There was a time when there were a few games based on The Matrix movies, and they were even pretty good at times. Today, while video game adaptations are tougher to come by (although you can be Neo or Trinity in Fortnite), fans shouldn’t sleep on a tabletop opportunity to delve into the Matrix, with Upper Deck’s Legendary Encounters: The Matrix deckbuilding game, available on Amazon.
If you’re a tabletop or deckbuilding game fan but unfamiliar with the Legendary series, you’re missing out. They’re a series of cooperative games you can play solo or with friends where you battle against the deck, and they’re constructed really well to capture the feeling of venturing into the licensed worlds they’re trying to portray. The first Legendary game was a Marvel superheroes deckbuilder and has a ton of expansions, but I have the first Legendary Encounters, where the franchise expanded into movies with the Alien franchise. While that one seems to be out of print, the game manages to replicate the specific feel of the original Alien franchise, but with cards, and not only is it a fun and well-designed game, it’s genuinely pretty tense for a game you play with cards.
Legendary Encounters: The Matrix was released in 2023, and captures the same feel of the films and lets you join up with up to four other players, and includes characters like Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus, as well as villains such as Agent Smith and the Merovingian. The game is played not only with cards, but with a special playmat that dictates the flow of the game and makes learning it a little easier, as well.
There are actually a ton of Legendary Encounters games, dipping into lots of different media franchises–some of which are even a little unexpected. In addition to the Alien game (which I can’t recommend enough), there’s also an X-Files edition and a James Bond edition, which also has several expansions based on different movies. Check out the list below, and find more on Amazon.
And if the Matrix deckbuilding game inspires a rewatch of the film series, you can buy the four-film collection on 4K Blu-ray for $60.
