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Legacy: Gears of Time is a strategic card game, mechanically rooted in its time travel theme. Players each play cards from their own hand, draw from a central draw pile, move and play technologies on a single timeline, while placing their influence cubes on existing technologies.
Legacy is played on a timeline that grows at the end of each of 4 rounds. Players take turns during a round consisting of 3 actions each. During each turn, you may travel back in time, play a technology card from your hand, influence an existing technology, or draw two cards (keeping only one).
As you travel back in time, Technologies are played from your hand by paying their discard cost. Any technologies you play generate influence for you automatically.
Having more influence than your opponents is the key to claiming rewards for a technology! At the end of each round, rewards are given for each technology and its dependencies. One Influence cube from each technology will come off at the end of each round, forming your influence pool to be used in future rounds to influence existing technologies. Keep in mind, a technology is only considered successful if all of its dependencies exist previously on the timeline.
Since there are several copies of each technology, you may be able to preempt and eliminate an existing copy by playing yours earlier in the timeline! Be sure there is room for your new technology, though; each time-frame has a capacity equal to it's distance from the present.
There are also a few rare but powerful Fate cards, each allowing you to break the rules in interesting ways. Fate cards have no discard cost and don't require an action to be played.
By strategically influencing existing technologies, adapting to your opponents actions, and carefully choosing when to go further back in time, you will find yourself victorious over your rivals! History remains intact until the Ancient Machine demands you return to the past to rebuild history, and your Legacy, once more.
Summary:
4 Rounds
4 Turns per Round
3 Actions per Turn (any mix of the following):
Travel back in Time
Play a Technology card
Influence an existing Technology
Draw two cards (keep one)
- securing key inventions before anyone else
- chains of progress across the timeline
- majority control
- rival time travelers racing through history to secure key inventions
- the year 2101
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Hand Management — It's the heaviest game on the list, and it's also the most timey-wimey brain-burning.
- Majority Control — You can influence an early invention to try and take control of it so there's a majority to control on top of the hand management.
- Set Collection — Once an invention is claimed, it can influence later technologies creating chains of progress across the timeline.
- Worker Placement — You send agents to different time periods trying to be the first to secure specific invention.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Let me know what you think of these five time travel board games in the comments below.
- Necessity is the mother of invention, but invention is also the mother of invention.
- It's the heaviest game on the list, and it's also the most timey-wimey brain-burning.
- So you create a paradox.
- It's rated as the top 100 games of all time.
- Get it? Future.
- It sounds like a head-scratcher, like that tri-dimensional chess on Star Trek.
- It's chaotic, silly, and all about seeing how strange history can get when everyone is meddling with it.
- Everyone hates Bob.
- It's essentially a cop investigation where every reset makes you a little smarter about what you're going to do next time.
- I haven't played Temporum. Never heard of it. Stick a look on BGG.
References (from this video)
- The concept is liked a lot.
- Works well as a time travel game.
- Does not look great.
- Definitely a dated-looking game.
- Time Travel
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Cause and Effect — It's you If you create something in the past, it will change how the future.
- Invention/Technology — So, if I make electricity early enough that then other inventions can be made.
- legacy/campaign — This is one of my time travel games. I'm like, 'Hey, this works.'
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- So, we have a game here called Sequoia. This is from 2022.
- It's It's fine. I'm giving it a six. Uh Beasty Bars is is is a fun style game where you're playing these different type of animals, and I think each additional expansion made it more complex and less fun.
- Trias is an old dinosaur game that originally came with cubes, and eventually they had little dinosaurs in it instead. And it's kind of grow out to different things. This is a very I have this ranked as a seven. Probably now, the next time I go through my rankings, I'll probably rank it as a six because it's fine, but it's showing its age.
- All righty, of all the games we talked about today, my favorite here is clearly David Goliath, although Hooky is a very close second.
- Either way, it's always good to talk to you all.
References (from this video)
- Better gameplay than Chrononauts
- Strategic game about inventing things
- A lot of back and forth time to this
- A bit alternate timeline-esque
- Inventing things in the past that allow actions in the future, like a civilization game about invention.
- Alternate timeline-esque
- Chrononauts
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- civilization game — Comparison to a civilization game focused on invention.
- Engine Building — Implied by inventions in the past enabling future actions.
- Time travel — Inventing in the past to affect the future, and actions in the past helping in the future.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Time travel is pretty much impossible to do properly.
- You just have to kind of ignore those flaws and just go with it.
- And the same thing is with board game. How do you make a time travel board game?
- Time travel is just debt time travel.
- It's really interesting how much time you're spending.