Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy First Impressions

Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy has fickle friends, concerning complications and tight table space.

I finally get to play this game.

It is 1729 in pre-revolution France, a time when the aristocracy has all the power and the means to rule the country. As a wealthy, well-educated aristocrat, you have travelled the world and had the fortune to enjoy your life to the fullest – but you see that history is about to change course and you know that in order to stay strong, your family must prepare well. You need to find new allies, absorb smaller families and use their potency to strengthen your kin. You have to arrange wise marriages, nurture strong connections at court, obtain titles, build mansions, and find the right spouses for your daughters and sons…

In Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy, you’re playing over 4 generations, building up your family name with fortune, friends and prestige.

Fortune is money, that’s a pretty obvious one. You can gain money or you can increase your income to gain extra money at certain periods of the game.

The higher your prestige the more Honour (Victory) points you will gain each round.

But no family can be successful without connections so your cards in hand, representing your Friends is a third, and quite unique resource.

The Family

You start with your ‘Head of Family’ and a handful of friends’ cards and some money. Your starting card shows you how much of each resource you start with.

It’s essentially a worker placement game. You have 2 action disks of your colour. Gain action disks of other colours that can be used for specific actions. There is a central board with several action spaces that are first come, first served and can only be used once each round. These allow you to gain a  title or buy a Mansion etc for differing effects.

You own player board has a few actions spaces for Marriage, having children, asking friends for money etc

Family Tree

The main part of the game will be building the family tree. You will marry off your head of the family and have children. In the next generation, you will marry off those children and have more children.

You Marry people off to the friends in your hand. Each has a cost (Women generally have a dowry so will bring income) and an ability. When a Marriage happens you draw a child card and place it under the newlyweds in the family tree. It can be a girl or boy, can have an effect must mostly not. Or, it can be really really bad.

This is maybe a thematic part of the game many people might not like.

I mentioned ‘fickle friends’ and they tend you leave you (you discard them from your hand) when you ask for money (poor you!) or you gain a  title (Poor them!) and again this fits into the theme.

Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy Summary

The game is very thematic, fairly quick, turns don’t take too long and while there is fighting over the actions on the centreboard, you don’t have a lot of confrontation which is nice.

I wanted to own it… Now I’ve played it I’m not so sure. It’s not that I don’t like it, I like it a lot. But I’m not sure the theme will be appealing to too many people so I’m not sure how often I’ll get to play it.

Also, I’m not sure my table is big enough!

Jesta ThaRogue