I keep promising to my games group that I will stop buying more games, at least until Christmas time. Of course, every time a games gets a good review I want it. Games now seem to be getting released more frequently than ever. And we love it. There are hardly any games coming out that we don’t enjoy, just don’t mention Magic...
One game I purchased based on ‘the buzz’ was Dungeon Lords. I don’t care much for theme, I accept that all games need one, but I wouldn’t buy a game just because it’s based on farming, paintings, shipping or anything else. It’s a game, and I want them all.
So whilst visiting a games shop, away from home, it seemed rude to come back with nothing. So, despite it being more than I would usually pay, I coughed up for Dungeon Lords. In fact, I lie when I say themes don’t matter. From past experience I keep away from ‘Funny games’. I don’t know what it is, I just never find them funny. It’s probably me, but I often dislike well known comedy shows on tv and everyone else finds them hilarious, but I don’t. Oh and I don’t particularly care for Dungeons and Dragons, I blame that for some of the bad press ‘our’ games get –we don’t paint and play paint with figures, nor do you have to dress up! The cover didn’t bode well, I knew from reading reviews that it wasn’t a funny game, but the childish cover and supposedly hilarious rules would normally keep me away. However, sticking to my mantra, a good game is a good game I took it back with me.
The rules, though longwinded, and annoying full of ‘funny’ remarks – no I didn’t find them funny, they just got in the way – were really straight forward. Just lots to remember. When you’ve got lots to remember you’ve got lots to tell people when trying to explain it.
To Summarise: Players build up a dungeon of corridors and rooms. Hire Monsters, buy traps to kill invading adventurers over four rounds. Keep your gold and food up and don’t get too bad, unless you are hard enough. Repeat twice.
I jumped into the first couple of games and never got past the first year. It felt enough with just one year, did we really want to do it all again? I never like to take too long to explain rules and this is one where explaining how the battles work is critical to how to play the game.
Most of the group had no clue why they were doing what they were doing, and when it came to the battles I found I was leading them through what they could and couldn’t do. We play hundreds of games, but somehow, this one wasn’t clicking with them. Maybe it’s because killing the adventurers is like a mini puzzle. And with puzzles if you don’t have the right pieces, or some are missing, or you don’t have the full picture, then there isn’t much you can do.
When we did get around to playing the second year it seemed a bit quicker to play through and those harder adventurers weren’t as hard as we’d first imagined, now that we’d built up some previous traps and monsters.
An odd thing about this game is no one seemed to focus or care about how the victory points worked. It was more important to just go with the flow of the game. I can’t remember explaining a game where I didn’t go over the victory points, usually first, and no one seemed to notice. It really didn’t matter. Just see if you can beat as many adventurers as you can and try to enjoy the process of it. Seems odd, but that’s how it worked.
As I always say we enjoy playing the games, not becoming masters of any. However, in a few cases a person who has no idea what they were doing turns out to win, is this a bad sign?
So what did I get for all that money, a nice looking game, great components, but not sold on the replay value. How often can we get excited about killing the same bunch of adventurers with the same traps and monsters. My group didn’t rate it and I think I will have a hard time getting it to the table again, a bit of a shame. However, my Son and I enjoy it more, I think my Son likes the idea of gathering the monsters then killing adventures, so the theme must matter more to his age group.
Not convinced. Possibly a little like his last game – Galaxy Trucker – enjoy playing it, have fun, but how often will the novelty go on?
And, no, I won’t buy the equally expensive expansion set. Well, not until Christmas at least.
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