I gave some brief initial impressions of this game a little while ago, and regular readers have probably gotten the impression that I like this game quite a bit. I just got done playing a few more games yesterday and I thought, with about twelve games under my belt (since last Tuesday, by the way), ranging from solo games to games with a full compliment of five players, it was about time I actually reviewed Castle Ravenloft.

For those who are unfamiliar, Castle Ravenloft is a D&D-based board game that draws its inspiration from the original D&D module. The rules of the game incorporate elements of 4th Edition D&D, but the combat is streamlined and simplified so that it goes quickly and keeps the game moving. The whole affair is more-or-less a dungeon crawl, albeit one that can have interesting and varied goals and mechanics depending on the scenario you’re playing. It can be played in about an hour (though times can vary from that mean by about thirty minutes, depending on events within the game and the number of players at the table), and it can be played with one to five players.

Overall, I like this game quite a bit. It scratches the D&D itch, it reinforces cooperative play, and it even plays well solo. There are thirteen scenarios in the game (two of them designed for solo play), plus two additional scenarios that Wizards of the Coast have released for free on their web site. Monsters, encounters, treasures, and even the dungeon itself are all randomized in the game, meaning that playing the same adventure twice in a row elicits different play experiences. This leads to a lot of variability in play, which in turn leads to a high degree of replay value. In addition, the game is extremely modular; it would be easy to build your own adventures, characters, monsters, villains, and so forth for the game, leading to even more replay value. In time, I fully expect the online to community to rally around this game and create some really cool stuff.

It’s not all great, though; there are a few issues with the game. First and foremost, the rules can be a little unclear at times. They don’t always spell things out in a comprehensive and unambiguous fashion, and while most of the time this can be mitigated by interpreting rules as strictly as possible, sometimes that just isn’t enough. Furthermore, some cards interact with each other, and with scenario rules, in strange ways that require some interpretation. It would be nice of WotC would create and maintain an official FAQ for the game, so that people can get official answers to some of the questions presented.

There have also been reports of people missing components from their boxes, or having components misprinted, or even having extra components. I didn’t experience any of those problems personally, but the possibility exists (I even heard an account of someone’s game missing all of the cards in the game, rendering it effectively unplayable). Luckily, WotC will replace any lost or damaged components, so if this problem troubles you, contact them.

Finally, there have been complaints about the quality of the components. Specifically, some people think that the cards and tiles are bland and uninteresting. I can definitely see where these people are coming from, even if I don’t agree. The artwork on the monster cards is black and white line art, and there is no artwork aside from a simple design on any of the other cards. The tiles are mostly lacking in any kinds of features or dungeon dressing, whit the exception of the named tiles. As I said, none of this bothers me. Artwork on treasure cards and encounter cards would be nice, but would likely drive up the price, and at $65 the game is already expensive enough. I’m also not convinced that such artwork would really enhance the experience past the first few games; it would cause the game to make a better first impression, but after while you’d probably stop noticing the artwork and paying attention to the rules. As for the artwork on the monster cards, I find it to be clear and communicative, as the depictions of the monsters exactly match their miniatures, leaving little room for guesswork. The tiles are similarly functional; there have already been quite a few questions as to whether things like altars and coffins block movement, and if there were more of these kinds of features on the tiles, those questions would be even more present (of course, this might have prompted WotC to address such a thing in the rulebook).

At this point I’d like to talk about a few of the highlights in the adventure book. I’ve played most of the adventures at this point, and enjoyed them all, but a few really stand out and deserve specific mention.

The game features two introductory adventures, one for solo play and one for group play (“Escape from the Tomb” and “Find the Icon of Ravenloft”, respectively). These are easily the two simplest adventures in the game, using straightforward goals and very few modifications to the core rules. They work well for their intended purpose: to introduce new players to the mechanics of the game. Once you’ve played them a few times, though, there are much more interesting (and complex) adventures to play, and you’ll likely only use them to introduce more new players.

“The Final Transformation” is a fairly complex scenario that sees the players escorting a townsperson, Kavan, into the crypt to find the fountain that can cure his impending vampirism. The catch is that, if he’s left alone or if monsters get too close to him, he turns into a vampire and attacks (temporarily). It’s a tense scenario, and probably one of the more difficult scenarios in the game. It is, however, extremely memorable, and even has a finale sequence that sees a large number of monsters spawning and attacking the party while they defend poor Kavan.

Perhaps my favorite scenario so far is “Horror of the Howling Hag”. This one stretches the mechanics of the game more than any other scenario, using an alternate setup for the board, a specific subset of tiles, and different spawning rules for monsters. The players start the adventure apart, in opposite corners of the crypt, and must find each other and the arcane circle that the hag is using to keep them there. Being isolated is a little scary, especially since the alternate spawning rules allow up to two monsters to spawn on a single tile simultaneously. The hag, herself, is an interesting villain; she doesn’t do a lot of damage, but she continues to keep the heroes separate by teleporting them around the dungeon. It’s a very interesting and challenging experience.

Finally, let me talk about the difficulty of the game. This is a hard game. I’ve lost more games than I’ve won. That said, I’m itching to play more. In Castle Ravenloft, when you lose you’re usually on the verge of winning, which makes you want to try again and do it right. Further, when you win you’re usually on the verge of losing, which makes your victory all the sweeter. I should mention, though, that there are some minor scaling issues in the game. The game scales probably about as well as it can be expected to; monsters, encounters, and villain actions all scale with the number of players in an appropriate way, and keep a fairly consistent level of challenge across numbers of players. There is one thing that the game really can’t account for in scaling, though: diversity of abilities. With one player, you have only a single character’s abilities to pull from, meaning that certain monsters or types of encounters will always be very difficult for you to handle. With five, you have everyone’s abilities to draw on, allowing you to react to events within the dungeon much more effectively. I think that the sweet spot for the game is probably three or four players; there’s enough diversity to allow you to react to a lot, but not so much that you’re prepared for everything. That said, the game is still a lot of fun with one or five, and it does scale much better than many other cooperative games that I’ve played. The scenario that you choose will also affect the difficulty, so with five players, it’s probably best to choose one of the more complex and difficult scenarios.

What I Liked: Almost everything. The game is quick-playing and fun, scratches the D&D itch, plays will with multiple players or in solo play, had a wide variety of adventures to choose from, and has a high degree of modibility and replay value.

What I Didn’t Like: The rules could be a little clearer in places. Hopefully WotC will post a FAQ at some point to mitigate this problem.

The Bottom Line: If you like D&D, you’ll probably like Castle Ravenloft. Even if you have no interest in playing D&D, Castle Ravenloft is a very well-designed cooperative dungeon crawl with a much shorter playing time than other cooperative games (like Arkham Horror) or dungeon crawls (like Descent). I highly recommend it.

I just can’t help meddling with game mechanics, and Castle Ravenloft is just so modular that it presents a lot of opportunities to meddle. You’ve likely already seen my Rust Monster for the game, if you’re a regular reader. Well, here’s a whole adventure, starring said Rust Monster.

First, a caveat or two. This is not a final version of this adventure. I’ve playtested it once, and what I’m posting here is a direct result of that playtest. You may notice that the Rust Monster contained in this adventure is pretty different from the one linked above; that’s deliberate. The original version just didn’t work in play; its AC and hit points were a little too high, and it just didn’t engage heroes often enough. Worse, it never really brought its most feared power (the ability to eat your gear) to bear. I’ve changed that (hopefully). The adventure has also been modified slightly from its original form. Originally I had item drops keyed to named tiles, but they were happening too often. I did a quick count of tiles and found that there were just as many named as unnamed tiles, making the chance of an item drop 50%. Too high. I instead keyed item drops to tiles with white triangles; there are fewer of these than those with black triangles, so the drop rate goes down to around 40%, which is a little more acceptable.

I also increased the goal requirements to escaping with all six lost relics rather than just four, for a couple of reasons. First, getting four took me about twenty minutes, which is way too short a time. Some of this was luck and some of it was because of the aforementioned drop rate, but I don’t want the game to be won that quickly (and I did win). Second, because of all the item drops, this is an item-rich adventure. You’re probably going to have quite a few on you, including the lost relics, so if that Rust Monster eats something, you should have plenty of stuff to throw at it that isn’t a lost relic. Again, playtesting may change this. I’ll have to see. The beauty of this game is that I can playtest it all by my lonesome.

Anyway, here’s the adventure, Lost Relics.

I’m not calling this a review, per se, even though I’m including it in the reviews category. I’m also including it in the session reports category, because it’s going to be a bit of both. I’m going to talk about some of my initial impressions of the game after playing it five times, and I’m going to describe (briefly) what happened in each session.

Let me start by saying this: my win-to-loss ratio in Castle Ravenloft is not what you’d call “good”. In fact, at one win and four losses, I’d say it’s pretty bad. That does not, however, mean that I think the game is bad. Quite the opposite actually; I enjoyed each game quite a bit, particularly because I never really felt that losing (or winning) was a foregone conclusion until, once or twice, right near the end. Another thing that I’d like to mention is that this game plays very well solo. Three of my five plays have been solo (using the included solo adventures), and they’ve all been a lot of fun.

Game One: Escape from the Tomb
I played the introductory solo scenario as my first game, using the dragonborn fighter and his recommended-for-beginners loadout of powers. I rolled badly initially and wound up swamped by a bunch of monsters that I hadn’t taken care of, but my dragon breath power got me out of that sticky spot. I used a wand of teleportation to get a wraith out of my hair and ran down a hallway, but I drew too many tiles with white triangles on them (in the initial scenario, these advance the sun track by a step, bringing you closer to Count Strahd’s awakening), and the vampire lord awoke and came to get me. I continued running down my hallway while Strahd and the wraith chased me, and eventually found that it was a dead end. I doubled back, but got stuck in a room with a crushing walls trap, and the two baddies quickly caught up to me. Between those three sources of damage, I went down pretty quickly. Game over.

I feel I made some tactical errors in this game, the most notable being that I had eleven or twelve experience points at the end, and hadn’t spent a single one. I could easily have canceled that crushing walls trap, which would have made things considerably easier, but forgot that I could. Lesson learned: spend your XP, don’t hoard them.

Game Two: Escape from the Tomb, Redux
This time I went in with the ranger. I was a little worried because of her relative squishiness compared to the fighter, but she more than makes up for it with offensive power. Careful attack is easily one of the best at-wills in the game. It may not seem like much, but the ability to automatically deal one damage to an adjacent monster at will is pretty big. Sadly, she didn’t fare much better. Strahd didn’t awaken this time, but pure attrition brought the ranger down. I do feel that, if I had had twin strike as an at-will instead of hunter’s shot, things might have gone better; there was one situation where it would likely have saved my life.

Game Three: Adventure – Impossible
This is a great adventure. It gives you the opportunity to play all (or most) of the characters, and gives you some experience with the villains, too. I started off with the cleric, and very quickly ran into the werewolf. What I discovered in short order is that the werewolf is extremely hard to kill if you don’t have a silver dagger or an at-will that does more than one point of damage. He regenerates one hit point every round, making it very difficult to make any headway against him. I mostly avoided him and explored, and soon ran into the zombie dragon. While the zombie dragon lacks the werewolf’s regeneration, it does have thirteen hit points, which is a challenge in and of itself.

The wizard followed the cleric, and he managed to deal some decent damage to the zombie dragon and take out a number of monsters before he went down. He didn’t last that long, though. Next came the rogue, and she was the one who finally bested the werewolf. A well-timed sneak attack, combined with a snipe shot and a riposte strike, took that beastie down. She also made some decent headway against the zombie dragon, and even leveled up, but failed to kill it. She went down, making way for the ranger.

Because of the ranger’s strong offensive capabilities, I was able to finally slay the zombie dragon, but not before an encounter card drew a tile from the bottom of the stack and teleported the dragon to that tile. Interestingly enough, that tile happened to be another villain-spawning tile, bringing the young vampire onto the board. The ranger killed the zombie dragon while the vampire slipped past her toward the entrance, and when she pursued, he killed her quickly.

Last was the fighter, and I was pretty sure I had it in the bag. Famous last words. Although the fighter is durable and can deal pretty good damage, the vampire heals himself every time he hits, and he was hitting a lot. He finally whittled me down and dropped my last hero.

Game Four: The Icon of Ravenloft
I finally convinced my wife to give the game a try, and she enjoyed it. She played the cleric while I played the rogue, and the two of them make a good team. Between my backstabbing and her lance of faith, we could one-shot pretty much any monster that got in our way, and we did so. We were getting a little worried when we got down to our last two or three hit points each, but we still had both of our healing surges when we found the chapel. We killed the two monsters on the tile (a wraith and a gargoyle), and made off with the Icon for my first win!

Game Five: Klak’s Infernal Artifact
Immediately after playing that game, I convinced her to play again. It wasn’t hard. This time she played the wizard to my fighter, and we went after that sneaky kobold sorcerer. We drew some nasty monsters early (wraiths, blazing skeletons, and gargoyles), and I had the misfortune to pull a spear gauntlet trap that did some significant damage to my poor fighter. We ran in the other direction, leaving it to do its thing. We started down a corridor and ran into a blazing skeleton, but by that time we each had two hit points and we had used both of our healing surges. Actually, I had used both of them; I had taken the tank role a little too seriously. The skeleton took the wizard out, and it was curtains for our mission.

Again, there was a tactical error that we made there. I had the bodyguard utility power, which would have allowed me to turn that hit into a miss. The next treasure card I drew (I killed the skeleton in the hopes that I’d get a healing potion for her) would have allowed us to heal one hit point every time we hit a monster, but that was too little too late. By the time we had figured out our error, though, the game was cleaned up.

Conclusions
I’m enjoying this game so far. I’m going to play some more over the weekend, probably both solo and group play, and I’m itching to try some of the more elaborate scenarios. I like that each of the characters feels different and has powers of varying complexity to use, and the monsters really wind up feeling pretty different from each other. I like that traps are deadly and nasty, and the encounter card system is a nice touch that makes it so that you never know what’s around the corner. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I may have rose-colored glasses on when I look at this game; I’ve been pretty excited about it for a good long time now. On the other hand, I’ve built it up in my head for quite a while, and so far it hasn’t disappointed me. Time will tell, but so far, so good.

In honor of the immanent (and, in some cases, already past) release of Castle Ravenloft, I thought I’d try my hand at creating a villain for the game. This one’s a classic. I should mention that none of the artwork is mine; I cribbed the template for the villain card from Ignazio Carrao on BoardGameGeek, and the rust monster image is pulled off of Google, from Wizards.com. The mechanics, on the other hand, are mine. Enjoy.

A recent blog post got me to thinking about the state of D&D miniatures as a product. Evidently, the line isn’t doing to well; WotC is making about as much money as they can off of randomized boosters and limited print-run figures and sets, but it’s not enough to keep the line afloat. Not enough of the RPGers are buying the minis for their home games, and since the miniatures wargame, itself, is no longer officially supported, quite a few potential customers have gone away, and while there may be a few left playing the community-supported version of the game, it’s still simply not enough.

I think that WotC is keenly aware of two things. One, it’s no longer really viable to pursue the current miniatures model. They may launch one or two more lines of random booster sets, and they may release the odd limited edition fig or set of figs, but I don’t think we’re going to see the minis line continue in the same way that it has up to this point. Two, I think they also realize that this is a very bad thing for D&D. There may have been a dwindling support of the minis line, but there’s still a very strong perception (and a well-founded one) that D&D is a minis-heavy game, and not being able to get the minis you want for your game is going to hurt the game as a whole, particularly when it comes to new players.

What’s interesting, though, is that WotC seems to be coming up with some very cool solutions to this problem. First of all, they’re releasing minis-based D&D boardgames like Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon. These are stand-alone games that serve a couple of different purposes. For non D&D-players, they’re still perfectly playable and enjoyable, and they may serve as an entry point to the game and the hobby as a whole. To people who already play D&D, they serve as a way to get your D&D fix in less than an hour with a small group or even alone. There’s another benefit for both groups, though: each of these games gives you more than forty minis and more than forty tiles that you can easily use in your D&D game.

This is of particular benefit to those who may just be starting out with D&D. Not only do the games introduce you to some of the mechanics, but they effectively give you a starter kit of minis and tiles for the RPG. It’s true that the minis are unpainted and that the tiles, because they are interlocking tiles and have boardgame-specific elements on them, are not completely compatible with standard Dungeon Tiles, but it’s still a cost effective way to get a bunch of stuff that you can use in your game. I think that this is very deliberate on WotC’s part; it’s a way to keep the minis line alive, while providing added benefit for existing D&D players and a big benefit to those who are not interested in role-playing but like crawling through dungeons.

Another thing that they seem to be doing in future releases is including cardstock counters for monsters included in the product. 2011 seems to be the year of the box set, and I think that this is one of the reasons for that. The upcoming Monster Vault and Dungeon Master’s Kit both come with counters, and future monster box sets will likely do the same. In addition, I can easily see WotC selling sets of counters in a way similar to how they sell sets of Dungeon Tiles: grouped by theme, set on the shelves with the books to maximize shelf space, and set at a low price point. Minis booster packs were never on the high end of the price range, but I always had a little bit of trouble paying $12-$25 for five minis, particularly if I didn’t know if I’d get anything I was going to be able to use anytime soon. A pack of counters, on the other hand, could provide you with large groups of commonly used monsters as well as a few big, special ones. Further, you’d likely know the kinds of things you’d be getting if they were grouped by theme, and the price point would likely be similar to Dungeon Tiles. Not only that, but storage solutions would be easier.

At any rate, I’m interested to see what WotC does with this kind of thing in the future. I’ve already pre-ordered Castle Ravenloft (as an aside, I’m a very sad panda after finding out that the game was delayed from the 17th of August to the 31st), and after reading the rules that WotC kindly posted, I’ll likely enjoy it and buy Wrath of Ashardalon, too. Heck, if nothing else, I’ve just gotten eighty tiles and eighty minis, many of which are mutliples of commonly used creatures. And if WotC goes full-bore with the counters idea, it’ll save me quite a lot of prep time, since I spend a lot of my prep time making custom counters for the monsters in my home game.

My wife and I had a barbecue yesterday, and it was a blast. After most of the guests had left, those of us who remained decided to play a board game. We decided on A Touch of Evil
because it was one of the only games I owned that would accommodate enough people for everyone to get to play.

This was, perhaps, the third or fourth time I’ve played this game since picking it up. For those who are unfamiliar with it, it’s a game in the same vein as Arkham Horror
, except that it’s shorter and simpler, can be played in either cooperative or competitive mode, and has a colonial-era horror theme (less Lovecraft, more Ichabod Crane).

Overall I think that, for what it is, A Touch of Evil is good. It’s not great; given the choice between the two (and the time, and people who also enjoy the game), I’d probably rather play Arkham Horror. I think that game does what it does a little bit better than AToE does. AToE is, however, much shorter to play, and easier to teach, than Arkham Horror is, which is good when you’ve got a larger group with mixed experience levels in gaming.

I’m glad that I bought A Touch of Evil. It’s not Flying Frog’s best game (I like Last Night On Earth
quite a lot more), but it is a good game, and I can see myself playing it again.

I got a chance to play Dominion: Alchemy last night (also in the game were Intrigue and Seaside, and of course core Dominion) with a friend of mine. Overall, I really like the expansion.

The potion mechanic is nice. For those who don’t know, most of the new cards in Alchemy have a money cost like any other action card, but also cost one potion; potions are a new kind of treasure card that you can buy for 4 coins. I like the fact that it makes these cards a little bit rarer unless you really build your deck to get them, because many of the Alchemy cards are fairly potent.

The core of the expansion is, of course, the new action cards. I got a chance to play with all but two of them (Vineyard and Herbalist) over the course of two games. I realized the potential of Alchemist a little too late, and my opponent really hammered me for it. Alchemist gives you bonus draws and actions, meaning that you can use it to chain long strings of actions and potentially go through your entire deck. What makes this card so potent is that, if you play at least one potion on the same turn that you play your Alchemists, all of those Alchemists go back on top of your deck. As you can imagine, this is an extremely effective strategy when your deck is built for it. I lost that game, largely because my opponent had more Alchemists than I had and was utilizing them more effectively.

The second game was a close one. I had an early lead because of all the Familiars I was snapping up. The Familiar is a +1 card, +1 action effect, but it’s also an attack that forces other players to take a curse. If you have a lot of Familiars, you can chain them together to force multiple curses, which is really nasty. At one point I played four of them in one turn, forcing my opponent to take four curses. The curse deck emptied pretty quickly, meaning that Familiar become somewhat less useful; the go-to replacement for it was Apothecary, a slightly cheaper card with the same card/action bonus, but that allows you to reveal the top four cards on your deck, take any potions or coppers, and put the rest back on top of your deck in any order. This was nice for getting more money and precious potions, and could have been extremely potent if it were in the same game as Alchemist.

Sadly, my early lead evaporated at the very end of the game because of one card combination that my opponent got a chance to use on me a few times. He played Throne Room (from Intrigue, which allows you to double the effect of the next card you play) on the new Possession card. Possession allows you to take your opponent’s turn for him, making his plays and gaining any cards he would have gained. You can’t cause any permanent harm to your opponent; trashed cards are simply set aside, then discarded at the end of your turn. Also, your opponent still gets a normal turn afterward. However, when combined with Throne Room, it means that my opponent was gaining more benefit from my cards than I was. This was particularly nasty because he kept on forcing me to draw and use my Philosopher’s Stones on his behalf. These are treasure cards that are worth 1 coin for every 5 cards in your deck and discard pile, and at that point I had close to thirty cards. He drew both of my Philosopher’s Stones in one turn, twice, meaning that two Provinces that I would have been able to buy, he bought instead. This, I think, is what clinched the game for him.

Overall, I really like Alchemy. My friend said, and I agree, that some of the cards (Possession, in particular) can really bog down games with more than two players, so it might be best used with only two. It does serve to make two-player games more interesting, though, and has cards that favor both thin, action-heavy decks and larger decks.