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Pandemic Legacy: Season 1
Lose a month and you play it again, then the calendar moves on regardless, so a campaign runs anywhere from 12 to 24 games. That rhythm is why this is still the benchmark: every defeat pushes the story forward, and the consequences land on the components. Stickers permanently mark the board, characters take scars that hinder them, and some cards are torn up and thrown away.
It starts out as ordinary Pandemic, which makes it the easiest story-heavy legacy campaign to teach a group. Torn-up cards do not come back, so plan on one campaign per copy: the finished box is a record of your year together, not something you reset.
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Gloomhaven
The legacy here is a whole world rather than a single board. Finishing scenarios places illustrated location stickers on the city map, ability cards take enhancement stickers that change what they do, and 17 character classes wait, mostly sealed, for your group to unlock them. Each hero chases a personal goal and retires on reaching it, which pushes players into new classes and keeps a long campaign from going stale.
There are 95 main scenarios in a box that weighs about 21 pounds, so this suits a group ready to commit for many months of tactical card play, with the stickered map left behind as a record of everywhere your party has been.
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Charterstone
Jamey Stegmaier's competitive village builder turns worker placement into a legacy campaign. Building stickers peel off cards and go permanently onto your own charter of the shared board, and more than 75 numbered crates hold new rules and pieces that open as the 12-game campaign unfolds.
Its honesty about permanence is the selling point. When the campaign ends, the village you built stays behind as a one-of-a-kind worker-placement game you can keep playing, and an optional recharge pack lets the same box host a second campaign. It also scales from one to six players, which is rare in this format.
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Risk Legacy
The 2011 original from Rob Daviau and Chris Dupuis still has the most gleeful sense of destruction. You choose one of your faction's two powers, stick it onto the faction card, and tear the other up and throw it away. Winners sign the board and found cities, scars stay on the map for good, and sealed packets wait in the box for conditions to be met during the 15-game campaign.
It is competitive Risk at heart, so it suits a fixed group that enjoys grudges more than puzzles. The board can keep changing after game 15, and you finish with a version of Risk nobody else owns, though replay value fades once every packet is open.
More about Risk Legacy5
My City
Reiner Knizia's polyomino city builder is the gentlest way into legacy play. The campaign is 24 games of about 30 minutes each, grouped into eight eras of three, and stickers alter each player's landscape as new rules arrive. Short sessions mean a group can finish an era in one evening, and the publisher pitches it as a family legacy game with simple rules.
One review found that the city evolves through new legacy content and rarely through the players' choices, so groups wanting a branching story may find it thin. What it does better than almost anything here is the ending: flip the double-sided board and it becomes a repeatable game, no reset kit required.
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Pandemic Legacy: Season 2
The sequel flips the premise: the world almost ended seventy-one years ago, and instead of curing disease you work from floating stations called havens, re-establishing supply lines to cities that have fallen off the grid. Rebuilding a network, rather than holding back outbreaks, makes it feel like a different game from its predecessor even though the core turn is familiar.
It is the natural next box for a group that finished Season 1 and wants the same pressure with a new problem to solve. Your decisions carry into future games and new components unlock as the story moves on.
More about Pandemic Legacy: Season 27
Pandemic Legacy: Season 0
A Cold War spy thriller wearing Pandemic's rules. It is 1962, your team of medical graduates has been called up by the CIA, and the campaign runs across 12 months of objectives in which every success or failure brings you closer to the truth. Swapping field medicine for espionage gives the series its most distinct tone.
Z-Man released it as a prequel to the first two seasons, so a group that has already played them gets the pleasure of seeing where things began, while newcomers face the same month-by-month pressure from scratch. Three sticker sheets and a two-part legacy deck in the box show how much of it gets marked up along the way.
More about Pandemic Legacy: Season 08
Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated
The funniest campaign here casts your group as new hires of a dungeon-delving franchise, sent out by your boss Omin Dran to bring back treasure. Underneath sits Clank!'s deck-building dungeon run, with a giant dragon standing between you and the loot, and around it the legacy layer adds stickers, new board elements and a franchise track tied to the box that stores your starter cards.
The campaign promises at least 10 sessions, and you can keep playing in a non-legacy mode afterward, so it is a good choice for a group that wants a lighter, joke-filled story without throwing the box away at the end.
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Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West
The map literally grows. The United States is split into 13 jigsaw pieces, only five of which form the starting board, and the winner of each game chooses where the map expands next. Over the 12-game campaign new cards, rules and stickers pile up, and what you complete is stored in a vault box to be tallied after the final game.
It suits a group that already loves Ticket to Ride and wants a long, familiar arc rather than shocking twists; Shut Up & Sit Down found that it plays things safe. It is also one of the pricier boxes here, listed at around $120 when it launched. When the campaign ends you can keep playing it as a regular Ticket to Ride game.
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Machi Koro Legacy
The quickest full campaign on this list: 10 games of roughly 30 to 40 minutes each, so a group could finish it in a few evenings. Along the way you tear up components, add stickers and open surprise envelopes and tuck boxes as the dice-rolling town builder grows new rules.
The payoff is generous. At the end you keep a customized version of Machi Koro that you can go on playing, which takes the sting out of the destruction. Reviews split on the legacy layer itself: Mano Kent Games called it a delight, while Meeple Mountain found few consequences to player choices, so it suits newcomers to Machi Koro and groups wanting a light legacy game more than those after deep consequences.
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Betrayal Legacy
A haunted house with a memory. Each player controls a family rather than a single character, and the story begins with a grandfather exploring the house in 1666 before running through a prologue and 13 chapters across the generations. Bind an item to your family and your descendants inherit a bonus; stickers mark cards with family names, and planks attach permanent changes to the rooms, so the house you are terrified of is one your own ancestors shaped.
The commitment is real, since substitutes miss the family history, but the reward is a finished box that becomes a customized Betrayal at House on the Hill you keep playing.
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The King's Dilemma
The legacy game for a table that would rather argue than roll dice. Players are the Houses governing the Kingdom of Ankist, voting on a dilemma each round, and the player who puts the most influence behind the result signs their name to the card. Many choices reveal new dilemmas from a secret envelope, so the kingdom's future events are written by your group's politics, and a game ends when the king dies or is forced to abdicate.
Branching storylines lead to many possible finales, and the themes of war, famine and morally ambiguous bargains earn its 14+ rating. Its pleasures are negotiation and story rather than tactics, so it suits a group that enjoys debate more than one hunting for a tight strategy game.
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Frosthaven
Gloomhaven's sequel adds something its predecessor lacked: a home to rebuild. Your party defends a small outpost far to the north, and each building you raise has its own card while upgrade stickers stack on top of one another as it levels up. Road events change with summer and winter, sealed envelopes and a sealed puzzle book hide what comes next, and sixteen new characters wait to be unlocked.
This is the biggest commitment here. There are 137 scenarios on the campaign flowchart, and one long-term review estimated more than a year to finish, possibly close to two, so choose it only if your group already knows it loves Gloomhaven's card combat.
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SeaFall
The bold experiment of the genre: Rob Daviau's age-of-sail game was billed as the first fully original legacy design rather than a legacy version of an existing game. Across roughly fifteen games you sail to nearby islands with unknown sites to discover, find new islands with their own rules, and improve your ship in one of four categories after each session, with winners earning permanent upgrades.
It is here for groups who want the most ambitious idea and accept the risk. Its reception was stormy, with complaints about luck and balance, and Destructoid found sessions running as long as five hours while the winners' upgrades left trailing players little way back. Play it for exploration, not balance.
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