Dungeons & Dragons Board Game Series Review

REVIEW OF CASTLE RAVENLOFT

 Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft is a simple cooperative dungeon crawler.

GAME PROCESS

 Each Castle Ravenloft mission has its own victory conditions. You read the layout instructions, choose your heroes, put them on the starting tile and you can start.

 Each character has its own parameters and special ability, as well as power cards that give additional unique opportunities. Character parameters are armor, HP, speed and the power of the second breath (healing surge). If the character's HP is zero at the start of the turn, then he is forced to use a second breath charge after gaining the appropriate amount of HP. In total, the heroes have two charges of second breath for the entire party.

 On your turn, you can move and attack, attack and move, or move twice. When attacking, you choose one of the power cards, roll a die and add the bonus from that card to the result. If the total is equal to or greater than the opponent's armor level, then you have dealt damage to them.

 When you defeat a monster, you receive the number of experience points indicated on the card, as well as a treasure card (they give additional special abilities). Experience can be spent on avoiding contact with monsters, as well as leveling up the character to the second if you are lucky enough to roll a 20 on the die when attacking.

 When you finish a move on the edge of a tile that is not adjacent to a wall, you automatically explore it. When exploring, you place a new tile on the field, draw a monster card and place its figure on the new tile.

 After your turn ends, the enemies phase begins. If you didn't research on your turn, you'll have to draw a contact card, and they don't bode well. You then activate one of the enemy cards and follow the instructions that describe the monster's behavior.

 Victory occurs when the victory conditions of the mission are fulfilled. Defeat occurs if the character has 0 HP and no second breath charges at the start of the character's turn. Also, most missions have additional defeat conditions.

PROS OF THE GAME

• Probably the best gateway dungeon crawler I've ever played. I had to play a game with a complete newbie and she got the hang of it almost instantly - by turn 3. Learning/learning how to play Castle Ravenloft is very easy.
• Characters feel significantly different thanks to special abilities and power cards. Each in its own way is useful for the team and will diversify the tactics a little.
• The game is licked, which is nice. Moves flow very quickly, downtime is minimal even with a large number of participants.
• Miniatures are chic and add atmosphere.
• It is nice that there are both simple missions for beginners and more difficult ones for experienced ones.
• One of the few dungeon crawlers that can be played in just an hour or less.

CONS OF THE GAME

• Some will not like to rely on the cube. Castle Ravenloft depends heavily on randomness, so if you don't like randomness, the game is unlikely to work.
• The dungeon tiles are pretty bland and boring. This makes the miniatures stand out more on the field, but the field is not visually impressive at all.
• There is only one d20 in the kit, although it would be more convenient if each hero had their own die plus one extra for the enemies.

CONCLUSION

 Castle Ravenloft is a good simple dungeon crawler for tabletop players of all ages. It cannot be called deep, but that's what makes it good: you can immediately start a game and get a fan without bothering with a lot of cards, rules, etc. In my opinion, he is somewhat underrated.

 Castle Ravenloft and other board games in the Dungeons and Dragons series are a great option for those looking for an easy-to-learn and replayable co-op dungeon crawler. He is also well suited to the role of a family. If you don't like dungeon crawlers or prefer deeper games, then this is not for you.

WRATH OF ASHARDALON REVIEW

PLOT

 The village of Lognbridge is located near the Fiery Peak itself - a volcano inhabited by tribes of kobolds, orcs, as well as much more dangerous monsters. These tribes regularly raid the village, and now that the red dragon Ashardalon has chosen the volcano, living here has become even more dangerous.

 Many brave warriors descended into the dungeons beneath the Fiery Peak in an attempt to slay the dragon and other monsters, but none returned. Now a new group of adventurers has arrived in the village in search of evil. Maybe they will succeed...

COMPONENTS

 As in the first game of the series, here you will find a decent-sized box filled with cards, tokens, tiles and plastic figures. There is a well-thought-out tab that makes it easier to lay out. However, the cards will not fit into the appropriate slots if you put them in the protectors.

 Many have complained about the lack of artwork on the cards, tiles, and part of the tokens in Castle Ravenloft. Nothing has changed here. Basically, Wrath of Ashardalon is just a continuation of Castle Ravenloft in a new setting, with new monsters and heroes.

GAME PROCESS

 The gameplay basically remained the same. Heroes take turns moving and attacking, exploring new tiles (if they're on the edge of a tile), making contact (if they haven't explored a tile this turn), then activating monsters and traps. This continues until the heroes complete the quest goal or one of them dies, and all the healing charges of the second breath have already been used up.

 However, there are some innovations. First, some tiles now have doors. When a player draws such a tile, a random door token is placed on it. The hero standing next to it can open it. If it is not closed, then the tile is turned over and the token is reset. If it is locked, the hero will have to spend a turn trying to open it. Sometimes the doors turn out to be mined and cause damage to nearby heroes.

 The mechanics are simple and at first glance may seem superfluous, because the tiles almost always have exits without doors, but in practice it is sometimes faster / more optimal to use an exit with a door. They are not needed often, but sometimes it forces a decision: to take a risk, knowing that there is a chance to run into a mined door, or to choose a longer detour.

 Another innovation is cameras. Often the final boss or goal of the quest will be in the chamber. The entrance to the chamber is shuffled into a stack of normal tiles, and when it is drawn, you take a separate stack of chamber tiles and place them around the edges of the entrance tile. It turns out a huge room consisting of 4-6 tiles. Most often, monsters are placed on several tiles at once - the boss's entourage. The chamber card shows the boss and monsters of that chamber. As a rule, in the quests it is discussed which of the cameras is used in it, but in the campaign mode, random cameras are used, so you have no idea who is waiting for you there.

 The campaign mode is also a nice innovation. You can now play as one character throughout a series of quests, gradually accumulating items and gaining power. During a quest, you now draw a treasure token for each monster you kill, instead of a treasure token that says gold (although some tokens immediately give treasure). All treasures are now items, not one-time instant bonuses, and they come with a price. Between quests, you can buy treasures (three random cards available) for gold to use in future quests. So, although pumping is extremely limited (you can only pump up to level 2), you gradually get stronger at the expense of treasures.

 Otherwise, the gameplay is the same as in Castle Ravenloft.

IMPRESSION

 Although I own Castle Ravenloft, the campaign mode and treasure tokens made this a must-buy for me. I really enjoy going through the campaign, so I brought the Ashardalon rules to Ravenloft as well. Despite the fact that now the characters do not reset the second level obtained after the quest and can gradually stock up on the best items, the game is still difficult.

 Wrath of Ashardalon has the same monsters as Castle Ravenloft, but now there are more 2-hit monsters that cannot be killed with a single standard attack. So monsters have not only become more durable, but there are often more of them now. Some tiles are long corridors, when you open them you have to pull out another tile, which means another extra monster. In addition, some of the monsters themselves can be explored - that is, more tiles and more monsters. In many games, the flow of monsters overwhelmed us. Therefore, the optimal tactic is to run forward as quickly as possible, reducing the number of enemies as much as possible.

 As I mentioned, all treasures have become items, not instant bonuses. Outside of campaign mode, getting treasure for every kill can make heroes very pumped by the end of the quest. This is probably why the monsters have become stronger and more numerous, but it still gets too easy towards the end. If you have Castle Ravenloft and you are not playing in campaign mode, it is worth shuffling the treasure cards, which will reduce the number of items in the hands of the heroes.

 Monsters, as before, behave quite differently. Archers stay away and shoot, other monsters run at you, and still others look for reinforcements. The statuses "slowed" and "immobilized" were replaced by "poisoned" and "stunned". Another novelty is a curse, which is mixed into the deck of contacts. The curse imposes a certain penalty on the hero, which can be removed under certain circumstances or if you roll a sufficiently high value on the die.

 My only gripe with Wrath of Ashardalon is the lack of variety in victory objectives. In almost all quests, there are various bosses waiting for you, but in general the gameplay is the same: find the 9-12th tile, kill the boss. In Castle Ravenloft, the quests were much more varied. Probably, we will have to rely on fan scripts.

 In general, Wrath of Ashardalon is a fan complex cooperative. But it looks best paired with Castle Ravenloft; together they provide a great variety of heroes, monsters and more.

LEGEND OF DRIZZT REVIEW

 Drizzt Do'Urden, his companions and enemies became famous thanks to Robert Salvatore's fantasy series. Legend of Drizzt invites you to experience his adventures. Unlike the two previous games in this series, there is no common plot and main enemy, because the action takes place over many books, which are often not connected to each other. There are plenty of villains from the book series, but you don't feel like you're facing an epic evil behind all your enemies like the vampire Strahd or the dragon Ashardalon.

COMPONENTS

 And again, great miniatures. There were a little less of them (40 instead of 42), instead, there are more big minks among them. It's just a pity that among them there is no boar - a familiar of one of the characters, although there is a mink of a panther - a familiar of Drizzt.

 Art has not changed: black and white silhouettes of monsters on their cards, no illustrations on event and treasure cards. At least the trap tokens now have traps painted on them, which is nice.

 There were even more tokens. Some are not used in the game at all and are intended for fans to create fan quests.

 An important innovation is the replacement of dungeon tiles with cave tiles. The dimensions remained the same (and even compatible with tiles from previous games), but the gray square castle dungeons were replaced by uneven cave walls. The tiles have become less monotonous and look much more attractive, as well as some changes in the gameplay (but more on them below).

 In addition to caves, mini-tiles of dead ends appeared here, which are used in some quests in the process of research or as part of a previously laid out cave.

GAME PROCESS

 The gameplay hasn't changed too much: still the same move structure, still the same exploration of tiles and fighting monsters.

 The first innovation is the division of decks into basic and advanced cards. The base deck has power cards for 5 heroes, a bunch of monsters, events, and treasures, making it easy for newcomers to get into the game. Those who are not afraid of difficulties or have played the previous game of the series, it makes sense to immediately mix both decks. In the advanced deck, there are power cards for 3 more heroes, as well as additional ability, monster, event and treasure cards.

 Characters are now 8; there is someone to choose from. Each quest recommends taking a certain set of characters, usually corresponding to the book. But no one forbids mixing them.

 Some of the new abilities of the heroes do not work like all the previous ones. Abilities like Battle Stance give a certain effect that lasts as long as the Stance token remains on the power card. Usually a one-time token, so you have to think about when to put it into action. A pair of characters also has the ability to call upon a familiar — an ally that will attack earlier monsters in the enemy phase. They are useful both for dealing additional damage and for distracting monsters from heroes.

 Another great innovation is tiles with special rules. Yes, it is more difficult for heroes and monsters to defend themselves in narrow passages; they arrive there -4 to armor. In the camp, heroes may not be afraid of events. Volcanic craters damage heroes who get too close.

 Also, not all quests are currently co-op. Several of you have a team-on-team confrontation (2 vs. 2 or 2 vs. 1) or everyone for themselves. In these quests, you can attack other heroes. It may not appeal to fans of cooperatives, but I personally liked such a variety.

 And finally, monsters are now distributed differently. Previously, there were 3 copies of ordinary monsters of 10 species, now several species have only 1-2 miniatures. These monsters are usually stronger, and the appearance of a rare monster is an unpleasant surprise. Also, some cards dictate two monsters into play and some none, and this keeps things tense; now you can't know for sure that when exploring a new tile you will always be greeted by a single monster.

 Although some of the treasure cards have a price listed on them and therefore can be used as campaigns from Wrath of Ashardalon, the campaign mode rules do not. You will need to buy Wrath of Ashardalon to get the rules and treasure tokens. There are no cameras in Legend of Drizzt either.

IMPRESSION

 Legend of Drizzt brings a lot of interesting ideas and variety to the D&D series. It can be mixed with others, or it can be played as an independent game to enjoy new surprises.

 The only complaint is that the characters are much stronger than in the previous games. It's understandable since the characters in the books are seasoned adventurers who should have cool abilities, but it's equally unfortunate that there's such an imbalance.

 Otherwise, Legend of Drizzt is very good. There are enough new concepts here that it doesn't feel like it's just a reskin. I really liked the new abilities of the heroes - surnames and combat stances, as well as a variety of monsters.

 For those who do not have the previous parts of the game, should note that they are very similar. Therefore, the choice of part depends on which setting you prefer. Salvatore fans will probably be delighted with this part. Personally, I liked it, even though I didn't read the book.