Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game

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Some mention that it's easy to learn and fairly quick to set up, while others say that it can be difficult at times, and the different quests demand different strategies. This is true of every printed piece except of course the cards, which are thinner to allow easy shuffling (still high quality). But really, to suggest a game that has such great miniatures as this one does as “bland” is just silly.

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. There is no "basic attack" - but you have two at-wills so you can usually attack in some way if you want. Evil lurks in the towers and dungeons of Castle Ravenloft, and only heroes of exceptional bravery can survive the horrors within. It was pure luck, I was surrounded by monsters but an Event card threw me to the furthest point of the dungeon away from everyone. and an Encounter card can suddenly teleport one of you 6 tiles away from the rest or cause the game to completely change.This seems a little odd but it really only matters on the first turn, when there are no monsters to attack on your Hero phase. 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.

I first purchased Wrath of Ashardalon, then bought Castle Ravenloft, Legend of Drizzt, and Temple of Elemental Evil. The active hero (that is, the person whose turn it is) can either attack and move, move and attack, or move twice.It gets to attack you on the Villain phase, and then you don't move again till the Hero phase of your next turn. 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. Castle Ravenloft provides these treasures, ranging from items like the ring of accuracy, the holy avenger or the lucky charm. 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.

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. I don't know what all the scenarios are in Ravenloft as I only played a couple, but I know that there are several that can be played through. It’s partly thanks to the co-operative nature of the game that it gets this effect across, and here the co-operation 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 co-op board games. We just naturally fell into a habit of not making ridiculous requests and not allowing weird interpretations. Once the scenario is chosen you lay down the starting tile, which is the dungeon entrance, and put your minis (included) on it.The dungeon tiles do look a bit generic but on the upside this leaves them interchangeable with future releases. 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.

At least for the ranger, I felt it was a poor suggestion (I also played the rogue but just custom chose my powers). The first few I painted were terrible, but my skills are improving, and the painted monsters and allies make the game even more enjoyable.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.