Welcome to an alternative Marvel Universe set in the dark gritty world of hard-knuckled detectives. It’s a grim take on the Roaring Twenties and Depression Thirties with tangled mysteries, flawed Heroes, corruption, betrayal, and moral grey areas. It’s a world immortalized by the Classic Marvel comic series that recasts their Heroes as unique Noir versions. Welcome to Legendary®: Marvel Noir.

In a world of Noir, conspiracies are hard to unravel, betrayal is commonplace, and it’s hard to determine who the real villains are.

Hidden Witnesses represents Villains and Masterminds hiding behind layers of informants, victims, and stooges. To find these Villains, you must track down and interview Hidden Witnesses who know their locations. Anytime a Villain captures a Hidden Witness they capture the top card of the Bystander Stack, face-down. You can’t fight a Villain while it has a Hidden Witness.

During a player’s turn they may spend 2 Recruit points to rescue a Hidden Witness any number of times and put it into their Victory Pile. Players can pay to rescue Hidden Witnesses even if they’re not going to fight the Villain that turn. They can also rescue just some of the Hidden Witnesses and leave the others for later.

Hidden Witnesses still count as Bystanders. When you rescue one, you get any special “When you rescue this Bystander…” effect written on it. It stays in your Victory Pile as a normal, face-up Bystander.

A Villain can have face-up Bystanders and face-down Hidden Witnesses at the same time. Players will need to first rescue the Hidden Witnesses. Then, they can fight the Villain which will automatically rescue the Bystanders. If a Villain escapes with any number of Bystanders, including Hidden Witnesses, it will cause all players to discard a single card, just like a Villain escaping with any normal Bystanders. Hidden Witnesses carried away by escaping Villains stay in the escape pile as normal, face-up Bystanders.

If a special ability lets you “Defeat a Villain for free,” (i.e. Black Widows’ Silent Sniper) you automatically rescue all of the Hidden Witnesses on it without paying the Recruit cost.

Masterminds and Schemes can also have Hidden Witnesses on them too. These work the same way.

The investigations begin on Legendary®: Marvel Noir February 15th. Contact your local gaming store and preorder your copy today.

If you missed any of our other card previews, click below to be taken to them.

Cast of Characters

Keyword – Investigate