We’re diving into the new Black Panther Marvel Legendary expansion! This expansion highlights the heroes and villains of Wakanda. We’ll examine what new challenges you’ll face with Black Panther and whether or not we think this expansion is worth picking up.

The following review will assume that you have a basic understanding of Marvel Legendary. If unfamiliar, check out this post for an overview of this game.

Black Panther is an expansion with 100 new cards in the form of 5 new heroes, 2 masterminds, and 2 villain groups.

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Heroes

The new heroes in this set are King Black Panther, Queen Storm of Wakanda, General Okoye, Princess Shuri, and White Wolf. Black Panther and Storm are returning for the third time and the other three are playable for the first time in Marvel Legendary. 

My favorite hero to use in the set is Princess Shuri. Shuri’s cards are balanced with equal amounts of recruit and attack. Her cards let her take advantage of the featured keyword Empowered, which is all about manipulating the HQ.

The other character card effects are themed well and match each hero’s powers. King Black Panther and Queen Storm use the Throne’s Favor keyword. General Okoye is all about taking wounds then discarding them for powerful effects. And the White Wolf’s cards revolve around adding permanent wounds to the villain or mastermind that stay from round to round.

Overall, the hero classes/keyword matches the character’s power especially well in this expansion.

Old Keywords, New Tricks

The nice feature of Black Panther is there are no new keywords to learn. Instead, Upper Deck tweaked existing ones to new and interesting effects. For example, Ambush is a keyword that has been around since the first set for the villains’ deck, now the word appears on Hero cards.

When a hero with an ambush effect enters the HQ, players can gain a benefit if they have the required hero class in their hands. We have mixed feelings about the use of ambush-effect on heroes. It is a one-time effect that is easy to miss and it can be hard to build a team that really utilizes the effect well. It is also hard to keep track of while playing two-handed solo, my preferred way to solo play.

The other keywords were both introduced in previous expansions; Empowered (Ant-Man) and Throne’s Favor (Realm of Kings).

I find the Throne’s Favor keyword to be better for the theme than the gameplay. I found it hard to trigger its effect in the games I played because I could never get the throne in the first place or someone else would take it before I could activate it. Ultimately the effect never felt powerful enough to try to build around it. 

I loved the Empowered keyword which is used by both the Heroes in the Villains. I enjoy thinking about how to modify the HQ to weaken villains or boost your heroes. The empowered keyword works great with multiclass heroes, which there are tons of in this set. There is one massive drawback of this power: it can create an ever-changing shifting of attack values for heroes and villains which can be tricky to track.  

Masterminds and Villains

The two new Masterminds in this expansion are Klaw and Killmonger. These were the obvious and best choices when thinking of Black Panther focused Masterminds.

Klaw and his villain group, Enemies of Wakanda, all have the Empowered keyword to add variable strength to their base attack. As previously mentioned, I enjoyed this keyword with the heroes. With the villains, we had to use d20s to track the their true strength. Without them it was impossible to keep everything straight at a quick glance.

Killmonger and his villain group, Killmonger’s League, can’t be defeated until their base attack is at zero. You lower their attack by your heroes attacking the full base value. That will earn you a small reward and add a wound to the villain. You must keep attacking the villain the full amount minus the wounds on the villain until their base value is zero. That means while Killmonger is only 5 power to defeat at full health it requires a cumulative 15 attack to defeat one Mastermind Tactic card. 

Thematic Fighting Can Lead to Tiresome Gameplay

Wounding a villain is interesting. I enjoy how the ambush effects on Baron Macabbe and Venomm require the players to sacrifice victory points/their hands to add wounds. I enjoy that I can wear a Mastermind down over multiple hands instead of needing one massive takedown turn. However, in games with Killmonger and Killmonger’s league, I got tired of fighting the same thing over and over again for little reward and adding the wounds to the card just crowded up the playing space. I am a fan of the add a wound keyword since it did create interesting effects, but did not enjoy the villains that require you to reduce their attack to zero before fighting. I did enjoy this thematically for the Mastermind.

Like all the recent expansions, each mastermind comes with an epic version which increases the Mastermind base attack value and the negative effects of their Master strike are increased. Epic Masterminds are great since it’s like getting extra challenge modes for players looking for that experience.

Final Thoughts

Black Panther is not an expansion I would recommend if you are new to Legendary. It adds a lot of booking keeping and effects in different places. Overall it can slow down the pace of the game. The amount of math and adjustments each card requires to know what their ever changing attack values are can become tedious. 

The new elements added to this game are a remixing of what was done in other expansions to various levels of success. The schemes are okay but not so fun that I would play them outside of a themed Wakanda game. They’re designed well for the Black Panther theme, just not our favorites for general play.

If, however, you are a big Black Panther fan there is still a lot to be excited about with this expansion. Princess Shuri & Queen Storm are great characters and I will be mixing them into other decks often. The add a wound key word is a fun, new hero/villain power. The character powers are well themed and will help cure your Black Panther itch as you wait for the sequel. 

Pick up a copy of the Black Panther Marvel Legendary Expansion.
Find this and all our favorite Legendary expansions on our Amazon Storefront.

Marvel Legendary Playmat Giveaway

We are giving away a playmat for Marvel Legendary! A big thank you to our friends at Upper Deck for partnering with us on this! Head to Instagram to find out how to enter! 

Need a Legendary playmat but missed the giveaway?
You can pick one up here: X-Men Mat, Thanos Mat

A special thank you to our friends at Upper Deck Entertainment for sending us a copy of Black Panther for review and sponsoring this giveaway. As always, our thoughts and opinions are our own.

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