From the Blog

Ashardalon stomping us.

This really happened.

As I promised here, this is the review of the “full version” of Wizard of the Coast‘s new boardgame Wrath of Ashardalon.

To start off, let me tell you: I think I did something wrong.

Maybe it was just bad luck, but the game was hard. Really hard. So hard that we didn’t get past the first level because Ashardalon got all up in and firebreathed us to death.

We tried to use the campaign rules, and I just don’t think I read them correctly. I’m going to blame someone else for that, though. I think that’s the fault of the game rules. In fact, I’m still not sure whether I read them correctly or not.

The rules are very brief, and there’s not, if I recall correctly, an index. If there is, I didn’t see it somehow during the game.

In any case, when Ashardalon showed up, we thought “Really?” It seems like, if you’re playing campaign mode, Ashardalon shouldn’t show up in any definitive manner until, you know, the end. Being the boss and all.

I’m thinking the idea is to chain together the 12 or so adventures in the book, and that’s what Campaign mode is. Oh, and take out the Ashardalon-shows-up-and-kicks-your-first-level-heroes-in-the-butt card.

That’s how we’re going to play it next time.

In any case, despite all that, I still had a blast. I know another player did. I’m guessing the other two players had a lukewarm reaction. And I understand it. Especially if you’re already a D&D player, you might come to this game expecting something more like D&D. For me, it was just enough. For others, you could get a lot of sweet components and, with some none-too-difficult modding, make the whole thing compatible with standard 4E.

I will tell you that the thing kept me in a state of dread the whole time. I like that. It’s like what playing a good horror game (or watching a good horror movie) is like: you don’t want to keep playing, but you can’t help it.

Also? The environmental hazard switchups are, on a conceptual level, completely hilarious. Here’s how it goes:

“Oh, man, hidden snipers! People are everywhere shooting at us! Better stay together!”

Two turns later:

“Oh, man! The walls are made of magma all of a sudden! GET AWAY FROM THOSE THINGS!”

In the end (after one halfway successful playthrough), I’m not sure it’s worth the sticker price unless you’re got a decent group to break up the financial pain. We’ll play it again, and I think our experience will be improved, but I think, in order to level up, this game needs to expand the scope of player choice. What I really want from it? A stripped down, videogamed up version of 4E. It could happen. It should happen. And it would look something like this game. Just not quite like this game.

Mar
04

Wrath of Ashardalon
I picked up Wizard of the Coast‘s new board game Wrath of Ashardalon today.

We’re going to play it tomorrow morning. I figured there would be 10,000,000 components to punch out, and that was right. I spent at least half an hour at that.

But, before the manual labor, I read through the rulebook (not having any experience with the prior boardgame Castle Ravenloft) and the adventure book.

And it turns out you can play this thing solo! It’s divided into 12 “adventures,” with an option to play everything in “campaign” form with some expanded rules. Very cool.

So I tried out the solo adventure. I choose the dwarf fighter chick and got down to business.

Now, keeping in mind that my experience is a single solo adventure with one character, here we go:

I liked it. That’s it. It was fun. I would have rather played it than most videogames. I would rather have kept playing it than get back to Dead Space 2, which I love. I’m not saying I prefer it to that—I’m merely saying it held my interest well, and that’s saying something.

The game works by having the party share a group of “healing surges,” which are not healing surges as you remember them from 4e. Instead, they’re more like a collectively owned share of phoenix downs from Final Fantasy. Anyone can use them when he goes down, and they restore around half of your health, varying for class/race.

The difficulty of the “adventure” is modified by altering the default number of healing surges the party receives. I believe the default is 2. I decided to play without assuming I’d be able to use any, just to test the difficulty in a statistically insignificant way.

In the end, I used one: during the boss fight, on the round before the last one, when a wall exploded behind me and sprayed me with lava.

Yeah, that happens.

I used it, killed the boss, and got out of there.

The whole experience was tense. My wife can testify. Every five minutes, she’d hear me shout something because I was sure I was going to die the next round. But the “kill a monster -> get a random bonus” flow worked to keep me alive—that and very literal readings of the monster tactics card. I played them as stupid as I possibly could, and I think I did it correctly.

If you’re just some forever alone dude that doesn’t have any friends that play boardgames, don’t get it. It’s fun, but it’s not worth the pricetag for single player unless you get it on the cheap somewhere. Now, if you have friends, I imagine this thing is a barrel of laughs.

Look for my multiplayer review tomorrow.