Upper Deck was showing off Dark Legacy:  The Rising, a card game with elements of role playing games, at the GAMA Trade Show.  The new game will launch at Gen Con this summer.

In Dark Legacy:  The Rising, each player controls a character who is in conflict with their opponent, using cards that represent spells and other resources.  Each card is assigned a “level” to represent the difficulty of using that resource, with higher level cards requiring more time to use.  In addition to the cards, the game uses dice to resolve actions.

The role playing element comes into play between games.  Players who are victorious in a match earn “experience points” that can be used to improve their character before the next game.  Higher level characters can use higher level cards more easily and acquire skills from a skill tree that can improve their spell casting, weapon skills, and other abilities.

Dark Legacy:  The Rising will launch with three starter sets.  Each starter set will include two 60-card starter decks, one each of two different factions for a total of six factions across all three starters, featuring cards from levels 1 through 5, as well as two paper playmats, dice, and tokens.  Following the release, smaller 60-card expansion sets will be released, adding higher level cards.  The cards in each set will be fixed, not random, but players can use them to build their own decks in the familiar trading card game style.

This game is the first published design by Bryan “Kaiser” Tillman, an artist who has done work for Upper Deck and other companies, including work in the comics industry.  Tillman also created the majority of the artwork for Dark Legacy.

The three starter decks will be MSRP $20.00 each.  The expansion packs will be MSRP $10.00.

This summer will also see the introduction of the MCU to Upper Deck’s long-running Vs System card game (see “The MCU Invades ‘Vs System’”) and a World War Hulk version of Legendary (see “‘Legendary’ Heats Up With ‘World War Hulk’”).