Dungeons & Dragons: Lords of Waterdeep

Lords of Waterdeep is one of the best new games I’ve played in a long time. While worker placement games are nothing new, Wizards has taken a popular genre and put a fresh of coat DnD paint on it. While at its core, quests are the best way to accumulate victory points. But by playing intrigue cards and owning buildings, you can affect others resource collections which in turn can hinder their ability to collect victory points.

There isn’t a lot of luck to the game except the quest cards that are revealed at Watchcliff Inn. Sometimes you’ll miss the opportunity to claim a high reward quest. But if that happens, you can hinder that person that claimed that quest by trying to starve them of adventurers or playing mandatory quests on them.

Lords of Waterdeep is one of those games where your strategy may have to change as the game is played. So it’s be important to be able to adopt a new gameplan mid-game.

The components in this game are top notch. All the buildings and tokens are made of heavy stock cardboard and the cards have a textured surface to them which gives them a high quality feel. In addition, Wizards has provided a well designed storage tray to hold all the pieces once the game is done.

Gamer Geeks – This game was immediately liked by my gamer geek friends.There’s enough depth and strategy to keep a player interested. And due to the many intrigue, quest and building cards, there is a good replay value to it.

Parent Geeks – After just one game played with the family, they all were anxious to try it again. My wife, the casual gamer, had no problem understanding the rules and developing a strategy over the course of the game and even won our first game. As such, this is good game for the casual gamer and a great introduction to the worker placement genre.

Child Geeks – My three sons, ages 9, 12, and 15, had no problems grasping the rules and after one round the rulebook wasn’t referenced again. While my 9 year old understood the rules, he had a little trouble developing a decent strategy. I think that will develop over time. But child geeks below 8 may lose interest in the game over time. In addition, good reading comprehension is needed to understand the quests and intrigue cards.

My biggest knock on the game is that once we got several rounds in the game, the theme of the game started to be lost. Over time we stopped calling the adventurers rogues, wizards, fighters and clerics and instead called them black, purple, orange and white cubes. We also started to gloss over the quest flavor text and just started looking at the quest requirements and rewards.

But aside from that, I’m very pleased with this game. In the multiple games I’ve played, long after we finished we continued to talk about the game, the strategy, what to do in the future and when we were going to play again. For my family and gaming group, this game is going to have some staying power. Waterdeep, City of Splendors, is a city well worth visiting again and again.

Lots of people have already experienced being adventurers in D&D, where a rich noble hires you to take on quests that provide you with treasure and gold. Now what if you actually played the noble that hires the adventurers? You get Lords of Water Deep.

Note: This is not a D&D adventure game for those of you who were hoping for one.

Summary:
In this game, everyone represents a noble with agents. Your identity is secret to only you until the end of the game and your agents are used to do your bidding whether it be investing in buildings, recruiting adventurers, seeking quests, or even doing your dirty work (intrigue cards). Each player takes turns placing these agents around the city to help achieve their goals. These goals usually entail making buildings or completing quests of a certain type. To win, you need to have the most victory points by the end of the game. These victory points are “usually” given by quests and making buildings, but there are a few exceptions such as intrigue cards and some buildings can give you VP if your agents occupy them.

Pros
– Let’s start with the amazing box and layout. This is the most organized game to play and clean up that I have ever seen. Every slot is made for good fitting and easy removal. Plus when you play the game, the layout is exact to where you leave all your pieces and cards.
– This game is very dynamic. Your lord is random, so your strategy and objective change. There are buildings that are permanent on the board, but as players make other buildings, it gives you more options to utilize your agents with. The quests available are constantly rotating as well. Then just as you think you have everything, the intrigue cards can let gain supplies, attack players, and force lords to focus on annoying side quests.
– While this isn’t a D&D game, for D&D fans this game holds a lot of flavor text and lore within the cards. I will admit, I usually get straight to the point of my cards but it’s always there if you want to take the time to review them.

Cons
– The adventurers are represented by colored squares. I’ve read some reviews where people are upset about this. This doesn’t bother me as much but it’s worth mentioning since I’ve seen several bring it up (it is D&D afterall).
– There’s no interaction between lords, other than to thwart one another with intrigue cards.
– While the Instructions were very good for the most part, I did get confused on the sequence of turns. The instructions tell you that you can place one agent on your turn, but they don’t tell you that the actual turn/round isn’t over until all agents are placed. In a separate area of the booklet, it does tell you that all agents go back to the agent pool at the end of the turn. Very small issue, but still should have been included in the turn walk through.

Catan vs. Waterdeep

Let me be the first to admit that these probably shouldn’t be compared against each other, because they are different beasts in their own right. But both are Euro Games and Catan is one of the most famous. That being said, I feel that Catan has a good edge on Waterdeep when it comes to player interaction. Catan is a fun game, but the real meat of that game is the bartering with other players to get what you need. This forces others to be more social to achieve their goals.

As for Lords of Water Deep, I love the fact that this game is dynamic. The city evolves because of the buildings being made and quests are always changing, depending on the type of quest. Sometimes you need to raise an army and sometimes you need to include money with your adventurers. I will admit that I’m also a little bias towards the theme of this game. Yes you are still gathering “supplies” to win, but the D&D side of me enjoys knowing I’m recruiting adventurers to do my quests.

Overall Catan will always have a special place in my heart and I will continue playing it, but I feel that Lords of Waterdeep is a more fun and enjoyable Euro game. I was very impressed with it, and I would recommend it to anyone who like this type of game.

What is the Lords of Waterdeep about?

The Lords of Waterdeep isn’t your typical D&D game. While it takes place in the D&D universe, you and your gaming group take the roles of various Lords that are working to gain dominance by assigning agents to go out and hire adventurers to go off on various quests.

As part of assigning your agents, you can also (1) buy buildings that offer adventurers, gold, or other rewards, (2) play intrigue cards that will always benefit you in some way and may either benefit or hinder other players, (3) acquire additional quests for your faction. Each Lord has specific victory bonuses that are kept secret from other players, such as a Lord may gain extra victory points from completing any Arcane or Warfare quests.

The game is played over eight rounds and at the end of the eight rounds, the player with the highest victory points (VP) wins. VP is earned by completing quests, having adventurers in your tavern, having gold, and completing certain types of quests that are specific to your Lord.

Each quest will have a certain requirement in terms of the type of adventurers that are needed to complete it. As you play the game, you will notice that many of the quest cards make sense in terms of the type of adventurers they will need. A combat-heavy quest will need more fighters and rogues, whereas a quest that deals with cleansing of evil or magic may require more clerics or wizards. The art on the cards also looks fantastic and each one has some flavor text to add to the immersion.

What do I like about the game?

One of the things I really like about LoW is that it’s easy to learn and easy to teach to new players but there are so many subtle complexities that you never feel like you’re settling for a light game just to appease to the non-gamers that you’re trying to play with. This is, to me, the quintessential gateway game.

The complexities wonderfully open up to you and your gaming group the more you play. For example – do I pick up these high reward quests now that will require me to save up a ton of resources before I can cash in, or do I take quick quests that I can complete faster for smaller rewards but will give me extra points for Lord affinity at the end of the game? Do I use my Intrigue cards now for an early advantage, or wait to see who’s leading before assigning them with mandatory quests? Do I focus on using my gold to acquire buildings or do I hoard my gold to complete the bigger quests? There’s always a ton of options available to every player.

Also, the components are top-notch – excellent board, fantastic art, pieces, cards are nice and thick, and everything just oozes of the overall theme. Storage in the box is also excellent and the rulebook has a storage diagram to help with it.

Closing comments

Overall, this game is brilliant. I have been getting my wife into board games and this and King of Tokyo are the two games I have been using to win her over. If you need additional proof as to how awesome this game is, check out Wil Wheaton’s Table Top episode on this game. I was sold after watching it. I highly recommend getting this game if you like a non-traditional fantasy theme with some truly engaging resource management thrown into the mix.

P.S: If you want to throw in some additional atmosphere, I recommend playing some irish pub music in the background while you play (the World of Warcraft Tavern music soundtrack is a good option too). Also, if you get this game, I highly, HIGHLY recommend getting the expansion game Scoundrels of Skullport, as it adds a whole new level of awesomeness to an already awesome game, by adding in some really crazy quests, new lords, new buildings and areas, an additional faction and a Corruption track (basically you get these quests or buildings with really good early rewards, but if you choose to undertake them, your player gets corrupt and as more players get corrupted, the overall corruption level serves as negative victory points at the end of the game. Fantastic!).

As the owners of the great Avalon Hill brand, it is no surprise that the board games published by Wizards of the Coast to date have fallen into the “Ameritrash” category. To label them as such is not denigrate them, for their emphasis has been highly developed themes, characters, heroes, or factions with individually defined abilities, combined with player-to-player conflict and a high level of luck. The publisher’s latest title has proved to be anything but an “Ameritrash” board game, but is instead a classic style “Eurogame,” which means relatively simple rules, a short playing time, a degree of abstraction rather than simulation, player interaction, player competition rather than player combat, and attractive physical components. What is more, this is a game based on Dungeons & Dragons, and specifically on the Forgotten Realms setting. Its title is Lords of Waterdeep.

Most Dungeons & Dragons board games deal with the themes inherent in those two words – “dungeons” and “dragons.” So they focus on delving into dungeons, facing dragons, and so on. Not so, Lords of Waterdeep. It is set in Waterdeep, the City of Splendors, the most resplendent jewel in the Forgotten Realms and a den of political intrigue and shady back-alley dealings where powerful, but masked lords vie for control of the city through of the region’s organisations that include the City Guard, the Harpers, the Knights of the Shield, the Red Sashes, and the Silverstars. They send out their Agents to acquire Buildings and access to better resources; gain Gold to make the many purchases necessary to ensure their rise to power; the means to Intrigue with their fellow Lords; and hire Adventurers whom they can send out on missions or Quests that once completed with spread their influence and gain them true power.

Designed for play by between two and five participants, aged twelve and over, once learned, Lords of Waterdeep can be played in an hour, no matter what the number of players. The box contains a game board, a rule book, five player mats, one hundred Adventurer cubes, one-hundred-and-twenty-one Intrigue, Quest, and Role cards, thirty-three wooden pieces that include the game’s various Agents and the score markers, and one-hundred-and-seventy card tokens that include the Building tiles and Building control markers, and plenty of Gold. All of which fits easily and neatly into the game’s insert tray that holds all of the game’s components almost perfectly.

Lords of Waterdeep’s game board measures 20” by 26” and depicts the city port of Waterdeep in Faerûn. Besides the Victory Point track around its edge and the spaces for the Intrigue and Quest cards, most of board has spaces for various Buildings that include Aurora’s Realms Shop, Castle Waterdeep, and Waterdeep Harbour as well as empty spaces where the players can put up Buildings of their own. Each of the Buildings provides a specific benefit. For example, the Aurora’s Realms Shop gives four Gold; the Builder’s Hall lets a player purchase an Advanced Building and bring it into play; Waterdeep Harbour allows a player to use an Intrigue card; the open-air stadium that is the Field of Triumph is where you can hire Fighters; new Quests are available to take at Cliffwatch Inn; and taking control of Castle Waterdeep lets you go first on the next round and draw an Intrigue card.

Besides the nine Basic Buildings marked on the board, Lords of Waterdeep includes twenty-four Advanced Buildings. These work in a similar fashion to the Basic Buildings, but the benefits provided by each are usually better. For example, when a player visits the Smuggler’s Dock, he can spend two Gold in order to hire four Adventurers, although only Clerics and Fighters; The Waymoot accumulates Victory Points that any player can visit and collect; and when at The Palace of Waterdeep, a player can direct the Ambassador at the beginning of the next round – and the Ambassador always acts before anyone else can take their turn. A side benefit to owning an Advanced Building is that when another player uses it, the owner gains a small benefit. For example, when another player uses the Smuggler’s Dock, its owner receives two Gold, and with The Waymoot or The Palace of Waterdeep, he receives two Victory Points.

Like the game board, the twenty-four page rulebook is done in full colour. It is well written, with quite a lot of information that includes plenty of examples. There is also a reasonable amount of background information too; enough that fans of the Forgotten Realms will appreciate the references, but not enough to overwhelm the casual player who does not roleplay. Overall, the rule book requires a careful read, but the rules themselves are fairly easy to grasp.

There is a player mat colour coded to each of the game’s five organisations – the City Guard, the Harpers, the Knights of the Shield, the Red Sashes, and the Silverstars. Each mat has spaces for his Agent Pool and other resources, plus his Completed Quests, as well as indications around the side to place his Active Quests, Completed Plot Quests, and his Lord of Waterdeep card.

The game’s one-hundred Adventurer cubes are divided into four colours – white, orange, black, and purple – representing Clerics, Fighters, Rogues, and Wizards respectively. These are the game’s primary resources, which along with Gold, are what a player will need to complete Quests.

At the heart of Lords of Waterdeep, and what the players are trying to complete, are its Quests, represented by the Quest cards. There are sixty of these and they come in five types – Arcane, Commerce, Piety, Subterfuge, and Warfare. Each Quest card gives the requirements necessary to complete and the rewards it grants when completed. For example, the “Domestic Owlbears” Arcana Quest card requires one white and two purple – or one Cleric and two Wizard cubes, and rewards the completing player with eight Victory Points, one Fighter or orange cube, and two Gold. A second type of Quest card is the Plot Quest card, which when completed gives an extra reward throughout the rest of the game. For example, the Skulduggery “Install a Spy in Castle Waterdeep Castle” Plot Quest card requires four Rogue or black cubes and four Gold to complete, and when done do so, not only rewards a player with eight Victory Points, but for every subsequent Skulduggery Quest completed, rewards him with another two Victory Points.

The cards that the players will use throughout the game are the Intrigue cards. These tend to grant a player extra Adventurers or extra Gold, or penalise rival players. For example, the “Spread the Wealth” Intrigue card gives both its player four Gold and another player of choice, two Gold; whilst the “Assassination” Intrigue card forces every other player to discard a Rogue or black cube from his tavern on his player mat. If a player cannot discard a Rogue, he must pay two Gold to the player who put the Intrigue card into play. Another type of Intrigue card is the Mandatory Quest which when given to another player forces him to complete that Quest before any of the others before him. For example, the “Stamp Out Cultists” Mandatory Quest Intrigue card forces a Lord to expend a Cleric, a Fighter, and a Rogue cube to complete it before moving onto his other Quests. Sadly, he only receives two Victory Points for completing it.

The first card though, that each player will receive is a Lord of Waterdeep card. Each one of these depicts one of the members of the secret council that governs the city, along with their name, some flavour text, and an effect that in providing a benefit at the end of the game will influence a player’s actions during the game. For example, Nymara Scheiron gives a player an extra four Victory Points at the end of the game for each Commerce and Skulduggery Quest completed, whereas Larissa Neathal gives six Victory Points for each Advanced Building she controls at the end of the game.

At the start of the game, each player receives a player mat, the Building control markers, and Agents, all of the same colour. The number of Agents received varies according to the number of players. With fewer players, each player receives more Agents; with more players, they receive less. This is the game’s core balancing mechanic. However many Agents a player starts with, every player receives a further Agent at the start of the second half of the game. Each player receives two Quest cards, two Intrigue cards, and a single Lord of Waterdeep card. This last card is kept hidden until the end of the game when everyone works out their final score. Lastly each player receives some Gold, the amount varying according to play order. The player who goes receives just four Gold, the next five, then six, and so on until the fifth player – if there is one – receives eight Gold. This is the game’s second balancing mechanic.

The game is played over the course eight Rounds. In each Round, the players take it in turn to assign a single Agent and then if they can, complete a Quest. Each Agent is assigned to a space on the board in an available Building or Advanced Building space. When he does, the Agent gives the player the benefit from that Building. Most Buildings have a single space, so that once an Agent has been assigned there, no Agent can be sent there to make use of its benefit, though some Intrigue cards allow a player to assign an Agent to an already occupied building. Thus if a player wants to purchase and construct an Advanced Building, he must assign an Agent to the “Builder’s Hall” before anyone else, or wait until the next Round. In which case, he probably wants to assign an Agent to Castle Waterdeep gain the opportunity to go first at the start of the next Round. Otherwise, a player must assign an Agent to another Building.

Two Buildings – Cliffwatch Inn and Waterdeep Harbour – have multiple spaces, so that more than one Agent can be assigned there, even by the same player. The former is the source for new Quest cards, while the latter allows a player to use an Intrigue card. Once an Agent is assigned, if a player has sufficient Adventurers, and sometimes Gold, to complete the requirements given on a Quest card, he can complete it and score Victory Points for doing so.

Lastly, and after all of the Agents have been assigned, any player with an Agent assigned to Waterdeep Harbour can reassign that Agent to any remaining unoccupied Building. This rewards the player for his cunning in sending an Agent to Waterdeep Harbour and playing an Intrigue card. The Round is over, everyone receives their Agents back, and a new Round begins until all eight have been played. At game’s end everyone counts up the Victory Points gained form completed Quest cards, plus unassigned Adventurers and unspent Gold, and the person with the most is the winner.

Lords of Waterdeep plays at reasonable pace, once the rules have been grasped, and offers a decent amount of game play and replay given how simple the rules really are and how light the game is. This is helped by the variety available in the Quest and Intrigue cards, but mostly in the Advanced Building cards. With twenty-four available, it is unlikely that all of them will come into play.

In terms of game play, Lords of Waterdeep rewards careful planning. Each player needs to be looking at what he needs to complete the Quests that he has in front of him. Of course, he also needs to get to the Buildings that he wants, but with rivals competing for the same space, this is not possible, so a player should also try and get the best out the available Buildings that he can. This can be alleviated if a player goes first, but in general, the closer a player is to going first the better. There is also some advantage in purchasing and constructing the Advanced Buildings as they provide further spaces where an Agent can be assigned. Further, if another player uses one, then the owning player also gains a small, but sometimes important benefit.

All of the Buildings in Lords of Waterdeep can play an important role during the game, but three tend to be more favoured than the others. They are the Builder’s Hall, because it allows Advanced Buildings to be purchased and constructed; Waterdeep Harbour, not just because an Intrigue card can be played, but also because an Agent assigned there can be reassigned; and lastly, Castle Waterdeep as it grants a player an Intrigue card and means that he can go first in the next Round.

Agents though, are in short supply, even after the extra one is gained at the start of the game’s second half. This means that the players must assign them with care so as not to waste their action.

Physically, Lords of Waterdeep is very nicely put together. All of the playing pieces have been done in wood and the rest of the pieces in sturdy card, though the Intrigue, Quest, and Lord of Waterdeep cards have been done slightly too thin a cardstock. The rulebook itself is bright and attractive and easy to read. For an American game, the look and feel of Lords of Waterdeep is anything but that.

In terms of theme, the grimy fantasy of the Waterdeep of the Forgotten Realms does not feel pasted on, a common complaint with this type of game. This is not to say that the mechanics behind the rules of Lords of Waterdeep could not be taken and have a new theme applied to them. It would take some effort, but in the meantime, the Dungeons & Dragons theme is applied with great care, and it is a theme that avoids many of Dungeons & Dragons’ clichés, primarily because it removes the concept of going on adventures and down dungeons. This is done by placing the players in the role of hiring the adventuring parties rather than being part of them – as in so many other games.

What is telling about Lords of Waterdeep is that Wizards of the Coast describe the format of this game as being “Non-traditional.” This is an odd claim for the publisher to make. Lords of Waterdeep is not a Non-traditional game. It is more or less, a traditional Eurogame, with worker placement and resource management mechanics similar to those found in well-known Eurogames such as Agricola, Caylus, and Puerto Rico, amongst many others. All games and mechanics that the designers at Wizards of the Coast and in particular, the designers of Lords of Waterdeep will be familiar with to some degree. The only way in which Lords of Waterdeep is Non-traditional is that it is not a classic American or Ameritrash design, and to describe it as “Non-traditional” is to belittle both this design and Eurogames in general. Certainly, it shows a wilfil ignorance upon the part of the publisher.

Although its various bits and pieces and possibly the business of the rulebook make Lords of Waterdeep look more intimidating than it really is, Lords of Waterdeep is really a medium to light Eurogame that is just a step on or two up from introductory games such as Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride. Certainly, it is much lighter and less complex than similar games such as Caylus and Agricola. Similarly, the game’s Dungeons & Dragons theme might be off-putting, but it never imposes itself on the game or its players. What is pleasing about the game is that the designers have achieved a balance between the theme and the mechanics that will attract both Eurogame players and players of Dungeons & Dragons players, but whilst both will be attracted to the game, Lords of Waterdeep is still more Eurogame than a Dungeons & Dragons game. Above all, Lords of Waterdeep is an enjoyable, decently themed Eurogame that uses familiar – almost traditional – mechanics to good effect.

So the game is beautiful, but how does it actually play?

The game is actually surprisingly simple, and, with two players, lasts about an hour. Now, when I say simple, I don’t mean that there isn’t a wealth of opportunity for strategy and plotting. The game actively encourages underhanded and back-stabby playing. Simple means that I was able to sit down with two others who hadn’t played, on my first game, and from setup to completion, we had all become quite good at it. I look forward to playing again and seeing how well we all improve.

I’m getting far ahead of myself, though.

You play the Lords of Waterdeep, mysterious figures who control the organizations within the city from behind the scenes. You begin the game with a number of agents (based on the number of players) and begin placing them throughout the city at the different buildings. If an agent is at that location, you cannot place another agent there, except in the case of the Waterdeep Harbor and the Cliffwatch Inn, which have multiple spots.

You attempt to gather heroes (represented by colored cubes) into your personal tavern to send them on quests for you, which you gather from the board’s Cliffwatch Inn. Quest range from bolstering the city guard to stamping out cults. You gather these heroes from specific locations on the board.

This is where the strategy kicks in: You are able to see other players’ taverns, as well as the heroes they’ve gathered so far. As such, you can send your agents to locations you know the other player needs to gather adventurers from.

There are Intrigue cards you are able to collect as well, which you can use against the other players, or in your own efforts. These can add to your heroes, remove other player’s heroes, force other players to perform mandatory quests, and lots of other nasty little surprises.

In addition, you can build buildings of your own at Builder’s Hall. These give you new buildings with interesting new mechanics, and which give the owner a little something when another player places an agent there. There are some quests which give you Victory Points for building buildings, and one of the Lords of Waterdeep grants you VP for this as well.

And that’s what it comes down to: Victory Points. As the game progresses, you’ll gain Victory Points for completing quests, building buildings, and a few other things. However, no one really knows who’s going to win until the very, very end, as the Lords of Waterdeep are revealed. Each player took a Lord at the beginning of the game, and kept them hidden from the other players. When they’re revealed, they have a brief rule on the bottom of their card, granting VP at the end of the game for completing specific types of quests. While you may have been completing quests throughout the game, more than any other player, if you weren’t doing the quests your particular Lord of Waterdeep granted VP for, the person with fewer completed quests than you may very well surge ahead and win it.

This game is incredibly simple to play right off the bat, but has a ton of options in-game, allowing players to play to their liking. In my first game, one player spent most of their time sending Agents to the Harbor, playing Intrigue cards, while another built a massive army of Fighters and completed Warfare after Warfare quest. Most of my tavern was full of Rogues as I completed lots of Skullduggery quests.

It’s a fantastic game, and I can’t wait to play with a full complement of five players.

Theme is pretty important with me. If I’m going to get others into the game, the theme has to be interesting enough for them to ask about the game. And the game has to play in a way that works with that theme, there has to be synergy. Lords of Waterdeep lacks that. It’s D&D tacked onto worker placement and resource management. I don’t know about you, but when I play Dungeons and Dragons, it’s not to send workers off to have the fun.

Is it Pretty?
That depends. All the quest and intrigue cards have nice art, as do your Lords of Waterdeep. The rubies and gold you earn are also nice touches. The buildings are dull to look at and they do nothing to improve on a drab main board. And all your workers are cubes, which, economically, might make sense, but it doesn’t help with the theme at all, which is too bad, since this game is riding on theme. And I’m not a fan of the cover art, but preferences…

Who’s it For?
I’m not sure. It doesn’t seem to offer enough in skill or control to be loved by the eurogame community. Too many times, I felt like I couldn’t really plan a strategy because of the luck of the draw when it came to quest. Turn order is incredibly important and if you can keep yourself as the first player to go each turns, you have a clear advantage. I came with warm feelings for the setting, having enjoyed the Forgotten Realms before but it didn’t click here with me. The theme isn’t really explored enough and it feels easily replaceable. This game to have any theme and still be the exact same game with no problems. That doesn’t work for those who want the FEEL of D&D in other mediums.

Why is it NOT in My Collection?
If it’s my choice to pick, I wouldn’t choose this one. It’s not a horrible game, it does what it does well enough. But it doesn’t do anything great. My non-D&D friends wouldn’t care for the gameplay and my D&D friends would love the limited use of the setting. Those I did play it with seemed to be having enough fun, but after eight rounds, I was ready to pack it up.

So we try to get together as a family to play games once a week or so, typically Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne. I recently picked this up and I cannot describe how impressed I am by this game.

REPLAY:
There are enough variables in LoWD to keep players on their toes every game. From the buildings laid out to Lords each game will not only give each player revised priorities each game, but a different playing field as well.

COMPONENTS:
The components are extremely high quality. The tokens are all heavy card stock or wood and the cards are all textured heavy duty. Topping it off though is the box insert that, unlike most games, is designed not just for storage, but to ease game play and setup.

THEME:
Anyone familiar with D&D’s Forgotten Realms will instantly recognize some of the characters and settings. For those of us without a lot of time in FR not knowing the theme will not hurt gameplay, and might in fact entice players to delve deeper into the world.

OVERALL:
This game is likely to replace our go to game. It has learned a great deal from it’s predecessors, seamlessly blending the solid mechanics of a euro with the rich theme and swag of an ameri-trash. I cannot recommend the game enough.

With strategy, straightforward goals, and beautiful production, Lords of Waterdeep works for a more picky Euro-style crowd or the casual gamer who doesn’t want to go through a learning curve for a good time.

The system it creates is fun to wrangle, and creates the biggest benefit and concern all at the same time.

Pro:

The game provides options, so there’s no single activity you’re repeating, no one avenue to your win condition. Win conditions are slightly different with each Lord, adding variety, while pursuit of quests vs. building gives you a feeling of lots of choices that can all benefit you.

Con:

Veteran players who have figured that out can make more informed decisions that novice players will miss. This is, of course, true of any game, but in this one you can really work the system if you know what you’re doing.

So, pick it up or not?

Definitely pick this game up if worker placement is your thing, because it’s got something for just about everybody, but if you know what you’re doing maybe just help the newbies out for one play. Seriously, this is the one worker placement game I’ll enjoy every time.

Although some players like to immerse themselves into the D&D theme of this game, those players will probably purchase the DnD meeples at some point to replace the cubes, others will play it for the mechanics. I used to play the D&D role playing games, but quit when I discovered tactical games. I don’t really care what you call the cubes, to me they are cubes. I like the worker placement mechanic of this game, and the idea of completing requirements to get points. This game really gives multiple ways of getting points, but you get the most points for completing quest. There are also points awarded for the amount of gold you amass, the cubes you posses at the end of the game, and for buying buildings that have point tokens on them. The only thing that disturbs me is that the more players you have, the fewer workers you get. With fewer workers, it takes longer to get the cubes and money you need to complete quests. The buildings are helpful, and you get bonuses for being the owner of a building that someone uses.

The expansion gives too many points for completing quests, and makes it too easy to get cubes. I played against a friend, who completed three forty point quest, while I completed a couple of low point quests. The forty point quests are not really any harder to complete than the twenty point quests of the main game. This should have been much harder.

Easy to learn. Love the theme. Plays well with 3 or 4. Different ways to victory, can do the quests to win or use your lords ability.

This is the game I use to introduce news players to board gaming. I played with my sister in law and brother in law, they are new to gaming. They were a little overwhelmed by all the components during setup. They quickly picked up the game play. They actually wanted to play again as soon as the first game was finished.