Ever since the form was birthed by Rob Daviau’s Risk Legacy, there’s been a central irony to legacy games — simply put, that their best parts are the things you do when you aren’t playing. Opening envelopes. Marking the board. Tearing up cards. Seeing how this physical artifact will transform before your eyes.

The same is true of Undaunted: Stalingrad, the fourth and most ambitious release in Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson’s much-celebrated Undaunted series, although to a thankfully lesser degree than in other exemplars of the form. This is a gentler legacy title, components-wise; nothing is destroyed over the course of its dozen-or-so session campaign, which can be safely reset upon its conclusion. More importantly, however, it sets itself apart by leaning into the physical terrors of war. By the conclusion of that fateful siege, both its titular city and the bodies of its combatants will have been ravaged by combat. This is a legacy game not only in the sense that it transforms between plays, but also in the way it forces one to confront the scars of war. It transforms, but is also transformative.

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