect. Each event has a number (1-5) which correspond with the lineup spaces on a player’s personal board. Each player must cycle the corresponding card out (put it at the bottom of your hero deck) and replace it with the top card from the hero deck. Then, follow the instructions of the event.

You can spend your attack points as you see fit:

• Attack a neutral and enemy ally and add it to your victory pile. You also earn a Victory token.
• Attack a friendly ally to support it, moving it one space down the battlefield
• Attack your opponent’s defenders. These cards defend masterminds, which cannot be attacked unless all defenders have been defeated.
• If you have enough points and defenders have been defeated, you may attack your opponent’s mastermind.
• If you have 5 attack points and it costs 3 points to attack an enemy ally and 2 points to attack a defender, you can do both.

You can spend recruit points to purchase heroes to add to your discard pile, which will then be cycled into your hand for future rounds.

As the game goes on, you will have more complex cards cycled into your hand. By more complex, I mean the text on each card will instruct you to do different things, which can advance your gameplay.

If you attack an ally on the battlefield, you remove it from the battlefield and add it to your victory pile. You also must do what the “Fight” instruction says. The ally will also indicate how many victory tokens you earn for defeating it.

If you flip over an ally card and it is not from the same house as what’s already in the Bow space, move the card that’s in the Bow space over to the Spear space. If it’s from the same house, both cards can exist in the space. However, each space can only hold three cards of the same house.

If all five battlefield spaces are full and you flip over the top card from the ally deck and it can’t be added to the card already in the Bow space, battlefield positions shift, meaning the card(s) in the Claw space move into the Escape space.

• If the ally that escapes belongs to one of the players, that player gains one victory token
• If the ally had one or more bystanders captured, they go into the victory pile of the ally’s owner. Bystanders captured by an escaped neutral ally go into the KO pile.
• If the ally was not from your house and you have six or more cards in your hand, you must discard a card. If it’s a neutral ally, all players with six or more cards in their hand must discard a card.
• If the ally has an escape effect on its card, do what it says

The new ally card may have an “Ambush” effect. After moving cards down the battlefield (if necessary), immediately do what the Ambush effect says. If the battlefield movement resulted in an ally escaping, do the escape effect first.

Maester, Wound, Event, and Bystander cards will come into play as the game goes on, so you don’t have to worry about them initially.

History

Legendary: Game of Thrones is brought to you by Upper Deck. Upper Deck is a trading card company that’s been around since 1989, when they launched their first baseball trading card set. While the business was built on sports trading cards, it’s since evolved into the world of entertainment, too. Upper Deck was an idea first thought of by Paul Sumner back in 1987. He worked in printing sales at the time and came up with the idea for a premium card. The rest is history!

This is an extensive and very in-depth game, so I want to shout out everyone involved in its production:

• Game Design and Card Set Design: Rob Heinsoo
• Associate Designer: Chris VanMeter
• Director of Entertainment Brands: Travis Rhea
• Brand Manager: Corrine Deng
• Director of Game Development: Bubby Johanson Sr.
• Game Developer: Mark Shaunessy
• Product Manager: Rob Ford
• Game Developer: Case Lopez
• Game Development Coordinator: Zack Stevens
• Graphic Design: Krista Timberlake
• Art Direction: Andrew Ballestros, Erika Klock, Emily Mazza
• Card art: Andrea Adiletto, Federico Bertoni, Katherine Lobo, Matteo Meloni, Jaka Prawira, Riccardo Robaldo
• Project Managers: Keli Lewis, Danny Montejo
• VP of Production and Logistics: Suzanne Lombardi
• President, Upper Deck Company: Jason Masherah
• Playtesters: Chad Brown, Bobby Coovert, Sean Dawson, Maximillian Dennis, Lisa Eschenbach, Miguel Friginal, Trevor Harron, Paul Hughes, Silas Hughes, Rob Lightner, Ryan Martin, Dan Moen, Karen Ressler, Keith Richmond, Jonathan Tweet, Vito Munoz, Rob Watkins
• Original Legendary ® Game Engine Design: Devin Low

Variations

Legendary: Game of Thrones is one of many trading card games created by Upper Deck. On their website, you can also find:

• Legendary: 007
• Legendary: Marvel
• Legendary Encounters: The X-Files
• Legendary: What If…?
• Legendary Encounters: The Matrix