Marvel Legendary: World war Hulk

Components

400 cards in total:

• 15 Heroes
• 6 Masterminds
• 7 Villain Groups
• 3 Henchmen Groups
• 8 Schemes
• 4 Bystanders

Overview

In Legendary: World War Hulk, the 16th expansion for Marvel Legendary, the focus is, surprisingly enough, around the Hulk.
Kidding aside, this expansion lets the players dive into the Planet Hulk and World War Hulk storylines from Marvel Comics, which obviously will bring a lot of new characters into the Marvel: Legendary Deck Building Game, and also blurs out the lines between the "good" guys and the "bad" guys. Hulk is both. If you don't know what I mean go read the comics!
Mechanic-wise there is some news as well. We are gonna check those out, but please note that this review assumes you have played Marvel: Legendary before.

New keywords

• Smash X - Discard a card from your hand to gain X attack. Pretty straight forward. There are A LOT of these cards in this set. Not only Hulk smashes, it seems.
• Transform into X (Heroes) - After playing this card and gaining all of its effects, remove it from the game and replace it with the named card. All of the Heroes has at least ONE transformed card. A cool new mechanic, but adds some fiddliness to set up and storage.
• Transform (Masterminds) - Flip this Mastermind over. Very cool, can generate some unexpected results. :)
• Outwit - Reveal 3 cards with a different cost in order to trigger the Outwit ability. Promotes diversity in cost. Nothing fancy, but a new mechanic nevertheless.
• Wounded Fury - This card gains +1 attack for each wound in your discard pile. This is awesome! A perfect mechanic for Hulk decks.
• Cross-Dimensional X Rampage - All players reveal a X hero, or gain a wound. This mechanic returns from Secret Wars, unclear why as it is pretty lame.
• Feast - KO the tops card of your deck. This one returns from Paint the Town Red, and it's a very nasty mechanic mostly used by Masterminds. But in this set you can Feast with some of your Heroes. :)
• We will also see the return of Traps These are essentially a challenge you will have to overcome before the turn ends, or suffer the consequences! (after you draw your new hand).

New Heroes

There are 15 new Heroes in this set, all with the new Transform mechanic.

• Amadeus Cho - Outwit is this guys go-to.
• Bruce Banner -Has a lot of Outwit cards. and, you guessed it, Transforms into Hulk, who SMASHES.
• Caiera - Hulk's wife is bringing a lot of attack power, but also some Smash and Outwit. Mixed colors, a great set of cards. Her Transform lets you DOUBLE your current total attack power. Wow!
• Gladiator Hulk - Smash, Wounded Fury, and Cross Dimensional Hulk Rampage. Raaawr!
• Hiroim - This guy can KO wounds etc, and rescue Bystanders. A lot of cards make him Transform.
• Hulkbuster Iron Man - Designed by Mr Stark to battle the invading Hulk. Has Smash and Transform, a cool Hero.
• Joe Fix-It, Grey Hulk - A wise-guy version of Hulk, perhaps more of a villain than a hero? Has cards that interact with villains and the Mastermind. Interesting stuff.
• Korg - Korg does some serious Smashing and Outwitting. His ultimate lets you gather all the heroes in HQ, add their total attack to you. It can be super powerful...
• Miek the Unhived - Does a lot of Feast:ing. A friend of King Hulk.
• Namora - Not really a part of the storylines in this set, nevertheless she Smashes a lot. She also interacts with the city. Kind of like Storm from the main set, with Smash. 
• No-Name, Brood Queen - Also Feasts. Very nasty looking. Also a friend of King Hulk.
• Rick Jones - A tech-focused Hero with a lot of Transform cards. 
• Sentry - Sentry has a lot of Transform cards, which has the ability to transform back, so there will be a lot of transforming back and forth. Sentry also has cards that get stronger each time you Transform. One of the Transformed versions also has Feast. The coolest card Sentry has is the ultimate. It lets you look at the top 5 cards of your deck, and add their attack together for you to use. But if this number gets 12 or higher, the card Transforms into the Void, another Mastermind. Oh-oh.
• She-Hulk - Where has this hero been? A lot of recruit points here. Reminds me of Thor from the base set. But she also uses Smash.
• Skaar, Son of Hulk - Hulks son kicks some serious ass with multiple Smash and Wounded Fury. 

Masterminds

There are 6 of them in World war Hulk, and they all have the ability to Transform. They also bring some other new ideas to the game, like The Red King for an example; you cannot fight him while there are any villains in the city.

• Illuminati, Secret Society - Always Leads: Illuminati
• The Red King - Always Leads: Sakaar Imperial Guard
• King Hulk, Sakaarson - Always Leads: Warbound
• General "Thunderbolt" Ross/Red Hulk - Always Leads: Code Red
• M.O.D.O.K. - Always Leads: Intelligencia
• Sentry/Void - Always Leads: Aspects of the Void

There are good guys and bad guys among the villains, depending on what scenario you are playing, you have the opportunity to do really interesting stuff from a thematical standpoint.

OPINION

The good

• A lot of new Heroes, many of them really cool.
• A lot of Hulk!
• A lot of new Masterminds, and again, some really cool ones.
• A lot of new villains and henchmen.
• Some pretty decent schemes, which lets you play the World war Hulk story line.

The bad?

• Perhaps one could argue this set is just "more of the same".
• As stated before, the Transform mechanic requires some extra fiddliness in terms of setup and storage. 

CONCLUSION

A great addition, and a BIG addition to Marvel Legendary, well worth it in our opinion, especially if you are a Hulk fan, and who isn't, right?!
Since the classic Dark City expansion is hard to get a hold of these days, this one makes for an excellent first expansion to Marvel Legendary.

Rating: 8/10