Regicide Legacy by Badgers From Mars

A classic card battler grows fangs when you turn it into a legacy campaign. We unpack how Regicide Legacy transforms a tight solo-friendly system into twelve tough chapters with mercenaries, sleeves, and exact-damage recruits that make every decision feel earned. The best part: you don’t need the original to jump in. The first chapter onboards fast, the mat and iconography remove bookkeeping, and the art swaps plain suits for readable fantasy symbols so tactics come first.

We trade notes on why failure fuels progress through gold and unlocks, and how the game stays brisk even as mechanics “get weird” in the best way. Combos take center stage: pair an ace for flexible spikes, stack same-value cards to blend damage, shields, and draw, and time animal companions to tilt the math. When you land perfect damage and pull a fallen boss onto the top of your deck, the payoff feels like a solved puzzle and a power move rolled into one. Production matters here—magnetic box, chapter packs, neoprene mat—so setup is minutes and playtime stays in the 20–60 range, often closer to 20 solo.

We also talk table sizes and modes: snappy solo runs that beg for one-more-try, cooperative play that rewards hand-off planning, and post-campaign options that keep the box alive with remixed challenges and core regicide mode. If you want a fast, tactical legacy game that respects your time, looks great, and actually gets deeper as you fail forward, this one earns the shelf space. Hit play, hear why it clicked for us, and tell us how you’d build your deck for those exact-damage recruits.

Enjoyed the breakdown? Follow the show, share with a friend who loves co‑op card games, and leave a quick review so more players can find us.

Chapters

• 0:16 Mustaches, Sparkle And Smash, Monster Jam
• 1:10 What Regicide Is And How It Plays
• 3:21 Enter Regicide Legacy
• 4:23 Production, Components, And Art
• 6:16 Why The Legacy Format Works
• 8:59 Difficulty, Progression, And Mercenaries
• 12:47 Deckbuilding Choices And Combos
• 16:49 Solo, Co‑Op, And Playtime
• 18:15 Kickstarter, Shipping, And Availability
• 19:06 Group Plans, Replay, And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:16

Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. Back and better than ever. Joining me today is the main co character in this adventure. And I am fumbling my words already. It's Jared Erickson. How are you doing, Jared?

SPEAKER_01: 0:27

Outstanding. I I'm throwing you off a little bit. There's a bit of a mustache. And that's that's for those that are watching on YouTube.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Oh, it's coming in strong. And you're also in a sparkle and smash uh tank top.

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

With the with Gemma's Sparkle and Smash t-shirt behind me. So what is sparkle and smash? Well, not to derail the conversation, it'll be real quick. On Friday, I cannot wait. I'm gonna go to Monster Jam with Gemma. Okay. So big, big over the fence coming up very soon. Very shortly. I'll give you the full down and dirty, but a monster size over the fence. Yes, yes. Can't wait. Well I I want to hear about this hot new regicide we got going on.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15

Yeah, let's talk about today's main topic, which is uh regicide legacy. I'm not sure why it's not coming up. There we go. Hey Regicide Legacy, and this is a new legacy campaign version of Regicide. Jared, how familiar are you with Regicide?

SPEAKER_01: 1:34

So uh I was trying to be a good a good co-host, uh, and I did remember to look on my BGA for Regicide because I have played this only on board game arena. Okay. Um I remember it only being a two-player game. So that's why I have many questions for you today about Regicide Legacy. Um, because it seems like we've really took a leap forward.

SPEAKER_00: 2:01

Oh, yes, here. Oh, yes. So Regicide came out, I don't know, maybe six years ago-ish. Uh, and basically it can be played with a regular deck of cards, but they'll sell you their fancy upgraded deck of cards that have fan has fancy artwork and stuff. But basically, you are going against a suite of bosses that range from the lower end uh jacks all the way up through the kings of each suit of a deck of cards, and you are playing the lower uh cards against these bosses, kind of one at a time, two at a time, if you can combine them to varying effects depending on the suit of the card that you play to whittle down the health of the boss that you're fighting. And every time you do not defeat that boss, they get to attack you back. And your health is managed kind of by the amount of cards that you have in your hand. Um, and each of the suits does something different. So your clubs are your attack clubs, you kind of smash them with a club. Uh the spades are kind of shaped like a shield, so that's your defense. Uh, I think you the diamonds are the ones that you draw back up in your hand, um, or you add cards to the deck that you can draw from. And the uh the hearts obviously heal you, so you're drawing into your hand. Yep. Regicide Legacy is like the fully realized version of what Regicide probably should have been from the beginning. I I love Regicide, it's a cool system. I find it difficult to like kind of remember what the different suits do kind of in the moment, keep tracking of health and all this stuff. Kind of becomes a pain when you're playing in person. They do have an app that is great. I love the Regicide app. Um, back in, I don't know, 2018, 20, no, 2020, 2022 when I was playing this. Uh, it was relatively inexpensive for an app, but um, yeah, you can play with a regular deck of cards. I'm just a sicko that needs to buy everything. So uh yeah, so regicide, really cool system, really fun to just play in your free time. It's kind of like solitary. You can kind of just pull out your deck of cards and play anywhere at any time. Now, Regicide Legacy is a vastly improved version of Regicide, and it's fully realized into a campaign game that just came out this year, and people are loving it. It's not without its downfalls, but um basically what this is is you open up the box, great production, by the way. Uh, publisher is Badger from Mars. The box is pretty large, it's like maybe a shoebox size, and it's got little magnets on the front, and the magnets unflipped and the box folds open, and you're sitting there staring at 12 campaign boxes, plus like four additional boxes for that have different modifiers and stuff. A rule book, uh, a neoprene mat in there, um, individual like player mats that you're playing on. So production is beautiful, really cool production. Um, and it's it's the artwork is striking. The color scheme is really cool. Uh, and in this one, you're not just they're not just printing a whole bunch of decks of cards for you. It has like realized art on all the cards that are that's kind of fantasy art. You've got your archers and your gnomes and your dwarves and your all this these different types of like fantasy archetypes. And then um instead of the regular card suits, it actually has like a picture of an axe instead of a club. So you know that's your attack one. It's got a picture of a shield, so you know that's your defense, it's got the heart that heals you, etc. So it's a little easier to um understand what's going on. The neoprene mat that you are playing on that represents kind of your, I don't know. It fills up in the later in the later like chapters of the of the campaign. But the first one you're fighting like one enemy at a time. It's right out there. You got a card in the middle, you got a health tracker on the right side that has like a little thing that you can move down so you can keep track of where the health is at. Uh, it's got a their attack value on the left hand side, and the cards are organized in a way that has both of that information on it, but the mat itself kind of helps you keep track as you progress. Now, the cool thing is um this is a legacy game, and they want you to get a ton of value out of this box. It's not cheap to buy. Um, the production itself is gonna cost you a lot more than a deck of cards, but they make sure that there's a ton of game in this. There's 12 different chapters. Yep. Each chapter is super challenging. And take this for what it's worth. I I have only played this solo, okay? And it's a great solo game because it fits in a nice little shoebox. Uh, you can pull it out whenever. It's pretty easy to get those like campaign decks out and set up and rolling right away. But those each of those 12 campaigns are super difficult. Um, so you will fail these multiple times before you end up succeeding in each chapter. Yeah. Okay. Because as you fail, you are earning gold, kind of a current. Oh yes. And then you can rip open these nice like mercenary packs and buy mercenaries that get added to your deck. Yes. Super cool. It also has uh some fancy like card sleeves that do different things to the cards. Okay. There's like corrupted cards and things like that. There's a 12-part story. I'm not going to talk about the story because it has spoilers. Oh, yeah. It's a decent story. It's not like one that I'm super engrossed in because you kind of get bogged out. Not bogged down. You kind of get invested in the mechanics of the actual um scenario that you're in. And if you are replaying the same scenario over and over and over again, that like instance of the story kind of loses its value a little bit to me. But the story's fine, the artwork's cool. Um, they made so many like gameplay improvements, and they just took that simple idea of regicide that came in a single deck of cards, and they just stretched this idea as far as it could go. Yeah, and I think it's great, I think it's a really cool implementation. Um, they have like stickers that you can put on the cards that will do stuff later on. Um, and I I have not finished all the chapters, so I'm not gonna like talk about the post-game, but I've heard that the post-game is like a great way to come up with a way to make this game live past those 12 chapters. Yeah, and they have ways that you can modify challenges in the previous, uh, the previous chapters that you've been through. They have a way that you can continue to play the core regicide game within this game. So you're getting a lot of your bang for your buck in this box. No need to play regicide before you play regicide legacy. You buy this box, you jump in. The mechanic's not going to be for everybody, but it's really cool, like cooperative playing off of each other's cards and a cooperative card battler. Yeah, really cool. So, Jared, what questions do you have about Regicide Legacy?

SPEAKER_01: 9:08

So, uh I'm glad that you brought up the there's stickers, sleeves, and then you also add full-on cards to your deck as well. So it's like you it's almost it's giving me like the RPG vibe of you get to craft your own uh personality, or like so. Do you do you get a choice between certain ones and then you kind of have to put those to the side that you did not choose, or are you always building up and like once you've gone through chapter one, chapter two is the exact same no matter who you are, where you come from, or so I will the gameplay mechanics, gameplay mechanics will change from chapter to chapter, uh, and it kind of like changes up the uh the way that you approach the challenges.

SPEAKER_00: 9:55

I'll say that much. Um, but the way that you are kind of deck building is the same. Okay, so like every time I'm going to have this draw deck and I'm going to draw cards out of it to make a hand, and I am playing those cards strategically to whittle down the boss and protect myself. Right. I would say it's more of a deck builder than it is a character builder, like in the traditional RPG. Um, so that that's cool. I love the deck building aspect. I don't feel like an RPG character because each of the cards has like their own character on them. It's more like forces of good versus forces of evil type story. So um, but yeah, like adding in those mercenaries feels good. If you defeat a boss with like the exact amount of damage that you need, you take them off the play area, they go face down, top card on your deck, on your draw deck, and so that's the next thing that comes into your hand, and they get more and more powerful as you go along. So recruiting those guys and adding them to your deck is super uh gives you a big advantage later on, but it's not an easy thing to do because like coming up with the right cards that you need at the right time uh to not only defeat the boss but to beat them exactly with the perfect amount of health to add them to the top of your deck uh is quite a challenge. So yeah, it it's it's you know, I I played, let's say, I played through the first three or four chapters, um, and I did not beat a single one on the first try. Yeah. And it's it it has some challenge to it, but like you know, the the BGG page says it plays 20 to 60 minutes. I I didn't have a play that was over 20 minutes because I'm playing by myself and I can go through it pretty quick. I understand the core rules of regicide, yeah. Um, but the way that the mechanics advance and change from chapter to chapter seemed really cool, at least early on. Um first chapter is just basic regicide, and then it gets uh it gets weird really fast, and it gets weird in the best of ways.

SPEAKER_01: 11:58

So that's a good little cliffhanger you're giving uh the the audience there.

SPEAKER_00: 12:03

Yeah, and I you know I it's not like um I don't know, something like my city. Uh I always had big hang-ups about uh legacy games like this because it kind of hurts my heart a little bit to put stickers on like the boards and the cards and stuff. I feel less of that in this game because you're putting stickers on cards, um, and there's so many in the deck that it's not like you're and it's not staring you right in the face every time you draw a card. They pop up randomly, and it feels good to like have them pop up. And um, but you know, I've always had that hang up like it feels gross to like ruin games as you play it, not ruin them, but like permanently alter games as you play through them. Yeah, um, so I don't want to like spoil too much of the story and too many of the mechanics because that's where this game really shines, is how they change those mechanics as you go through the chapters.

SPEAKER_01: 12:56

Yeah, I was yeah, I was definitely worried that everything was stickers. I like adding uh the the idea of adding the the mercenaries to your deck as well.

SPEAKER_00: 13:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 13:07

Um, no, that's that's pretty dope. But that the mercenaries that come on, they they still have those same type of abilities, or there's special abilities as well, like the the heel, um there are some different ones. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 13:22

Um I won't get too much into those, but like the initial couple that you're opening up are just like you know, more powerful cards, and they kind of play off of the other cards in your hand in a smart way. There's all sorts of like weird mechanics, like uh I keep saying weird, it's not weird, it's like unique mechanic mechanics like compared to the base game. Yeah, you can play like animal uh companions. So like I put a card down and then I pair an animal companion with it that can like add its ability. Um stuff like that is pretty cool. You can pair an ace with anything, but like if I have a whole bunch of threes, I can play all the threes at the same time, and I'll get a kind of a compounding factor of their different abilities. So I can heal, do damage, and prevent myself from taking damage if I had all those correct threes and played them all at the same time. So stuff like that's pretty cool. Like, and you can build your deck in a certain way, uh, depending on the situation where you can really come up with some clever combos that make you feel super powerful, even though they're not like you're not throwing a you know 10 aces down, um, but you could you can put together a hand that like plays off of itself really nice, and uh that stuff always feels good to me.

SPEAKER_01: 14:35

Yeah. So what remind me again how many cards are at the beginning of this game, how many cards are in your draw pile, and then how much how big is your your hand size? I think you go through.

SPEAKER_00: 14:48

I think the initial I didn't count them. I probably should have. Um I mean, guess roughly, I guess. But the first like the very first round that you play is like intro to regicide, so it feels like a traditional deck that you're playing with. Yeah, and then you have um this is a little different in the original Regicide. You fought against the Jack through Kings, Kings, the face cards, right? Yes. Your deck when you start is two through ten, and then you have aces, and then you have these jesters that change things up and do weird things that get added to your deck over time, yeah. Um, and those play and have a different mechanic, and you're you're building your deck slowly, uh, starting with those tens as you defeat them, and then it gets better and better, better as you go along. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:41

Yeah, are you required to remove certain numbered cards to add those others? Or because I know when you when you do the sticker, you're sticking it on a very specific card or something like that, or is it or is it like choose choose a card and put the sticker on? Or maybe it's all the above, and again, we're dancing around, not too much spoilers here, but still want to hype it up as uh a really good game here.

SPEAKER_00: 16:10

Yeah, yeah. Um, I have not had an instance where I had to add a sticker to a specific card. Okay, um, and I know that there are like um sleeves that can change the uh capabilities of your um or the abilities of your card. So a little bit of card crafting, a little bit of like legacy sticker placement changing permanently. Yeah, um, yeah, it feels good, man. I I'm excited to get through the rest of these. I wish I would have finished them all. I've had this game for like two months now, and because the challenges are so difficult, like it's gonna take a significant amount of playthroughs to like work through all of this. So if you're looking for bang for your buck in terms of like cooperative solo legacy style games that play quickly, yeah, uh Regicide Legacy is a good one to pick up.

SPEAKER_01: 17:04

Yeah, so yeah, is that what you had in mind when you got this game? Was it for the solo mode?

SPEAKER_00: 17:11

Yeah, I mean, uh I always appreciate a game that has a solo mode. Yeah, and I I always played the regicide basic or the original regicide solo, um, just because it's easy to pull out and play on you know your airline trade tables and stuff like that. Like wherever I had a free moment, I could play a little bit of regicide or play it on my phone. And so I saw that this was cooperative. I love that. Um, cooperative legacy game, I love that too. Yeah, and the fact that it has a solo mode, and I knew that it played similar to base regicide and had a solo mode, I knew that this was like this was a buy for me because I I knew that it what I was getting into a little bit, and there's still surprises at every box that I open. So yeah, I I'm excited to get through the rest of these. Maybe I'll report back when I do so. But yeah, really, really cool. I'm I'm excited to get back to this.

SPEAKER_01: 18:05

And did you did you back this on a Kickstarter or is this um prime time right now?

SPEAKER_00: 18:11

Uh so this is out in stores. Um, I did back this on a Kickstarter, and it took forever to get here. I think this one actually like went to Germany and then came back. Oh no, like it was in transit and then got rerouted. So yeah, I'm glad that I finally got my hands on this. It took long enough, and um the box was a little damaged when I got it. I I will not blame the you know, quartermaster logistics or badgers from Mars, or I'm not gonna blame any of those guys because um it's probably just you know transit that did some damage, but um man, this game is so cool. I I'm so glad to have it.

SPEAKER_01: 18:48

Sweet. Yeah, we I and I love that too. I I did look back real quick and original baseline registered, it always has played up to four. Yeah, but great at great solo mode. Um, but right here, BGG saying best at three. So uh OGN should be thinking about hopping on this uh together, I feel like. Yeah, next time we round we round the wagons up, you know, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 19:16

And and I think like going back to the previous versions, or even if I make it through all the campaign stuff, um, from what I understand, from what I've heard, there's a way to just go back and like play these unique challenges and still give this game life and not miss a beat with any of the changes or whatever that occur over the legacy of the game. So um yeah, I'm I would definitely get this to the table with you guys because I think you guys would dig the mechanics. I know Clay's played a little bit of Regicide before, yeah. Uh he dabbled in it. Um, but this is like that idea fully realized. So I think you guys would get a kick out of this one.

SPEAKER_01: 19:55

Okay. Well, you've got me sold. I'm I'm very interested. Nice. Heck yeah, dude. Did we do it? Yeah, I think we did it. Anything else on this one?

SPEAKER_00: 20:08

I don't want to give away too much. Um, there's a bunch of spoilers I could get into. Um but I will leave it that to the listener to uh dive into Regicide Legacy and explore for themselves. Yeah, we'll have to see what Clayton has has to say for uh for this episode for sure. Yeah, absolutely. If you have played Regicide Legacy and you're listening andor watching, uh let us know what you think. Uh leave us some love, give us a like and a follow, and uh hit us up on Instagram at Operation Game Night Podcast for OGN. I have been Travis, he has been Jared. This has been OGN and Regicide Legacy, and we are out.