Amy

This was first exposure to a worker placement game, and I really enjoyed it! This may have had something to do with the simplicity of the mechanics in addition to how much I enjoy the D&D theme.

Game Components
As long as you don’t want to store this game in its side, the components and box design in this game are excellent. The cards all feel like solid quality card stock with a nice feel in your hand. The artwork is engaging with sufficient variety. The board and player mats all clearly delineate where everything is placed, which dramatically cuts down on messy table tops. I’m the type of person that likes for everything to be nice and neat on the table, and this game clearly accomplishes that. And when it’s time to put the game away, everything fits clearly and snuggly in the box. As long as you don’t store it on it’s side in which case everything is likely to get mixed up.

Mechanics
This is a simple worker placement game where you gather resources (wizards, clerics, warriors, rogues, and money) and use them to complete quests with a variety of awards including victory points, more resources, and sometimes recurring positive conditions. For people not familiar with Euro style games, this is a great introductory game although more experienced Euro gamers may find themselves getting bored with the simplicity of the mechanics.

Theme
This really is a Euro game with a little bit of a theme thrown on top. You are “shadowy” Lords of Waterdeep (hence the title) working to complete quests that will enable you to take control of the city with know other players knowing who you are playing as. This makes for a fun reveal at the end and some nice artwork, but the theme is a minor enough element that it’s easy to forget about while placing your workers.

General Game Play
Every turn you begin by placing an agent on any one of several spots on the board that each give you different resources, allow you to gain quest cards or intrigue cards, or to play intrigue cards. After you collect your resources/play your cards, you can then complete one quest (this simply involves paying the required resources) and collect any rewards. Everyone takes turns placing their agents until they have placed all available agents. Then the round ends and everyone collects their agents again. The game ends after the completion of 8 rounds. At that point, victory points are totaled to determine the winner. It’s nice to have a limit of 8 rounds for controlling game time.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game as an introduction to a worker placement game as well as the theme even if it wasn’t a major component of the game. I have also played it with both the minimum and maximum number of players and enjoyed it both ways.

The theme of this game (obviously DC comics) was very well implemented including lots of New 52 artwork, the most recent run of DC comics. There are villain, super-villain, hero, super-hero, power, equipment, weakness, vulnerability, and location cards with the super-hero cards being the only ones that aren’t added to your deck. The latter provide you with special abilities that you as an individual can use throughout the game. The only issue with the theme is that you can being playing as Wonder Woman using your heat vision while driving the batmobile in Arkham Asylum with Mr Freeze at your side fighting against the Anti-Monitor. My husband and I took advantage of this situation to add some role-playing in the form of weaving an entertaining story as to why this would ever happen, which added a huge element of fun to the game.

The mechanics of the game are the basic deck building mechanics with one type of currency used for everything (purchasing cards as well as defeating super villains) so it’s a great game to teach the mechanics of deck building. My only difficulty was remembering when to shuffle my discard pile because of the complexity of the conditions and how it can really impact game play if you do it at the wrong time.

The overall goal of the game is to defeat the chosen number of super-villains before the source deck runs out of cards for everyone to buy. Players can play as many cards as they have in their hands and buy as many things as their “power” total (the game’s currency) allows in any given turn. This means that you can move through the deck of source cards a lot quicker than you would expect. However, I have played this game with 2, 4, and 5 players and as well as the maximum number of super-villains without coming close to running out of cards from the source deck before defeating (buying) all of the super-villains. It seems like there are just so many cards! As such, it seems this other end game condition is just one that the creators of the game included for an “in the unlikely event…” situation.

Overall, a fun game that scales well from 2-5 players including a more interactive experience when it is not your turn (due to the high number of cards with an attack aspect) than a game like Dominion. Fanboys of DC will probably love the theme although people not as familiar with the DCU might not appreciate many of the cards.