Top 10 Best Legacy Board Games

Legacy board games are some of the most exciting tabletop offerings out there. If you're looking to lose yourself in an immersive story with your friends, that will unfold over weeks of play, then you'll definitely want to try some out.

A legacy board game is one where your gameplay leaves a permanent impact on the game's rules, characters, and components. Unfolding over several sessions, these longform games transform over time and adapt their stories based upon your actions, allowing your decisions to leave a real lasting 'legacy' on the game's world.

You'll be placing down stickers that permanently alter the board, opening envelopes containing new rules and, in some cases, even physically destroying parts of the game when you're instructed to. Here's a selection of 10 of our favourite legacy games.

It all started here. Risk Legacy was the very first Legacy game, released back in 2011. It takes Risk, the familiar game of global conquest for 3-5 players, and adds on a new layer of longform campaigning. The world map and each of the playable factions will evolve and transform dynamically over the course of 15 games of Risk. This will leave you with a uniquely customised world at the end, in which you can fight future battles.

Stonemaier Games, the publishers of Scythe, Wingspan, and Vantage, tried their hand at designing a legacy game in 2017 with Charterstone.

Charterstone is a game about building up a settlement from a village, to a town, into a full-blown city. 1-6 players choose a different character, each of whom follows a different tech tree and works with different sets of resources. Charterstone has an utterly adorable art style, but an underlying story that tackles some surprisingly deep themes.

Sagrada is a dice drafting game about constructing a beautiful stained glass window. As any artist will tell you ,though, true creativity isn't just the work of an afternoon it's the work of a lifetime, and it takes time and effort to see your passions realised.

Sagrada Artisans allows 2-4 players to create their own family of tradesfolk and watch them grow over the years, refining their craft and developing their skills as they gradually fill the Sagrada Família Cathedral with a series of increasingly beautiful works of stained glass art.

Aeon's End Legacy is a cooperative deckbuilding game of magical conflict about working together to defend the world from demonic invaders.

1-4 players take on the role of 'breach mages', spellcasters who act as the frontline against otherworldly threats.

As the campaign continues, players will gradually develop their mages, gaining access to powerful new spells in order to fend off increasingly difficult waves of enemies and bosses.

This is one for fantasy fans looking to work together against a common threat, and to gradually level up and develop their skills against fiendish foes.

Flash Point: Legacy of Flame is a legacy campaign game about fighting fires for 1-6 players.

It's a cooperative action management game that simulates the experience of being a firefighter. Everyone will begin as a new recruit and gradually progress until they're an experienced veteran, dousing blazing and rescuing those trapped inside as an escalating story slowly unfolds.

The King's Dilemma is a legacy game with a strong narrative focus that gradually unfolds a branching story over a series of sessions. 3-5 players each control a different noble house, as they inform, shape, and guide the development of a kingdom across generations.

Gameplay is conducted through a series of votes, as scenarios are presented to players who must decide on the best course of action to take. Every player has their own agenda, and not everyone truly has the best interests of the kingdom at heart, setting up very real stakes behind every choice made.

Ticket to Ride games have tasked players with building train lines all around the world, from Paris to Portland to Portugal. So when the time came to develop a Ticket to Ride Legacy game, a new approach was needed.

Ticket to Ride: Legacy - Legends of the West transports players not across the world, but rather across time. The game travels back into the 19th century to tell the story of the development of America's railways.

2-5 Players each control different railway companies that expand their networks across a developing board that starts off on the east coast, and eventually stretches over to the west.

Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure is a dungeon crawling board game about delving into danger to grab handfuls of loot. This rush to grab treasure is tempered by the need to remain as quiet as possible in order to avoid waking up a sleeping dragon.

Clank! is a fun one off game, but for players looking to add a bit more narrative to their dungeon dives, the two Clank! Legacy games have plenty to offer.

Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated and its sequel, Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated 2 - Darkest Magic make 2-4 players employees of Acquisitions Incorporated, an adventuring company that wants to secure as many profitable returns as possible by plundering everything that the dungeon has to offer.

Both games are stand alone tales of acquisition and adventure that can be played separately.

My City is a grid based game of city construction that is simultaneously competitive and cozy. You'll be competing to make the most optimal building placement choices in a rustic and warm city setting.

Over 24 sessions, 2-4 players will each construct a city that gradually transforms and industrialises as time passes by. New buildings and technologies are unlocked in each session, updating and adding to the rules as time goes by.

My City offers a full legacy experience at a budget price, as does its spin off My Island, which swaps out the grid based gameplay of My City for a hex based alternative, and its urban setting for an offshore adventure.

The original Pandemic was released almost 20 years ago now, back in 2008. It's a challenging 2-4 player game about racing against the clock to battle against several rapidly spreading diseases before they expand uncontrollably and become impossible to contain.

Z-Man Games saw that Pandemic had a lot of potential to tell some gripping stories pulled straight from a disaster movie, and so they later released several 'seasons' of Pandemic Legacy games.

Pandemic Legacy Season 1 wraps an expansive plotline around the story told between the lines in a typical game of Pandemic.

Season 2 focuses on the aftermath of the outbreak and tells a Dystopian science-fiction story about survival and rebuilding in a damaged world.

Finally, Season 0 changes the genre and winds back the clock, telling a Cold War spy story about espionage and bio weapons.

Each of these titles tells a radically different story, and expands the rules of Pandemic in interesting new directions. Whichever season appeals to you, you're sure to find an exciting story contained within.

Maybe the most exciting thing about legacy board games is the fact that they cover so many different genres. While all of these games are brought together by their shared implementation of legacy mechanics, each of them offers something radically different. You might be scheming and politicking in The King's Dilemma, constructing cross country trainlines in Ticket to Ride: Legacy - Legends of the West, or skulking away from Dragons in Clank! Legacy. Whatever you end up doing though, these legacy mechanics will ensure that your choices end up leaving an impact.

For more board game top tens, stick with Magic Madhouse, and subscribe to our newsletter down below. You can also follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram for updates and video content.