Betrayal at the House on the Hill - I've played this before and quite like it. In many ways it better encapsulates and boardgame-ifies Call of Cthulhu better than Arkham Horror does. At least the way I run Call of Cthulhu: first half of the game is a Scooby Doo episode, the second half involves things falling apart and centers failing to hold. Don't get me wrong though, Arkham Horror is nifty, but it doesn't involve exploring randomly placed haunted house tiles and I will never get tired of that.
Dominion with Seaside expansion - Dominion has all the juice inherent in the structure of a collectible card game without the economic shackles of buying more boosters. And unlike many, many games I occasionally win this one, so that's nice. One time I even beat my sister, which I consider a braggable accomplishment because I'm pretty sure she basically lives her life looking for opportunities to whomp me at boardgames. The Seaside expansion cards left me completely flummoxed and I got clobbered. But I can't blame the game on that though, as lots of games confuse me. Even something as relatively straightforward as Puerto Rico took me an embarassingly huge number of plays before I figured out what I was doing wrong. ("Hey, maybe I should try shipping some goods and scoring some points!")
Incidentally, a reliable informant told me that Thunderstone is basically Dominion plus monster fighting. You know I gotta get in on that action.
Dust Tactics - This is a simple minis game from the makers of AT-43 that dares ask the question: what if World War II had more lasers and robots? I ended up playing the Nazis, running some laser troopers commanded by a busty Aryan dominatrix type and a couple panzer-mecha. Bazooka Joe and his four-legged tanks chewed me to pieces, so yay for Uncle Sam I guess. The figures were nicely done plastics and the dry-erase control sheets did an excellent job of encapsulating a lot of information. The only thing that I didn't like was that one moved across a giant grid o' squares. Hexes too fancy?
Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game - My opinion of fullblown 4e aside, I really gave this the old college try. After all, if my major complaint is that 4e is too boardgamey, you'd think a boardgame version might be a hoot. Good: if you want more figures and tiles for your D&D game, there's a lot of good loot in this one. Including some sweetass monsters. Bad: everything else. Seriously. If you want to play a boardgame about dungeoneering there are many better options. I've never played Descent but several people at the table and kibitzing nearby said it was far superior. Personally, I'd rather play Dungeon! or Mertwig's Maze than Castle Ravenloft. Or even Munchkin Quest, which seems to have the same endgame flaw as the original cardgame.
Castle Ravenloft did have one interesting new mechanic that I can't quite figure out whether to put in the Good or Bad column: whenever you roll a natural 20 on any die throw your PC goes up a level. That can only happen once a game since only first and second level are supported, but even several days later I'm pondering the possibilities of level advancement by random occurence...
Megadungeon Map
-
click to enlargeThe players find this somewhere in the megadungeon, showing
how the areas connect, where the Gate of Six Keys is and where the keys are.
.jpg)
%202.png)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.png)
.jpg)
Posts
Castle Ravenloft scores points for me because it's a game I can play with my six year old and nine year old. They've really gotten a kick out of it. I can't see breaking it out for the regular gaming group, though.
ReplyDeleteI also like Ravenloft, though it is REALLY crunchy and I'm scared to death of losing any pieces. Thank goodness the box is built like a tank!
ReplyDeleteThat aside, we still break out Dungeon! every once in a while because that's our fav. (Okay, MY fav) and it's just so easy to play.
My dream is still to have an upgraded Dungeon! that's retains the ease of play, but also endlessly re-playable. Ravenloft sort of overshoots that mark, but it is still a lot of fun.
I own Decent, though I haven't played it much. Biggest problem being that for a beer and pretzels board game that doesn't offer too much in the way strategy, it takes way too long to resolve.
ReplyDeleteSilly question - have you ever played Settlers of Catan? What's your opinion on it?
ReplyDelete'whenever you roll a natural 20 on any die throw your PC goes up a level'
ReplyDelete- I like this, it keeps the PCs active.
Not silly at all, lady2. Yeah, I've played Settler of Catan several times. It seems like a pretty decent game to me. It's not super-flashy but I find the play interesting. The only real downside is this: all games are more fun with good people, but any game with trades between players pretty much invites bad eggs to ruin play.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I will always be amused by any game that tricks players into announcing "I've got wood for sheep".
Perhaps an increasing system where it would take one "20" to go from level one to level two, two "20s" to go up to level three, three "20s" to go up to level four, and so on, until you need nineteen "20s" to reach level 20.
ReplyDeleteA touch near impossible if you need them all in one session, but if you could hold them over sessions...
just a thought.
-- GopherDave
I'm still not sure how I feel about Castle Ravenloft, but I am sure that it's not fair to compare it to Descent. They are aimed at two different audiences. Ravenloft is designed to play fast with some strategy but minimal tactics. Descent takes much longer to play and affords many more tactical choices to players. Nothing wrong with preferring Descent, but the games are trying to do different things under the larger umbrella of "dungeon crawl."
ReplyDeleteAlso, players must have a certain number of experience points banked in order to go up a level on the throw of a 20. Players must decide whether to spend their XP on sure things like avoiding traps, or wait and hope to get the 20 which will level them. Again, it may not be a mechanic everyone likes, but many of the negative Ravenloft reviews seem to not understand some of the mechanics.
"...but many of the negative Ravenloft reviews seem to not understand some of the mechanics."
ReplyDeleteWhich is a fair point, because the rule book (IMHO) is not well written. It leaves room for a lot of interp.
My friend bought Ravenloft because he has a loony fear of dungeon crawl games lasting more than one session. I soon witnessed how players were to function like PC/MMORPG players. The Wizard is a ranged nuker with no odd spells, for example. Banked monster EXP was needed constantly to avoid painful traps, only once did someone level up. I will never forsake DESCENT for this.
ReplyDeleteMy gaming group and I recently picked up Dominion as our backup/downtime game, and we LOVE it. One of the best new games I've tried in ages and ages.
ReplyDeleteAs for Castle Ravenloft, even the old GW HeroQuest boardgame would be higher on my list than trying that one out...
Re: Castle Ravenloft. Its been a big hit at my gaming table because it's the only co-op dungeon-crawler that doesn't require a GM. (Games like Descent that require a GM are pretty much non-starters for me, because if I want to play a dungeon-crawl with a GM I would just grab my OD&D books off the shelf and get to it.) The 60-minute playing time is also awesome.
ReplyDeleteIt's not without some issues, but:
(1) If you get a chance, try some of the more advanced scenarios. The first couple or three scenarios in the box should probably have been labeled as tutorial: They introduce the basic gameplay. And while that gameplay is well-balanced, it can get kind of bland without the complications introduced by the more advanced scenarios.
(2) The tactics and strategy of the game are radically different from any edition of D&D. The fact that the game looks so much like D&D on the surface can be very misleading and lead to very boring play. If you play again, take a long, hard look at how the interactions between players and monsters on the tile borders work. That's the heart of the game's tactics.
I am glad that I am not the only one who seems to get flummoxed by Eurogames like Puerto Rico. I have no idea what it is about those games, but I seem to get my rear kicked every time I play one.
ReplyDeleteabout the roll 20 to level idea:
ReplyDeleteIf a fighter levelled up in the wilderness - maybe they get to become a ranger or barbarian, or in a city - assassin or cavalier.
What’s the endgame flaw in Munchkin?
ReplyDeleteRobert - the first person to try to win always gets slaughtered by the oher players, setting up the 2nd or 3rd winningest player to take the crown.
ReplyDelete@ Jeff: Man, I am trying to think, but it's tough...I am almost POSITIVE I've seen an RPG that had a random level up mechanic in it...I just don't remember where. Possibly some random Iron Game Chef game.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a terribly bad idea to introduce that to a design, though not for a mechanic that (presumably) players are rolling a lot of...like attack rolls.
BTW I still love and play Dungeon!
Ah. We haven’t found that to be a flaw. The trick is to convince everyone that someone else is the greatest threat. Or a few other strategies that you can pursue if you get the right card.
ReplyDeleteHmm, maybe the groups I've played it with weren't sufficiently dastardly.
ReplyDeleteComing from your "live to whomp your butt" sister, that copy of Ascension I bought from the Armored Gopher at WW? It is a deck-building game that adds in the monster-killing aspect also, but it plays faster and it's slightly tougher to predict a clear winner. Thunderstone's great; Dominion's great; and I haven't played nearly enough Ascension to put the "great" stamp on it, but I'm liking it so far. I'll have to bring it to the next family dealio and whomp your butt at it.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah. Munchkin is about being dastardly. In fact, we can’t play it when one of my friends is around because that aspect of it really bugs him.
ReplyDeleteRe: Munchkin. Convincing other people that there's "nothing I can do to stop Bob!" so that they'll deplete their cards while you keep a few mischievous tricks up your sleeve is crucial.
ReplyDelete