Evolution is Legendary! – Doomlings: Legends of Enderas review

One of the very cool games that came out in 2022 was a neat little card game called Doomlings.

This is a game where each player represents a doomling civilization on some distant planet (or is it an alternate Earth? Only Kang can know for sure).

As a civilization, you are playing trait cards to upgrade and evolve your doomling race, but as ages pass, the world will inevitably end in world-wide catastrophe.

I promise no existential angst in this review (unless you like Trinkets).

The latest expansion (kindly provided to me by Doomlings LLC) is called Legends of Enderas, and it provides more stuff.

Yes, more of that too!

One of the previous expansions, the Upgrade Pack (unless you bought all of them individually), offered some doomling variety in the form of Mythlings, Dinolings, and Techlings, and multi-colour doomlings.

Another one, Imaginary Ends, added some more types along with Fuzelings that combined those types.

So what does Legends of Enderas give you?

More Mythlings, Dinolings, and Techlings! Along with some multi-colour and Fuzelings of these three types.

Also coming for the ride is a new mechanic, which is much better than the Trinkets in Imaginary Ends: Treasures.

The set comes with 120 cards, and while some of those are treasures, there are a whopping 94 new cards for the deck itself.

While playing this expansion for the review, we combined the cards with the base game cards and the original Dinoling/Techling/Mythling cards, ages, and catastrophes.

The deck was a bit…bloated.

And hard to shuffle!

Seriously, the more expansions you buy for Doomlings, the more you’re going to have to choose just what expansion packs you actually use for the game.

Let’s look at the Dinolings first, because they’re looking at me kind of hungrily.

First, you might notice the big Dinoling icon on the top right on the side. These show what type of Doomling they are (Dinolings in this case), but they are different than the really small icons on the original Dinoling cards (as well as Mythling and Techling ones).

I like the change, but do kind of wish it had been this way from the beginning.

The difference does illustrate which expansion the cards are from, but it’s easy to miss the originals when you are looking for other cards of the same type (say for Carnivore above).

Or you could address deck bloat and only play with the new cards.

That’s a thought!

Dinolings haven’t changed much. They’re still interacting with the Discard Pile or making you discard (sometimes both!).

But they can be incredibly strong. Even the weaker ones as far as points go (like Plastron) will either let you get rid of a negative value trait in your trait pile, or play the top card of the discard pile.

Which could be a huge one! Or may be a terrible one.

Mythlings come in a few varieties, including a new type of card that can really blow things up.

First, let’s look at the “normal” ones.

Again, these cards can have weird effects in a variety of ways.

I love me some Chronomancer, who lets you take another turn at World’s End!

He’s not worth much by himself, but that extra turn can be crucial.

Except when the Catastrophe’s effect makes you discard every card in your hand.

*sniff* I’m not bitter.

Anyway, Mythlings are pretty cool too, but their wild cousins are even more wacky.

These cards are rarely played by themselves as a trait, because they’re often negative points!

They often have effects that let you discard them for something, or that happen when they are discarded (such as giving a nasty surprise to another player when their trait action forces you to discard a card at random and this one is chosen).

For example, Enchanted above can just be played normally, giving you extra points if it’s attached to a Mythling.

But if it’s discarded somehow (either through that random discard, or maybe even if you have to discard when stabilizing), you can attach it to a Dominant card instead! (Dominants usually can’t have attachments, so this is a good thing).

These crazy cards add to the chaos.

However, if Doomlings is already too chaotic for you, and it just may be, then this might just push you over the edge.

Techlings are often cards that can be attached to other cards in your trait pile, often having an effect depending on what they are attached to, or increased scoring, or something else good.

No, you are not.

Some techlings are attachments but others interact with attachments, or maybe even just other techlings.

The techling attachments in this expansion are actually a bit more interesting than in the original because some of them actually have different effects depending on what colour trait you attach them to.

Finally, there are the Fuzelings, which are considered 2-3 of these doomling types.

They are considered to be all types based on the icons on the card.

Some are even multi-coloured!

Another thing I really like about this expansion is that some of the cards have an even deeper interaction with the discard pile than in previous expansions.

Fossil Fueled above lets you play one of the five top cards on the discard pile.

This does add one change to the game, which isn’t really in the ruleset for this expansion, but we felt it was logical.

Maybe it’s actually not intended!

But it should be.

Discards are done in player order if multiple players have to discard (such as for an Age or Catastrophe effect).

Obviously you can discard your cards in any order you want, but we felt doing it in player order made it better for cards like this.

It may not be necessary. You may want to do a free-for-all discard, but if you do, don’t come crying to me if somebody plays Fossil Fueled and gets to play that really juicy Dominant card that’s sitting on top of the deck because you discarded out of order.

One more thing about the new cards before I get into the one new mechanic in this expansion.

I wish they had done this sooner (though if you’re trimming out expansions, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered), but with Legends of Enderas they’ve finally added more Kidneys and Swarms to the deck!

Kidneys and Swarms score points based on how many other cards of the same name are on the table (Kidneys just for your trait pile while Swarms look at the entire table).

These cards are in the base game but I don’t think any other expansions have added any. This means their group scoring is really diluted depending on which expansions you are playing with.

Personally, I would include these cards now even if I’m not playing with the Techling/Dinoling/Mythling expansions because what type of doomling they are doesn’t matter.

They just add to the set scoring possibilities.

And that’s a good thing.

As usual, each doomling type comes with its own Ages and Catastrophes which are at least somewhat thematic.

(You can click on the pictures in this gallery since I know they’re kind of hard to read)

These are really enjoyable! And why I don’t really like the changes made for Trinkets.

I want to see more of these Ages. Not less.

Anyway, let’s get to the thing you’ve all been waiting for.

The treasures!

I love the treasure mechanic addition, almost as much as I really didn’t enjoy the trinkets in Imaginary Ends.

The main difference?

Treasures don’t fundamentally change the round structure.

I like the different ages that come up each round, and the trinkets removed a bunch of them.

Treasures are really easy.

If you have fewer than two treasures, you draw one at the beginning of each age.

Treasures can be played any time on your turn (or on another player’s turn if it’s a Cloak), based on the type of effect you’re playing.

Each treasure has two effects, but you can only play one.

For example, the Zero-Point Module above, you can either draw 2 cards at the beginning of your turn or you can use it to play two red or two green traits on your turn.

You can play both treasure cards you have if you want.

These treasures don’t change the game. They just give you more options.

It is!

The treasure aspect is what makes this expansion so good.

Sure, additional cards are wonderful, but if you include all expansion cards, you’re going to be buried in them and your hands will hurt.

Maybe Superman could shuffle them all, but I know I sure can’t.

But just like with the Meaning of Life cards, I will always include these no matter what other expansions I’m playing with.

Also a shout-out to whoever writes the flavour text on so many of these trait cards.

My friends and I have laughed at so many of them.

Is any expansion a must-have?

Not really, especially with card games like this.

The base game is wonderful, but so are most of these expansions (except Trinkets).

This is a wonderful expansion too.

Just be ready to mix and match expansions, pulling some out and playing with others.

If you must buy only one expansion, I would say pick Legends of Enderas due to the Treasures as well as the extra Kidney/Swarm cards.

Wait, let me rephrase that, because I love the Meaning of Life cards in the Upgrade Pack.

If you must buy only two expansions, make them the Upgrade Pack and Legends of Enderas.

You can’t go wrong with those choices.

At least until the world ends, when choices won’t really matter anymore.

(Damn, I almost made it without the angst!)

(This review was written after 3 plays with these cards. Doomlings Inc provided a copy of this expansion in exchange for a fair and unbiased review)