DM_Jeff
Explorer
This is my play-tested experience of AEG’s TOMB CRYPTMASTERS board game.
The game was provided to my group by AEG for a review.
Cryptmasters is an expansion in many ways to the original Tomb board game. Here are the basics in a nutshell: the game comes in the same sized box, with the same awesome layout and artwork, but with a bunch of new surprises, a clearer instruction manual and (best part of all) is completely compatible with the first game or played alone.
For those needing a refresher, Tomb is a game where 2-6 players face off in dungeon-crawling mayhem, competing against each other and the Cryptmaster. Each player takes turns carefully building a party of adventurers from a small batch of character tiles available at the Inn. Once you have selected a well-rounded party, attached to them equipment, tactic, prayer and spell cards, you delve into the tomb. By entering rooms, thwarting curses, disabling traps, killing monsters and looting, you slowly build up an XP pool. Once all crypts are cleared the player with the most XP’s is the winner.
The game comes with two game boards, as in the first Tomb game. Both are improvements over the original. The Inn is better laid out for ease of reaching cards and functionality, and the tomb itself contains both a ‘basic’ and ‘advanced’ side. What does that mean? Well, there was such in the first game but the line between them was fairly thin. In Cryptmasters, the basic side (called “Black Sun Vaults”) is very basic indeed, and is outstanding for teaching the game to new players or running a quickie. The crypt rooms all hold only 1 or 2 cards each with one central tomb holding 3. There are no other special instructions or features. The advanced side, the “Sepulcher of Hate” is loaded with passageway traps, a difficult navigational challenge and every room has a special feature in addition to the cards (up to 5 in a room!). There is a sturdy tray to hold all the goodies in place, including hundreds of cards, character tiles and stands, dice, and counters.
Most of this review assumes you know about the original Tomb game. The game’s basic play remains the same. Outcome of actions is determined with three differently colored 10-sided dice. Green dice have just a couple of axes (successes), blue have half axes, and red dice have mostly axes. When you want to accomplish anything you check the ability of the character card who’s trying the activity against a preset difficulty number (or as an opposed roll). You roll all the dice (usually a combination of colors) and count up all the successes. If you get equal to or higher than the number needed, you succeed. If not, you fail. When you enter a tomb room, another player is selected as the Cryptmaster who does his best to defeat you with the curses, traps and monsters (if any) in the room.
The rulebook has been redesigned with playability in mind. While there is still not an index it is overall laid out better than the original with rules made clearer to understand and implement.
Those who read my original TOMB review remember it being a fun time, but there were some things stacked against us: We had 6 players (the max) while trying to learn, and some of the rules were hard to find. For Cryptmasters, I played 3 times, each with 3 to 5 players, and the difference was easily seen. Your first game, regardless, is a new experience. With that under our belts we MIXED the two sets, and played with the Cryptmasters rulebook and easy board. The strategy to advance became clearer, and everyone settled into their spot more. What I mean by that is we all knew what we were looking for in our character tiles and when to do what.
So: What Is Different? Glad you asked.
• While the basic play remains the same, many options have been added. Not only can you still pickpocket from other player’s characters in the tomb, but you can have direct party vs. party conflict! There are also rules for playing arena-style player vs. player conflicts.
• You can hire mercenaries from other parties to help you raid a tomb! They get a little bonus XP for helping you but your survival opportunity just went up. Interestingly, some character tiles have the ‘mercenary’ trait, meaning they can join another party on a raid without first being invited!
• There is a Cryptmaster deck of special cards to make the encounters more varied and interesting. When a Cryptmaster gets the room cards, he also gets a Cryptmaster tactic card to elevate the encounter.
• The way to determine the Cryptmaster has changed a bit. Before each room was noted with an L or R, meaning the person to the Left or Right of the player entering was the Cryptmaster. This game has the same, plus LL and RR designations meaning the person twice your left or right to give the table more interaction, just a simple fix that easily makes a difference.
• There are now Curse cards in addition to Traps, Monsters and Treasure. Curses are debilitating effects that stay with you until you use your party’s powers to remove them.
• Pariah character tiles: These worthless SOB’s are always a bane to your party, hampering movement, combat, spellcasting or worse. When you select your initial 5 cards to choose from to recruit and one is a pariah, you must take that character (but then you get to choose another immediately as well). Pariah’s can’t be dismissed, you have to find creative ways of getting them killed. This can lead to much amusement.
• Boss monsters! This is a big change. When you lay out the tomb to begin play, one room contains the Cryptmaster boss monster. This sucker has outrageous abilities and dice rolls, surely to maim and destroy any average party with ease. They also lend their unique powers to all the other monsters in the crypt, meaning until he’s defeated the others are slightly harder to beat as well. It’s a great new addition to the game that gives “the end” more of a punch, and something epic to work for.
• Some characters now even help you when it becomes your turn to play the Cryptmaster with interesting crossover abilities.
• More new equipment cards to attach to characters means a greater variety of available tactical options and attachments (everything from thieves’ tools to spikes and ten-foot poles).
Integrating the cards and tiles with the first Tomb game was nothing but a joy, as it simply gave us more variety to choose from. We played 3 games total in this combined way, and there were plenty of new cards never before seen each time.
We learned some valuable lessons from that first game. First, you do need a full, talented variety of classes in your party to be successful. Sure, you can try going in without one or the other, but invariably you will come across something only solved by one of those types (fighter, mage, cleric and rogue, or multiclass option thereof). Second, when you are not the Cryptmaster or the raiding player, constantly check your cards and characters to be sure you know how their abilities are used. With up to 5 characters, each with special abilities, exceptions, equipment, magic items, spells, prayers and tactic cards, it can easily get overwhelming. In that first game more than once we had party deaths that were easily avoidable if someone had just remembered the trigger to enact a rule and save the day. These new games ran smoother as a result, in fact the game my wife and I played with our 12 and 16 year olds even went off without a hitch as a great time.
The game play is still swingy at times, but if you play smart and with patience you can build a near exceptional party that turns fate to your favor. The best checks and balances however now comes when the other players see what an awesome combo you have built and target you for all sorts of maliciousness.
Our games were with 3, 4 and 5 players and all ran quick, easy and fun. As we all became more proficient the XP totals at the end kept getting closer and closer showing our skills had increased. The Cryptmaster now has more to do and gets to inflict curses to boot, so they had more fun. With the increased options of party-vs.-party conflict, new tactics cards and hiring mercenaries, the players had more fun as well. Each game steadily ran more quickly and efficiently.
With the new rulebook, being able to tell which order the special powers were enacted was made clearer. Overall the book is a good improvement over the original but could still be more accessible with a detailed index and more eye-catching headers.
So, while the first Tomb game was fun, the second added options that made the game overall more interactive and challenging. The two new tomb boards themselves are easily our preferred favorites these days.
MSRP $59.95 (found all over for less online).
Questions? Please ask away.
The game was provided to my group by AEG for a review.
Cryptmasters is an expansion in many ways to the original Tomb board game. Here are the basics in a nutshell: the game comes in the same sized box, with the same awesome layout and artwork, but with a bunch of new surprises, a clearer instruction manual and (best part of all) is completely compatible with the first game or played alone.
For those needing a refresher, Tomb is a game where 2-6 players face off in dungeon-crawling mayhem, competing against each other and the Cryptmaster. Each player takes turns carefully building a party of adventurers from a small batch of character tiles available at the Inn. Once you have selected a well-rounded party, attached to them equipment, tactic, prayer and spell cards, you delve into the tomb. By entering rooms, thwarting curses, disabling traps, killing monsters and looting, you slowly build up an XP pool. Once all crypts are cleared the player with the most XP’s is the winner.
The game comes with two game boards, as in the first Tomb game. Both are improvements over the original. The Inn is better laid out for ease of reaching cards and functionality, and the tomb itself contains both a ‘basic’ and ‘advanced’ side. What does that mean? Well, there was such in the first game but the line between them was fairly thin. In Cryptmasters, the basic side (called “Black Sun Vaults”) is very basic indeed, and is outstanding for teaching the game to new players or running a quickie. The crypt rooms all hold only 1 or 2 cards each with one central tomb holding 3. There are no other special instructions or features. The advanced side, the “Sepulcher of Hate” is loaded with passageway traps, a difficult navigational challenge and every room has a special feature in addition to the cards (up to 5 in a room!). There is a sturdy tray to hold all the goodies in place, including hundreds of cards, character tiles and stands, dice, and counters.
Most of this review assumes you know about the original Tomb game. The game’s basic play remains the same. Outcome of actions is determined with three differently colored 10-sided dice. Green dice have just a couple of axes (successes), blue have half axes, and red dice have mostly axes. When you want to accomplish anything you check the ability of the character card who’s trying the activity against a preset difficulty number (or as an opposed roll). You roll all the dice (usually a combination of colors) and count up all the successes. If you get equal to or higher than the number needed, you succeed. If not, you fail. When you enter a tomb room, another player is selected as the Cryptmaster who does his best to defeat you with the curses, traps and monsters (if any) in the room.
The rulebook has been redesigned with playability in mind. While there is still not an index it is overall laid out better than the original with rules made clearer to understand and implement.
Those who read my original TOMB review remember it being a fun time, but there were some things stacked against us: We had 6 players (the max) while trying to learn, and some of the rules were hard to find. For Cryptmasters, I played 3 times, each with 3 to 5 players, and the difference was easily seen. Your first game, regardless, is a new experience. With that under our belts we MIXED the two sets, and played with the Cryptmasters rulebook and easy board. The strategy to advance became clearer, and everyone settled into their spot more. What I mean by that is we all knew what we were looking for in our character tiles and when to do what.
So: What Is Different? Glad you asked.
• While the basic play remains the same, many options have been added. Not only can you still pickpocket from other player’s characters in the tomb, but you can have direct party vs. party conflict! There are also rules for playing arena-style player vs. player conflicts.
• You can hire mercenaries from other parties to help you raid a tomb! They get a little bonus XP for helping you but your survival opportunity just went up. Interestingly, some character tiles have the ‘mercenary’ trait, meaning they can join another party on a raid without first being invited!
• There is a Cryptmaster deck of special cards to make the encounters more varied and interesting. When a Cryptmaster gets the room cards, he also gets a Cryptmaster tactic card to elevate the encounter.
• The way to determine the Cryptmaster has changed a bit. Before each room was noted with an L or R, meaning the person to the Left or Right of the player entering was the Cryptmaster. This game has the same, plus LL and RR designations meaning the person twice your left or right to give the table more interaction, just a simple fix that easily makes a difference.
• There are now Curse cards in addition to Traps, Monsters and Treasure. Curses are debilitating effects that stay with you until you use your party’s powers to remove them.
• Pariah character tiles: These worthless SOB’s are always a bane to your party, hampering movement, combat, spellcasting or worse. When you select your initial 5 cards to choose from to recruit and one is a pariah, you must take that character (but then you get to choose another immediately as well). Pariah’s can’t be dismissed, you have to find creative ways of getting them killed. This can lead to much amusement.
• Boss monsters! This is a big change. When you lay out the tomb to begin play, one room contains the Cryptmaster boss monster. This sucker has outrageous abilities and dice rolls, surely to maim and destroy any average party with ease. They also lend their unique powers to all the other monsters in the crypt, meaning until he’s defeated the others are slightly harder to beat as well. It’s a great new addition to the game that gives “the end” more of a punch, and something epic to work for.
• Some characters now even help you when it becomes your turn to play the Cryptmaster with interesting crossover abilities.
• More new equipment cards to attach to characters means a greater variety of available tactical options and attachments (everything from thieves’ tools to spikes and ten-foot poles).
Integrating the cards and tiles with the first Tomb game was nothing but a joy, as it simply gave us more variety to choose from. We played 3 games total in this combined way, and there were plenty of new cards never before seen each time.
We learned some valuable lessons from that first game. First, you do need a full, talented variety of classes in your party to be successful. Sure, you can try going in without one or the other, but invariably you will come across something only solved by one of those types (fighter, mage, cleric and rogue, or multiclass option thereof). Second, when you are not the Cryptmaster or the raiding player, constantly check your cards and characters to be sure you know how their abilities are used. With up to 5 characters, each with special abilities, exceptions, equipment, magic items, spells, prayers and tactic cards, it can easily get overwhelming. In that first game more than once we had party deaths that were easily avoidable if someone had just remembered the trigger to enact a rule and save the day. These new games ran smoother as a result, in fact the game my wife and I played with our 12 and 16 year olds even went off without a hitch as a great time.
The game play is still swingy at times, but if you play smart and with patience you can build a near exceptional party that turns fate to your favor. The best checks and balances however now comes when the other players see what an awesome combo you have built and target you for all sorts of maliciousness.
Our games were with 3, 4 and 5 players and all ran quick, easy and fun. As we all became more proficient the XP totals at the end kept getting closer and closer showing our skills had increased. The Cryptmaster now has more to do and gets to inflict curses to boot, so they had more fun. With the increased options of party-vs.-party conflict, new tactics cards and hiring mercenaries, the players had more fun as well. Each game steadily ran more quickly and efficiently.
With the new rulebook, being able to tell which order the special powers were enacted was made clearer. Overall the book is a good improvement over the original but could still be more accessible with a detailed index and more eye-catching headers.
So, while the first Tomb game was fun, the second added options that made the game overall more interactive and challenging. The two new tomb boards themselves are easily our preferred favorites these days.
MSRP $59.95 (found all over for less online).
Questions? Please ask away.
