Castle Ravenloft: Escape the Tomb Mark II

Recently I discussed the idea of redoing the Castle Ravenloft game a little to try to make it a little better.  So here is the my first attempt for the first Adventure which is a solo, Escape the Tomb.  The premise of the adventure is that a solo hero wakes up at the base of Strahd's crypt and needs to escape the dungeon before dusk.  The original rules called for the escape tile to be placed 10 deep in the pile and that the timer for the approach of dawn was determined by the color of the arrows on the revealed tiles during the exploration phase.  A white arrows moved the time counter while the black just caused the annoying encounter cards.  
 
To try to improve the adventure, I have built a dungeon and hidden the target tile in a group of 6.  I built a symmetric dungeon where all of the possible exit tiles are like 6 tiles away from the start.  I choose pretty basic monsters except for the garagolyes but then have card text that has them just sitting and waiting unless the adventurer gets close so a smart adventurer might be able to get by them without too much damage.  The sun timer is controlled by revealing possible exit tiles and a die roll every turn.

So for setup you need to find all the stuff in the book suggests.  You also need to draw out the cards for 2 rat swarms, 2 gargoyles, and 2 skeletons.  Place the Secret Stairway tile aside and set up the dungeon as above with the six monsters already on the tiles shown.  You will note the 6 upside down tiles.  After building the rest of the dungeon you need to take the secret stairway upside down and shuffle it in with 5 other tiles(3 black arrows and 2 white arrows) and place them as shown upside down.  These upside down tiles are the only one which are explored in the traditional way.  This includes placing a monster and and encounter for black arrows.  Encounter cards are never drawn in this adventure for not revealing a new tile in a turn.  On the turn you reveal one of these tiles move the sun marker 1 step.

At the start of each player turn roll a d6 and consult the table:

1-3 Nothing
4,5 Draw a Monster Card,  Roll the d6 Again and place the monster on that possible exit tile, revealed or not counting right to left.
6 Draw an Encounter Card and Move the Sun token.

Special Rules:
Moving Monsters: when monsters move to a tile without a specific placement required place them on the bone pile unless it is occupied.  If it is occupied place them next to the bone pile.

Moving the Hero:  The Hero cannot move out of a square that is next to a monster.

Wrath of Ashardalon: D&D Boardgame Review

So for one of my father's day gifts I got the Dungeon and Dragons Cooperative Boardgame: Wrath of Ashardalon. My other gifts where shirts. I have the Castle Ravenloft game which can be used with this game to expand the possible adventures.


Box contains a divider for storage and all these parts. Interlocking board tiles. Card stock character and villian sheets, cards for random treasures,monsters, or traps, and keeping track of hero powers. Counters for hit points and the figures for the game.

I was shorted 1 figure in the box so I have sent a letter to customer service.

These are the 5 heroes for the game. Dwarf Fighter (not sure who scuplted this dwarf but I think they missed the idea), Elf Paladin, Human Cleric, Dragonborn Mage, and Half Orc Rogue. So pretty similar to Castle Ravenloft with those classes but with different races and Ranger traded to Paladin.

Here is Ashardalon, the biggest baddie in the game.

Two other large monsters: Otyugh and Rage Drake. I have a metal Otyugh from my chainmail collection.

Other adventure villians.

Sampling of the basic bad guys. There are 10 different basic bad guys where you get 3 of them.
There is an interesting dynamic in the game that if you get more than 1 of the same monster in play they get to both go anytime one would.

So to play the game you build up a deck of dungeon tiles based on directions from the adventure book, pick you heroes and powers, get the encounter and monster decks ready and start exploring. Pretty much every tile generates a monster and some also cause additional encounter affects. Castle Ravenloft had some problems with an optimal strategy of essentially always have the high defense heroes with the most hit points up front to get the monsters. This game appears to have some new tricks like large rooms that are revealed with a single tile draw.

Saturday Board Game Day

I went over to a group of buddies house last weekend to take part in their semi-monthly board game days. The house has three of my high school friends living in it and usually they get about 10-15 people over playing games. Attendance was lighter this time but it allowed me to get to talk and play with my friends instead of friends of friends so that was good.

We played two different games both of which I had not played before. One was Kingsburg which is a very abstract game in the Settlers genre of empire building. You gather resources which you spend to build things and defend you area from yearly attacks. The game lasts 5 years with each year having 3 seasons of resource gathering and building and 1 season of attacks by goblins. It is very different from Settlers since the only direct competition between the players really comes during the resource gathering phase where you have to place your dice on the King's Advisors to get the resources and you have many options to try to block other people from placing dice by selecting the same adviser. The game was not bad and I would play it again just a little more abstract than I like.


We also played the retro game, Thunderroad. This is essentially a car racing and combat game from the time that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome came out(1986). Not a direct tie in just trying to grab some of the interest that the movie generates. This game is pretty simple with the object being to have the last car standing by either out running the other players or destroying them. The board is made up of 2 road lengths and when you get off the front, the one in the back becomes the front with all the cars left there removed. Each player had 3 cars that can get destroyed and repaired plus a chopper which just shoots people. I would be willing to play it again since it is fast but it is not a deep game. I have a copy of GW's Dark Future and the White Line Fever expansion book which is a much deeper combat and racing game from about the same period.