Marvel Legendary – Annihilation expansion

You may recall, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while (so, you know, a couple of you), that I have recently re-immersed myself in Upper Deck’s Marvel Legendary.

So much so that I did a post on what’s supposedly coming in 2021 for expansions and for some reason that post has taken off as far as hits go.

Anyway, yesterday a graphic was released that showed a little bit of what’s coming in the upcoming Annihilation expansion that has been delayed many times this year. It was originally coming in February (I think) and now it’s “when it comes out, it will be out.”

I don’t know if there were delays due to the production errors for the Realm of Kings expansion or if there’s some other issue.

Anyway, it’s nice to see some hint of the new Fantastic Four expansion. For years, they couldn’t do anything Fantastic Four related because of licensing issues. They still can’t combine the Fantastic Four with other parts of the Marvel universe, but there’s enough content to be able to do a standalone expansion.

That, and there’s enough in Legendary to be able to combine things without actually combining them! Just because you can’t specifically reference other expansions doesn’t mean you can’t make the Heroes mesh well with other Heroes in the franchise.

If you know what I mean.

What’s coming in Annihilation?

These three cards reveal a few things.

First, this Fantastic Four expansion will include the entire team as one Hero faction (as opposed to the individual Heroes that are in the Fantastic Four expansion). The Thing card shown here is part of the “Fantastic Four United” Hero faction. It still has a 4 cost, which means it will mesh well with the Thing’s Hero group from the earlier expansion.

It also shows that the “Focus” keyword will be returning. This will allow you to use Recruit in order to do whatever the Focus effect is.

In addition to “Fantastic Four United” Hero faction, there are the Heralds of Galactus which obviously includes Silver Surfer. Will it include others (who usually aren’t as heroic as the Surfer is in the comics)? Who knows?

Finally, Annihilus will be one of the two Masterminds. We can’t really tell what his keyword is (something to do with “Mass,” but it’s hard to read). However, its Master Strike is pretty potent.

It reveals the top card of the Villain deck. If it’s a Bystander, he captures it. If it’s a villain, that villain enters the city, moves forward a space (pushing anything in front of it) and then does any Ambush effect.

Fans of Legendary have been anxiously awaiting this expansion and the fact that it keeps getting pushed back has been frustrating.

It looks like Annihilation has finally been set to appear this Summer. It does mean that we’re probably not going to get all of the expansions that were promised in the original post.

COVID sucks, don’t it?

Not sure if that’s the reason. Upper Deck hasn’t been forthcoming as far as that goes.

Now that I’m caught up with every expansion that I want, it will be nice to be buying these as they come out instead of spending a bunch of money catching up.

And I can’t wait for this one!

It’s good to see the Fantastic Four coming back to the Legendary franchise.

What do you think of this one? And are you looking forward to it as much as I am?

Let me know in the comments.