Author Topic: Welcome to the Dungeon  (Read 1855 times)

Offline danisthirty

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Welcome to the Dungeon
« on: March 08, 2016, 07:20:32 AM »
Today we played Richard's brand new game: Welcome to the Dungeon. There was very little setup required and it only took five minutes to explain the rules. Once everything was ready to go, we took it in turns to draw monster cards from the monster pile and then placed them either in the "dungeon" (another face-down pile of cards) or kept them out of the dungeon by placing them (face down) in front of ourselves and sacrificing a piece of equipment from our shared hero who one of us would eventually be taking into the dungeon in an attempt to slay (or at least survive) whatever monsters happened to be in there at the end of the round.

So as each player takes their turn, the chances of surviving an encounter with the dungeon look decreasingly favourable since the only options are to increase the number of monsters in the dungeon or remove a piece of equipment from the hero. But there is a third option, which is simply to resign the round and guarantee that you won't be the one sent into the dungeon to kill all the monsters (or die trying). Once everyone apart from one player has resigned, that player must assume the role of the hero and take on the dungeon with whatever equipment remains. Survive two dungeons to win the game. Get killed twice and you're out of the game. Alternatively, sit back and let everyone else kill themselves and you can win that way too without so much as setting foot inside a single dungeon (which would be a very boring way to win)!

That's pretty much all there is to it. No single player knows what's in the dungeon but they do of course know what monsters they've put in it (if any) and this will influence their decision as they assess when is the right time to resign and leave it to someone else if they think it's unsurvivable. Choosing not to place a monster in the dungeon carries its own risks with it as sacrificing a piece of equipment may be too big a risk for the other players, causing them all to resign and leaving you to go into the dungeon. However, resign too early and you may end up giving one of your opponents an easy victory so there's definitely a large "push your luck" element to the game.

I've mentioned heros and equipment a couple of times without really explaining them in full so far. There are four heroes to choose from, and each hero has their own set of equipment which is split across 6 individual tiles. Rather than each player having their own hero, players choose a single hero between them and place him along with his full set of equipment in the middle of the table at the start of each round. Each piece of equipment has a positive influence on the hero's chances of surviving the dungeon and may increase his number of hit points (monsters you can't kill deplete these in varying amounts depending on the type of monster), provide him with weapons which can be used to slay the monsters or give him other special abilities. So, the hero becomes progressively weaker as his items of equipment are removed throughout the round.

We played two games of this and I ended up in the final two both times. In the first game I played against Lex and had a victory in hand meaning I needed just one more dungeon victory to win the game. However, Lex wasn't going to let this happen and so held on until he was certain that the dungeon was unsurvivable before resigning. In the first of our head-to-head rounds I resigned too early and he was able to get a win. So I held on for a bit longer in the second game until Lex resigned and I got killed in the dungeon. This being my second defeat, he won the game. In the second game I ended up in a head-to-head against Richard and won when Richard resigned and I killed all the monsters (or at least didn't get killed by them) for a second time.

Overall, my feeling was that it was a fun game that would work best in a larger group of at least 5 players (although it says 2 – 4 players on the box). It didn't work so well as a 3 and I fear it could have gotten boring if we'd played it for much longer. However, it was a very light game which didn't take too long to play, so despite the player elimination factor, I think it would make a good warm-up game to set the mood for a much heavier/ longer fantasy-themed game. Alternatively, it also felt like there was a lot of room for expansions which could easily double the length of the game for those who wanted to take it a bit more seriously. :(y)

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2519.0


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