Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game

It’s been some time since my last review… life seems to have that knack for getting in the way of gaming! I’m happy to have some time to write up a review and doubly happy it’s for this game! I’m currently running a 4E campaign with a great bunch of friends, so I’m in full on “D&D” mode. I actually decided to get this game for a couple different reasons… first, being a DM you don’t really get to scratch the dungeon crawl itch yourself since you’re the one pulling the strings behind the curtain. Second, I’ve read some good things about the game here on BG, Lastly, having just recently downloaded Castlevania Adventure Rebirth, I’m infected with the vampire hunting bug which was the ultimate tie breaker for me getting this game versus Wrath of Ashardalon (I will still get that game at some later date!). I was also looking for something “D&D lite” to play with my siblings and wife who enjoy playing games but don’t really have the time to commit to full on 4E campaigning. Thus far, I feel I’ve gotten my money’s worth!

Right out of the gate upon opening up the box, the components are fantastic! The game comes with several decks of cards, sturdy “dungeon tiles” that are printed on thick card stock and interlock nicely, character cards also printed on the same thick stock for both the heavy villains in the game as well as the playable heroes. Plenty of tokens, for various uses in the games multiple scenarios and lastly the miniatures! These miniatures are mostly recasts from the Dungeons and Dragons miniatures game. There are a few original pieces in here, but for the most part Wizards reused their minis, which is perfectly fine considering there are some very nice sculpts presented here… especially the HUGE Dracolich figure! My only issue with them is they’re not painted. Considering Heroscape had fully painted minis for a board game, Wizards could have easily included painted minis for Castle Ravenloft as well. I docked the components rating 1 star for this, but if given the option, I would have only docked it 1/2 a star.

Next we have game play, which thus far after a handful of games under my belt is fun and straight forward. If you’re familiar with 4th Edition combat rules, you’re familiar with this game’s combat rules. If you’re not, it’s easily explained in the rule book. Gone are some of detailed nuances from 4th Edition like Combat Advantage, Flanking, and AOEs, etc… in place is very straight forward combat abilities that work well within the framework of the game. Monsters are controlled by the players and have several “if, then” tactics printed on their combat cards to guide the players when taking monster turns. There are twelve pre-printed scenarios that set up different victory conditions and have scene setting flavor text. With the “shuffle and flip” tile placement, you’ll more than likely never have the same environment twice which makes for some nice replay value. There are also two bonus adventures and a handful of contest winner adventures available on the dungeons and dragons website as well. If you’re feeling creative You can also take the structure of the pre-printed scenarios and design your own new if you’re so inclined. The possibilities and replay value due to this are endless! All in all, I felt the game play was straight forward and enjoyable. There were a few things I couldn’t locate in the rule book like starting number of Healing Surges but the invaluable wealth of knowledge on BG resolved those questions rather quickly. 🙂

All in all, I’m extremely happy with this purchase and have had a lot of fun playing the game thus far. I love that it’s a game that can be played solo as well as with 4 more players. I actually felt a nice wave of nostalgia for the old Milton Bradley game Heroquest while I played this. I’m excited about trying to use some of the game elements in my 4E campaign as well, like a completely random “shifting halls” style dungeon using the tiles and since I enjoy painting minis, the non-painted minis will provide me with some new “canvases” to work with. I’m hopeful this game will be a gateway for my siblings, wife and friends who aren’t D&D players to maybe consider taking the plunge. I’ll be sure to comment on how that goes in the discussion area later on. So if you’re looking for a quick D&D feeling dungeon crawl without having to invest hours of your time creating an immersive world, this game is right up your ally!

I’m starting to realize something about myself and my reviews, and it’s quite enlightening. I’ve come to understand that what sets me apart from other reviewers is that I actually play a lot of a game before reviewing it, generally; at least 3 times per game, and almost always with different people. Many other reviewers seem to think that an opinion can be formed by a single play, and many reviews are rife with assumptions and, in many cases, errors. Maybe that’s why I have almost ten thousand reads of my article (that I can track) over the entire internet with all of my syndication partners. I’m truly happy to have you as a reader, and it’s because of you guys and gals that I put my life on hold for 4 to 6 hours every Sunday to review games for you fine folks in order to help you sort the chaff from the wheat.

Let me begin this review by noting that I initially thought this game was mediocre at best, and that it didn’t have much in the way of compelling gameplay. I thought it to be too mechanical, with many other dungeon crawl games being far superior and thus found myself wondering why I would want to purchase a game like this with such other, better, games out there on the market. Then, like a bottle of Smirnoff to the head, it hit me. I had an epiphany of epic proportions regarding Ravenloft that changed my mind entirely, and now I realize that this game system is far superior to almost all of its peers in the genre. It’s not because of the bits, although the bits are tip-top. It’s not because of the mechanics, really, because they are fairly bland and a little wonky at first. It’s because this game has such an amazing host of possibilities in creating scenarios and has such an open architecture that you can create, and are encouraged to, add house rules to it that are scenario-specific.

I don’t know why I didn’t see the beauty of this game in the first 15 plays. I think it’s because, to be fair, the built-in scenarios are really not that interesting, and they do not take advantage of the mechanic that I have discovered in scenario building which really is what makes this game such a ******* gem among the ore that’s out there today. I realized on Saturday night that by stacking the decks in a specific order, you can create an incredibly compelling narrative within the game and create a true D&D-worthy adventure for you and your friends to participate in that evokes strong feelings of fear, terror, and ultimately, supreme satisfaction. My only regret is that I didn’t realize this until so recently.

I know, I’m putting the cart before the horse. You’re asking yourselves, “Pete, what the heck are you talking about? You haven’t told me jack about the game yet, so how can I understand what you’re talking about until you frame the former comments in a context I understand??” Well, let’s get into that, shall we?

The concept of Castle Ravenloft, from a 10,000 foot perspective, is that up to five noble adventurers are compelled to head to the land of Borovia, which is home to Castle Ravenloft, roost of the dread vampire Count Strahd. This “world” was envisioned back in 1983, in an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons module named ‘Ravenloft’. Anyhow, this update of the theme has adventurers roaming the catacombs of Castle Ravenloft in search of adventure and riches beyond imagination, although they generally will find nothing but vile beasts and death.

It’s an atypical dungeon crawl in that it has Space-Hulk style interlocking tiles that are mostly placed in a random order, meaning the game is different every time you play it. Every aspect of the game is set up from the scenario you choose to play, where certain items are listed to be in play or certain tiles pulled from the stack and placed at key locations. Generally, a ‘goal’ tile is placed nine to twelve places deep within the random tile stack, and when the players reach that goal the endgame begins. There’s no scoring in this game, and it’s an Ameritrasher’s dream in that there are only two states the game can end in, which are total victory and the utter destruction of the heroes.

The box is very large in depth but the standard bookshelf design as far as length and width. Inside are a virtually endless sea of chits, unpainted plastic miniatures, a boatload of cards, and a ******** of incredibly well produced interlocking dungeon tiles. Also within is a very, very short rulebook and an equally miniscule adventure guide, which serves as the blueprint to play scenarios which do little more than get you accustomed to the concepts of the game. While not precisely telling you so, you are compelled to want to create your own scenarios, and this is where the game’s true shine emits from. Suffice to say that the art is very nice, and while some people call it bland, it is not so in my humble opinion. The cards themselves do not have much art on them at all, and there are no magical weapons depicted anywhere, really. There’s no shiny armor.

The cards are, in fact, all text-based, with the exception of the monster cards which have a hand-drawn image of whatever creature that the card represents. While some see this as a shortcoming, I think that it leaves things to the imagination, which is par for the course with D&D, so it’s actually quite thematic to have omitted the pictures. Anyhow, everything is of the highest quality regarding construction, and you will certainly not be disappointed.

My only beef with the entire box is that the miniatures are unpainted versions of existing Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures Game minis, and I’d have rather paid 100$ for the game with painted minis than have to try to go out and source them from a singles retailer or paint them myself. That, my friends, was a typical Wizards “F You, Consumer” move that should not be easily forgiven. So, in response to that, “F You, Wizards.” The smart play for them would be to release a “Ravenloft Upgrade” package for $50 that has all of the miniatures for the game in it. I would jump on that like a recently-released inmate on a prostitute. I’ve always liked Wizards, and Ravenloft hasn’t changed that, but this again makes me wonder who the **** is driving the sales force over there.

Anyhow, the setup is completely determined by the scenario you choose to play out of either the book or your head, depending on how much effort you wish to put in. The common factors, though, come down to each player picking a character and selecting the skills they wish to use for this game. The skills are cards from a character-specific deck which have three classes of powers.

Two of the powers, the ‘At-Will’ types, are essentially your hand-to-hand or ranged weapon powers that you can use over and over again. The other cards, though, are generally one-time use powers that may be recovered by winning the ability to do so through a lucky treasure down the road. Each player also gets one Treasure Card at the beginning of your game, which may or may not be helpful. In all cases, though, the “dungeon tile” stack gets placed within reach, and a starting tile of some sort is placed in the play area, with each players miniature put thereon.

There are several stacks of cards which need to be set out and shuffled: the Treasure deck, the Monster deck, and the Encounter deck. There’s another deck as well, the Adventure Deck, but that is generally reserved for cherry-picking certain items out of if certain scenario-based actions happen. Personally, I like to shuffle that deck right into the Treasure deck for general consumption because the Treasure deck is mostly comprised of very small one-time boosts where the Adventure deck is where most of the weapons and “items” that you’d want to actually carry with you are located.

Gameplay consists of each player taking their two actions, which are either to move and attack, attack and move, or move twice. Once they’ve done these actions, if they are on a tile that has an open edge and they are standing on that edge, they add a new tile. If they are not standing on an unexplored edge, then they pull and resolve an Encounter card, which are ALWAYS very bad news.

Also, if a player pulls a tile with a black arrow icon on it when they pull a tile, they place that tile and then pull an Encounter card. In all cases, though, when a new tile is pulled, a player must pull a Monster card, place the miniature on the skull pile icon in the newly placed room, and place the Monster card in front of them as they now control that monster. After you’ve resolved the Encounter card, Tile pull and subsequent Monster card, or both, you must then activate any monster types you control, in the order you pulled the card that controls them.

Each monster has a specific script that it follows, and this is simply the most brilliant boardgame AI system I’ve ever seen. It’s far superior to the Dungeon Twister 2 AI method, although it is similar. In short, each monster has its own personality, and the monsters were all done very, very well. This mechanic alone will be copied by all other dungeon crawls, if we’re lucky, because this was the one stand-out design triumph that I noticed from play one to today. It’s, simply put, flawlessly designed and executed.

Another Dirty McNasty aspect of the game is that the Encounter cards almost always attempt to mercilessly curb stomp the players by placing traps into the dungeon, causing very bad events to occur, placing “auras” into play that affect all players and in some cases all monsters, or generally enact some other form of *******. The word “Encounter” doesn’t normally mean “something very bad is about to happen to you” in life; I mean, you could “encounter” a beautiful woman who wishes to perform sexual favors on you, right? Not in Ravenloft. Bad stuff ALWAYS happens when you have an “Encounter”.

Maybe it’s just the fact that stunning, nymphomaniacal women don’t generally hang out in a vampire-haunted crypt, but either way, I dread pulling these cards, to the point of irrational terror while playing the game. In all the failures I’ve had, Encounters were the prime target of my ire postgame because they always seem to just plain ‘hate on you’ at every turn. So, yes, I am man enough to admit that I hate, and I do mean HATE, Encounter cards. Hate them. Oh, do I hate them. Grr.

Traps, as I noted before my minor rant, can come about by the hated Encounters (grr…) and these are generally one of the nastier varieties of nastiness that the Encounters can cause. They’re nasty because they always come into play right where you’re standing, and the fact that you’ve pulled them means you’ve already taken your turn and are about to have to resolve the traps, along with the monsters, so you’re about to get messed up in a major way. These lovely traps are fireballs, spears, crossbows, smashing walls…all kinds of bad stuff. The good news is that on players’ turns, they can attempt to disarm them by a die roll, and if you’ve played the ‘Rogue’ character, you have a 75% chance of success in doing so. Traps are activated just like monsters, luckily, so only one player will activate it, and most traps only affect players on that tile during activation, although a few have a ranged effect.

Combat with monsters is all resolved by playing one of your power cards, and every single aspect of the game is resolved with a D20 roll, so this is no different. The short version is that you roll the D20, add your power’s modifier, add any treasure modifiers, and compare against the enemy’s armor cl***. If you equal or exceed that, you hit him for the set amount of damage listed on the card. If you hit the enemy hard enough to exceed its hit points, it dies. You keep the monster card, which is taken from the controlling player, and it earns the hero team an experience amount as listed on the card. The player who dealt the killing blow also gets a Treasure card for their trouble.

Speaking of Treasure cards, I should explain why I’m not a big fan of them. Most of the treasures in the game are not treasure items, but rather helpful effects that can do things like heal a character a little, or allow you to look at the top three Encounter cards and rearrange them to your liking. There are a few “+1 Sword of Ballbusting” type items, but most of the real goodies in the game are in the Adventure Treasure deck, which is a separate deck altogether that generally isn’t used. My advice to you is to take that deck and mix it into the regular treasures, because it really feels more like an adventure when you find cool stuff. The other aspect is that the Adventure Treasure deck has a different back, so it will be known when a cool treasure is about to be found. What I like to do is take that card and place it under the next monster that is pulled, and when that monster is pulled, the slayer takes that card as his treasure in lieu of pulling from the Advenure deck.

Experience points are of an odd sort in Ravenloft. They can be used, when five are amassed, to cancel an Encounter card or to level up a character. These experience points are shared among the entire team, so they build up fast, and are spent even faster. To level up a character from level one to level two, the player who wishes to level up must roll a natural 20 on any roll they make and may spend five experience to do so. This is the weakest mechanic in the game, and as such you will not see this happening more than five percent of the time, statistically. The bump you get from leveling up is pretty much a one armor cl*** point boost and a couple of hit points, with one additional special power being revealed. The physical difference is that you simply flip your cardboard character sheet over to the opposing side, and now you’re a level two character. There is no level three, so once you’re boosted up, that’s that.

Now that you understand the basics of how to play, let’s explore my initial point about Ravenloft. The magic of the game, in my opinion, is that it is so open ended that it leads you to the proverbial water and lets you drink as much, or as little, as you wish to. You can play an out-of-the-book scenario, or you can craft amazingly intricate, immersive scenarios to play. You can use random tiles, cards, and cookie-cutter rules, or you can have all hundred-and-fifty-or-so cards and all forty tiles in a specific order with scenario-based rules for each tile to make this a true-to-D&D adventure of epic scale. It’s a grand sandbox to spill as much or as little blood into as you wish, and for those of us who are creative enough to see the merit within this system, this game is phenomenal.

I will be publishing a scenario that I came up with on Saturday Morning, which is a 2-part adventure, and even as simple as it is, it’s far more engaging and challenging than the out-of-the-box scenarios which might lead you to believe that the game is less interesting than its potential enjoyability truly is. Keep an eye out for it here or on Boardgamegeek.com, if you’re interested.

The long and short, in closing, is that this game that I initially thought was a short-sighted epic failure turned out to be one of the best, most immersive, dungeon crawls I’ve played to date, and I’ve played a ******** of them. Don’t let your first couple “learning” plays dissuade you, and once you’ve got ten games in and really, really understand the game’s core concepts, pace, and flow, try to come up with some bad-*** scenarios on your own that fit your expectations and group’s style. That’s what makes this game magnificent, really. I just wish I hadn’t publicly scorned the game so much, because now I look a little bit like an asshat for it. Honestly, though, that’s what makes me a decent reviewer: I play the subject game a lot, and I’m not set on an opinion until I feel I know the game well enough to review it. And sometimes, I need to have an epiphany.

What Makes Castle Ravenloft An Amazing Summer Home:
* Theme drips from this game like urine from a kid who has seen a vampire
* The simple core rule set makes this approachable and learnable in a very short amount of time
* The art, while not DaVinci, is quite nice and appealing
* The sandbox architecture of the game makes this an amazingly agile game system

What Makes Castle Ravenloft Look Like A Poop-Filled Outhouse:
* ***, Wizards? You already had the molds and small Chinese hands to do the painting…why are the minis unpainted???
* There has not been an AEG/Alderac-style aftermarket “painted miniatures” pack released to fix the aforementioned oversight
* The Treasure deck is mostly loaded with worthless items and one-time-use ****

Overall:

What a great game! I wish I’d seen the light earlier, but I had been so indoctrinated by other dungeon crawls that I overlooked the sandbox aspect. The only downside, which really isn’t that big of a deal, is that the game ships with unpainted miniatures, which it should not have. This game should be an auto-buy for anyone who even thinks they MAY like dungeon crawls. It can actually appeal to a person who only likes Euro games as well, because the mechanics are so simple that even a Container disciple could get the game without blowing a circuit and having to chant “Tikal, Tikal, Tikal” to save them from flipping the light switch on and off seven times in a row to save the planet from imploding.

Rating:
4.5/5 Stars

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO EXPERIENCE RAVENLOFT IN ALL ITS GLORY…play this:
http://www.box.net/shared/11dyod630i

It’s a home-brew scenario that retains ALL of the rules in the rulebook while creating a narrative, almost RPG-style, adventure.

Castle Ravenloft is a game set in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy universe.

The first thing you will notice is the box is *heavy*. Inside you will find nearly one billion bits for various things. Chits, tiles, minis, cards, and an insert with a few large compartments for storing it all.

The bits in this game are fantastic. The heavy cardboard tiles you will use for constructing your ‘dungeon’ are of the highest quality, the artwork is good and thematic, everything is well written and polished. The instructions are fairly well written – not the best ever, but fairly well written – and there are a few scenarios included to guide your play.

Each player controls a hero going through the dungeon. The players take turns taking some action with their respective heroes, fighting a monster and/or exploring the dungeon, and then taking a turn with whatever monster(s) are also running loose and often revealing some trap or other unpleasant effect. Each hero and each monster is represtented by a high quality (unpainted, but high quality) miniature from the D&D line of miniatures.

The different missions have different goals. The first mission, easily played solo with just one hero, calls for the hero to escape from deep within the dungeon before the evil vampire Strahd catches up to him. Other missions call for the hero(es) to get certain magic items, or guide villagers through the dungeon, or defeat certain monsters. The internet is, of course, loaded with fan-made scenarios as well.

This is my favorite solo game. The mechanic requiring the player to physically take the role of the dungeon – drawing trap and encounter cards, manipulating the monsters according to the instructions in the rulebook – almost makes me feel like there is another player at the table, in a way that adding blocks to the map in Pandemic does not.

As a coop game, again with the opportunity each player has to fight *as* the monsters, to *be* the dungeon with its traps and controlling the minis, this game allows some ‘gotcha’ resistance to the Alpha Male Menace that can occur when one strong personality is playing with others in a coop game.

I do wish the minis were painted but I understand that’s not realistic. Still, without paint, some of them look quite a bit like some of the others. And there are areas in which the rulebook is unclear, specifically when dealing with how the player controls the monsters, but Google Is Your Friend and the clear answers are out there.

This game is fantastic for those who want a mini fantasy solo/coop game. Plays fairly quickly once you understand the rules (and depending on the scenario) and scales well from one to four players. It may be able to handle more; I won’t hazard a guess.

I only wish my kid had some interest in coops… *sigh*

This game is for people who appreciate D&D and fantasy themes but just don’t want to invest the time, or don’t have a good Dungeon Master to run a role playing campaign.

You can get a good D&D fantasy fix with this game. I enjoy the aspect of exploring as you go. Cooperating with your friends to accomplish a goal. I also enjoy the fact that you can play the game solo because the adventures and monsters run themselves. It’s easy to learn and fast to setup. You also get a lot of game for the money.

The downsides to this game, for one, is that it’s a challenge to store this game. There are many components of different sizes and shapes. Second, it’s a bummer, for me at least, that the miniatures are not painted. I’ve never done miniature painting and thinking about painting all these figures is daunting.

Overall, I really enjoy getting my D&D fix with this game. I also have Wrath of Ashardalon and mix these 2 games together for some extra adventures.

I bought Wrath of Ashardalon first and this second. Overall the former is much better with slightly more refined mechanics and balancing. I’ve played several games with this and it has always been a good time. It doesn’t give any real chance for role playing but then again, I don’t think it was designed to.

The stories are fun and the random tile system is a good way to add replay value though it seems to fall a bit short. It doesn’t quite come out random enough each time to truly feel like a different adventure. In the end, it does get a little old to be going into the same castle over and over again, even if you have a different objective each time.

The minis are neat and have been useful in my D&D4E adventures. None of the pieces of this game really feel too cheap but they certainly aren’t of the best quality. Just the sheer number of minis you get was awesome, though I’ve never gotten another game with minis (except WoA) so it might just be par for the course.

I have played this many times with D&D vets when no one feels like DMing and it has always been fun if a little bland next to D&D proper. I have also played it a few times with people that know nothing about D&D and they picked it up surprisingly fast.

If you like the combat of D&D4E and you want to spend the evening killing monster hoards, this game is for you.

If you are looking for a game that will simulate D&D, I suggest you look elsewhere.

I just had the opportunity to play the Dungeons and Dragons Castle Ravenloft game, and I have to say that I am disappointed. Reviews I have read implied that the game was somewhat of a cross between D&D 4th edition and Betrayal at House on the Hill (an excellent cooperative game with multiple scenarios). I really wanted to like this game. Though not a fan of D&D 4th edition, I did consider that ruleset would make a great boardgame. Sadly, I found this game to be severely lacking.

The way the game is structured, you have a scenario with a win condition known at the start of the game (the sessions I played were an escort mission, and a quest to kill a dracolich). Players then take turns moving and exploring, with player turns working much like D&D turns. The exploration system is my primary problem with the game. You go to the edge of the board, and lay down a random tile. Every tile has a monster, and every monster immediately attacks the character. There is no opportunity for reaction, tactics, etc. There are several reasons why this is problematic.

D&D characters have strengths and weaknesses. Take, for example, the wizard. A wizard’s strength is being able to attacks enemies from afar, often multiple ones. Their weakness is typically lack of ability to take damage, represented by a low hit point total. Castle Ravenloft’s Exploration/Encounter system heavily penalizes the wizard character for having fewer hit points than the other characters. We came to realize that this character was just not viable for playing.

Another weakness is the Exploration/Encounter system, as I mentioned before. Every exploration reveals an enemy. And while it is nice that all players cooperate, the tactics they use largely make them feel the same.

Another game that occupies this same conceptual space is Descent. Also a dungeon crawl game, Descent has one player operate as the Overlord, controlling the monsters. Its gameplay is smoother and more satisfying, but it does not play so quickly. A better horror exploration game that plays in a similar amount of time is Betrayal at House on the Hill (mentioned earlier). Primarily cooperative, it uses a traitor mechanic that causes one player to unexpectedly betray the party, which sets into motion a story-driven scenario, where both the traitor and the rest of the players have distinct win conditions.

To sum up, this is not a good game. There are planty of other good cooperative games to measure this against. The poorly-conceived systems diminish its playability, and its small number of scenarios limit its replayability. I would seriously consider either of the games previously mentioned above this.

First off I just want to say this game blew me away with it’s components. It’s practically worth the price tag alone for the dungeon tiles and minis that come with the game. Many times I’ve said that I would consider buying the game if I ran more D&D and fantasy role playing games.

The game itself is a very stripped down 4th edition mechanics. It’s so stripped down that it comes across as being very boring for experienced role players such as myself, and particularly if you have played a lot of 4th edition.

There’s not a whole lot of replay value to the game after you have completed all the different quests that are included. This of course leads itself to expansion, but the few scenarios that come with the game will only last you a few sessions before you have to start repeating them.

With that said, the game is also particularly hard and can be VICIOUS if the dice are against you.

Overall the game is great for a few sit downs and if you can use the components afterward. Otherwise I would pass on it and find a friend who has a copy of Descent or just break out the D&D books and run a dungeon crawl.

Dizem que o D&D 4.0 transformou o RPG num Jogo de Tabuleiro. O que dizer de um jogo de tabuleiro criado em cima do D&D 4.0?

Eu acho que o D&D 4.0 ficou muito bom, muito dinâmico, simplifica a vida do mestre e dos jogadores, abrindo espaço para o verdadeiro RPG.

Agora, se você não tem tempo de montar uma boa aventura, esse jogo cai como uma luva em qualquer grupo de RPG.

O jogo traz todos os elementos necessários para uma boa diversão explorando masmorras e derrotando monstros.

I had heard that this was an alright game and being a fan of the Ravenloft series since I was a kid, picking this up was a no brainer. The only thing this game seemed to have going for it was the figured. Lots of neat miniatures. The game board tiles, cards, and other components were a bit lackluster. The rules, maybe I over thought them, were confusing to me. There was so little in the rule book I was not quite sure what was going on. I also found the game very difficult. Like I said maybe I missed something critical somewhere, but for me this game was a pretty big miss.

Not a bad game. It’s sequel is much better. (Wrath of Ashardalon)