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board game report: Lords of Waterdeep
Jul. 13th, 2024 01:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yhlee[from the archives of my old journal, back in 2015]
The latest new-to-me game that I have played is a worker-placement board game called The Lords of Waterdeep. It was introduced to me by a guy at Little Wars who had bought it. I was intimidated at first by the rules summary (I have played very few games in this genre) but even though I came in dead last I ended up enjoying it quite a lot! As you might imagine, it is Forgotten-Realms-themed, although the only Lord whose name I recognized was Khelben Arunson. (I used to read Forgotten Realms novels, back in the day. What can I say? They were in the library and they were entertaining and I liked AD&D 2nd ed.) I'm told the setting has changed over time, which, reasonable enough.
Anyway, each character is secretly one of the Lords, each of whom gets bonus points for different kinds of completed quests. I think the types were something like warfare, commerce, piety, arcane, and maybe there was another, maybe not. I ended up with a half-drow who got bonus points for piety and arcane, which sucked because by dint of shuffling we hardly saw any of those until later game. Each player starts with two agents, and starting with the first player (at first determined by who's been out of town most recently--in this case me, because of Readercon!--and then by whoever has the First Player token that you can claim by placing one of your agents in a particular location. Each location will give you something, like (say) two fighters or four ducats or the chance to play an Intrigue card from your hand. You can also build more buildings, and the building's owner collects particular things (say, a ducat, or a choice of a cleric or a rogue) whenever someone uses that building. You score points mainly by completing quests from a quest deck, which you do by paying off the prerequisites--say five fighters and four gold, or whatever, and then they'll award you points and/or some other benefit, like a couple of mages. It's all very smooth, and the game ends in eight turns, period. After the first two I felt pretty comfortable with the rules--I didn't play _well_, but I had some sense of how to play. Definitely worth a try.
(sorry so absent, VERY BUSY, but I'm reading a book on board game design that, tentatively, I'm finding quite good, hopefully I'll be able to report on it soonish; also hopiong to play a couple more solo board games soon and report back)
The latest new-to-me game that I have played is a worker-placement board game called The Lords of Waterdeep. It was introduced to me by a guy at Little Wars who had bought it. I was intimidated at first by the rules summary (I have played very few games in this genre) but even though I came in dead last I ended up enjoying it quite a lot! As you might imagine, it is Forgotten-Realms-themed, although the only Lord whose name I recognized was Khelben Arunson. (I used to read Forgotten Realms novels, back in the day. What can I say? They were in the library and they were entertaining and I liked AD&D 2nd ed.) I'm told the setting has changed over time, which, reasonable enough.
Anyway, each character is secretly one of the Lords, each of whom gets bonus points for different kinds of completed quests. I think the types were something like warfare, commerce, piety, arcane, and maybe there was another, maybe not. I ended up with a half-drow who got bonus points for piety and arcane, which sucked because by dint of shuffling we hardly saw any of those until later game. Each player starts with two agents, and starting with the first player (at first determined by who's been out of town most recently--in this case me, because of Readercon!--and then by whoever has the First Player token that you can claim by placing one of your agents in a particular location. Each location will give you something, like (say) two fighters or four ducats or the chance to play an Intrigue card from your hand. You can also build more buildings, and the building's owner collects particular things (say, a ducat, or a choice of a cleric or a rogue) whenever someone uses that building. You score points mainly by completing quests from a quest deck, which you do by paying off the prerequisites--say five fighters and four gold, or whatever, and then they'll award you points and/or some other benefit, like a couple of mages. It's all very smooth, and the game ends in eight turns, period. After the first two I felt pretty comfortable with the rules--I didn't play _well_, but I had some sense of how to play. Definitely worth a try.
(sorry so absent, VERY BUSY, but I'm reading a book on board game design that, tentatively, I'm finding quite good, hopefully I'll be able to report on it soonish; also hopiong to play a couple more solo board games soon and report back)
