Upper Deck has just announced a new Legendary Encounters table-top game (board game) that will be based on The Matrix film series.
Legendary Encounters is a series of deck-building board games where players have to cooperate and work together to win. The many games are set in different popular universes, and players get to take on roles specific to the movie or franchise that their edition is set in, and sometimes even recruit allies that they recognize from the films.
Encounters in the games generally follow the sequence of the connected movies as players work together to complete challenging mission objectives.
The slogan of the games is “Work Together or Die Trying…”
Legendary Encounters: The Matrix
Legendary Encounters: The Matrix will be the latest entry in Upper Deck’s long line of board games, and was officially unveiled at GenCon 2022 as part of a series of new licensed Upper Deck games.
Like the other games in the franchise, Legendary Encounters: The Matrix is a standalone game, but it should have some cross-compatibility with the other games if you have more editions.
Demos of the board game were available to try at GenCon which revealed that the game will be split up into “acts” that mimic the storyline from The Matrix trilogy of films, as is common with most of their games. Much of the gameplay is the same as the core of all the board games, but each character has a unique starter card of some kind that is tied to their character. Upper Deck has opted not to use stills from the movie for the art of their cards for this edition, instead including hand-drawn cartoons for their art.
Unlike the Marvel Legendary games by the same creators, Legendary Encounters games are true cooperative games, requiring the help of other players to beat the game. Each player controls a specific character from the game which are sometimes well-known characters from the franchise or characters based on them.
As it is still a deck-building game at its core, players must build their decks by purchasing cards in a common market area. Players can buy cards that are tied to any character, although it is recommended that a player tries to synergize their deck around their character and their character’s special abilities.
Other Legendary Encounters Games
Legendary Encounters: The Matrix is just the latest in a long line of licensed deck-building board games by Upper Deck, including Alien (2014), Predator (2015), Firefly (2016), X-Files (2019), and James Bond (2022).
In each edition, players get to play their favourite characters, fight the specific evils of the franchise and experience immersion in their favourite movies. Legendary Encounters: Alien is particularly interesting, as if a player’s character dies to a Chestburster, they turn into a Xenomorph for the rest of the game, trying to thwart their fellow players.
Another long-running Legendary game is the one based on The Marvel Universe that has annual updates and expansions. Upper Deck announced their latest plans to include Black Panther in the next expansion, as well as a ‘big box’ expansion, focused on the Infinity Saga.
