Legacy Board Games and Campaign Board Games

What Are Legacy Board Games and Campaign Board Games?

Someone in our group gasped the first time we tore up a card in Pandemic Legacy. Someone else laughed nervously. Then we all leaned forward, because the game had just become something none of us had experienced at a table before.

Legacy and campaign games do something most board games never attempt. Where almost every other game resets and starts fresh each time you play, these games remember. Your decisions in session three affect what happens in session seven. Characters develop scars. Cities get named. Sealed boxes get ripped open mid-game. It is the closest a board game gets to the feeling of a television series you cannot stop watching.

This guide explains what each category actually means, how they differ, which games are worth your time, and whether this style of play suits your group.

What Is a Legacy Board Game?

A legacy game is a board game designed to change permanently over a series of sessions. Rob Daviau, the designer who invented the format, describes legacy games as “experiential” rather than “repeatable” — closer to buying a concert ticket than buying a chess set.

The defining feature is physical, irreversible change. Players write names on cards. They apply stickers to the board. And yes, occasionally they destroy components entirely. Each copy of a legacy game ends up unique, shaped by the specific decisions of the group who played it.

Risk Legacy, released in 2011, was the first game to use this format. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (2015) was the game that convinced the wider hobby that the concept had genuine merit. It quickly climbed to the number one spot on BoardGameGeek when released in October 2015, which it held until December 2017 when it was outranked by Gloomhaven.

The key characteristics of a legacy board game:

• Permanent, physical changes to components (stickers, writing, destruction)
• A campaign that can only be played through once per copy of the game
• Story and rules that unlock progressively over 12 to 24 sessions
• Decisions in one session that carry real consequences into the next

Some games remain playable in their final altered state after completion, while others provide refill packs to enable additional playthroughs. Either way, the copy you finish with is yours in a way no other type of game quite manages.

What Is a Campaign Board Game?

Campaign games are closely related but importantly different. In a campaign game, you play through a series of linked scenarios — often with characters developing over time — but the physical game itself does not necessarily change permanently. Components remain intact. You could, in theory, replay the same campaign with a fresh group.

The distinction gets blurry and plenty of enthusiasts argue about it. But a useful working definition: in a legacy game, the physical game changes; in a campaign game, your characters and story progress, but the game itself could theoretically be replayed.

More traditional campaign games offer a string of scenarios that are not impacted by the outcome of previous scenarios, besides branching narratives and the possibility to go to the next scenario only when you won the previous one, and possibly some overarching character evolution. The D&D Adventure Board Games (Wrath of Ashardalon etc.), Mice and Mystics, and Andor are typical campaign games.

Gloomhaven sits in interesting territory. Most players treat it as a campaign game with legacy elements — characters retire and unlock new ones, the world map evolves, but the core game does not get physically destroyed. Most people count it as a campaign game with legacy leanings.

Campaign games typically feature:

• A string of linked scenarios where outcomes affect the narrative branch you follow
• Character progression: levelling up, gaining skills, unlocking equipment
• A persistent world that responds to player success and failure
• Genuine replayability, since the game components remain intact after the campaign

How Are They Different? A Quick Comparison

The simplest way to put it: legacy games are one-time experiences that change what the game physically is. Campaign games are ongoing stories that develop your characters and narrative while leaving the components more or less intact.

A legacy game is a bit like a novel you read once. A campaign game is more like a series you could rewatch, even if experiencing it fresh is the best version.

Neither is better. They suit different groups and different moods.

What Makes These Games So Good?

There are a few things legacy and campaign games do that almost nothing else in the hobby manages.

Genuine emotional stakes. When a character can permanently die, or a city on the board can be gone for the rest of the campaign, you care differently. I have seen players sit in silence for several minutes weighing a choice in Pandemic Legacy, knowing that getting it wrong would follow the group for the next eight sessions. That kind of tension is hard to manufacture.

Shared history. After a full legacy campaign, your group has a story that is entirely your own. Nobody else’s copy looks like yours. Nobody else had that moment in session six when everything fell apart. That shared ownership of a narrative is what players describe most when you ask them why they love the format.

The joy of discovery. Sealed boxes. Locked envelopes. Cards you are not allowed to look at yet. Legacy and campaign games are built to reward curiosity. In my experience at our table, opening a new box mid-campaign is one of the most reliably exciting things a board game can do.

Meaningful progression. Campaign games especially give characters real development — new abilities, better equipment, evolving tactics. There is genuine satisfaction in watching a character you have invested a dozen sessions in become properly powerful.

Family and Gateway Options

These games are not only for experienced hobbyists. There are excellent options for families and players who are new to the hobby.

Zombie Kidz Evolution (also Children’s/Educational, Cooperative): My first recommendation for families. My daughter took to it immediately. Players cooperate to defend a school from zombies in a campaign built for younger players. The legacy elements are gentle — new envelopes unlock as you achieve goals — and the whole thing is cheerful rather than frightening. The campaign is short enough that a family can complete it without losing momentum, which matters more than it sounds.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West (2023, also Network/Route Building, Set Collection): The ideal gateway legacy game for families who already enjoy Ticket to Ride. Designed by Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock, and Alan R. Moon, the 12-game campaign starts very accessibly and gradually adds new rules and content as you work your way west across North America. At our table, the moment the map expanded into new territory mid-campaign was genuinely exciting, and it never gets complicated enough to lose less experienced players. It was nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2024.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle (also Cooperative, Deck-Building): Each of its seven games corresponds to a book in the series, adding new mechanics as it goes. It draws in players who would not usually describe themselves as “board gamers,” which is the best kind of gateway.

Notable Legacy and Campaign Games Worth Your Time

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (Cooperative, Thematic): Remains the most influential legacy game made. It won the 2015 Golden Geek Board Game of the Year. The 12-to-24 session campaign across a year-long disease crisis is still one of the most compelling experiences I have had at a games table. If you have never played a legacy game, this is where I would start.

Gloomhaven (Cooperative, Dungeon Crawl, Adventure): The current benchmark for campaign games. Over 90 scenarios, deep tactical combat, character retirement and unlocking, and a world that responds to player decisions. A big investment in time and money, but there is very little in the hobby that matches its ambition.

Frosthaven (Cooperative, Dungeon Crawl): Builds on Gloomhaven with 100 new scenarios in a remote outpost setting. It features sixteen new heroes, twenty new enemies, over a hundred new pieces of gear, and three completely new races. The right next step once you have exhausted Gloomhaven or want something with a slightly different tone.

Risk Legacy (Competitive, Area Control, War Games): Where the whole legacy format began. A 15-game campaign of world conquest where winners sign the board, factions evolve, and components can be destroyed. Quicker than most legacy games at roughly 90 minutes per session, and a good option for groups who prefer competition to cooperation.

Charterstone (Worker Placement, Euro Game): Jamey Stegmaier’s legacy take on the worker placement genre. Over 12 games, players build a shared village by placing building stickers on the board, each creating new action spaces. After the campaign, you have a fully playable standalone game that is entirely unlike anyone else’s.

Betrayal Legacy (Horror, Exploration, Semi-Cooperative): Takes the chaotic haunted house formula of Betrayal at House on the Hill and gives it a generational narrative spanning centuries. Each session shapes the house itself for all future games.

Machi Koro Legacy (Dice Rolling, Card Drafting, City Building): Brings the light city-builder into legacy territory over ten sessions. A good option for groups who want shorter play times and lighter complexity.

Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated (Deck-Building, Adventure): Blends dungeon delving with legacy progression across a ten-game campaign. One of the most accessible entry points to legacy gaming for experienced card game players.

Recently Released Games Worth Watching

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West (2023): The standout recent release. It brought the legacy format to one of the hobby’s most beloved family games and introduced a whole generation of casual players to the concept. The legacy campaign starts with a map of just the eastern coast of the USA, and as you play through you unlock regions and grow the map, opening boxes and adding game components and new rules.

Clank! Legacy 2 (2024, Deck-Building, Dungeon Crawl, Adventure): The follow-up to Acquisitions Incorporated. Backed through Kickstarter and now available at retail, it continues the accessible legacy dungeon-crawling tradition for players who worked through the first game and wanted more.

Is a Legacy or Campaign Game Right for Your Group?

These games are not for everyone, and it is worth being honest about that before you commit.

You need a consistent group. The whole experience depends on playing with the same people across all sessions. If your gaming group is irregular or constantly changing, campaign and legacy games become genuinely difficult to manage. I learned this the hard way with an abandoned campaign that still sits on my shelf with a few stickers applied and six sessions never played.

Legacy games cannot be resold once played. Once stickers are applied and cards are written on, the game is yours in a literal sense. Some players find this uncomfortable. Others find it the whole point.

They require commitment. A full Gloomhaven campaign is a hundred-plus hours across many months. Even shorter campaigns like Pandemic Legacy ask for a dozen or more sessions. This is not a game you pull out casually — or at least, it is much less satisfying that way.

That said, for groups who can commit, the payoff is unlike almost anything else the hobby offers.

The Spectrum: Where Do These Games Sit?

The lines between legacy and campaign are not always clean. Many games sit somewhere in between. Gloomhaven has legacy elements but is generally described as a campaign game. Scythe: The Rise of Fenris offers a campaign with no permanent changes to the base game. Arkham Horror: The Card Game has a campaign structure without physical alteration.

If you are drawn to the feeling of continuity and consequence but not quite ready for irreversible changes, a campaign game is likely the better starting point. You get the narrative investment and the character development without the finality.