Welcome to Waterdeep, the City of Splendours! A place beloved of many a D&D player who has thrown themselves at the mercy of a Forgotten Realms campaign, it’s little surprise that Wizards of the Coast decided to use it as a backdrop for their first venture into a very different sort of game. Sure, WotC have done plenty over recent years in order to expand the line with the Adventure System games like Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon, but these feel almost like an arcade version of the full-on role playing experience. Lords of Waterdeep takes the D&D universe in a very different direction, for what we have here is a cube-pushing Euro.
(If you’re new to the world of board games, you may well be asking what the hell that means. Without going too deep into terminology, a Eurogame generally involves some element of managing the resources you start with, getting your hands on more and – assuming you’re playing well – scoring more victory points that your opponents. At the opposite end of the spectrum are Ameritrash games, boxes filled to bursting with plastic miniatures where you’re generally trying to wipe out your enemies. These are very sweeping statements, but that’ll do you as a starting point.)
You start with a faction at your disposal (there’s no difference between them bar their colour), a couple of wooden Agents and a selection of cards. The most important shows your Lord, your in-game character, who will give you a target that can offer some hefty bonuses at the end of play should you manage to achieve their secret goal. You’ll also be given a couple of Quests and Intrigue cards, both types of which you’ll end up seeing a lot of over the course of the game.
Playing Lords of Waterdeep well means that you’ll have to combine resource management with placing your Agents in the right place at the right time. Depending on where you put your little wooden guys, most of the time you’ll end up collecting different coloured cubes that represent four different classes; either Fighters, Wizards, Clerics or Rogues. These are needed to complete Quests – manage to collect enough of them to fulfil the amount required and you get to hand them back in, flip the card and get yourself some points when the game’s eight rounds are over. Intrigue cards allow you to bend the rules, either by helping yourself or hindering the progress of others.
At the beginning of the game Waterdeep has only a limited amount of areas to put your guys down on, but thankfully you also have the option to build new areas. Once these have been added to the board they’re open to everyone to use, but the player who built each one will get a rather useful bonus each time a space is occupied – it’s well worth contributing to the city’s make-up. More buildings mean more options, and more options mean more opportunity to complete those all important Quests.
While Lords of Waterdeep may look initially confusing – there is, after all, an awful lot of cardboard in that box - the gameplay is actually straightforward and easy to understand. From small beginnings the city will grow before your eyes, and while the trivial amount of resources and cash you start with will also increase, you’ll often find that you never quite have enough to hand in order to do everything you want. This means that you’ll have to prioritise and decide what is more important to you. Is it better to screw over someone else right now or focus on getting more resources to do something bigger for yourself during the next round?
Making these calls gives the game a real feeling of depth; Lords of Waterdeep is thematic in the extreme. If you boil the game down to its most basic elements you’re just collecting then spending cubes, but through the story that is told during gameplay you do get the feeling of being one of the secretive Lords, conniving and scheming to get your family to the top of the tree. Of course, with years of backstory to draw from you’d expect nothing less. The high quality production values also add to the experience; the artwork is beautiful and everything down to the cardboard coinage is lovely.
The only downside – and it’s merely a minor gripe – are the cubes representing your minions. However, if you fancy investing a little bit of extra cash you could always replace them with little wooden Wizards that are readily available from plenty of online stores. Pimping your game in this fashion is far from necessary though – it’s really only for those who feel like adding a bit of polish to what is already a great way to see what the city of Waterdeep holds.
All told, Lords of Waterdeep comes highly recommended. Even novice gamers will grasp the mechanics of how it works with little problem and it offers plenty of meat for more established players to get into. A new expansion is due early in 2013 that will add Skullport into the mix, but this base set already offers plenty for people to play with. If you’re looking for something entertaining to play that has little to no luck involved but still works as a very approachable game, this should definitely be on your list.
Note: this is the first in what will hopefully be a permanent fixture here on EN World: a weekly boardgame review. This review is by our new boardgame reviewer, Michael Fox of the Little Metal Dog podcast.
(If you’re new to the world of board games, you may well be asking what the hell that means. Without going too deep into terminology, a Eurogame generally involves some element of managing the resources you start with, getting your hands on more and – assuming you’re playing well – scoring more victory points that your opponents. At the opposite end of the spectrum are Ameritrash games, boxes filled to bursting with plastic miniatures where you’re generally trying to wipe out your enemies. These are very sweeping statements, but that’ll do you as a starting point.)
Playing Lords of Waterdeep well means that you’ll have to combine resource management with placing your Agents in the right place at the right time. Depending on where you put your little wooden guys, most of the time you’ll end up collecting different coloured cubes that represent four different classes; either Fighters, Wizards, Clerics or Rogues. These are needed to complete Quests – manage to collect enough of them to fulfil the amount required and you get to hand them back in, flip the card and get yourself some points when the game’s eight rounds are over. Intrigue cards allow you to bend the rules, either by helping yourself or hindering the progress of others.
At the beginning of the game Waterdeep has only a limited amount of areas to put your guys down on, but thankfully you also have the option to build new areas. Once these have been added to the board they’re open to everyone to use, but the player who built each one will get a rather useful bonus each time a space is occupied – it’s well worth contributing to the city’s make-up. More buildings mean more options, and more options mean more opportunity to complete those all important Quests.
While Lords of Waterdeep may look initially confusing – there is, after all, an awful lot of cardboard in that box - the gameplay is actually straightforward and easy to understand. From small beginnings the city will grow before your eyes, and while the trivial amount of resources and cash you start with will also increase, you’ll often find that you never quite have enough to hand in order to do everything you want. This means that you’ll have to prioritise and decide what is more important to you. Is it better to screw over someone else right now or focus on getting more resources to do something bigger for yourself during the next round?
Making these calls gives the game a real feeling of depth; Lords of Waterdeep is thematic in the extreme. If you boil the game down to its most basic elements you’re just collecting then spending cubes, but through the story that is told during gameplay you do get the feeling of being one of the secretive Lords, conniving and scheming to get your family to the top of the tree. Of course, with years of backstory to draw from you’d expect nothing less. The high quality production values also add to the experience; the artwork is beautiful and everything down to the cardboard coinage is lovely.
The only downside – and it’s merely a minor gripe – are the cubes representing your minions. However, if you fancy investing a little bit of extra cash you could always replace them with little wooden Wizards that are readily available from plenty of online stores. Pimping your game in this fashion is far from necessary though – it’s really only for those who feel like adding a bit of polish to what is already a great way to see what the city of Waterdeep holds.
All told, Lords of Waterdeep comes highly recommended. Even novice gamers will grasp the mechanics of how it works with little problem and it offers plenty of meat for more established players to get into. A new expansion is due early in 2013 that will add Skullport into the mix, but this base set already offers plenty for people to play with. If you’re looking for something entertaining to play that has little to no luck involved but still works as a very approachable game, this should definitely be on your list.
Note: this is the first in what will hopefully be a permanent fixture here on EN World: a weekly boardgame review. This review is by our new boardgame reviewer, Michael Fox of the Little Metal Dog podcast.
