No Mr. Bond, I Expect You To Deck-Build...

Legendary: A James Bond Deck Building Game is more proof of how robust the Legendary game system is. Originally designed as a Marvel superhero game, Legendary has gone on to embrace franchises as diverse as Alien, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and even Big Trouble in Little China. Each new version has added something new to the game's simple deck building mechanics. For the most part these additions have integrated with the core game pretty seamlessly, while at the same time making each version of Legendary seem unique to its particular franchise. With its outlandish villains and often preposterous gadgets, the James Bond franchise isn't that far off from superhero adventure anyway, so it's definitely a good fit, requiring minimal changes to the game's structure.

New to the game the concept of Missions, a new card type that goes into the villain deck. While normal villains have to be defeated by playing cards with Attack value, missions work a little differently, offering alternative ways to defeat them such as using recruit points. Each mission set also includes an "inevitable mission" that starts the game on the bottom of the villain deck, acting as a timer to determine when the game ends and giving the last few turns a bit more excitement and drama.

The James Bond edition also brings a few new keywords and accompanying game mechanics to the game. Chase cards move more quickly through the play area, giving players less time to defeat them, and Squeeze, a keyword created specifically for Famke Janssen's absurdly over-the-top character from Goldeneye, reduces the number of cards available to recruit. Several cards taken from Casino Royale require the player to create a sort of poker hand using their cards' various symbols and values

The game play sticks to the core Legendary structure rather than the Encounters variant used by the majority of the non-Marvel versions, but it does group the encounter cards by film, with cards from Goldfinger, The Man With the Golden Gun, GoldenEye, and Casino Royale. This allows players to play out the events from these four films, but it also means that a ton of content from the other 20 films in the series (including Timothy Dalton's version of the title character, my personal favorite) is entirely missing. Hopefully expansions are coming.

This edition avoids the inconsistent artwork that is the Legendary series' only shortcoming by using stills from the movies, something they seem to be moving towards with their games licensed from film and TV properties. This makes for a better looking game, but also makes it a bit more jarring if you plan to try combining this set with any of the other Legendary games (which should otherwise be possible, at least theoretically).

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A solid entry in the Legendary series that stands on its own if you're just looking for a good James Bond game.

• Legendary: a James Bond Deck Building Game official website
• Legendary: a James Bond Deck Building Game on BoardGameGeek