My copy of the new Dungeons and Dragons Cooperative Board Game: Castle Ravenloft arrived today while I was home for lunch. I broke it open and check it out before heading back to work. Sturdy Box for the game and the box is taller than I expected.
Box has a nice storage insert with 5 compartments for cards, board tiles, and the figures. I bagged up the tokens into different groups.
The game is a dungeon exploring theme where new tiles are semi randomly revealed when a character end his turn on the edge of an existing tile. It is semi random since the different adventures have you place certain tiles into the stack at a specific point or range of tiles. The little arrows show you how to align the tiles so you do not walk into a wall. Tiles are similar in thickness to Space Hulk but are Matte and lack the embossing.
These are character cards for the Heroes and Major villains made of the same thick card stock as the board. For the heroes it gives your basic stats, special rules, and how many powers you have. The villain cards have
You get 5 decks of cards; Monster cards to generate the random monsters, Treasure to reward you, Adventure treasures that match with the different adventures, Encounter which show up if players are not exploring new tiles during a turn or on some of the tiles. The last deck is the character powers which tell you about your At-Will, Daily, and Utility powers. Each character has 10 powers of which he gets to pick 4-5. So in additional to random dungeon elements you get added replay value by trying with different powers.
Here are all the figures for the set. 5 Blue Heroes, 4 Grey Villains, 3 White Villains, and 10 sets of 3 monsters in red, clear blue, and white. These figures come no where close to what you get in GW sets like Isle of Blood or Space Hulk, but these are pieces to play the game not a game to play with the pieces. The come assembled bagged by color. I would say that you could open the game and get going in like 10 minutes with a few people punching the card stock while some one looks at the rules.
A sub group of the characters and villains.
Close up of the Hag figure. Detail is ok but many of the pieces have pretty soft parts so if you tried to paint them I think it might crack.
Dragonborn fighter. This is the new design in the box as the other are recycled from the D&D Mini line of prepainted collectible figures.Looks like it is a fun game. It is supposed to be quick and work for 1-5 players. I will give the Solo introduction adventure a go tomorrow night.
Thanks for the pic of the Dragonborn, I've been thinking of picking this up for the mini's to use in my 4E group.
ReplyDeleteReasonable secondary use for them. You get enough pieces to proxy up an encounter you are going to have. I personally have a large collection of chainmail minis that I would use for that if playing at my place but these would travel easy in a plastic bag.
ReplyDeletenot talking shit, but MAN they want to be GW with their Space Hulk right now...
ReplyDeleteI guess I do not understand what you mean. This game is sort of a DnD 4e entry product/substitute. It certainly has no where near the polish of Space Hulk but for that game they pretty much only had to do polish since all the rules are recycled.
ReplyDeleteThis game is also totally different since it is 5 player and cooperative. Makes it better for groups of friends. I brought Space Hulk to a boardgame day once and the problem was that most of the other games were for many players while it was only 2.
It is also important to note that this product which is available at a high discount level than GW stuff comes in at half the price after standard discounts than Space Hulk. So you can get this one and the next expansion for the cost of Space Hulk.
Thanks for the review, I just may pick this one up. Looks pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteSo I played the Solo first adventure twice tonight. 1 Lose with the Ranger 1 win with the fighter. I am not sure if I was playing it correct since it seem like I was constantly be held up exploring a new tile and every tile generates a monster who goes before you do. This seemed to yield a lot of damage to my character that really added up as the adventure went on. I think I lost the first game because I did not use experience to cancel a trap which did quite a bit of damage to me over a couple of turns. I was holding the experience to go up to 2nd level but that depends on getting a good card or rolling a 20.
ReplyDeleteProbably works better when you have more than 1 hero since actions are staggered. Overall seemed interesting and fast paced.