Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 60-90 min
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time: 5-10 minutes

Heroes and Legends is the latest expansion for Warmachine: High Command. Like the others it adds more warriors and warjacks to the series. The warcasters are more powerful versions of some from the base game.

Heroes and Legends Description:

If you have not played High Command before, I gave a basic overview of the rules and a review here. The rest of this post will highlight some of the new cards from Heroes and Legends.

Cygnar adds Lord Commander Colmen Stryker as a warcaster. He costs 5 Command to rush and has 5 Power. He also grants friendly warjacks at his location +1 Power and let’s you rush a warjack to his location after you battle for free. The new Thunderhead warjacks start with 2 Power and get an additional Power for each enemy at its location. Captain Maxwell Finn is a trencher commander and gives other trencher cards at his location +1 Power and Health.

Menoth’s new warcaster, Hierarch Severius, only has 2 Power but enemy warriors at his location lose Power equal to their base Power which he then gains. He also gives warjacks at his location +1 Power. The Covenant of Menoth is a warrior with no Power and 5 Health that cancels all enemy warjacks’, warbeasts’ and warriors’ abilities at his location. The Avatar of Menoth is a warjack with 3 Power and 6 Health that keeps your other cards at its location from being destroyed.

Supreme Kommandant Irusk joins the Khador forces with 3 Power. He costs 5 Command to rush and allows you to rush a warrior card from your reserves to his location. Like the other new warcasters he also adds +1 Power to friendly warjacks at his location. The Behemoth has 3 Power and a huge 7 Health. Its Armor Piercing ability reduces one enemy card with 4 or more health by 2 for the turn. Great Bears of Gallowswood is a warrior that gains +2 Power if there are two or more enemies at his location.

Cryx welcome new warcaster, Lich Lord Asphyxious. He has 4 Power, costs 5 War to rush and gives friendly warjacks at his location +1 Power. He also pulls all the undead cards from the discard pile to his location. Captain Rengrave lets you deploy a revenant card from your hand to his location when he is rushed, deployed or moved. The Deathjack adds an undead card from your discard pile to your hand if one or more enemies were destroyed at its location this turn.

Quick Review of the Heroes and Legends Expansion:

Heroes and Legends is a hefty expansion. Though it is the same size as the other High Command expansions, it adds some heavy hitters to the series.

The art and cards are the same high quality as those in the base set and there aren’t any new rules.

So I introduced all the new warcasters. But you might realize all these warcasters came in the base game. The new versions are more powerful (and expensive to rush) than the previously released ones. They also keep one of their original detachments and swap one out. Having more powerful abilities is cool but the extra cost means you might need to plan to rush them more.

There also seem to be more team cards in this expansion. There are leaders for Trenchers, Winter Guard, and Revenants. This can make focusing your detachments to these cards more powerful and fluid.

Heroes and Legends is my favorite Warmachine High Command expansion yet. It can give you some direction of how to build your deck depending on your faction. In some cases this requires having the previous expansions to have access to the right cards. The new warcasters add a lot of punch and seem necessary if your opponent is using one. If you have been buying the other expansions I think this is a must buy. Even if you don’t have other expansions I think Heroes and Legends is worth having. Give it a try and I think you’ll agree.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 4 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6