Legend of Drizzt Board Game Review

Legend of Drizzt - DND Adventure System
by Wizards of the Coast

For 1 to 5 players

Play time 1.5 hrs

Setup time 15 mins

Teaching time 15 mins

Disclaimer - I have not played any of the other DND Adventure System board games (Castle Ravenloft & Wrath of Ashardalon)

Legend of Drizzt is a board game themed around "The Icewind Dale" Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore which is based around the dungeons and dragons world. The board game is a cooperative game where up to 5 heroes team up together to go dungeon crawling in order to come out victorious in their quest. The game features characters, villains and quests from the R. A. Salvatore's novels. You and your friends may choose to play the legendary king dwarf Bruenor Battlehammer or the quick witted halfling, Regis, or the courageous barbarian, Wulfgar, or the beautiful, Cattie-brie. Of course Drizzt is also a hero you can choose to play who in my opinion is super powered in this game.

Players will delve into the caverns to fulfill their quests. They start on a start tile and reveal additional cavern tiles when exploring. Monsters appear in the caverns and attack the heroes. Traps and encounters happen. Treasures are found. All these happen until either the heroes complete their quest or one hero gets knocked out with no healing surge available at the start of his/her next turn.

Gameplay 7/10

At the start of the game, a quest is chosen and read aloud to set the dungeon crawling mood. Players choose a hero to play, takes their respective hero board and figure, chooses their hero's active and passive skill cards to use during the quest, and takes their hero stance tokens, and hit point (HP) tokens.The hero figurines are placed on the start tile unless specified otherwise in the specific quest.
According to the quest book, instructions are given on which cavern tiles to shuffle together for the particular quests and whatever else that needs to be prepared. Then the game can begin.

Each turn follows a pretty strict flow - hero moves and/or attacks, exploration happens or does not happen, encounters happen, monsters activate and attack. Player cards are provided for each player to remember which actions to perform. After a turn or two, everyone will be familiar with the flow.

Just like a DND dungeon crawling game, each hero will have movement points showing how many squares they are allowed to move, what's their armor class for defense and their hit-point value. Each hero in this game also has a special ability, something only that particular hero can do, which may be special attacks, special effects or special actions they can perform during the game.

Players use their hero's movement points to move their hero around in the cavern which grows bigger every time someone decides to explore.

Attacks happen via a D20 (20-sided die) die roll. The player decides which At-Will power or Daily power to use before the die roll. Bonuses and effects if any are added to the die roll based on the cards. Then the armor class of the target is subtracted from this value. If the value is still a positive number (including 0), then the target is damaged. Damage is given based on the attack power card used (usually 1 or 2 damages).



When the monsters activate, they follow the pre-programmed instructions given on their respective monster cards. The monsters move and attack as stated on the cards. Sometimes their attacks may also poison or immobilize the heroes.

Rinse and repeat, the heroes continue exploring, fighting and defeating monsters until they reach the goal tile, which reveals the boss monster or any other objective that the quest book has provided. Once the heroes complete the quest, they win! If either hero gets knocked out and at the start of their turn, has no healing surge to stand up again, then the heroes lose the quest.

Experience 8/10

It is a great idea to have a co-op with monsters acting on their own instead of having a player play the dungeon master and controlling all the monsters. This way, every one gets to play together as a team, all against the game system. I love how the cavern tiles reveal themselves during exploration rather than having the whole map already there at the start. It gives a realistic sense of  actually crawling in the dungeon.



Because they made a game system to go against you, you can actually play solo, which IMO is more fun than a multiplayer game (you get to control everything). It is not so difficult to control 2 or more heroes solo. I can finish a game solo in half the time it takes for any number of players to play.

Playing this with other players, if there is an Alpha gamer (most often the owner of the game), the one who knows all the powers that every hero has, this one person may take control of the whole game and every one else will just be following. Games like this get really boring when really the only decision you can make is, well, none... You get to roll the die and watch the cavern unfold and cool looking monster figurines get placed on the tiles, some towering over your heroes.



Saying all this, we do enjoy this game from time to time. Kids love it because it looks cool. We love it because we get to do some real dungeon crawling, not knowing what will turn up at the next corner. If you're just looking to have a fantasy session, becoming imaginative heroes, looking to have a few laughs over drinks, then get this. If you're looking for medium to heavy strategy, then get the Castle Ravenloft DND Adventure board game. It is the same thing as this but ups the difficulty significantly.

Replayability 7/10

The quest book is filled with 13 quests with different ways of getting to your objective. Some will pit players against each other, some will divide you into teams, and one which will insert a hidden traitor that no one, even the traitor himself, would know until the end of the game.

So far we have not gotten the chance to try out these other quests yet, so I'd say the replayability is still there. However, most of the people in my gaming group would go with Descent if they wish for a dungeon crawling board game experience. Which means that this game stays on my shelf until I manage to find another opportunity to bring it down again.

Components 7/10

The figurines look good, color coded, some bigger than others. The boss figurine is a cool looking demon. Not expensive if you consider how many figures they are giving you for the price you pay.



The rest of the components are sturdy and card stock is thick. However, the art looks a bit dull and bland. There are many tokens and the box has compartments to place them. You will just have to figure out which works best for you.

Overall 7/10

I had the hots for this game for over a year before I got my hands on it. Everything from the mechanics to the tile laying to the dungeon crawling and to the characters, all of it drew me to this game. This would be a good gateway game for those players who are thinking of getting into tabletop RPG but are not sure they would like to spend the time and effort to sustain one.



Good for casual gamers who like dungeon crawling. You can finish a session in an hour and a half.

Pros:
Nice figures
Good mechanics of tile laying and monster activation
Kids can learn how to add and subtract

Cons:
Art bland
Difficulty - easy
Light, new gamers will find it a chore to understand how to use their powers/weapons


Variants
There are many other self-created quests online that you can print out and use. Many ways of using the game system to meet your gaming group needs.

You can actually use the components in this game for a your very own Tabletop RPG dungeon crawling. It is a very good system that is set up.

You can also get the rest of the DND Adventure Systems to combine and create your own dungeon.

Elder Sign Board Game Review

Elder Sign

by FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES

for 1-8 players

Play time 1 hour

Setup time 10 mins

Teaching time 15 mins

Reason I bought Elder Sign is because of the dice, and because it can play up to 8 people, and because it is portable. The game works, but I've had some bad experiences teaching it. Since 3 months ago till now, we have not craved for this, so I'm not sure it is ever going to come back on the table again. I still play it solo though.

Elder Sign is a HP Lovecraft themed Arkham Horror Lite coop game with dice and lots of luck. There, I've summed up the whole game.

If you have not played Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror before, then I'll need to explain this game a bit. You throw dice to complete tasks which will give you items or Elder Signs!!! Yes, one of the ways to win this game is to collect these Signs and once you hit the amount you need, then game over for the bad guys. The other way is to go head-to-head with the Boss. It is fun to throw dice but there are some drawbacks to Elder Sign that makes it not so fun which I will explain later in this review.

Game Components 5/10
Very beautiful artwork on all the cards. The cards make up your board. You don't get a board here, and I wish they had a board. It would bring so much more attraction to the game. But I believe this game was made to be protable (It comes in a box considerably smaller than most other board games of its kind) so the cards would have to do. But I still think they skimped on this to make it cheaper, which brings the game experience down by a few notches.

The cards are sized well but the words are so small, and in writing that makes them look like scribbles. I can hardly read them. To get into the theme of the game, you will need to read each card, but it is such a hassle because you have to lift each card up to read it that our gaming group just skimped on the theme itself. What a bore. No theme, no good gaming experience for me! The cards are quite thin so just sleeve them up.

Oh they also give you a beautiful clock to fix and play with. Though in the long run, I foresee the clock falling apart after plenty of turning.

You're given 6 green dice, 1 yellow and 1 red one. All are beautifully carved in dice and the only component I can find no fault with in this game.

Finally, you get a whole bunch of tokens (they look like hundreds) the size of lady birds, like really small. So take your kids below 6 years old out of the gaming room before bringing this out. So far I have yet to miss a piece but it is highly likely that a few tokens may go missing after some time.

Game Mechanics 7/10
During setup, an Ancient One is chosen (Boss evil) for your team to fight against. On the Boss card, you will see a number of Elder Signs you have to collect to win and the number of doom tokens you can afford before all hell breaks loose and the Ancient One comes into the world. Every player then gets a character card on which you will have Stamina points and Sanity points, get either of these down to zero and your character either dies or goes insane. Your character card also shows one special ability that each character will have that is important to win the game. Make sure you use it to its full ability.

6 adventure cards will be placed face up and during a turn, an investigator (character) will have to go over to any of these adventure cards and try to complete the task set before him/her by throwing dice equal to the requirement of that adventure. During the game, you may choose to lock a die roll on your investigator or on a friend who is already on that adventure (usually because he/she failed it before this). Or if you have items on hand, you use them, usually either to add the yellow or red die, or lock a die. These things will help you heaps during the game so make sure you stock up on items and keep using them to gain more items. If you fail to complete the tasks, you are punished with the items listed on the card. If you are successful, feel the victory as you get rewarded for your efforts and luck in dice rolling. Some of these adventures have Elder Signs as rewards, which you have to collect before the Ancient One awakens.

If the Ancient One awakens, then muahahahaha "the Dark Lord is aliiveeeee". Just kidding. Once you wake the Boss, everyone goes to battle mode and you will have to roll the combination on the Ancient One card every turn until either the all investigators die or go insane, or you reduce the Boss' doom tokens to zero and defeat him. Well all the best defeating the Ancient One. It is very hard to defeat the Boss. There is also the Boss, Azallalalalathu, who has no dice combination on his card, which means you all lose when he awakens.

Oh I almost forgot to mention the dreaded clock. After every turn, the clock moves 3 hours forward. Whenever it hits 12 (supposedly midnight), a myth card is drawn and effects resolved (usually add doom tokens to the track). This mechanic helps to scale the amount of players so that the game doesn't take too long and at the same time keeps the same difficulty level whether with 1 player or with 8.

Replayability 7/10
10 Ancient Ones to defeat, 12 characters to choose from, various adventures to play through. Yes, this game is made with replayability in mind. However, I'm not sure how I am going to get this to the table again considering all the other better board games that I have.

Game Experience 5/10
I had a really good experience with dice when I was playing King of Tokyo. They say all dice games came from Yahtzee. So I had this urge to find a coop game that was driven by dice. Elder Sign came into my list of games to get.

My experience playing this game with casual gamers is... not so good. Like I mentioned, the cards are really hard to read and there are so many small components to keep track of. Everyone just wanted to find the cards that had Elder Signs as rewards. Soon enough they lost all their items and kept on failing tasks. We still won the game though so the claims that this game is too easy is valid to an extent.

The die rolling is really fun. Completing the tasks makes you want to do a victory dance. The mechanics to lock dice is fantastic too. But for some reason, it still lacks the ooommph that we had with King of Tokyo. Or maybe my friends weren't that into the HP Lovecraft horror theme in the first place. I do not know what was the reason behind it but game time kinda sucked with this game.

I do notably wish to state that playing the game solo is fun and I have played this a few times alone when I just had to free my mind off some work. Maybe I just haven't found the right group to play this with.

A friend just played it with his gaming group last night and they had a hard time beating it. They mentioned that the adventures and monsters locked the yellow, red and green dice at the start of the game. Then they couldn't even roll a peril and a terror at the same time. Funnily, I have never had a hard time beating the game. Must be really bad dice rolls that they experienced. Yes, this game will mostly be based on luck.

Overall 5/10
I'm a bit disappointed that this doesn't get more plays. Solo-ing is the only time I enjoyed this game. Usually when playing with other players, they get bored in between turns and talk about the sky, the moon and everything else. So instead of a coop game, it is a make your site rolls count game.

No point complaining now, just play solo all the way. Or maybe get wifey for a two player game. Yea, that might work...

Pros:
Dice are cool
Beautiful artwork

Cons:
High downtime with 4+ players
Complex
Teaching this is hard
Easy to win
Horror theme
Lots of small components



Played the game? Feel free to comment and let me know how much you enjoyed the game...

Shadows Over Camelot Board Game Review

Shadows Over Camelot

By DAYS OF WONDER

For 3-7 players

Play time 1.5 hrs

Setup time 10 mins

Teaching time 15 mins

Shadows over Camelot is a cooperative board game with a traitor element in-built if you so wish to add this to the game. It spices things up considerably but I cannot comment on this much because I have only tried the purely coop version and that already rocks.

This game kinda got me hooked on to board games. It is full of theme and simple to teach. When a friend of mine suggested we spend the night playing Shadows over Camelot, I wasn't enthusiastic. Board games to me meant monopoly, chess or scrabble - games that were plain and bland and simply a way to kill time, not that these games weren't good, but you can tell when a board game has the ability to imerse you into an adventure and a story, and when it is just plain do this, get that and you win. So I just went along with it and boy was I in for a surprise.

The theme of Shadows over Camelot brings you to the story of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. Sir Lancelot has just deserted the king and the forces of evil are going against the kingdom of Camelot. Players each play as one of the courageous knights who will travel to the outskirts of Camelot to complete tasks and attain white swords and rid the evil shadow that is looming over Camelot.

Game components 9/10
Miniatures.. Lots and lots of miniatures.. Oh joy.. And colored too though not pre-painted.. I like the components.. The boards are creative with beautiful pictures of Camelot and it's various tasks to accomplish. There are quite a few boards and some even double sided to expand on the tasks. Cards are sturdy and will last a couple runs.

Game Mechanics 7/10
It feels a bit like a poker or solitaire game though not totally. I will not go through every task that you will be attempting. I will simply go through the basic turn-phase.

Setup will consist of everyone receiving their cards in hand including a Merlin card which gives the player/players some abilities to cancel bad events later in the game. Then everyone gets a 6-sided die placed on its side to denote the player's life point value. Everyone chooses the knight they wish to be and grabs their specific knight miniature and places it at the round table of Camelot. Then the first player turn begins.

Each player's turn consists of 2 things - one heroic progression and one evil progression (we like to call them the good thing and the bad thing).

A good thing you may do on your turn may be only one of the following:

• Movement to Camelot or to any quest on the boards
• Placing a card down to progress a certain quest
• If you are in Camelot, you can
• Draw 2 white cards or
• Choose to fight siege durgeons (I hope I got the spelling right)
• Play a special ability card
• Discard 3 cards of the same number from your hand to gain a life point

Then after your heroic action, you have to now choose which of evil moves forward. You may do one of the following:

• Add a siege durgeon to the board
• Draw a black card and resolve it
• Lose a life (how heroically sacrificial this is =.=")

Quests are resolved by placing the correct number of cards and with the right numbers onto the quest itself. The holy grail quests is the exception where you have to place Grail cards there to complete it. As the progression of evil goes, they get to place a card also. This usually happens every time you draw a black card. Complete a quest and you get to gain white swords plus some rewards listed. Lose a quest to evil and you gain black swords plus some negative effects listed.

To win the game, you must collect a number of white swords more than the number of black swords once the round table is filled with swords.

To lose the game, well:

• Forced to place the last siege durgeon on the board
• All the knights' life point reaches zero
• The number of black swords on the table is more than half the number of swords that can be placed on the table

So as you can see here, the game is very difficult. The only way to tweak the difficulty of the game is to add or reduce life points.

Replayability 3/10 (without traitor)

If you do not play with the "traitor" component, then replayability may be quite low after you've defeated the game. Our group played twice and defeated the game. We played one more time just to see if the game would get any easier and yes it did. However, like I mentioned at the beginning, we have not had the chance to try with the traitor component. I believe the replayability value will skyrocket once we have (according to what I've heard). This makes the difficulty level of the game increase significantly so the challenge will definitely be there.

Game Experience 8/10

This was the first Euro game of its kind that I played and it got me hooked to the world of board gaming. So believe it or not, this game gave me an experience of a lifetime. The adrenaline pumping into me as we watched our quests being taken over by evil, and as we won quest after quest, we breathed a sigh of relief and high-fived one another. I truly felt as if I am a heroic knight trying to save Camelot from destruction.

Some things that I found disappointing about the game was that you can only do one thing every turn. Play with 7 players and that one thing that you do counts because you are going to have a super-downtime once you're done with your turn. This makes every turn even longer if some players only wait for their turn before starting to decide what they should do. Moving from one place to another is considered a good thing (What? You mean I move and I end my turn there?). Cards do not come easy because you have to use a turn to draw cards as well. So we feel very limited in our actions, unlike Pandemic where you can strategize and do 4 actions. Decision making is minimal for your good turn but maximum when you decide which bad thing you wish to do. Nobody wants to do a bad thing, but you're forced to do it.

My marks for experience is raised due to the fact that during every turn, there is communication going on among all the players. I love socializing and team work and Shadows over Camelot provides this experience with a very simplistic game play. This helps non-gamers and casual gamers to join in on the fun as well. 

Unfortunately, for every coop game that we have come across, it does suffer from the Alpha gamer syndrome. Typically, one player (a heavy gamer usually) will control everyone's decisions making everyone obey his commands as he strategizes for everyone.  If you are playing board games with people, a good thing to keep in mind is that teamwork comes from the team itself. Let your team make their own decisions and give their opinions even though you may not approve of their lack of thought in their decisions (Sarcasm, totally). It is good to mention that this has not yet happened in our gaming groups. Our main goal when playing is not to win or not, but it is the experience itself teaming up with others and to see how far we can go as a team. If we have a player trying to make decisions for everyone, we will definitely ask him/her to calm down and allow everyone to play as they wish, even though if it means making some losing choices.

Overall 8/10

I love love love coop games. And Shadows over Camelot is the culprit for that. I can't wait for the next session where we can add the traitor in. Awesome experience, awesome teamwork, awesome memories.

Pros:

Awesome experience

Awesome team work

Awesome memories

Cons:

Alpha gamer syndrome

Limited actions per turn


What did you think of the game? Leave me a comment on your opinion of it...

Pandemic Board Game Review

Pandemic

by ZMAN GAMES

for 2-4 players

Play time 1.5 hours

Setup time 10 mins

Teaching time 15 mins

Who ever thought everyone could actually win together in a board game? Pandemic is one of those games where you can. This is a cooperative game (the first of its kind) that has one of the best and classic designs. Everyone was so impressed by it that game designers decided to come up with more cooperative games and now we have a ton of them that has copied or tried to improve upon the basic idea of either everybody wins or everybody loses. And I think it's just brilliant.

My first cooperative game was Shadows over Camelot. This was introduced by a friend and it got me hooked to board games from then on... So cooperative games have a close place in my heart. Some time soon, I might just do a game review on Shadows over Camelot... 

In Pandemic, players will become a character/role that is part of a medical team of experts trying to cure the world of diseases which are infecting the world more and more during the whole duration of the game. There will be moments of "Ok we can control this", and as the game progresses, "Sh*t, we have to treat that one there. No this one, first. Sh*t we're going to lose.. Arrr!", to "Phew, that was a close one. What the ****, another Epidemic card?". Well, you get the idea.

Game components 9/10
The board is made with awesome material and the printing made to last. After 10+ games, nothing has deteriorated, no blunt edges or scratches, so a good quality board. Cards are a bit thin so i sleeved them to avoid damaged corners. You get wooden blocks for pawns.. And the coolest part are the translucent cubes in four different colors, 24 of each color. Then some other wooden components that make up research buildings, infection rate and outbreak rate.

The components do their job well so I have no complaints there. However, don't let your 2-year old get his hands on them. Otherwise, you'll be losing the game more often... (well it's true...)

Game Mechanics 8/10
Coop games have a very awesome mechanic in that every turn, each player will play the good guy and then the bad guy or vice versa depending on which sequence the game system decides to make you do first. Basically you're all ganging up to go against the game itself (or going against the designer if you wish to put it that way). All good coop games have this similarity - that it is never easy to win. So for the first few tries, you're definitely going to lose a few times. But that's ok, because the challenge will make you come back for more, and you'll be thinking about it night and day trying to figure out how to beat the freaking system.

At setup, every player gets a character card which depicts your role in the medical team and your special ability that will help the team if you use it well. Players will also be given a number of cards in hand with countries or events on them.

Then every turn, you can perform 4 actions which comprise of walking/driving/ferrying around the board, flying using the cards you have in your hand, building research stations to travel to and fro on the world map, treating diseases and finding cures. And trust me, 4 actions are not enough to do all you wish to do.

After deciding and executing the actions, the active player will draw 2 cards and resolve any Epidemic cards if they draw any. You may only have 7 cards in your hand at all times.

Then comes the bad event - infections. You will draw cards equal to the infection rate, and infect the said cities with disease cubes. Have more than three in a city, and an outbreak occurs which infects all the cities adjacent to that city. And if these cities have more than three cubes as well, a chain outbreak occurs. Sometimes, chains can happen three or four times and you'll be covering your eyes as your precious cities are engulfed by the likes of the flu virus.

There are 3 ways to lose this game and only 1 way to win. Have 8 outbreaks and you lose. Finish up all one color of disease cubes and if you cannot place the number of cubes required on the board, you lose. Finish your player deck and you lose (This helps to keep the playing time controlled but oh boy does this hurt your chances of winning). The only way to win is to find all four cures. You do not need to eradicate the diseases, just find the cures.

Repayability 8/10
The replayability factor in Pandemic comes mainly from the different roles available to you. Different combinations provide different advantages and a different way to strategize and a different way to play. Pandemic also gives you the option to tweak the difficulty of your game by adding or taking out Epidemic cards. That way if you're up for a greater challenge, just add one more in.

The expansions "On The Brink" and "In the Lab" provide you many variations which make you want to play the game more. I have not had the chance to play these yet, but from the reviews of some, it makes me want to get them.

Game Experience 8/10
I love it... Most of the time, you will think that you have got it covered and this game will be a breeze, until someone draws an Epidemic card.. and then chaos happens. The challenge it gives as a coop game makes me feel like I'm playing a chess game but at a cooperative level. We all want to win, and win together we will, if we unite our brains together and work as a team. And I love team play. The feeling that comes when we manage to find all the cures is exceptionally satisfying..

Sometimes I play this game solo as well. Since it's a multiplayer solitaire game, I play 2-3 players myself just for the mental challenge which refreshes me every time.

This game may be brain taxing for the more casual light gamers. Wifey doesn't like it because of the uncertainty of not knowing when and where the cubes will appear next, and also when Epidemics will happen. But I say bring it on...

So get a bunch of tough competitive gamers and force them to cooperate together to play this game. It will be a blast watching them squirm as they realize that no one person can gain the glory for himself/herself.

Overall 8/10
A good rating for a good game. Pandemic will do justice for regular board gamers. Light casual gamers may wish to look for something less brain taxing. But if you love the challenge and you love team work, get this game. Awesome for the adult and youngsters alike.

Pros:
Coop
Difficult (Challenging)
Good strategy/Less luck (although some luck is involved)
Teamwork

Cons:
Not for light casual non-gamers
Difficult
Brain taxing


What did you think of the game? Leave me a comment on your opinion of it...