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 youre 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. Its 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 dont 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 isnt 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 didnt experience any of those problems personally, but the possibility exists (I even heard an account of someones 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 dont 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. Im 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 youd 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 Id like to talk about a few of the highlights in the adventure book. Ive 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 youve played them a few times, though, there are much more interesting (and complex) adventures to play, and youll 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 hes left alone or if monsters get too close to him, he turns into a vampire and attacks (temporarily). Its 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 doesnt do a lot of damage, but she continues to keep the heroes separate by teleporting them around the dungeon. Its a very interesting and challenging experience. Finally, let me talk about the difficulty of the game. This is a hard game. Ive lost more games than Ive won. That said, Im itching to play more. In Castle Ravenloft, when you lose youre usually on the verge of winning, which makes you want to try again and do it right. Further, when you win youre 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 cant account for in scaling, though: diversity of abilities. With one player, you have only a single characters 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 everyones 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; theres enough diversity to allow you to react to a lot, but not so much that youre 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 Ive played. The scenario that you choose will also affect the difficulty, so with five players, its 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 Didnt 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, youll 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.

A friend asked if a few of us would want to get together and spend an afternoon trying this out. He had just gotten it and was excited. I have to admit, being used to roleplaying games, I was not excited about playing a board game. I didn't think it would fill up a whole afternoon or really grab my attention like an RPG. I was wrong. I love previous Ravenloft adventures and so I gave it a try, and I'm glad I did. We played with four players (the game can accommodate up to 5 and there is no GM), and ended up playing 4 scenarios which took about 5 hours total. I estimate a full game, if you win, will take about 60-90 minutes on average, however, it is a very lethal game and there is a wide variation on how long it takes to win or TPK. If you sit down for a session with a few friends, I would plan on playing for 2 hours at a minimum. This would give time for two shorter games or one very satisfying long game. The Board Game vs D&D Castle Ravenloft Board Game (CRBG) is modeled on the 4e D&D rules, but very loosely. The things you will recognize from 4e include "powers" (utility, at-will, and daily; no "encounter" powers); the classes and races of the heroes; and the basic mechanic with an attack roll versus AC, hit points, and healing surges. However these are in many ways superficial similarities. First off the only die you will ever use in CRBG is a d20. Nothing else is ever rolled, it is only & always d20's. The

game includes a d20, which handily always rolls 6 or lower for heroes and 19 or 20 for monsters, to make your life more interesting. The other major difference is the nature of game play. This is a tile-based dungeon crawl game, which uses turn phases to govern play and keep the action moving. In this way it is truly a tactical board game and the feel is decidedly different than D&D. Things change rapidly and there are more surprises than in an RPG. I would say - and I really want to stress this - even if you hate 4th edition D&D you might still love CRBG. Why? Because all the stuff about 4e that some people dislike it's too much like a video game, etc. - makes for a GREAT tactical board game. The fact that you have limited, perfectly balanced resources of powers; tightly controlled magic items; superpowers that change the battlefield, etc has a terrific impact on gameplay. It is almost perfectly suited to this medium. The Physical Thing The game showcases typical high quality you'd expect of a contemporary D&D product. The pieces are printed in full color on a lush, heavy, super thick stock that I am confident will last a long time. This is true of every printed piece except of course the cards, which are thinner to allow easy shuffling (still high quality). Of the printed pieces, I particularly loved the tokens that represent hit points. One side is gold and the other black, so that you can flip them over as you lose health to show your "empty" hit points. This was such a natural visual cue that I found myself making Zeldaesque sound effects as I flipped them, as if I was gaining or losing hearts in a video game. (Some of the others never seemed to get the hang of this, and would just discard their pieces back into the box as they lost hit points, and then fish them back out when they healed.... but I think that's just because my friends are a little special.) There are also a large number of plastic mini's that come with the set, so many that my friend suggested it would be cheaper to buy the $65 board game than to buy an equivalent number of mini's. He's probably right, but the figures are all single-color. Most of the monsters are either bone white or raw beef red, and the heroes are all blue (I like to imagine this corresponds to the political parties of the heroes and the undead). I recognized early on that this made it very easy for us to see what was what on the board, but I still found it disappointing. The hero minis, which are individualized to match the art on the character card, should have at least been painted. They would have looked awesome and still stood out on the board from the monochrome monsters. Of course you could always swap out your own mini's to represent your hero, but it'd be nice if you got some beautiful new figs in your CRBG. Instead all you get are one-color dummies who, at best, can stand in as mooks in your normal D&D game and might just stay in the box instead. Overall

The game has awesome gameplay in which fortunes change quickly. A group has a decent chance of survival if they learn to stay near each other (spread over 2-3 adjacent tiles) and not to add new rooms until killing off the existing monsters (to avoid being overwhelmed). We called this our "control the square" strategy and it worked well. Even with that, I'd say it's about a 50% survival rate. You'll lose as many games as you win. Players should go in knowing that and expecting it. To me, it added excitement. Since it's not easy to get attached to the characters there is a lot more appeal to testing yourself against an unpredictable meat grinder than there would be in an RPG. Gameplay tends to move pretty quickly, metagaming is transparent and acceptable ("How many hit points does the skeleton have?"), and an Encounter card can suddenly teleport one of you 6 tiles away from the rest or cause the game to completely change. Most importantly, I didn't find a way to "break" the game in 5 hours of playing. That's good for a board game. Take Scrabble for example. If you save your Q or Z until you get a triple word score, and you always put something down on a double or triple word score no matter how bad your letters are, you will always win against someone who doesn't do that. Always. There is no win button in CRBG, at least not that I could find. There are strategies the group can use, as mentioned above, but the whole group has to stick to them and even then things can change rapidly. Our last game was our best game in terms of strategy but we died with only 4 of our 12 items collected. It's also fascinating playing without a GM. The usual rules lawyering seemed to vanish, because there was no one to lawyer against, and if we let ourselves get away with stuff we were essentially just letting ourselves win like a 5 year old. We just naturally fell into a habit of not making ridiculous requests and not allowing weird interpretations. For all those reasons, it's a solid 5 in Substance. Because of the monochromatic heroes and monsters, and the fairly repetitive-looking dungeon tiles, it's only a 4 in Style.

Castle Ravenloft: the 4th Edition D&D horror board game of DOOM!
This is our third board game review here at Arswe've previously reviewed Elder Gods and Drakon, both by Fantasy Flightand we had originally planned to dive into Tannhauser, a WWI-era miniatures game, also by Fantasy Flight. But someone pointed out in the comments to our last review that the idea is to talk about board games in general, not have a Fantasy Flight column. Hence, our decision to go with Wizards of the Coast's Castle Ravenloft in the third installment. Besides, Castle Ravenloft's claim to

fame is offering bite-sized chunks of fourth-edition Dungeons and Dragonsand that's hard to pass up. Dungeons and Dragons is a game that requires preparationtime to create character sheets and plan a campaignand the sessions can be long if you're in the middle of an adventure. You can set up one of the 13 co-operative adventures in Castle Ravenloft in a matter of minutes, and a game will last between one hour and 90 minutes once you understand the rules. It's a great way to get your fix, or to bring a new player into the fold. Let's take a look at how the game plays, and what you get in the package.

What you get

If you're a fan of miniatures, this game offers some serious value. The box is large, and comes with 40 plastic miniatures, dozens of dungeon tiles, stacks of cards for encounters, monsters, treasures and the like, as well as a rule- and adventure book. The miniatures are the same sculpts as past Dungeons and Dragons releases, so you may be getting some doubles if you already collect. If you're starting from scratch, though, the game's $65 list price is much easier to swallow once you see the bags and bags and heroes and monsters, including some larger enemies. The color-coded nature of the minis means that finding the particular enemy you're looking for is a snap, and every monster you'll encounter in the game is included.

The miniatures look great and add character to the game

The miniatures are all unpainted, and come with their own card with their stats and attacks. The tiles include adventure-specific areas for use with the adventures included in the package. The adventure book tells you exactly how to set up the board for each adventure's victory and defeat conditions, and gameplay consists of three phases per turn: Movement, Exploration, and Villain. Movement is determined by your character's speed ratingyou lay down a new dungeon tile if you end your turn at the edge of an existing tile, and a monster spawns on each new tile. The villains move and attack according to the actions listed on their card, and you gain treasures by playing through encounter cards or by killing the monsters. It's all very streamlined, as the fourth-edition rules have been boiled down to their core. This is a combat game, through and through, and winning is not assured. You'll have to move as a group, saving your daily and utility powers until they're needed, and working towards each adventure's goal. The game comes with pre-rolled characters, and you pick your powers and abilities at the beginning of the adventure (the rule book has suggestions for beginning players). You gain experience by destroying monsters, and you can gain a level and slightly higher stats by rolling a natural 20 in the course of the game and spending 5XP to flip your card over. You can also spend experience to get out of encounters. In some adventures you'll be searching for loot, in others you'll be hunting down vampires, and in the most difficult scenario you'll be going after the lord of the castle himself. Each adventure has some specific pieces that come into play, and there are multiple strategies for winning each one; the replayability is vast. Since everything you're playing is compatible with fourth-edition rules, adventurous DMs will soon be creating their own adventures with the included pieces, or adding their own traps and monsters.

The rules need some help

The rulebook is short, and the majority of the game's rules are easy to understand even if you've never played Dungeons and Dragons beforethis is not an intimidating game, even for new playersbut the rules can be frustratingly ambiguous in some specific instances. There were multiple times our group was sent to the rule book for an explanation of a rule, only to be presented with language that was too vague, or simply didn't give all the details. We dealt with the ambiguities by voting, or by coming up with house rules we all agreed on. In a few cases, we simply shrugged and did whatever was best for our party of adventurers. When trying to determine if experience was communal or limited to the player who killed the monster, it finally came down to the placement of an apostrophe in the rulebook (the "heroes'" experience) and that's a little scary when both the cards and the rule book had typos. This is a brand new game, so the rules are bound to be revised and updated, but it sucks to be an early adopter of a board game and find these issues. It's fun to create variants, but I like to have a rock-solid understanding of the basic rules and the way the game is meant to be played before I modify it. In our group we have Rodney, who is ably DMing

our main fourth-edition campaign; Aaron, who has been playing Dungeons and Dragons for the past decade; and Bill, who is a major board game enthusiast. When, after checking the rules multiple times, we're all still talking about we think they might mean, it's clear that they're not explained very well. This isn't our first rodeo, and it has to be worse for new players who don't have that knowledge base to draw from. The rules are simply incomplete, and that's a shame.

One of the pre-made characters, after taking some damage in battle

In conclusion
For those who like to fly solo, the game includes one single-player adventure. But you can easily play through the later adventures for two or three players by yourself, just moving all the pieces and battling the characters. Yes, it's a little lonely to play solo, but the game makes it easy. I realized I needed to invite other people over to play when I imagined the characters talking to each other. For all the game's flaws, it comes to life with a rowdy group. For each encounter, we had a player read the card to the person it affected, and didn't tell them what was at stake before they made their decisions. We added our own flavor texts to attacks and rolls. We cheered when we won, and we groaned when a powerful monster was placed on the board. While I tend to enjoy a more talkative role-playing experience, where I can bust out some social skills and talk our way out of situations, this game moves so quickly and

is so satisfying that I had a good time. I just wish the rules were firmer, but experienced players will quickly find what works for their group anyway. The game has the feel of something that still needs some refinement, which is a major disappointment for a product coming from an already refined rule set. Things will get better as time goes on, but the $65 product is being sold now. If you're already into Dungeons and Dragons, then you can move around these rule issues with ease, but new players may feel lost. For a game that could have been such an easy portal into Dungeons and Dragons, that's disappointing. If you can feel me waffling on the game it's because I'm so torn. The package is great, and worth the price, and I would recommend this to fans of the setting. But for newer players, there are better choices at the moment.

The Good

40 high-quality plastic miniatures The included adventures change up the requirements for victory, and feel very distinct The dungeon tiles and character cards feel great, easy to punch out and keep in the box The rules are simple to play with a single 20-side die, making this an ideal game for experienced players to bring those unfamiliar with the core rules into the fold The ability to modify the game rules or expand the adventures using your fourthedition rule books is a plus Pre-made adventures, characters, and rules mean each adventure can be set up in minutes, and played in an hour. Great for those who love table-top gaming but don't have much time to play The random nature of the dungeon tiles means you're really exploring; there is no DM who knows what's coming next The setting of Castle Ravenloft has serious draw for long-time fans

The Bad

The rules don't feel complete The artwork can feel a little bland in places There are some typographical errors in both the rules and the cards Some of the thinner miniatures feel like they will be easy to break or bend This is an all-combat game, Dungeons and Dragons fans who like social adventures may become bored

The Ugly

Coming up with flavor dialog while playing the game solo, and then moving the characters to speak to each other... even when it has nothing to do with the quest

Verdict: convince your favorite DM to add this into his stack of rule books
This might be the least timely review ever written. By this point, every other reviewer alive has chimed in about Castle Ravenloft. It was one of last year's biggest releases, and everyone had to talk about it and argue about it and disagree about it and either proclaim it the best game ever created, or call it a heaping pile of rabbit pellets. And while all that was happening, I found myself completely unable to get a copy, so that when I do finally get around to reviewing the game, I might as well be reviewing checkers. However, thanks to Noble Knight Games, I finally have a copy of the latest big hitter in the dungeon crawl game category, and so I can now tell you why I will be playing it for a good long time, and why I am now even more upset that it will be several months before I can get a copy of Wrath of Ashardalon. If you've been living somewhere outside a Tibetan monastery for the last six months or so, you've probably already read half a dozen reviews about Castle Ravenloft (in fact, you have probably already decided whether you want a copy). So you probably already know that it's a fully cooperative game where you go traipsing around inside Count Strahd's gloomy house, investigating corridors and rooms and being attacked by an incredible number of monsters while looking for loot. You have characters ripped right out of Fourth Edition D&D, like a dragonborn fighter and dwarf cleric, as well as a variety of unfriendly inhabitants who will pop out and hurt you. Given the wealth of knowledge available for Castle Ravenloft, I'm not going to bother describing how everything works. You can't swing a dead lolcatz without hitting a review of the game, so I'm positive someone has told you how you draw cards and roll dice. Besides, that stuff is boring. Instead of being boring, let's just skip right to the good parts and the bad parts. A fully cooperative dungeon crawl is hard to create. The problem is, a dungeon master is able to make monsters act tricky, and prescripted monster reactions make them predictable. And that means that instead of a tactical game, it becomes almost a puzzle game. You'll find yourself attacking less attractive targets just because they're on the right tile, or killing silly rat swarms because the treasure might let you level up. But just because you know what the monsters are going to do, that doesn't mean the game isn't tense. The game is not very hard to win, and that's why it isn't tense. I grant you that I've only played three times so far, but we never had any trouble winning. We had fun, and wanted to play more, but we never really had a moment where we said, 'holy crap, we're all going to die!' Maybe future adventures get a little more difficult, but so far, we have sailed through them. Another problem with Castle Ravenloft that might make it less fun is that it lacks some of the feeling that you're playing out a story. It's a little too technical and dry, and just doesn't ooze theme the way I want it to do. Every attempt has been made to pull a tale of derring-do and dark adventure out of the randomized tiles and plastic miniatures, but that

story is at odds with the game itself. For instance, you're going to draw a monster on every tile. You know this. If you don't draw a new tile, you're guaranteed to have to draw an encounter card, and then something bad will happen to you. Again, you know this. And so rather than a story or tactical battle where you're sneaking through a dungeon, you wind up with a game where you're pushing forward, trying to clear out one tile before you pull another, ignoring some traps because you won't need to pass that tile again, or arranging your miniatures to best exploit your various powers. It just doesn't create a cohesive story. Another blow against the story is the fact that your characters cannot improve from one dungeon to the next. You start every adventure at first level, and maybe reach second level before you're done, and then the next time you play, your ranger forgot all the crap she learned last time. That shoots a hole right through the middle of the story. I like a game where each adventure feels like another step on a path, where every villain I destroy is just one step closer to the final confrontation. The scenarios build toward the eventual hunt for Strahd, but it feels like anyone could do any of them whenever they want (mostly because they can). Story or not, however, Castle Ravenloft is fun. It's fun to tromp through a dungeon, discovering room after room, hacking away at zombies and ghouls and giant spiders. Traps pop up and shoot spears at our heroes, and scary mists roll through the hallways, making us soil our trousers and cry for our mothers. It may be a tad academic, but it's all dungeon romp, all the time. And unlike my favorite dungeon crawl game of all time (which would still be Warhammer Quest), there is more to do than just cut things. The first adventure had me scrambling to escape the castle, and the second had us searching for the lost icon of Ravenloft in an overrun chapel full of monsters. In the third, we battled a very unfriendly kobold sorcerer and destroyed his infernal device. Other adventures have still other goals, and the game is full of specialized markers and tokens that afford you the chance to do something besides maraud from room to room and kill things (not that there's anything wrong with that). Another strong point in Ravenloft's favor is that it is pretty darn sexy. The art is great, and the miniatures are straight out of the D&D miniatures game (though they don't have paint). There's even a huge scary dracolich, which is a cross between a dead wizard and that mean kid from Harry Potter. The tiles look neat, with piles of bones and altars and coffins and stuff, and the game has a decidedly polished look. No rookie designer built this game, I'll tell you that. Now, in my completely biased and unfair opinion, any dungeon crawl game that wants to compete has to measure up against Warhammer Quest. And while Castle Ravenloft does some things better than my favorite game, it has downsides. Where Warhammer Quest really feels like a tale about a group of warriors battling through a dank dungeon to defeat ancient evil (or maybe just rat-people with bad hygiene), Castle Ravenloft lacks some of

the flavor. The option to improve from game to game is one of the greatest things about Warhammer Quest - that, and the non-stop, fast-paced action. While Ravenloft moves very quickly, and affords the players lots of choices to make, you're going to start every adventure with a first-level guy, regardless of how long you've been playing. There are a few other reasons that Warhammer Quest beats Ravenloft, but they're very small. I like Warhammer art, for example, and I've never been able to sign off on some of the silliness of D&D (dragonborn being one good example). On the other hand, Ravenloft offers a much wider variety of game, with lots of different games coming out of just the one box. Combat is actually faster than Quest, and it's a tighter game with a lot less accounting and record-keeping. While I am not persuaded, I could definitely see where a gamer might think Ravenloft is actually better than Warhammer Quest. I know which one I prefer, but it's awfully close. Finally, Castle Ravenloft has an incredible amount of staying power. Never mind that there's already an expansion (not really, of course - Ashardalon is a stand-alone game, but it provides a lot more toys to throw in the toybox). Once you play all the scenarios in the box, Ravenloft provides enough doodads and widgets for an enterprising game nerd to create nearly any kind of adventure he wants, without having to buy anything beyond a pen and a sheet of paper. When you can play the same game twenty times and still never play the same thing twice, you're getting your money out of your investment. So now you know why I totally dig Castle Ravenloft, and why I will be playing it a lot more, even though I still have Warhammer Quest regularly calling to me from the shelf where it is stored with reverence and pride. Sure, it took me a long time to get a copy and write a review. Better late than never, I suppose.

Summary
1-5 players Pros: Great adventure game Lots of options and tons of replay Incredibly slick production Fast and easy to play, with slick rules that are easy to resolve Cons: A little dry Characters don't get better between adventures Castle Ravenloft is already priced to be a deal, considering how much awesome is in the box, but if you want to save even more, Noble Knight Games has it right here:

The first entry into the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System line of cooperative games, Castle Ravenloft challenges gamers with twelve different scenarios to play through. Take control of the fighter, cleric, wizard, ranger, or rogue and see if you can defeat Count Strahd Von Zarovich and his minions. How does Castle Ravenloft stack up against other dungeon crawling board games? Read on for our full review and find out! Just the Facts: Players: 1-5 Playing Time: 60 minutes Age: 12 to Adult Publisher: Wizards of the Coast MSRP: $64.95 Release: August 31st, 2010 The Components:

40 plastic heroes and monsters 13 sheets of interlocking cardstock dungeon tiles 200 encounter and treasure cards Rulebook Scenario book 20-sided die. The miniatures are downright beautiful, and compare favorably to those included in other popular dungeon crawling games. One nice touch is the set of curved damage counters that fit snugly up against a models base, which is the most elegant solution to keeping track of monster damage that Ive seen yet. For example, take a look at this example of

the gargoyle figurine with an adjacent damage marker:

(Photography credit: Rich Chamberlain) When you look at Castle Ravenloft alongside the new Essentials line of products, it becomes clear that Wizards of the Coast is really putting all of the tools to run a successful D&D campaign in players hands. Everything right down to the counters and floor tiles can be used for future settings of a DMs design. Fourth Edition D&D really puts a focus on the components, as it greatly benefits from having nice miniatures and a battle mat, so its nice to see those pieces included here. The packaging for this game, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. On the good side, the box insert works very well. As someone who usually throws out the plastic inserts in a board games box, I can say that this one is a keeper. It is well thought out and holds all of the components perfectly. Unfortunately, its usefulness is negated for gamers who store boxes on their sides because of a large gap between the top of the insert and the top of the box. This gap, measuring just over an inch, was where the un-punched sheets of cardboard counters were originally kept, but now it serves as a large void where all of the neatly-sorted components will spill out and shift to one side of the box. As a game that benefits from a short playtime, taking 10 minutes to sort all of the pieces out is definitely a burden. Final Thoughts: What youre not getting with Castle Ravenloft is epic strategy and deep narratives, but in their place you are presented with a streamlined game that still managed to provide a

series of tactical choices. Knowing where to position your character and when to use special powers are small but meaningful decisions. Otherwise, the game does tend to play itself and rely a bit on the luck of the draw or the roll of the dice, but this is not a bad thing considering this games target audience. For those gamers who dont have the time to dedicate 4+ hours to a dungeon crawl, Castle Ravenloft is a terrific option. Even when compared to traditional RPGs, this provides an easy way for new players to get involved with D&D. To answer one common question when people hear that statement, no, you dont have to role play to enjoy this game. Youre welcome to get into character and passionately read the cards flavor text if youd like, but it wont help you survive Count Strahd. Still, its enough of a D&D experience to provide hardcore players an easy way to get a quick fix. Yes, there are some minor components issues, but those are completely outweighed by the joy of the game. It is also worth noting that Wizards of the Coast seems dedicated to keeping the game fresh by releasing several new scenarios through their website. If you take away nothing else from this review, just know that you will have fun when playing this game. That fact and all of the above adds up to make Castle Ravenloft a strongly recommended purchase. Pros: - Rules are easy to teach - Streamlined 60 minute gameplay - Beautiful components that are useful in other D&D games Cons: - Outcomes heavily influenced by luck - Poor box design

Castle Ravenloft is the first in what promises to be a series of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) themed boardgames which use a simplified version of the 4th edition D&D rules. Now, Ive played D&D off an on for over 25 years, but was still a little hesitant about whether to pick this game up until I heard that it was actually a cooperative game, and that it was playable solitaire. So, what got me to pony up my money was the idea of a cooperative dungeon-crawl game with opportunity for solo play, a rather unique entity in the larger genre of dungeon-crawl adventure games. Ive played it several times since then, and I have some pretty strong feelings about the game. But before I get to that, lets start off with a little discussion about how to play the darn thing. Game Basics (click here for complete game rules) From a materials point of view, Castle Ravenloft is pretty impressive. It comes with a big stack of dungeon tiles, a lot of cards, several types of tokens and counters, and a metric crap-ton of plastic miniatures (42 of them, to be exact). Personally, Im pretty happy with

the components, but a lot of people online complain about the bland art on the tiles, the lack of art and general low quality of the cards, and the uninspired art direction of the whole game. I think that everyone agrees on how nice the minis are, though, even if I did choose to replace most of mine with similar models from the pre-painted D&D Miniatures I already owned (which you'll see in most of the pictures included in this review).

The rules are 15 pages long and look very nice, but I found them to be far vaguer and at times confusing than they should have been. Part of my problem stemmed from assumptions that I brought with me from D&D and other similar games, but the rulebook could have been written a lot better to head off a lot of the issues that I (and others) have had. I know that they were trying to make it ultra simple for those with no D&D experience, but a little extra explanation would have gone a long way to make it clearer. In order to set up the game, you have to first choose one of the 13 scenarios and do a little bit of work to set up the dungeon tile stack and find the right tokens as indicated in the scenario. Each player gets to choose a unique character, make some choices about which specific powers it will use throughout the game, and place its miniature on the start tile (most of the time, anyway). Then you just shuffle up the three different decks of cards (monsters, encounters and treasure) and get started. On each players turn, there are three different phases. In the Hero Phase, they get to move and attack, attack and move, or move twice. Most of the time, players will use one of their character powers to attack a monster or do something else thats pretty cool in this phase. To attack, you usually roll the 20-sided die and add the modifier from your attack power, and if you meet or exceed the monsters Armor Class, you deal damage to it. When a monster has received enough damage to kill it, its card is placed in an experience point pile and you get to draw a Treasure card. If the player is lucky enough to roll a natural 20 on the die, they may spend 5 experience points from the common pool to level up their character to 2nd level, which gives them a new power and some slightly improved stats. Since its a short-form game with no campaign play at this point, characters cant advance beyond 2nd level.

Next is the Exploration Phase. If the character is next to an unexplored edge of the dungeon map, you draw the next dungeon tile from the stack and place it next to the character. A new monster card is then drawn and its miniature is placed on the new tile. The monster card itself is placed in the play area of the player who drew it. The final phase of each turn is the Villain Phase. The first step in this phase is to draw an Encounter card if the tile just placed contains a black triangle or if the player did not explore a new tile this turn. Encounter cards are always bad (usually at least as bad as a new monster, and they dont provide treasure or experience in most cases). The only good thing is that you can choose to discard 5 experience points (if you have enough) to cancel an Encounter card once its been revealed. After possible drawing an Encounter card, any Villain (boss-level monsters defined by the scenario) in play will activate, followed then by certain other monsters. One of the really cool aspects of this game is how they programmed the monsters to act. On each monster card, there is a little algorithm that you read from bottom to top until you find a circumstance that applies. For instance, the first line on the Skeleton card reads If the skeleton is adjacent to a Hero, it attacks that Hero with a Scimitar, so you look to see if the skeleton is next to a hero, and carry out the attack (roll the die and compare it to the heros AC). If its not next to a hero, then you read the next line, If the Skeleton is within 1 tile of a Hero, it moves adjacent to the nearest Hero and attacks that Hero with a charging slice and carry it out if it applies. The last line on the card is always the default action for the monster (if nothing else applies), which is usually to move towards the closest hero. All monster cards in the current players area will activate in the order in which they were placed. The evil thing is that if any other player also has the same kind of monster in their area, it will activate at the same time as the active players monster. So, when the skeleton activates, every other skeleton in play will activate as well. Clearly, its always a priority to eliminate duplicate monsters.

Players go around the table taking their turns until the game is won or lost. Winning conditions are always defined by the scenario, which occasionally also includes special losing parameters as well. But the default way to lose is to have any player be at 0 hit points (dead, I presume) at the beginning of their turn and have no remaining Healing Surge token available to revive them. The entire group only has a total of 2 Healing Surge tokens to use throughout the game, which allow a hero to regain half of their maximum hit points if they are still dead at the beginning of their turn. Most people who rave about Castle Ravenloft frequently tout that its always done in an hour. That may be true for some of the more straightforward scenarios, but most of my games have probably lasted more in the 75-90 minute range, with some taking upwards of 2 hours. What Ive found is that while the simple scenarios are quick to play, they also fall into a rut very quickly. Its almost always more efficient to explore a new tile every turn (since most of the scenario goals are tied to finding a certain tile), which means that you see a new monster every turn. And because of the order of the turn, it always means that the new monster will have a chance to attack the exploring hero before they can do anything about it. Then the next hero attacks that monster and explores a new tile, revealing a new monster, which attacks them, and so on and so on. The more advanced scenarios mix things up a little bit with different layouts for the dungeon and by adding in additional rules for placing monsters, but what Ive found is that adding in the cool twists to expand the play experience also tends to add more time to the game. And since the game is still so simple at its core, it doesnt always hold up well to longer play times.

What I Think... Ill get to my final thoughts in just a minute, but let me start by discussing a few things that have tripped up some of the people Ive played this with. First of all, Castle Ravenloft is not really D&D Lite. Well, I guess it sort of is, but people who walk in with the expectation that it will provide a very similar experience to real D&D will probably be disappointed by how much it has been simplified and tweaked. Most of the tactical decision-making and miniature-combat elements that you get in recent versions of D&D are totally lost here, and it can be confusing when powers have the same name as powers in the RPG but do very different things. Youve got to remember that Castle Ravenloft is, first and foremost, a cooperative game.

Most of the confusion that I and others had when learning the game stemmed from trying to make it be something that it isnt by adding in more tactical complexity or roleplaying aspects that simply arent there. If a player is allowed to make a choice (like where exactly to place a monster when it moves, for example), then it should be made in the best interests of the player, rather than in an attempt to bring more realism (i.e. what the monster would do) into the game (as long as youre still following the letter of the law in regards to rules or text on the cards, of course). Unfortunately, as a cooperative game, I dont know that its all that compelling. Mostly, thats because its too easy, with my experience being that a group with any experience at all will usually survive the average scenario with Healing Surges to spare. And while I really like the customization that you have when you choose the powers for your character, the structure of the game actually hinders character specialization quite a bit. As I said earlier, the most efficient way to play in most cases is just to explore a new tile every turn, but the wizard character (with its AC, hit points and powers) would normally be one to hang back and deal damage from a distance. So to play the wizard to its strengths and thematic nature is actually at odds with doing well in the game, which kind of sucks. There are, of course, still several opportunities for players to strategize about how to handle situations, especially when it comes to the villain or main challenge of the scenario. And synergies still exist about when and how is best to use the characters powers, but in my opinion, they are far more constrained than they should be.

It's much prettier with painted minis... On its surface, Castle Ravenloft seems like it would have oodles of replayability, what with being modular, scenario based, and having some level of character individualization. But to me, every game feels pretty much the same as every other. Again, it goes back to the rut of continually exploring and the rigidity of each turn. So you may say, Then do something different, stupid! But the problem there is that not falling into the rut means that youre probably not playing as well as you could, and that youre extending the game, which isnt really that much fun either. One of the main reasons that I picked up Castle Ravenloft was for the possibility of

playing it solitaire, and for the most part, it does well on that count. The actual scenarios designed to be played solo (i.e. with one hero) dont seem to work all that well (I dont think that the game is really balanced for just one character to be played), but as with most any cooperative game, its very easy to just run multiple characters at the same time and play the game as designed. A lot of this review sounds mostly negative. And in the big picture of how I feel about Castle Ravenloft, Id have to say that overall Im a bit disappointed in it. But on the other hand, most of the times when Ive played it, I and the others around the table have had quite a bit of fun. I like the cooperative games as a whole, and the ease of setup makes it very attractive when a longer or more involved adventure/dungeon-crawl game would be difficult to pull off. And while I dont think that experienced D&D players will really be satisfied with the game, I do think that it could be an excellent tool to introduce the basics of the RPG and its setting to a new player. I could see lots of school-age boys just eating this up, which could then feed directly into an introduction to real roleplaying. And one of the coolest things about cooperative games in general is how easy it is to bring in new players (since you can help them play their turns until they get the hand of it), so Id definitely say that this would be a great game to introduce to new boardgamers who have any interest at all in its fantasy theme.

The "real" Strahd mini (from the collectible minis game), which wasn't included in this game for some unknown reason This review is based on the game as packaged by Wizards of the Coast, but I think that it would be an oversight if I didnt mention the online community surrounding this game. There are already lots of unofficial scenarios, monsters, heroes, and rules variants available on BoardGameGeek and other places throughout the internet, with more being created all the time. Im very eager to try out some of these fan-created resources (especially the ones that address my issues with the game), and when you consider the potential for all this wealth of creativity, the replayability of the game really skyrockets. So to end, Ill go back to where I started. The thing that brings me back to Castle Ravenloft is still the fact that it fills a niche almost completely untouched by other games in the genre. I especially like the Ravenloft setting, I love cooperative games, and I like the option to play solo. So at least until something better comes along to meet these needs, I will continue to appreciate and enjoy this game for all the things it is, rather than hate on it for all that it is not. The Verdict! Castle Ravenloft has a lot of potential to fill a very interesting niche in the cooperative

and dungeon-crawling boardgame settings, but ultimately is a little too disappointing for me to recommend wholeheartedly.

Rules: Easy to pick up, once you get past your own assumptions and the horrendous rulebook Downtime: Very little, since it's coop and turns go so quickly Length: "About an hour", which usually turns more into 90 minutes for me. And it does tend to wear out its welcome by the end a lot of times. Player Interaction: It's cooperative, and I'll agree that there are lots of ways to actually cooperate and plan/help each other. Overall Weight: Medium Light GamerChris' Rating: 6 (on the BGG 10-point scale)

The Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game was the first hobby game I ever played, and the first adventure module for that game that I ever saw and lusted after was the vampire romp Ravenloft. So in spite of not having touched a D&D line product in over a decade, when I saw that Wizards of the Coast were re-entering the boardgame market with a cooperative Ravenloft adventure game I was instantly intrigued. The kind folks at Wizards of the Coast were good enough to whet my appetite further by indulging my request for a review copy which came a few days prior to release. So I've already been lucky enough to play this ten times or so, plenty on which to form an opinion. The very first time that I played this game, I was rapidly struck by two things. The first is that this quite possibly does the best job ever of capturing the spirit of those oldfashioned role-playing game dungeon crawls that were so much fun in the days of my youth. In spite of the fact that it has a decent amount of board game style strategic meat on its bones it really feels like a stripped down role-playing session: each turn the heroes move and the dungeon unfurls slowly before them as they draw tiles from a stack and add them to the board. They then draw a monster card, to represent what appears from out of the gloom and attacks, following a pre-set AI routine printed on the card, and often an encounter card representing such things as events and traps. The players must work together to use their mixed and complimentary abilities to defeat their foes and solve their problems, gaining treasure cards in return and the whole is wrapped in a loosely binding

plot thanks to one of the thirteen different scenarios that come with the game. You can tell the designers were aiming for this sort of effect thanks to the old-school flavour text thats supplied for one of the players to read out at the start of each scenario and at certain key events, just like the room descriptions that the dungeon master was supposed to read in adventure modules. And boy, did they ever succeed in that intention. Its partly thanks to the co-operative nature of the game that it gets this effect across, and here the cooperation feels like something natural and expected instead of the sense of forced jollity in what is normally a competitive medium that so pervades and spoils the majority of coop board games. The second is that the game is absolutely packed with really neat little mechanical twists that aim to get the most tactical and narrative mileage out of the simple rules. Theres nothing mold-breaking involved here, just a real sense that people worked hard to do as much as the could with relatively little. The best example of this is the tile-based movement system that all monsters (and occasionally some of the heroes) use: rather than plotting at path across squares, it involves simply moving to a different tile, and this being a co-op game the players get to choose which square on the tile the piece gets moved to. In a nutshell this sidesteps an array of potentially complex rules for plotting monster movement square-by-square while at the same time providing the backbone of tactical choice in the game since the precise positioning of the target on a tile can result in the powers of the monsters and the heroes having different results on the situation. Its a brilliantly stripped-down design that manages to simultaneously trim off all the excess fat that has historically so plagued dungeon crawl games whilst at the same time actually making use of that minimalism to improve the game experience. Sadly the rules arent all a bed of roses. The process of slimming down the rules has, unfortunately, resulted in a slew of minor ambiguities. Its unclear, for example, whether dungeon squares containing furniture like coffins or laboratory equipment are valid for movement or not. Theres nothing that will bring the game crashing down round your ears and, usefully, co-op games by their very nature can make light work of bypassing rules loopholes so long as all the players agree on how to interpret the written instructions, but its still a bit sad to see these sorts of problems in a game from such a major publisher, who certainly have the resources to playtest and iron out rules issues. The low rules weight also means that some of the gothic flavour of the game is almost inevitably lost. Wraiths in this game dont drain the life force of mortals, or need magic weapons to hit them, theyre just tough to kill and hand out terrifying amounts of damage. I think this is whats behind some of the accusations of blandness that Ive seen levelled at the design. However I think this is pretty unfair: the designers have clearly worked hard to try and differentiate the monsters as much as possible from each other and you can really see this in the AI routines printed on each monster card that governs how they behave. Almost every conceivable point of difference has been worked out and utlilised to make sure that a skeleton is not quite the same as a zombie and so on. Personally Im entirely comfortable with the level of detail thats been sacrificed in order to make this as fast playing and as accessible as possible. And given that it plays in around an hour, is simple enough for a primary-school age child to engage with (if not

play effectively), and retains enough complexity to support thirteen scenarios, six boss monsters, and ten or so normal monsters plus traps, events, items and other effects Id argue those sacrifices were well worth making. The other thing that some commentators have described as bland is the artwork in the game. I have a mixed response to this. The dungeon tiles do look a bit generic but on the upside this leaves them interchangeable with future releases. The cards are, it must be said, a bit lacking. Only the monster cards have artwork on them and you really would have thought a company with the resources of Wizards of the Coast could find some stock art to use on other cards. It would certainly help you to feel that youd found a cool item to see it pictured instead of just a line of text telling you that it gives you +1 to attack rolls. But really, to suggest a game that has such great miniatures as this one does as bland is just silly. Theyre the best sculpts Ive seen outside of a Games Workshop title and theres tons of them in the box, the majority of them being unique figures rather than duplicates. The light rules weight and the well-known nature of the license also leaves ample scope for both official and fan-generated extra content to be squeezed in. There are already a couple of extra scenarios you can download from the Wizards of the Coast site as well as plans for another game based on the same framework with interchangeable components called Wrath of Ashardalon which includes rules for campaigns, the only really major omission in this title. The game feels like a toolbox in a good way, not by providing you with lots of components that aren't covered by the rules, but by inviting the player to use their skill and imagination to expand the game in whatever direction they choose. Want to add some rules for items heroes can carry into the dungeon? Go ahead. Want to add some more monsters from your figure collection? Be my guest. I suspect there are expansions planned for this, waiting, as yet unannounced. But frankly there's already plenty in the box to provide plenty of replay value right off the bat. One thing I haven't mentioned yet is that each character can pick four or five powers unique to them, and while suggested combinations are offered, there's actually about twice as many to choose from, providing lots of opportunity for exploring different approaches to different scenarios. The basic items in the treasure deck are supplemented by more powerful scenario specific items and by one-shot fortunes and blessings. And as well as traps the encounter deck boasts all kinds of cool stuff like atmospheric cackling skulls, to old-school dungeon favourites such as gray ooze all the way to bizarre effects that teleport heroes and monsters all round the dungeon. As ever the simple rules are made to work as hard as possible to provide one of the staple requirements of a good dungeon crawler: plenty of variety. After all the good stuff, I do have one major gripe about the game and that is its odd, unpredictable difficulty curve. This is a multi-faceted problem. For starters theres no guide as to how tough the various scenarios in the game are, and I can assure you that some are considerably more difficult than others. The characters are not balanced, with some looking distinctly more powerful than others. I remain unconvinced that the mechanics for increasing difficulty when more characters are in the game really works

since its reliant on more than one player drawing the same monster card, and that monster type then acts twice per turn. Not only is it random, but its actually pretty unlikely to happen with ten-odd different monsters in the game and in any case I dont think it really makes up for the synergy of abilities you get having more characters playing together. Theres also the fact that the game adds pressure to the players by making them get behind on their use of actions. Each player gets on action (an attack, for example) each turn and usually theyll reveal a monster on their turn. As long as the next player makes their attack roll and kills the monster the players stay in control: its when they start missing and the actions needed to deal with the backlog start to pile up that things become hard to handle. And all the action checks in the game are handled by a twenty-sided dice of course, so its quite possible to get a run of bad (or good) results in a row thanks to the flat probability curve of rolling a single dice, resulting in games that are ridiculously difficult (or easy). That flat probability curve and all those checks for action success also mean that, obviously, theres a fairly high level of randomness in the game generally because to accomplish many actions in the game beyond moving, you need to roll the dice. Theres also quite a lot to think about. Ive already mentioned the tile-based movement and the variable character powers. Theres also a lot of risk-based decisions such as whether you want to reveal a new tile - and a new monster - each turn or whether you care to risk taking an encounter instead, something you're forced to do if you fail to explore. If you do take it, you have the option of spending some of your hard-earned monster kills to cancel it and if you let it happen it might be a question of whether to take damage or suffer a different effect. The game is permeated with these sorts of "what-if" decisions. So, although there is meaningful choice in the game, those of you who came looking for a level of detailed tactics like that found in Descent or an Arkham Horror like level of control will be disappointed. I actually think the game hits a really sweet spot in balancing skill and random elements, and it helps a lot that the game is so quick playing because it means that a trip into the dungeon plagued with ill luck feels more like a story with a bad ending than a waste of gaming time. In a nutshell then, this is a really impressive re-entry into the board game market for the Dungeons & Dragons licence and one with a lot of mileage in front of it. Another major publisher in the business can't do anything but good for the hobby. My personal distaste for co-op games is well known but Castle Ravenloft has joined the extremely small shortlist of co-ops that have become regular visitors to my gaming table: no small feat in itself. Yet I can imagine it, and its brethren, returning again and again in the months to come.

Dungeons & Dragons Castle Ravenloft

Well as some of you will know a fair few weeks ago I was musing on why I no longer played board games anymore, you can find that article here. Any way I decided I should really try to put this right by picking myself up a couple of board games and giving them a damn fine go. Well I'm well on my way to having a nice little collection of board games now, I started off with Dwarf Kings Hold from Mantic Games and will be hopefully getting myself the second of those games Green Menace. I also have the Gears of War game on pre-order from OG Games and Mansions of Madness should be arriving any day soon hopefully. However none of those games are really what I'd term true Dungeon Crawlers, yep Dwarf Kings Hold is set in a dungeon or should that be a 'hold' but its an adversarial game that I've heard described as Space Hulk with Dwarfs and axes, now while I think that's not an entirely fair analogy its not a million miles off in terms of vibe, but the two games play very differently. So I wanted a dungeon crawler. I'd had a few people suggest the D&D Adventure System Games of Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon, so I picked both up to see what they were like. First things first I've given Castle Ravenloft a thorough going over, and I've enjoyed it, but in the words of the tax dodging Irishman Bono 'I still haven't found what I'm looking for'. Product Description

Lets get this out of the way right now, the production quality on this product is very high indeed and its clear Wizards of the coast have really gone to town with the components in this game. Even the box itself is a high quality product that will stand up quite nicely to the rough and tumble of daily gaming sessions. The card tiles and tokens are all on a very high quality card and have nice glossy surfaces, its all very slick. The miniatures although quite nice sculpts some of them are what lets this down. They aren't made of the nicest substance known to man and I actually think they'll be pretty naff to paint considering how bendy they all are. Its not great and its a shame, because I'd have liked to have painted them. There is however a lot of stuff in the box. Gameplay 7 out of 10 I think its fair to suggest that I am less than enamoured with the kind of games the rules themselves seem to produce. Sure its all very slick and functions well enough and you won't ever get to a point where you're not sure what should happen. However it doesn't create the greatest atmosphere going, I've never once felt like an intrepid explorer searching through a dank, dark and dangerous dungeon. It has no atmosphere as a game and the challenge is less than I'd hoped for too, so it doesn't tick many of my personal boxes but it does at least function well as a game mechanic. Detail 7 out of 10 The detailing on pretty much everything is consistently good. The tile artwork is clear and crisp and well designed, if a little bit too bland for my tastes. The tokens are token like and sturdy, they're clear to understand and easy to read... and a little bland. Call me old fashioned but I like a little bit of personality in the artwork that goes into these sorts of components, its all very Dungeon 101 and very generic and by the books. The miniatures themselves are your typical generic beasties and adventurers, they're not bad themselves in terms of the detailing and sculpting, but the substance they're made out of isn't for me. Sure I'm guessing its a nice and hardy substance for chucking back into the game box but that's not what I'm going to do with them.

The rules themselves are a very stripped down version of D&D I remember, its not really a dungeon crawling RPG anymore but some kind of homage to that genre in the form of an engaging enough board game. Have to be honest and say its not quite what I was expecting or indeed what I wanted. However it is fairly entertaining and with a good group of friends its a riot and well worth playing. Just don't be expecting a deep experience with character building and progression, there's none of that malarky, its just a straight up board game set in a dungeon. Quality 8 out of 10 The quality of the card components within the box are undeniably good and quite frankly I think they'll happily take a good solid amount of gaming before they start to look dog eared or tatty. If this score was generated on those components alone I'd probably give this score a 9 or 10 because they are very hardy indeed and the rulebook and mission book are glossy enough and in full colour. What drags it all down a notch or two for me would be the rubbery plastic used to make the miniatures. Sure I can understand why they're made out of the horrid stuff, it's probably easier to pull out of the moulds and it'll not break as easy in the box. However as I hope I've established, I'm a wargamer and I like to paint my mini's if I can. So what should have been a win for them actually drags the score down, if only it were a harder plastic.

The rules are slick easy to understand and follow. The randomly generated dungeons that I've played though all seem quite similar in shape, so perhaps its not as random as first thought! Though the rules do create an engaging enough game it rapidly boils down to very basic stat team management work. Its not at all hard to rip through most dungeons in this game with a little bit of nouse and 1 or two friends to help out along the way. As a co-operative board game its quite good, as a dungeon crawler its not quite as cerebral as I'd hoped it would be. Service 8 out of 10 Well the service I got for this particular little gem was from OG Games and I'd have to say I'm more than happy with their service. I ordered this boxed set along with Wrath of Ashardalon one evening and plumped for the free postage at second class delivery and it turned up two days later in a nice grey plastic bag wrapped in bubble wrap with corner protectors. Castle Ravenloft was fine and so too was Wrath of Ashardalon so no complaints and it all went smoothly. Price 8 out of 10 I paid 44.99 form OG Games and I think that's a fair enough price for the game considering its RRP is 54.99. I have seen it slightly cheaper elsewhere but I trust OG Games and I know they deliver what they say they will so I'm more than happy to pay 1 or 2 more than some other places, plus OG do free delivery, whereas those other places don't.

Overall 7 out of 10 Its not bad. Its not what I was expecting and its not what I wanted. However that doesn't mean its bad. I mean after playing Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon I've actually decided to pre-order the third game in the range The Legend of Drizzt, which means they can't be too bad can they? True it isn't and never will be the in depth dungeon crawler I wanted. There isn't the leveling and there isn't the character generation, and I know for many people that will be a good thing, but for me I was hoping for a bit more of a free reign with this game. However it has kept me and my friends entertained and they do want to come back for more and its a nice diversion to Infinity and Dystopian Wars right now. Peace out! D&D Adventure System Board Games

With the recent addition of Legend of Drizzt, the third in the Adventure System series of board games, Wizards of the Coast has presented a modular, easily played family of games with enough depth, components and scenarios to keep players interested for a long time. The complete modularity of the sets, a few caveats about Legend of Drizzt aside (see my review), encourages the swapping and combining of parts from different sets to make a completely new gaming experience. Wizards of the Coast has actually released an official three-adventure campaign featuring components of both Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon. While the mixing and matching possibilities are all but endless, we will consider just a few in each article in this series. In today's installment, we will take a look at heroes.

The heroes from both Ravenloft and Ashardalon are allowed in the official cross-over scenario. While the Legend of Drizzt heroes are a bit more powerful than those in the

other two sets, there is no real harm in introducing them into any Ravenloft or Ashardalon game. The heroes from the first two sets are capable enough that the addition of one more healing surge to the group should be enough to balance them out in Drizzt's Underdark. One important point from the cross-over scenario rules is that heroes can use class cards from either game, appropriate to their classes. For example, the Ravenloft Wizard can use Wrath of Ashardalon Wizard powers and vice versa. The only limitation there is that if you use the Wizards from both sets in one game session, each player must choose different powers than the other. Ravenloft and Ashardalon each have a Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard. Those powers are just as easily interchangeable. Legend of Drizzt has a Ranger (like Ravenloft), a Fighter and a Rogue (like both Ravenloft and Ashardalon). However, the somewhat different nature of the heroes from Legend of Drizzt presents a few problems we will deal with later in this article. For now, it is enough to understand that the characters in Ravenloft and Ashardalon are sufficiently generic that we can ignore their proper names and refer to them as 'Dwarf Fighter', 'Eladrin Wizard,' etc. By contrast, the heroes in Legend of Drizzt are special, as they all represent characters familiar to readers of R.A Salvatore's novels. This is reflected in the highly personalized powers they generally have. Three of them - Bruenor, Catie-Brie and Drizzt - even have unique Stance Tokens, a mechanic introduced in this set. Putting aside Legend of Drizzt class powers for the time being, we shall consider the racial powers from all three sets. The only Eladrin so far is the Wizard in Ravenloft. His Fey Step Utility power seems suitable for any future Eladrin character. The Drow Ranger and Drow Swashbuckler from Legend of Drizzt both have their own copy of the Cloud of Darkness and Darkfire Utility Powers, so they are set. These powers are generic enough that they, like Fey Step for Eladrin, could easily be used for any future or custom Drow character. But what about the Dragonborn? Ravenloft and Ashardalon each feature a Dragonborn character, each with a different Dragonborn Daily Power. The powers seem generic enough, but theme and game balance seem to dictate that those powers should stay with their intended heroes. Why? Take a look at Dragon's Breath (the Dragonborn Fighter Power from Ravenloft). It allows the hero to attack all monsters on his tile at +4 to hit and 1 damage. Hurled Breath, the Dragonborn Wizard Daily Power from Ashardalon, allows that hero to attack all monsters on any tile within 2 tiles, (including his own tile), at +5 to hit and the same 1 damage. The latter is better in terms of both range and accuracy; fitting for a Wizard who has used magic to fully master his innate breath weapon ability, and powerful enough to make up for a Wizard's lack of reliable damage potential. Dragon Breath does a better job of showing the more physical Fighter who using what nature has given him. Keeping Hurled Breath from the Dragonborn Fighter also prevents him from being overpowered. Next, we come to the Dwarves. All three sets come with a Dwarf. The Dwarf Cleric from Ravenloft has no racial power. The Dwarf Fighter from Ashardalon has Dwarven Resilience which allows for some major healing mojo. There is no harm in making this power available to any of the Dwarves. So far, so good. But then we come to Bruenor. Bruenor has no racial powers per se, but he has a few that can be considered as such.

Dwarven Ale and Legendary Knowledge seem to fit the bill. The Ancient Enemies Utility Power, though, really has the feel of a Dwarf Fighter Power. It is based on the idea that Dwarves have been at war with Goblins for generations, and allows the player to place any number of monsters within 1 tile of the hero adjacent to that hero. The flavor text about Goblins doesn't really match the powers ability to affect all monsters, but the power is nonetheless perfect for the Dwarven Defender concept, which first existed in name in Third Edition D&D. Ancient Enemies, then, should probably be made available only to other Dwarven Fighters. Dwarven Ale, on the other hand, being essentially a healing power, seems suitable for Dwarves of any class. Legendary Knowledge relies upon the characteristically Dwarven knowledge of the Underdark and should likewise be available to all Dwarven characters. Lastly, we shall consider the system's lone Halfling, Regis. The Halfling Rogue has a Utility power called Hide which is based upon his small size. We may well consider this power to be available only to other Halfling Rogues, or to any future Rogues of small size, such as Gnomes. Now we shall consider the class powers. The powers from Ravenloft and Ashardalon are already interchangeable between the four classes that they share, which are Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard. Most of the Legend of Drizzt classes - Archer, Assassin, Barbarian, Battlerager and Swashbuckler - are unique to that set. But Legend of Drizzt does have a Fighter, a Ranger and a Rogue. Of Bruenor the Dwarven Fighter's powers, those that are suitable for any Fighter are Notched Axe (At-will), Lucky Hit (Utility), and Power Strike (Utility). The remaining powers either require Bruenor's Stance Token or have already been deemed more suitable as de facto Dwarf Racial Powers. Drizzt, the Drow Ranger, is next. The Drow Utility Powers he comes with are, of course, suitable only for Drow. Powers that require his Stance Token are also unique to him. Lone Drow can be fudged to be 'Lone Human,' 'Lone Elf,' etc. It represents a Ranger's ability to get around, and the flavor text and power name can always be considered unimportant. Inspirational Strike and Twin Strike are likewise sufficiently generic. Figurine of Guenhwyvar is probably best reserved for Drizzt, just because of the theme from the books. The At-will Powers associated with his two swords, Twinkle and Icingdeath, drip Drizzt theme as well, and thus should be saved for him and him alone. At last we come once more to Regis the Halfling. His Magic Mace and Ruby Pendant Atwill Powers are too much a part of his character to be given to anyone else. Mass Charm also requires the Ruby Pendant. All of his Daily Powers, however - Distracting Attack, Finish Off and Lone Wolf Strike - are suitable for any Rogue. Among the Utilities, Disarm, Sudden Escape and Tumble work as generic. We have already discussed the remaining power, Hide. One final note. Many of the Legend of Drizzt heroes are given specific powers at the start of the game, particularly the At-wills. Therefore, the question of whether they would choose certain powers from the other two sets is moot - they are simply not allowed such flexibility. However, they nonetheless get to choose Daily and Utility Powers, and those

should be made available to them from the other sets. This less flexible power assignment bears a resemblance to the D&D Essentials rules, for fans of the RPG. If any more sets in the Adventure System come out, we will take a look at them in the same light when that time comes. Hopefully these rules will give you a framework for having fun - they certainly have for us! Unlike the Villagers found in Wrath of Ashardalon, Allies, found in the Legend of Drizzt set, can hold their own. Two of the Allies are simply Utlility Powers for Athrogate and Drizzt, representing magical icons that can turn into a magical boar named Snort for Athrogate and a magical panther named Guenhwyvar for Drizzt. The other five Allies are lesser versions of several of the Heroes included in the set. For reasons unknown, this list does not include Athrogate the Dwarf Battlerager, nor does it include Artemis or Jarlaxle who can be played as Heroes or used as Villains according to the rules of the scenario. The list of Allies is:

Bruenor Battlehammer (Dwarf Fighter) Cattie-Brie (Human Archer) Drizzt Do'Urden (Drow Ranger) Regis (Halfling Rogue) Wulfgar (Human Barbarian)

Of these Allies, only Wulfgar is used in any of the scenarios. Guenhwyvar and Snort are essentially Utility Powers for their respective heroes, but the Bruenor, Catti-Brie, Drizzt Do'Urden and Regis ally cards were apparently included for custom purposes. This gives us carte blanche to do as we wish! Of the Allies, the hardest to kill in terms of AC/HP combo would be Bruenor (15/5),with Drizzt (15/4) and Wulfgar (12/6) taking up the middle of the pack and Regis (14/3) and Catti-Brie (15/3) being the most fragile. Their attacks are modest and their tactics simple. It would be easy enough to make a custom scenario using them along the lines of the one involving Wulfgar. However, taking Allies along on an adventure, especially if one is playing solo, seems to offer the most enjoyment. An Ally is not as useful as a full fledged Hero, and should not be treated as such. Healing Surges should not apply to them; once they are dead, they're dead. Nor does the game end when one dies - only the death of a true Hero should cause the game to be lost. If you wish to give the Ally some survivability, then allow him or her to come back in the active Hero's tile if that Hero has the option flip over a previously used card, and uses it on the Ally instead. To balance things, one can replace a Healing Surge with one strong or two weak Allies at the start of the game. An alternative is to trade a Utility Power for an Ally, though it should be mentioned that the actual Utility Power Allies - Guenhwyvar and Snort - have

fewer hit points than all the other Allies except for Regis. If you want more balance, trade out a Hero Ally for both a Utility Power and the starting treasure that all characters get. Activate Allies during the active Hero's Villain Phase, after Villains and before any monsters or traps. Treasure can be gained as normal by the active Hero when a controlled Ally kills a monster, but only if the active Hero did not already kill a monster this turn. These guidelines can make for greater replayability in the game and allow a larger party of adventurers with less fuss over controlling multiple characters. This article would not be complete if we did not consider a few scenario uses for the Allies:

When the active Hero ends his or her turn adjacent to a Dwarven Statue on a Dwarven Statue tile, if that hero is holding a designated item (perhaps Holy Water from the Ravenloft set) the player may take Bruenor as an Ally for the rest of the game. A similar requirement could allow the active Hero to summon Drizzt from the Drow Circle, where he has been trapped in magical stasis. Guenhwyvar can come along, too. The Crystal Prison idea for Wulfgar's scenario can be reused in any context. The Chamber tiles from Wrath of Ashardalon can be used to represent a prison where several Allies are being held. Heroes from the other sets could come to rescue the Legend of Drizzt Heroes, perhaps having been recruited by Athrogate. After a successful adventure in a campaign as per the last scenario in Wrath of Ashardalon, Allies can be hired as men-at-arms for an agreed-upon price whenever the Dwarven Traders come around.

A perusal of the monster decks from Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon shows that each has 12 monsters worth one experience, 12 monsters worth two experience and 6 monsters worth three experience. Legend of Drizzt breaks that mold somewhat. It has 12 monsters worth one experience, but only 9 worth two experience, and 5 worth three or four experience. Drizzt also has two Hunting Party cards to bring in two monsters and two Stalagmite cards to show that the 'monster' was really just a shadow. It would make sense, where possible, when modifying the deck of a given title in the series to adhere to this spread, since this is how each game was designed. We will look at each of the three titles in the series and see some ways in which each set might be modified by swapping out monsters from one set for another to expand play possibilities. Castle Ravenloft is already very tight on theme. The gothic Gargoyles and ghoulish Undead capture the essence of a haunted castle very well. The Rat Swarms seem to belong perfectly well in such a setting, and what Dracula (Strahd) story would be complete without Wolves? ('Children of the night. Hear how they sing?)" One change that might be made is to swap out the Kobold Skirmisher (the least thematic monster in the set, included only to support the villain Klak, the Kobold Sorcerer) for the

Hypnotic Spirit from Legend of Drizzt. However, if you wish to feature Klak, you might instead want to keep the Kobold Skirmisher and even add in the Kobold Dragonshield from Wrath of Ashardalon. In such a case, you are left to choose between the Rat Swarm and Zombie to swap out. Since the game is already replete with Undead, the Zombie might be the simplest to lose. Of course, you can always do a halfway measure and take out two Rat Swarms and one Zombie, and bring in the three Kobold Dragonshields. For added flavor, you can import the Kobold Warren event Encounter Card and the Kobold Trappers environment Encounter Card from Ashardalon as well. Simply choose Encounter Cards of the same subtype to remove from the deck. Wrath of Ashardalon offers two primary themes: one Draconic, and one Aberrant. The Kobold Skirmisher from Ravenloft fits into the Draconic theme of Ashardalon quite well. Feel free to ditch the Human Cultist, Orc Archer or even the Snake to bring this Dragon worshipper in. While you're at it, you can also bring in the villain Klak, as he is also a Kobold. Substituting him for the Kobold Dragonlord or even combining the two villains in one scenario can be great, thematic fun. The second primary theme of Aberrations does not really cry out for any specific monsters from the other sets, though one could argue that the Drider Dinin Do'urden from Legend of Drizzt represents a monstrous creature. Even the Feral Trolls from Drizzt work well with the Gibbering Mouthers, Grells and Otyugh, especially if you want an adventure that is more about weird and dangerous monsters than about a specific humanoid tribe. A secondary theme to Ashardalon is the clan diversity. You have Kobolds and a Kobold Villain, Orcs and an Orc Villain, and Duergar with a Duergar Villain. Add in a few more monster clans and you have basically recreated The Keep on the Borderlands, and old original D&D module. There are several ways to treat this effect, and the first is to look at certain Encounter Cards and Chamber Cards. To focus on humanoid clans, you can remove the following Encounter Cards from the Ashardalon deck: event-attacks Phalagar's Lair and Waking Dream, and event Unnatural Corruption. These cards are more focused on Aberrations. The event cards Duergar Outpost, Hall of the Orcs and Kobold Warrens favor certain creature types. You can remove one or more of these to represent the dominance of one clan over another. Again, bringing in the Kobold Skirmisher and the Villain Klak can represent a Kobold dungeon, while bringing in the Rat Swarm and Wolf, both Animals, really fills out the Orc Clan Lair Chamber Card and the Hall of the Orcs Encounter Card that each call for Animals and Orcs. There are several more options that require a bit of a balancing act in terms of the experience point values of monsters in the deck. You can substitute the Goblins - Archer, Cutter and Champion - from Legend of Drizzt and pull out monsters from one of the other tribes. Alternately, you can put in all the Goblins from Drizzt and the Kobold Skirmisher and Rat Swarm from Ravenloft, and take out a variety of Aberrations and

Devils. This would leave you primarily with Goblins, Kobolds and Orcs, which is very Keep on the Borderlands! You can really go overboard with the 'Keep' theme and throw in Skeletons and Zombies, which combine with the Human Cultists to create the Temple of Evil Chaos encounter area. This would probably add more monsters than you can shake a stick at, but don't forget that you needn't add in all three of a given monster, so you can have variety without having more than 12 monsters worth one or two experience each. While such a change would dilute the chances of two or more players having the same monster card and thereby limit the number of monster activations per turn, you can always take away a Healing Surge Token to make the game a bit more challenging. Legend of Drizzt is pretty well set as is, but the perfect monster swap would be to add in the Spider from Ravenloft and take out the Water Elemental, both of which are two experience monsters. And if you really want to get creative, use the Cavern Tiles from Drizzt in one of the other two sets. A final step in the direction of The Keep on the Borderlands would be to have all of the monster clans inhabit the winding caverns of the Underdark, which resemble nothing so much as the Caves of Chaos. To have a 'common room' for each tribe, use the Dire Chamber and Horrid Chamber tiles, and have a specific Cavern Tile trigger the placement of these Dungeon Tiles. Here is a sample list:

Broken Door Tile - place the Dire Chamber Entrance Tile, follow the instructions for it in Wrath of Ashardalon, and then shuffle the Kobold Clan Lair Chamber Card, Orc Clain Lair Chamber Card and any one other Chamber Card. If you Draw the Kobold or Orc card, follow the instructions on it. You can even substitute Klak for the Kobold Dragonlord if you wish. If you draw the third Chamber Card, place Goblins and Animals only in the chamber. You win if you kill all the monsters in the Dire Chamber. Dark Chasm Tile - Place the Ancient Throne Tile adjacent to the unexplored edge of the Dark Chasm Tile, then place one more Cavern Tile on each unexplored edge of the Ancient Throne Tile. After that, place the Altar on the Ancient Throne space. Each player places a monster on an empty tile, then each player places a second monster, playing empty tiles where possible. Discard any monsters that are not Undead or Human Cultists and draw again. You win if you destroy the altar and kill all the monsters thus placed (all of which should be marked with Shield Tokens). Feel free to make up your own ideas using the Underground River Tile, Crystal Shard Tile or just about anything else!

One criticism that some have had is the supposed lack of theme compared to Castle Ravenloft. In Ravenloft, you really feel like you are in a haunted mansion. In Ashardalon, some have felt, you are in a more generic dungeon crawl. While this may seem to be the case on the surface, a perusal of the components will reveal that there is actually quite a bit of theme to be had.

First of all, the dungeon, Firestorm Peak, is alive with magama flows, heated walls, volcanic gas, earthquakes and cave-ins - all the sorts of hazards you would expect in a dungeon set inside a volcano. There are also Kobold worshippers of the Dragon Ashardalon running around, which in D&D are the standard minions of evil dragons. Meerak, a Kobold Dragonlord, leads Ashardalon's faithful. There is a Rage Drake in the mountain, apparently one of Ashardalon's kin. A few Human Cultists round out the religious tone of Ashardalon as a Dragon God, and a few Devils (including the Duergar, a race of devil Dwarfs which actually have the 'Devil' keyword in this game) bring home that this is the lair of a sinister dragon god who brooks no trespass!

Adventure awaits! Photo credit: Nick Gauthier A few stray monsters, such as Cave Bears and Orcs, give the game a somewhat more generic feel at times, but the other set of monsters, the various abberations, bespeak a Far Realm influence that hails back to Second Edition Dungeons & Dragons module, Gates of Firestorm Peak. Grells, Gibbering Mouthers, and even an Otyugh plague the characters, but none so much as the Gauth, a Beholder kin, who is attempting to open a gate to the realm of madness! All right under the Mighty Dragon Ashardalon's nose. As a bonus, the Duergar are actually minions in the original D&D module, as is the backstory of the village of Longbridge being the local township from which the Wrath of Ashardalon characters hail. And these monsters are mean! While the monsters in Castle Ravenloft could slow or immobilize you, the monsters in Wrath of Ashardalon can poison you or daze you instead. If you aren't staggering from the lingering effects of a Cultists' dagger or a Serpent's bite, you just might by infected by the beak of a Grell. Even the Cave Bear gets in on the act, dazing you with a furious springing attack. Special Sentry monsters can call other monsters to their aid, and the Legion Devils appear three at a time. If you can even reach the boss monster, chances are these meanies will have you at death's door before you can even engage it. In Wrath of Ashardalon, as in the other two titles, players explore the dungeon by placing random tiles that spawn monsters. A deck of encounter cards makes very bad things

happen, which can be a curse, an earthquake, a poisoned dart trap, an assault by invisible snipers, or even just plain getting lost. The walls can become too hot to touch, you can disappear into a pit, and you can even be buried in a cave-in. The game does everything possible to try to kill you, monsters aside. You have to use your daily and utility powers carefully, and hope that they can recharge during the game. When you finally reach the boss monster, you are likely to be dogged by several enemies and low on resources. Chances are, you will fail. So why play? First off, the game has some new elements since Castle Ravenloft that make it an exciting dungeon crawl. There are possibly trapped doors to be unlocked and special large chambers that require you to place up to six specific tiles at a time. In some scenarios, you determine what is in these awesomely large chambers by drawing a card from a special Chamber deck. This gives some of the scenarios extra replayability - a scenario can be, 'Find the Dire Chamber and when you get there, draw a card to see what adventure awaits!' That is awesome, because you might stumble into the refuse pile of an Otyugh or the lair of an Orc Storm Shaman and his minions, for all you know. Villagers are to be found within the mountain, and you have to try to rescue them while keeping them from getting themselves killed. There are even objects, like the Altar, that you can destroy as a quest goal. Finally, there are treasure markers, indicating a monetary amount such as 100-500gp value, useful if you want to create a campaign where characters can buy items in subsequent advacntures. The last adventure actually features a campaign where you can use these treasure tokens to purchase new items from a group of Dwarven traders. The campaign even lets you swap out a power for another between adventures, much like retraining in 4th Edition D&D. All in all, the game plays well, is extremely challenging, and allows for great campaign play and custom scenario options. It is well supported by Wizards of the Coast with online scenarios that allow for compatibility with Castle Ravenloft, and even require components from both games. The replay value is amazing, and you are sure to get your money's worth

First of all, the heroes, particulary Drizzt Do'urden, are generally more powerful than the heroes in the other two sets. Right off the bat, if one simply uses a LoD hero in one of the other games (again, particularly Drizzt), one can expect to have an easier time of it. This can be salvaged, of course, if one considers that the other games, especially Wrath of Ashardalon, have some very challenging scenarios. The newer heroes can simply be used in lieu of adding an extra healing surge token to the heroes in those other sets. But if you are looking for heroes that are balanced against the other two games, you won't find it here. Other differences besides mere power exist for the heroes. They tend to get more assigned powers, similar to Healing Word for the Cleric in Raveloft, and are allowed to make fewer choices, particularly for the At-wills. However, heroes tend to get to choose

two Utility powers, and some of these, called Stances, can be used repeatedly throughout the game. This actually makes the heroes somewhat more fun to play, once you get past the fact that they are a step above the heroes from Ravenloft and Ashardalon. You will even find heroes that have a Speed of 7, which is yet another stretched limit. In spite of the more robust heroes, the game is rather challenging, and the newer monsters and encounters make it more dangerous for lesser heroes. Several monsters such as the Hypnotic Spirit and Water Elemental attack each hero on a tile. The Spider Swarm can poison everyone, and the Drow Wizard damages all of the heroes on a miss. (Only one monster in each of the previous sets can attack all heroes on a tile). If the Goblin Champion starts adjacent to a hero, he gets to attack, also damaging on a miss, and then he can immediately run away! The Drow Duellist can attack twice, and the Hunting Drake moves two tiles toward the hero with the fewest hit points, making him deadlier than the otherwise similar Castle Ravenloft Wolf. Then there are the monsters worth 4 experience. Two Feral Trolls and a Drider named Dinin Do'urden are each have 3 or 4 hit points and get passed to the player to the right after each villain phase, thereby activating on each player's turn like Villains. The greater hp and activations on each player's turn effectively make them semi-villains. This precedent was actually set by the promo figures from GenCon for the previous two games, but was made standard in this set. These 'level four' monsters also close the threat gap between the level 1-3 monsters of previous sets and the level 5 and 6 Villains. And while there aren't quite as many monsters in this set, the amount of plastic used for the Feral Trolls and Dinin Do'urden make up for it. A surprising departure from the previous sets was the lack of any level 6 Villains in Drizzt. Castle Ravenloft had Straud and a Dracolich, Wrath of Ashardalon had the Ancient Red Dragon Ashardalon and a Gauth Beholder - but all of the villains in Legend of Drizzt, including the mega-sized Demon sculpt and the epically cool Shadow Dragon, are each only level 5. This is puzzling, especially since the set upped the ante with the 4 experience point monsters. For what it's worth, the villain cards in this set are all of the same smaller level 5 villain size, which makes more room for double-size tiles, like the Start Tile. A last point of departure is the fact that all of the tiles are now labeled 'Cavern Tile' instead of 'Dungeon Tile.' This would seem to make mixing and matching tiles between sets more difficult, at least if you want generic scenarios. On other hand, the new style of tile is pretty nifty, and really captures the Underdark feel. And to add to that feel, there are Narrow Passage tiles that inflict a -4 Armor Class penalty to heroes and monsters on those tiles. These penalties are denoted by purple '-4 AC' tile tokens that are shaped like the damage tokens that show damage on a monster. And while we are on it, there are now damage tokens that show 2 damage, in keeping with the higher hp monsters. Now for the pluses. Legend of Drizzt adds several fun elements to an already exciting line. The tiles now include small, trapezoidal 'Cavern Edge' tiles that are about one-fourth the size of a regular tile, and which can be used to finish off a cave passaged. These are

especially useful in the scenarios where you build your own cavern maps at the start of the game. There are also volcanic vent tiles that are dangerous for heroes to linger on because certain encounter cards can cause damage to anyone on or near these tiles. Some of the encounters can also immobilize or poison the heroes, and condition tokens exist for each of these. It's worth noting the the Immobilize token first appeared in Castle Ravenloft and the Poison token first appeared in Wrath of Ashardalon, so Legend of Drizzt took one from each. Other terrain aspects include a Secret Tunnel (with two map tokens) that can be placed by a treasure card, a Camp (also with a token) that can be placed to allow a player to skip drawing and encounter card for that turn, and treasure chests that might be are sometimes trapped - and often hold treasure. Unfortunately, like the doors introduced in Wrath of Ashardalon, there is no way to disable a chest trap, not even a trick like the Mage Hand of the Dragonborn Wizard Hero included in that set. Several of the small, round item and similar tokens also boast full color print. Allies bring some creativity to the turn sequence. For example, if you are playing Drizzt Do'urden and a friend is playing Catie-Brie in a two-player game, it is possible to have one of the other heroes appear as an ally, which is essentially a sort of friendly monster card that activates after Villains but before any monsters or traps you control during your villain phase. These allies are not as powerful as the same characters are when they are included as heroes in their own right, but it is nice to have the magical panther Genhwyvar (who actually does not appear as a hero in the game) or the Barbarian Wulfgar (who does) on one's side in battle. The can be particularly useful since they activate after a new tile places a monster during the exploration phase, but before that monster can attack you! The game also continues the concept of curse encounter cards from Wrath of Ashardalon. It does not do more with the multi-monster Legion Devil concept from Ashardalon, nor with the Sentry monster concept that causes a monster on a tile by itself near an unexplored edge to call other monsters for aid. But there is no need to recreate all of the newer stuff that made Ashardalon great. Besides, there is a monster card called Hunting Party that has you draw two monsters for the turn, and another, called Stalagmite, that is essentially a 'no monster this turn card.' These add some flavor to the monster deck, and the Hunting Party does it in a more elegant way than the Sentry monster in Ashardalon. One of the most fascinating ideas they put into this box that really adds a new dimension to the game is the inclusion of both competitive and team scenarios. Competitive scenarios are 'every hero for herself,' while team scenarios pit one or more players against the remaining players. Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle can be used both as heroes and as villains, depending on the scenario in question. And there is no question of theme is this set; it is dripping with it. Ultimately, you will want this game if you like the others in the series, or if you like quest games in general. This might even be a great first game to get, particularly if you are only going to buy one. The cooperative, competitive and team scenarios offer more options for

players looking for different gameplay experiences, and it doesn't take long to overlook the differences between Legend of Drizzt and the earlier titles. First, it is important to understand that the previous two titles, Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon, are so similar to one another that Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has released a three-adventure campaign utilizing components from both. Wrath of Ashardalon introduces a few new elements like doors and campaigns, but ultimately it cleaves to the thematic and mechanical precedents set by Castle Ravenloft. While it is worth exploring the new elements in Legend of Drizzt (LoD) that are in fact fully compatible with the rest of the series, let us first explore a few minor to moderate issues of back compatibility from Legend of Drizzt to the other two games.

Legend of Drizzt Photo credit: Nick Gauthier First of all, the heroes, particulary Drizzt Do'urden, are generally more powerful than the heroes in the other two sets. Right off the bat, if one simply uses a LoD hero in one of the other games (again, particularly Drizzt), one can expect to have an easier time of it. This can be salvaged, of course, if one considers that the other games, especially Wrath of Ashardalon, have some very challenging scenarios. The newer heroes can simply be used in lieu of adding an extra healing surge token to the heroes in those other sets. But if you are looking for heroes that are balanced against the other two games, you won't find it here. Other differences besides mere power exist for the heroes. They tend to get more assigned powers, similar to Healing Word for the Cleric in Raveloft, and are allowed to make fewer choices, particularly for the At-wills. However, heroes tend to get to choose two Utility powers, and some of these, called Stances, can be used repeatedly throughout the game. This actually makes the heroes somewhat more fun to play, once you get past the fact that they are a step above the heroes from Ravenloft and Ashardalon. You will even find heroes that have a Speed of 7, which is yet another stretched limit. In spite of the more robust heroes, the game is rather challenging, and the newer monsters and encounters make it more dangerous for lesser heroes. Several monsters such as the Hypnotic Spirit and Water Elemental attack each hero on a tile. The Spider Swarm can poison everyone, and the Drow Wizard damages all of the heroes on a miss. (Only one monster in each of the previous sets can attack all heroes on a tile). If the Goblin

Champion starts adjacent to a hero, he gets to attack, also damaging on a miss, and then he can immediately run away! The Drow Duellist can attack twice, and the Hunting Drake moves two tiles toward the hero with the fewest hit points, making him deadlier than the otherwise similar Castle Ravenloft Wolf. Then there are the monsters worth 4 experience. Two Feral Trolls and a Drider named Dinin Do'urden are each have 3 or 4 hit points and get passed to the player to the right after each villain phase, thereby activating on each player's turn like Villains. The greater hp and activations on each player's turn effectively make them semi-villains. This precedent was actually set by the promo figures from GenCon for the previous two games, but was made standard in this set. These 'level four' monsters also close the threat gap between the level 1-3 monsters of previous sets and the level 5 and 6 Villains. And while there aren't quite as many monsters in this set, the amount of plastic used for the Feral Trolls and Dinin Do'urden make up for it. A surprising departure from the previous sets was the lack of any level 6 Villains in Drizzt. Castle Ravenloft had Straud and a Dracolich, Wrath of Ashardalon had the Ancient Red Dragon Ashardalon and a Gauth Beholder - but all of the villains in Legend of Drizzt, including the mega-sized Demon sculpt and the epically cool Shadow Dragon, are each only level 5. This is puzzling, especially since the set upped the ante with the 4 experience point monsters. For what it's worth, the villain cards in this set are all of the same smaller level 5 villain size, which makes more room for double-size tiles, like the Start Tile. A last point of departure is the fact that all of the tiles are now labeled 'Cavern Tile' instead of 'Dungeon Tile.' This would seem to make mixing and matching tiles between sets more difficult, at least if you want generic scenarios. On other hand, the new style of tile is pretty nifty, and really captures the Underdark feel. And to add to that feel, there are Narrow Passage tiles that inflict a -4 Armor Class penalty to heroes and monsters on those tiles. These penalties are denoted by purple '-4 AC' tile tokens that are shaped like the damage tokens that show damage on a monster. And while we are on it, there are now damage tokens that show 2 damage, in keeping with the higher hp monsters. Now for the pluses. Legend of Drizzt adds several fun elements to an already exciting line. The tiles now include small, trapezoidal 'Cavern Edge' tiles that are about one-fourth the size of a regular tile, and which can be used to finish off a cave passaged. These are especially useful in the scenarios where you build your own cavern maps at the start of the game. There are also volcanic vent tiles that are dangerous for heroes to linger on because certain encounter cards can cause damage to anyone on or near these tiles. Some of the encounters can also immobilize or poison the heroes, and condition tokens exist for each of these. It's worth noting the the Immobilize token first appeared in Castle Ravenloft and the Poison token first appeared in Wrath of Ashardalon, so Legend of Drizzt took one from each. Other terrain aspects include a Secret Tunnel (with two map tokens) that can be placed by a treasure card, a Camp (also with a token) that can be placed to allow a player to skip

drawing and encounter card for that turn, and treasure chests that might be are sometimes trapped - and often hold treasure. Unfortunately, like the doors introduced in Wrath of Ashardalon, there is no way to disable a chest trap, not even a trick like the Mage Hand of the Dragonborn Wizard Hero included in that set. Several of the small, round item and similar tokens also boast full color print. Allies bring some creativity to the turn sequence. For example, if you are playing Drizzt Do'urden and a friend is playing Catie-Brie in a two-player game, it is possible to have one of the other heroes appear as an ally, which is essentially a sort of friendly monster card that activates after Villains but before any monsters or traps you control during your villain phase. These allies are not as powerful as the same characters are when they are included as heroes in their own right, but it is nice to have the magical panther Genhwyvar (who actually does not appear as a hero in the game) or the Barbarian Wulfgar (who does) on one's side in battle. The can be particularly useful since they activate after a new tile places a monster during the exploration phase, but before that monster can attack you! The game also continues the concept of curse encounter cards from Wrath of Ashardalon. It does not do more with the multi-monster Legion Devil concept from Ashardalon, nor with the Sentry monster concept that causes a monster on a tile by itself near an unexplored edge to call other monsters for aid. But there is no need to recreate all of the newer stuff that made Ashardalon great. Besides, there is a monster card called Hunting Party that has you draw two monsters for the turn, and another, called Stalagmite, that is essentially a 'no monster this turn card.' These add some flavor to the monster deck, and the Hunting Party does it in a more elegant way than the Sentry monster in Ashardalon. One of the most fascinating ideas they put into this box that really adds a new dimension to the game is the inclusion of both competitive and team scenarios. Competitive scenarios are 'every hero for herself,' while team scenarios pit one or more players against the remaining players. Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle can be used both as heroes and as villains, depending on the scenario in question. And there is no question of theme is this set; it is dripping with it. Ultimately, you will want this game if you like the others in the series, or if you like quest games in general. This might even be a great first game to get, particularly if you are only going to buy one. The cooperative, competitive and team scenarios offer more options for players looking for different gameplay experiences, and it doesn't take long to overlook the differences between Legend of Drizzt and the earlier titles