Legend Raiders First Impressions

Legend Raiders sees players discover treasures and go on expeditions.

But do you have the tools for the job?

Hail to you, intrepid explorer! You’ve been selected to participate in the world’s biggest event. The best among explorers, archaeologists, and adventurers will compete to decide who’s the most excellent. The veil of mystery continues to surround many treasures and legendary places: Will you be able to dig them up and prove that you are the best? —”Legend Raiders Inc. – Scouting Bureau”

Legend Raiders Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

Players roll a die that gives them one of 3 effects for the round.

They will then take a discovery tile and the 2 tool tokens in the same column from the headquarters board.

Or they can go on an expedition to take an expedition card, and use the required tool tokens shown on a taken discovery tile to score it.

How do you win?

When a player has 6 discovery tiles the game ends.

Players score their expedition cards by matching symbols on their scored discovery tiles.

The player with the most points is the winner.

Main Mechanisms

A bit of set collection. You need tool tokens to fulfil discovery tiles and discovery tiles to fulfil expedition cards. But the tools are gained at the same time as the discoveries and the expeditions are taken when a discovery is, well, discovered. Work that out,

USP

Nothing truly new here.

Theme

I like the expedition theme. I love the pun names of the characters like Lana Soft and Lin Diana Jones.

Setup

Put the tiles, tokens and cards out! Not much to do here.

Components & Artwork

Very standard components but they’re pretty good ones.

The art is a very nice early cartoony early 20th century.

Ease of Teaching

This is a very simple game to teach. Everything is open information and very intuitive.

The die only has 3 different symbols. One is to take a tool from the bag and another is to gain an extra point when discovering a thing that round.

The 3rd is to make all players flip their torch to the other side. When the torch is on the ‘lit’ side, it can be flipped face down and used as a wild card tool. The very nice gentleman I played the game with at Essen Spiel struggled with this for some reason so I’m mentioning it here.

Similar Games

For the discovery element, Archaeology: The New Expedition comes to mind. It’s more push your luck than set collection though but a decent game.

For a family weight set collection game with extra steps, Yak is good fun!

For a beefier game, Lost Ruins of Arnak has an exploration theme and also the set collection element.

Legend Raiders Review

Positives

A nice easy game, it’s a very pleasant experience.

The overall look is cool.

The character names are hilarious.

The more discovery tiles you take the more coins you cover on your board so the fewer points you score when discovering. This forces you to be efficient which I really enjoyed.

Negatives

It’s a bit lighter than I prefer my games.

Will probably lack replayability.

Summary

A very fun family weight game

Jesta ThaRogue