Legitimacy - Review

A couple of months back I sold my copy of Talisman which I'd been lugging around since the 80's. Why did I sell it? I realised that I'd become reluctant to play it. The reason I was reluctant was simply that the game was too darned long, even when I used my "play fast rules". I also found the use of counters for everything a wee bit fiddley.

The hole that Talisman left in my collection has now been very well filled by Legitimacy!

In this game you take control of a character in a fantasy land and move around the board fufilling quests collecting crown jewels and then race to claim the throne.

The charcater you play can have three stats, move, fight and magic. Move is a bonus you add to a die roll when it comes time for you to move. Fight is added to a die when you're bashing another player, and magic is a ranged attack which can take various forms depending on spell used.

All the chracters start as "Good" but if you attack another player your'll become "Evil". This doesn't change your character as such, but if you have any "Good" followers they will leave you when you turn "Evil" and vice versa. Once you complete a mission and gain a Jewel however your character becomes "good" again, huzzar!

You'll also start with a random pet, which adds to one of your abilities.

The board is based on large hexagons each of which has a colour. Your character has a colour too, and an associated board hex. When setting up the hexes as the play board you always start with the black hex and add the hex for each character. So if you have three players you would have a board made up of a total of four hexes. These hexes are cute with comical graphics and little characters hidden amoungst the artwork such as the nessie in the lake.

These hexes, contain a number of path ways and you can move your character along these (roll a die add your move stat). The paths cross from hex to hex. The paths all have various munbers of spaces along them, including named spaces and black spaces. If you choose to stop at a black space you can draw a card that might be a mission or an object. If its a mission, which is usually just travel to a named space, your in luck. Once you travel to that named space you'll get to draw a Crown Jewel card. You'll need three crown jewels to win. As a bonus some of the Jewels also have special abilities.

As you're traveling around you are able to attack or zap other players and nick their stuff, of course they'll be trying to do the same to you! This leads to some careful decisions as to which direction and how far you might travel along certain branches of the paths. As I found out while playing, it does no good to travel up a dead end path to get to a named space so you can grab a jewel, only to find yourself trapped,attacked and looted!

Once you've got your hands on the required three jewels you race to the castle throneroom at which point you'rw the winner.

This is a light game with comical artwork that is fun to play with the family. It's length is just right for the complexity.

Here's why I feel this replaced Talisman:

The game DOES NOT drag on for three hours of roll and move.
It DOES NOT have lots of fiddley counters used to track everything.
It DOES NOT have a bunch of fiddley rules for what you can carry.
It DOES NOT have you constantly going backwards and forwards trying to get to a particular space.
It DOES NOT have the equivalent "Bandits" card to spirit eveything that you worked to gain in the last two hours away to the oasis.

IT DOES play in a decent amount of time.
IT DOES use cards to track your goodies and abilities.
IT DOES vary with each play depending on what characters you choose.
IT DOES vary what spells, pets, objects and missions you have to complete.
IT DOES generate a lot of table chat and FUN!

All in all, I really like this game, comical, light, fantasy adventure in less than an hour.