Kaiserbudheim

Dungeoneer is a neat little card game from Atlas games that can moderately satisfy an itch for a dungeon crawler. At its core is basic exploration, traps, monsters and events…but with a twist. It is a cut-throat free for all, with a mechanic of “boons” and “banes” that elevates the tension and threat level. In a nutshell, players are both a hero character and a mini DM to all the other players. The better you do (or the more risks you take), the more “bane” is accumulated that the other players can play traps, events and monsters in attempt to thwart your hero from completing his/her quest (where as “boon” is used to purchase equipment or play skills/spells/abilities from your hand).

It’s a fun romp, but not without some hitches. There still is an element of “king-making”, and depending on who you play with, the boon/bane system can make it either very minor or very pronounced. And among a group of “win at all costs” power gamers, some of the fun will definitely get sucked out. The game relies heavily on luck, and doesn’t scale well with more players. It becomes exponentially difficult (and tedious) with each player beyond 3. And as a minor point, the art direction is just…weird. Denmark’s work is beautiful, but everything seems to have some kind of tweak just for the sake of being different. It’s not High Fantasy, not quite Dark Gothic…just strange.

That said, there’s still plenty to like about this game. And for those of you who like to tinker with games, there’s plenty of great source material here to modify with House Rules and variants.

A nice meld of board/tabletop war game with fantastic components (which btw can double for pieces for the equally excellent Dust Warfare war game). The alt WW2 theme fits nicely, and adds plenty of atmosphere without feeling like it was tacked on. The movement and combat is simple of enough, yet has a wealth of options to make it surprisingly complex over most boardgames (e.g. Risk, Axis & Allies). Pacing is fast, combat is even faster and brutal. There’s a host of official scenarios that are pretty balanced to keep you gaming for many sessions. The price point is pretty wallet friendly…although there’s a huge selection of units, it’s not necessary to field it all (and most everything is reasonably priced) – just cater it to your play style.