Dungeons & Dragons: Eternal Winter

So, it’s expansion time again and this week I’m going to talk about Eternal Winter, an expansion for the D&D Fantasy Board Game I reviewed last week. I’m going to focus this review primarily on what the expansion adds rather than on specific cards etc.

 

Unboxed

So what do you get:

• 2 double-sided game boards
• 1 Barbarian hero figure
• 1 large dragon figure
• 7 Monster figures
• 1 Tower
• 4 double door tokens
• 1 Hero token
• 2 Passageway tokens
• 26 Item cards
• 24 Monster cards
• 1 Reminder card
• 1 Hero board
• 1 Die
• Adventure book

Everything in this set is on a par with the base set. The monster models are pretty good and very big, including a dragon, some eagle riders, wolves and salamanders.

There are new monster cards for some of the older minis which are Winter versions. These show show different stats to make the monster feel different than in the base game.

There are couple of areas where the game is a bit lax. Firstly the new Hero is only presented with starting equipment for level 3, this assumes that you wont want to use him in the base game. The second is that the maps show additional props (like trees) that are not included in this set so you have to substitute in pillars or other tokens. But other than that everything is a pretty good quality, considering you can pick this expansion up for £12 on ebay.

New Mechanics

One of the major new mechanics introduced in this expansions is Flight and different “levels”. This is probably the worst mechanic in the whole game.

Firstly there is only one elevated position, the tower. This could be fixed by modding the expansion yourself (possibly using the new 3-d tile kits from Wizards) but adding a whole new mechanic for one 4x4 platform seemed redundant.

The second problem with the mechanic is the flight die. Any creature that can fly rolls the flight dice. This dice then dictates how that creature moves. There are three results:

1. Move Up
2. Move Down
3. Fly Anywhere on the same level

Rolling the dice counts as an action so you can only roll once per turn and still attack. However, because you must follow the instructions on the dice, if you are up on the tower and want to get down you have a 1/3 chance. If you fail you can roll again, but then you would have to land somewhere far enough away from the heroes so they cant bash your brains in during their turn. However, most fliers have pathetically low ground movement so you’re in a catch 22. If you roll the dice while on the ground you have as much chance of flying back up to the tower as you have of engaging the heroes and actually being able to attack or not moving at all.

Obviously having fliers be able to continually harass the players would have been a bit game breaking but this entirely random mechanic is rather strained to say the least.

The second new mechanic in this set is Breath Weapons. These are extremely powerful as they ignore armour and in the Dragon’s case they can hit heroes standing three boards away with the same ferocity as if they were standing right next to the Dragon. It might have been a bit more tactically challenging for Breath Weapons to affect anything in it’s path, not just heroes.

The third new mechanic is Wandering Monsters, which I actually quite like. Essentially you build a deck of monsters that can continually enter play while at least 1 hero is “outside”. Each turn the Dungeon Master can roll the Star Dice and if he rolls a star result he flips over a card and brings that monster into play on a specific spot. It might have been nice for there to be more than one spawn point for wandering monsters in each scenario through…

The final new mechanic is snow. This is really just a hindrance and reduces Heroes speed by 1 if they start on the snow. Happily though Winter Monsters and the new Barbarian Class are unaffected. I’m not sure that with the deadlier monsters, breath weapons and fliers that the heroes needed to be hampered any more than they were. In fact this mechanic seems to be aimed at making players see the barbarian as the most attractive choice for this campaign, of course, only one of them can play the Barbarian. Speaking of which…

The New Hero

The Barbarian Morkahn is pretty much a clone of Regdar, they have identical hit points, armour class and weapon and artefact slots, except that Morkahn can move 1 additional space, isn’t slowed down on snow, can have an additional attack if he spends 4 hit points and still has Regdar’s special ability of gaining an additional damage if he attacks in melee.

Add to that the fact that he starts with a crossbow that allows him to go up and down the tower and you can see why he is the best hero of choice for this campaign. However, there is only one of him, which means that everyone else has to play weaker characters who can’t walk on snow or climb cliffs or attack three times.

The New Campaign

 

The final part of this set however is the campaign. Six new missions, all set at the top difficulty (i.e. Level 3). These new campaigns pose a significant challenge to the heroes, especially if you have fewer than four characters.

The new monsters and fearsome foes like the Salamander and the Dragon, as well as the minor twists on the old foes make these scenarios reasonably fun to run through. There is nothing ground breaking about them but they are different enough from the base set to be enjoyable.

The new weapons and spells offer new opportunities and most of them have a winter twist to add some theme and flavour.

However, it would have been nice to have, either, components for the heroes to progress to fourth level or for the campaign to effectively “start over” and have the heroes begin from first level and work their way up (as the later expansion The Forbidden Forest did)

Final Thoughts

Overall this expansion is just more of the same from the base game. It adds some power creep, as I mentioned with the new Hero and the new monsters.

The new mechanics the game adds are, on the whole, not worth it. But the new boards, monsters, weapons and spells are nice for people who want to design their own campaigns.

The lack of levelling up in the new campaign really removes any feeling of Roleplaying from the game and it certainly isn’t anywhere as thematic as the other expansion The Forbidden Forest.

So, if you liked the base game and you are just looking for a new campaign with a fresher face then this may be the expansion for you. However, if you are looking for a more story driven adventure I’d definitely look at getting the Forbidden Forest instead.

However, if what you are looking for is components to use with creating your own campaigns that are set in a winterwonderland then grab this expansion while you still can… plus… it has Dragons and that’s always cool right?!

Dungeons & Dragons: The Board Game

Wrath of Ashardalon may well be the new hotness, but it is by no means the first time that Wizards of the Coast has tried to convert D&D to table top fun.

The game I will be talking about today is the largely forgotten D&D the Board Game, released way back in 2003 when 3rd edition was all the rage and the d20 ruled the RPG world.

Theme

An evil Lich Lord is terrorising the Kingdom, only a fighter, wizard, rogue and cleric have any chance of stopping him and to do so they must venture into numerous dungeons, defeating hundreds of foes, collecting valuable treasures and emerging victorious, their heads held high and their coffers full.  

Unboxed

So, what’s in the box?

• Players' Guide
• Dungeon Master's Guide
• 5 Double-Sided Gameboards
• 4 Hero Figures
• 36 Monster Figures
• 95 Item Cards
• 39 Monster Cards
• 10 Custom Dice
• 4 Hero Playsheets
• 104 Damage/Health Counters
• 19 Treasure Chest Markers
• 22 Trap Markers
• 4 Dead Character Markers
• 18 Door Markers
• 3 Ooze Markers
• 6 Stone Column Board Markers
• 3 Tree Board Markers
• 1 Skeleton Key Marker

Ok, so I should point out, those first two items are not the actual PHB and DMG, but merely a small pamphlet of rules and a book of maps and adventures.

The rulebooks are pretty clear and have nice examples, mine had a misprint with the front and back pages duplicated twice, but overall they were nice enough. Also, rather importantly, they aren’t overly intimating in their size or complexity.

The figures that are included in the box are pretty nice, very nice for board game quality (although the game is from Hasbro so they should be able to make plastic toys well) certainly better than, for example, Descent.

That said, the cardboard is not FFG quality, but still it is functional and there is plenty of it. I like the fact that the characters have their own boards, rather than the usual paper sheets, obviously this is less customisable than a real rpg but t’s fine for a board game.

Also the custom dice are very nice and the double sided boards offer a lot of variety in game set up. The cards are a little thin and mine have begun to wear but the art work is nice and everything is clear and functional.

Playing the Game

Ok, so I’m not going to go through all the rules here as the game is a little too long winded for that.

Essentially the Dungeon Master will pick a scenario, set up the map, monsters etc and read the story and objective to the other players who are all heroes.

Then initiative cards are dealt, these are cards with the numbers 1-5 on them. These will determine the order in which players can act. Starting with player 1 and ending with player 5. Because these are randomised whenever a player enters a new area the order in which players act will change. This attempts to simulate the initiative system in the D&D game, but far more simplistic and rather random.

On their turn a player may take two actions:

• Fight
• Move
• Cast a Spell
• Change Item
• Open a Chest

Moving is simply moving your playing piece the number of spaces listed on your card. You cannot move diagonally.

Fighting is based on your cards in play. All weapons and spells are either melee or ranged. To use a melee attack you must be adjacent (not diagonally) to a monster. To use a ranged attack you must be at least 1 square away and able to draw line of sight to the monster.

To work out damage you simply roll the coloured dice on the card and minus the monster’s armour class from the number of swords showing on the dice. Some weapons have rerolls or other special effects usually triggered by the Star Dice (a special custom die that is effectively a 50/50 randomiser)

To cast a spell you must first pay the number of spell points to cast it (this varies based on the spell caster, some spells are more difficult to cast if you are a cleric or a wizard). Attack spells are identical to weapon attacks, other spells simply have an effect on the game rules. In all cases they are exceptionally easy to determine the effects of.

To open a chest you must be adjacent to it. The DM then draws a card and gives it to you. Some cards will show traps instead, in which case you receive no reward and must follow the text on the card.

On the Dungeon Masters turn each of his monsters can activate twice, usually moving and'/or attacking.

If a hero is killed the model is replaced with a token to show where his body is. The hero can only be brought back to life using a resurrection spell/potion. Unfortunately with expansions these effects can be difficult to find due to the enlarged item deck.

If the heroes achieve the objective they win and may keep any treasures they found to use in the next adventure.

Thoughts

Ok, so this game is supposed to be a primer for REAL D&D, it even has an advertisement for the core rulebooks in the box. And as an introductory tool it succeeds, as a challenging game though…

Lets look at it’s faults. Firstly the game design itself, while having some interesting innovations, is flawed due to some inherited mechanics. The game takes other, older games, like Heroquest as its basis and that’s a problem.

The attack or move, double attack, double move, structure of a turn has been done to death. It feels very restrictive unlike the system in Descent where, with just the introduction of exhaustion and readied orders you have a much more flexible system.

In addition, why can heroes and monsters not move and attack diagonally? What does this restriction actually add to game balance or enjoyment? If both monsters and heroes can do it then there is no loss of game balance. In addition ranged attacks can be made diagonally or potentially across 3 boards, while melee attacks cannot! This is a perverse aspect of game design that is so counter intuitive it makes me scream.

Another thing I find disappointing about the game is the lack of uniqueness… by this I mean, a ranged attack feels like a melee attack, which feels like a spell. Plus almost all spells can be cast by both Wizards and Clerics (even if it is at a penalty.) By simplifying the system the designers got rid of a lot of what is good and unique about characters… BUT at the same time they created a situation where only certain characters can perform vital game actions, such as the Rogue…

Traps are a huge part of the game, yet if the Rogue is killed (or with expansions you chose not to take one) then you cannot search for traps without the aid of magic. Perhaps a set of skill cards that allowed players to build custom characters would have helped make this a more strategic game, rather than a simplified emulation of D&D to cajole you into trying it’s older, more option heavy, brother.

That said the game does have some interesting mechanics. I like the custom dice, in particular the Star Dice which adds some nice effects to the game, including a way for Wizards and Clerics to restore spell points through attacking monsters.

I also like the search dice, which allows you to reveal traps, starting with the closest and working outwards. It’s much simpler than the real 3rd edition version which made you search each individual 5ft square.

The monsters too are nice, simple enough to use, but replicating some of the abilities of their real counter parts.

The weapon cards are great as you can see at a glance not only what dice to roll but what the maximum damage you can hope to achieve would be. That said, the lack of any “range” mechanic leaves me cold.

I also like the fact that the heroes can level up and that the item cards get more powerful as they do. However, the fact that the game was capped at level three, even in the expansions, irked me.

Final Thoughts

Overall then is not a well designed tactical excursion. In fact, as the DM you can expect to lose more often than you win, especially in the early scenarios. Also, the game does not scale to accommodate less players unless players play multiple characters.

As a primer for D&D, the game succeeds in some ways. It sets up the character archetypes and typical monsters. It introduces the idea of initiative, magic limitations, armour class, damage, turning undead and general dungeon delving. But it is not, in any sense of the word, a Roleplaying Game.

Is it fun? Yes, but only with teenagers or older children who aren’t looking for the complexity of a roleplaying game or the tactical challenge of a game like Descent.

However, the game does have a MASSIVE redeeming feature. The price, I picked up my copy in a charity shop for just £2! And based on price to enjoyment, I have to say it is a bargain that has kept my little brother amused for hours. We also picked up both expansions for £6 each on ebay, so for £14 we have a game that has hit the table two dozen times and has kept us dungeon crawling for hours on end.

It may not be my dungeon crawler of choice, but I’ve paid more for worse.

New Poll and Competition

This week I will finally get to play a Deckbuilding game as the lovely people at AEG are sending me a copy of Dragonspire to Review. So that got me wondering which Deck Builder you guys enjoy the most, so why not vote in the poll and let me know…

Also this months competition is almost at an end. You’ve got a little over a week to get your entries in for a chance to win a great little prize. To check out what you could win and how to enter click on the image in the sidebar. The closing date is the 28th February so hurry up and don’t miss out!

Zooloretto: Job Boards

So, just a quick expansion review this week. If you have ever wanted to add a bit more strategy to your Zooloretto Games then the Job Boards are the way to do it.

Job Boards

The Board of Directors has informed you of the results of years of study and now you know exactly what kind of animals will drive your public into a spending spree. If you can bag yourself the right kind of animals you’ll get a big bonus at the end of the year and if you’re really lucky the animal welfare inspector might not even notice all those extra elephants in your barn.

Unboxed

To play this variant you need all the components from the base game plus the job boards which appear in the “Gorilla Expansion” or “Expansion 2”

However I would personally recommend downloading these from Liumas on Board Game Geek. I used photoshop to shrink them and fit them all on one sheet, printed them on label paper and stuck that to thick card board. This will give you a much larger number of Job Boards to play with and it will stop other players being able to guess exactly which animals you need.

Playing the Game

At the start of the game each player is dealt a job board face down. If you are playing with fewer than 5 players then keep drawing until you have a job board featuring 3 animals that are in the game.

On your board are pictured 3 different animals, the first animal is worth 3 Bonus Points for EACH completed enclosure containing that animal, the second 2 bonus points and the third is worth 0 points in your barn (instead of –2) at the end of the game.

Thoughts

This, relatively simply, expansion adds a lot of strategy to Zooloretto. You now have a goal which helps give the players focus if they have played the game to death (hint hint).

The fact that you are rewarded for each enclosure with that animal type gives you a good reason to go after multiple enclosures with the same type of animals. If you add in the Extra Enclosures expansion then you have a cheeky way of boosting your points, although if you’re playing the game super competitively then players will complain about balance.

As well as providing a focus and a use for extra animals of the same type, these cards also give you some tactics for using the barn. Each game you will have one type of animal that costs you 0 points in your barn, if this happens to be an animal another player wants (that they will score three points for for example) then it is worth you taking it and putting it in your barn. At the end of the game it wont cost you anything, but it will, likely as not, generate extra income from players buying the animals from you so you can buy the animals you need to score those extra bonus points.

Overall this is a great little variant for the game that helps add strategy and tactics and a little freshness to a game that may have been overplayed (in our household). Plus, if you use Liumas’ files it’s practically free, although you could always throw him some Geek Gold for his trouble. Regardless, why not check it out and see for yourself.

Until next week, have fun gaming!

Oh…

Don't forget to enter our competition…

Aquaretto

On the face of it Aquaretto appears to be a simple retheme of Zooloretto with meeples because, well, games have to have meeples. But actually it’s an entirely different animal.

Theme

You are the manager of a Water Zoo, planning where exactly on your big grassy field you can build your basins for all the aquatic animals that are arriving (somewhat randomly) at your Zoo. Luckily you have some offers of land from local farmers which is available for purchase, so you can expand a little, but space is still tight and what with the WSPA rulings on just how much space you need for each separate species things are going to get tough.

As if that wasn’t enough you also ended up working as a one-man Human Resources department as you attempt to control your unruly crew of meeples, making sure that they carry out the most important jobs in your zoo!

Unboxed

Well, I may have embellished that a little, but it’s still a fun game. Let’s take a look in the box:

• 5 Wooden Trucks
• 30 Wooden Coins
• 1 Red Wooden Disk
• 10 Coin Tiles
• 88 Animal Tiles
• 16 Offspring Tiles
• 10 Large Expansions
• 10 Small Expansions
• 5 Player Boards
• 5 Depots
• 16 Wooden Co-Workers
• 1 Cloth Bag

It’s Rio Grande and that means good quality. All the bits are great and the artwork is easily the best in the Zooloretto series. The animal choices too are a little more traditional than Zooloretto which doesn’t feature some of the more popular animals like Lions or Tigers even after all the expansions to the game.

The player boards may seem small and the expansions a bit fiddly but all of this makes a lot of sense when you understand how this game differs wildly from Zooloretto. If I do have one gripe and it’s a minor one, it’s the square tiles for the babies. I know it looks neater if all the tiles are square but it also means they end up getting put back in the bag and then you have to find them and that’s just a little annoying. Bring back round babies!

Playing the Game

Each player starts the game with 1 Player Board, Two Small and Two Large Expansions (with the coin side face up that shows how much they cost to buy.) a depot and 1 coin.

A wooden truck is placed in the centre of the table for each player and up to eight types of animals are placed into the bag, along with the coin tiles, depending on the number of players. Unlike Zooloretto there are three types of animal that are always in the bag Dolphins, Seals and Killer Wales (Orcas), regardless of the number of players.

Next 15 random tiles are drawn from the bag and marked with the Red Wooden Disk, these trigger the end game conditions exactly like in Zooloretto.

Now play can begin, again, exactly like Zooloretto you have 3 options on your turn:

1. Draw a Tile and Place it on a Truck
2. Perform a Money Action
3. Take a Truck

If you choose to draw a tile you must place it on one of the available trucks.

Possible money actions that can be taken are:

• 1 Gold – Buy Small Expansion
• 2 Gold – Buy Large Expansion
• 2 Gold – Discard top tile from you Depot
• 2 Gold – Buy top tile from another Players Depot
• 1 Gold - Move a Co-Worker

The round continues until all players have taken a truck, if you have taken a truck you take no further turns that round.

Unlike Zooloretto, you are not just aiming to fill four enclosures as best you can in this game, in fact diversifying early on can be a very bad plan.

When you take a truck you place any animals on it into your zoo. They must be placed so that they are touching (not corner to corner) with another tile of the same animal type. If you have no animal of that type in your zoo you can place them anywhere to start a new basin. You cannot have 2 basins with the same animal types in and different animal types cannot touch one another (except corner to corner).

In addition, your starting zoo can only hold 3 different animal types. For each large expansion you purchase you may have 1 additional animal type in your zoo (for a maximum of 5 types)

Any animal that cannot be legally placed in your Zoo is placed in a stack in your Depot. Only the top (visible) tile in the Depot can be bought or moved. In addition once an animal has been placed on your player board it may never be moved.

(Click for Larger Image)

When your basins (groups of connected same type animals) grow larger they earn you bonuses. For every 3 animals in a single basin you get 1 coin. For every 5 animals you get a Co-Worker. This means you score a bonus at 3, 5, 6, 9, 10 and 12.

Co-Workers can be placed in 4 ways:

• Fish Shop – For each Co-Worker here you gain 1 additional point at the end of the game for each tile with a Fish Icon.
• Cash Desk – For Each Co-Worker here you gain 1 additional point at the end of the game for each coin in your supply.
• Trainer – Placed in an empty space on the board you gain 1 additional point at the end of the game for each Trainable Animal (Seals, Dolphins and Orcas without Lightening Bolt Symbols) adjacent to the trainer (Horizontally, Vertically or Diagonally)
• Depot – If you place a worker on the depot you half the negative points you will score at the end of game for tiles in your depot.

The game continues on until a tile is drawn from the stack marked with the red disk (when the bag runs out of tiles). The current round is played out and then scoring is done.

You score:

• 1 point per tile in your Zoo
• -2 Points per type of tile in your Depot
• Any bonus points you score from your Co-Workers

Thoughts

Aquaretto is known as the Big Brother in the Zooloretto family and it’s not without good reason. The limited space on the boards (19 spaces on your main player board) means you must plan ahead or you could end up not being able to add to your basins.

This constant planning does draw focus away from the other players and there is certainly less of a screw your neighbour feel than in Zooloretto. Trucks with a high diversity (3 different animals) are usually bad for you.

Co-Workers are vitally important in scoring, if you have fewer than the other players you are most likely going to lose as almost all co-workers double the value of at least some of your tiles.

All in all Aquaretto feels like a faster and more grown up game. Placement of tiles and Co-workers takes consideration in order to score maximum points. Of course the random element (drawing tiles from the bag) and the risk element (other players taking your truck) prevents the game from being entire strategic.

There are even tactics as to when and how you place your expansions. In basic Zooloretto the only real decision was when to expand (usually when you had the coins and nothing better to do with them.) Aquaretto however has a freeform system for placing the expansions, meaning you can place them where you need extra space as long as they continue at least 1 row or column of your zoo.

The way that the Depot works (with a stack) means that you can control your excess animals in a more strategic way. For example if you need additional coins you could place an animal another player needs on top so they can buy it from you, or if you would rather they didn’t have it you can bury it under other animals so they either have to buy the top tiles or do without. Unfortunately, you cannot alter the order of the stack so animals you didn’t have room for but wanted in your zoo can also get buried where you can’t access them. Still it’s nice to have more control than the barn offers in Zooloretto.

In my opinion Aquaretto is the perfect stepping stone from Zooloretto into medium weight euro games. There is a lot going on but it plays fast so even if you lose you can play again and try a different tactic. I give Aquaretto a big thumbs up for families with older children (pre-teenager) or for those looking to get their children into playing more “grownup” games. 

How Do You Play…

So, as promised, the results of this months poll…

• Solo  7 (43%)
• Two Player  14 (87%)
• Three Player  10 (62%)
• Four Player  11 (68%)
• Five Player  7 (43%)
• Six Player  7 (43%)
• Seven Player  5 (31%)
• Eight Player  4 (25%)
• I only ever play Werewolf  0 (0%)

It’s interesting that more people play 2-player than any other category. Based on looking at games in my collection it is obvious that publishers often aim games at a 4 person market, which makes sense especially with the modern family. That said I most often play games in a 3-player setting, one which is generally less well catered for and rarely do I play games with more than 5.

Despite the social aspect of gaming in larger groups, like 4 or more, I too enjoy the 2-player style of game. There are many reasons why.

Two Player games are often specifically designed and balanced around the number of players, which can make them tighter and more tactically challenging. They are often cheaper (although Horus Heresy could be the exception that proves the rule). In many ways they act like solo or computer games, except that your opponent is a living breathing human who can react to you like no computer could hope to.

One of the things that does appeal to me in a two player game is the fact that you don’t really feel victimised. With more players you can feel picked on if you have a particularly bad game, where as in a two player game, with the exception of heavily luck-based games, you are generally defeated because you were outplayed.

I also find it interesting that almost half of the people who voted also play games solo. I am have been known to play Agricola, Red November or Space Hulk Death Angel by myself, but I wouldn’t classify myself as a solo gamer. I tend to prefer the challenge a computer opponent can bring to a game if I’m playing solo. Plus the faff and space required by a board game is completely eliminated by using a computer instead, but clearly there is still a strong argument for a solo mode in board games.

When I post the poll up, I also added a discussion in the UKGMN Guild to ask our members which games they would recommend for a specific numbers of players and I just wanted to share a few of them with you guys:

1. Space Hulk: Death Angel, Red November, Pocket Civ, Castle Panic, Ambush!
2. Pandemic, Warhammer Invasion, Memoir '44. Space Hulk. Jaipur. Conflict of Heroes. Twilight Struggle
3. Citadels, Dominion, Stone Age, Galaxy Trucker, Middle-Earth Quest
4. Carcassonne, Stone Age, Nexus Ops, Small World, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Pandemic
5. Descent, For Sale, Evo, El Grande, Shogun, Small World
6. The Great Fire of London 1666, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Shadows Over Camelot, Absolute Balderdash
7. Diamant, Saboteur, Apples to Apples, Werewolf
8. Taboo, Roborally
9. Werewolf, Wits N Wagers
10. Time's Up, Werewolf

If you have any more suggestions (and I’m sure you will) why not post them below or better still get involved in the conversation over on the Guild and become part of our little community.

Some Other Bits

That’s about it, tomorrow is review day so keep an eye out for that. A few small additions have been made to the blog, including RSS feeds for both Board Game News and The UKGMN Guild are now in the sidebar. Don’t forget our competition to win the Adventurers Pre-painted Minis (click the image in the sidebar for more info.) If you have something to say, articles to contribute or games you want reviewed don’t hesitate to contact us using the link in the side bar.

Until tomorrow, have fun gaming!