Mice and Mystics Review

One of the hottest games lately has been Mice and Mystics.

In Mice and Mystics, you are a group of mice (that used to be humans) attempting to save your kingdom from an evil overlord that is seducing your father, the King.  Also, the evil overlord controls lots of rats, which is horribly inconvenient.  The game is scenario driven, and in each scenario, the players are working together to accomplish a certain goal - whether that is escaping the castle, defeating the house cat, sending a message via a crow, or something else entirely.  To do this, the players alternate taking turns with their mice.  On each turn, you are allowed to move and take an action.  The different actions include attacking, searching, exploring, and recovering.  As free actions, you are also allowed to level up, equip your mouse, or share equipment with other mice on the same space.  Most of the actions are fairly straightforward.  When attacking, you roll dice and compare the number of hits against the number of blocks - and if there are more hits than blocks, then damage is assigned (and if cheese is rolled, then the side that rolled it gets to collect cheese tokens).  Searching lets you find new items, exploring lets you move to the next tile (or flip the current tile), and recovering allows you to attempt to remove status affects.  Among the mice's turns, the minions that are on the board will also get to take turns; their turns work similarly to the mice turns, but they will almost always attack.  If the mice are able to successfully accomplish their goal before time runs out, then they succeed!  If all of the mice are captured at the same time, or time runs out, then they were stopped without being able to accomplish their mission - thus dooming the kingdom!  (There are various things that "advance the timer," like having mice captured and having the minions collect too much cheese.)

At its core, Mice and Mystics is a very lightweight role playing game.  It includes leveling up, an ongoing campaign, characters that you should embrace, and an overarching story.  In fact, the game comes with both a rulebook and a quest book.  And, that quest book contains 11 different quests.  So, honestly, my first pro for Mice and Mystics is that it is a wonderful choice if you are looking for a way to have a laid back role playing experience that can easily include non-gamers and younger kids (probably as young as 8-12).  I think that the campaign is put together well, and I truly appreciate two specific elements.  First, I like that each scenario doesn't have the same victory condition, and second that there are decisions (side quests) that you have to make during the campaign that will affect what happens later.  And, I especially appreciate that, if you play like I do, then you must make these decisions from an uninformed perspective - which does a good job of representing the vantage point of your characters.  Should I go try to get the cook's attention?  Well, I don't know - do I actually need her attention?  What advantage is there in that?  Well, it seems like a good idea - let's do it!

Equip your characters and help them to level up!

The next pro for Mice and Mystics is the world and the story that you find yourself thrown into.  Suddenly, your father has taken ill, and this evil woman has far too much control over your kingdom.  So, what do you do?  You have the castle mystic turn you all into mice, obviously.  Now, as mice, everything is gargantuan!  In fact, even the rats are larger than you.  Both the setting and the enemies in the game do a good job of helping you invest in this theme.  I also like that, as you experience different things, you get to learn more about the story of what is happening around you.  In fact, there are story segments both before and after each adventure, along with an opening prologue and final epilogue for the quest book itself.  And, for the most part the story is interesting - though there are occasionally lines that make me cringe.  (My least favorite line in the book is, "and to make sure Collin didn't dawdle, Nez said, 'Now don't ya dawdle, boy!'"  I really wish they had someone read through that and realize that the word dawdle sounds awkward when used twice in the same sentence.  A thesaurus would have truly helped this line.)  There are also some minor logic problems, in my opinion, but if I go into detail, I'm concerned that I might spoil part of the story for you.  And, as I said before, the story is one of the best parts of the game!

Yet, though I thought that the campaign was well done, there were some definite cons that I had for Mice and Mystics.  The most immediate con that I had for Mice and Mystics was that I felt like I was constantly running into rule ambiguities.  Now, I will confess - I learned this game from a tutorial video.  However, this video was on Plaid Hat Games' site, and was referenced on the front of the rules ("If you want us to teach you how to play, you can visit...") so I was hoping that watching it would be all I needed in order to start playing the game.  Unfortunately, after watching it, I still didn't feel like I understood the game very well, and even after reading the rulebook and referencing it during the game, we often found ourselves guessing at how certain things worked.  One example is with the "Fishhook and Thread" object.  This object is found in the water on the first scenario.  When moving out of water, the rulebook specifies that you must roll a die, and if you roll a "star", then you successfully move out of the water.  The Fishhook and Thread allows you to connect two spaces on the tile and move between the spaces "as if they were normal adjacent spaces."  Now, does "normal" mean non-water, or does it mean that you are able to move between them as if the spaces in between didn't exist?  Do you roll a die, or not?  This is just one example of a multitude of times that I found myself scratching my head trying to decide what exactly the game intended for me to do.  I'm hoping that in the future the FAQ for the game starts addressing more of these issues, but when I referenced it, it still felt like it was in its infancy stage.

Epic battles on miniature scales

The next con that I had was that I felt like the actions were too prescribed.  Now, if you recall, there were several different things that a mouse could do on his turn.  That sounds exciting, right?  Unfortunately, in order to actually explore (move to the next tile), your current tile had to be cleared of minions.  Why the mice decide they need to fight every household pest is beyond me (ok, ok, they are "heroic" mice - sure), but I really didn't understand why they weren't willing to ever run away.  Regardless, the net effect of this rule is that most turns amount to charging at opponents and attacking.  You will occasionally search, and you will occasionally explore (well, at least if you hope to advance the game), but when you should do each thing is pretty obvious, and so there's not a lot of strategy behind when to fight and when to do other things.

My final con for Mice and Mystics was that I felt the dice played too much of a factor in determining the outcome of the game.  Now, random elements in games are good - they help each play experience to be different.  This is a great thing!  However, in Mice and Mystics, you roll the dice so often that it feels like the entire game depends on how those rolls land.  Did the minions attack you and get some of your cheese?  Did they also roll a lot of cheese when they were attacking and defending?  Then there's a good chance that you aren't going to have a chance to complete your quest, since time will run out well before you are able to actually advance in the game - after all, you hear a roach scurrying around the corner, and you can't resist engaging in an epic battle of one inch warriors! 

Overall, I give Mice and Mystics a 7.0/10.  I think that the campaign nature of the game is well done, but I found the actual gameplay grew stale for me too quickly, so I will probably move away from the game without bothering to complete the campaign.  However, the story was interesting enough for me to cheat and read it, without taking the time to play the chapters.

If Mice and Mystics sounds interesting, you might also check out Runebound, Talisman, and Flash Point: Fire Rescue.

Zombie in my Pocket Review

A quick game where you can get your zombie-fix is Zombie in my Pocket.

In Zombie in my Pocket, the object of the game is to find the Cursed Totem (and let your buddy carry it - after all, it is cursed), find the Sacred Etchings, and then bury the Cursed Totem to stop the Zombie Apocalypse that is infesting your backyard. To do this, each turn one of the players gets to serve as leader. He then decides on one of three courses of action for the "team": explore, perform an event in the current location (if available), or cower (to regain one health for each player still in the game). If you explore or attempt an event, then you must resolve the top card from the Event Deck (normally get jumped by large numbers of Zombies). If you choose to cower, then you simply discard the top card from the Event Deck. If you are able to successfully bury the Totem before going through the Event Deck three times, then whoever is still alive wins; if not, then you all lose. Oh, and if you all die you all lose.

The first thing that I like about Zombie in my Pocket is the Event Deck serving as a timer. This forces the players to continue exploring instead of constantly cowering. Another neat aspect of this is that whenever an Item card would be found, an Event card is flipped to determine which Item is received - which means that you have to waste time in order to find the Item. This is often worth the time lost, but sometimes a greedy leader can cost the entire group the game!

Another aspect of the Event Cards is that they get progressively more difficult as the game continues. This means, if you are able to explore everything incredibly quickly and find and bury the Totem, then you can win with minimal cowering. However, if things start going wrong and you start cowering and wasting cards in the deck, well, you should hope you gained items at some point. Otherwise, the Zombie Horde will probably cause problems for you.

The last thing pro that I will mention about Zombie in my Pocket is the Fight or Flee mechanic. Whenever your group encounters a group of Zombies, each player must independently determine if it is in his best interests to fight or to flee. Then, everyone reveals their decision at the same time. If everyone flees, everyone loses a life and you return to the previous room. If everyone fights, then you compare your total strength (one per player plus any weapons) to the total strength of the Zombies (normally more than what you have) and damage is dealt out as evenly as possible. However, if some people decide to fight while other players decide to abandon their "teammates", then the ones who fled get to gain health by abandoning their friends. Yeah, that's fairly awesome. I enjoyed constantly pondering whether I should abandon my friends or not (and acting like I was going to abandon them each time). Of course, in the end, I was left to hold off an entire Zombie Army with only my wits, my looks, and my Chainsaw... needless to say, I was not a winner in that game.

A neutral point of note about Zombie in my Pocket is that there is not a large amount of replayability in the game. Whereas this is almost always a con in my reviews, I do not see it as a con here. Zombie in my Pocket, I believe, was designed as a light game in which you could play a quick scenario and enjoy running away from Zombies. It is priced accordingly. It isn't Betrayal At House On The Hill or Arkham Horror - don't expect it to be.  I don't think that you should go buy this game thinking that it will provide you unending hours of entertainment. Go into it expecting that you should be able to get what you pay for - that it should be able to entertain you to play through it several times, and then you can move on from the game.

The first (and biggest) con that I have to Zombie in my Pocket is that the board is designed in a way that it is possible to run into a deadend in every direction. In one of our games, I noticed that we only had one valid open door left, and so I cheated to see if we had any deadend rooms left. Sure enough, we had one. I shuffled all of the remaining tiles and pulled a random one - it was the deadend! At this point, there was no way to win the game because the architect of the mansion did not see fit to include hallways to each of the inner rooms (so where these Zombies were coming from was beyond me). We re-shuffled the draw pile and took a different room instead, thus continuing our game, but it seems to be a flaw in the game if you can run into this kind of situation.

Overall, I give Zombie in my Pocket a 7.5/10. It is what it is - a simple, single scenario, Zombie game. It is fun, I in no way am disappointed in it, but I will probably move on and play other games now.

If you like Zombie or Horror-themed games, you might also check out Nightfall, Zombie Dice, and (of course) Betrayal at House on the Hill.

Talisman (Revised 4th Edition) Review

So, after hearing mixed reviews for a long time, I was finally able to play several games of Talisman: The Magical Quest Game, Revised 4th edition.

In Talisman, each player takes on the role of a generic person of a given type (Sorceress, Thief, Wizard, etc). From here, he must wander around the board fighting monsters and encountering strange phenomena until he is able to strengthen himself enough to go to the Crown of Command and then start killing off all of the other players (in the Crown of Command he gets a magical spell that lets him kill them from where he is without chasing them). On any given turn, the active player will roll a six-sided die and will then have to move that many places around the board in either direction. Once he finishes movement, he will encounter whatever is already there (if anything), or he might draw a new encounter card (or cards) as directed by the game space (or he may even try to fight another player if one is present). Once the encounter is resolved, his turn is over and the next person repeats the process. This continues until one person quests all the way into the Crown of Command (which requires a Talisman (hence the name "Talisman") to get into) and destroys all of his opponents (who are glaring at him for shooting them).

Talisman is a conundrum to me, and so this section about pros and cons may seem a little bit different than normal. For example, here is the first conundrum: Talisman felt like a lightweight game to me, and yet seems to average around an hour per player. By "lightweight", I mean that there are not a lot of stats that have to be kept track of, and combat is really pretty simple (compare your stat plus a six-sided die roll to the opponent's stat plus a six-sided die roll). It is a very quick paced game in which the time between each of your turns is only about a minute or two, even in five player. And yet, with this, the game can still take a long time to play (this is not as much true in two player, but even still the "short version" of the game where you only have to enter the Crown of Command (not kill everyone else) will take about one and a half hours). Because of that, I don't know that I can easily fit it into either the category of lightweight or heavy.

One of the pros for Talisman is that, since it feels lightweight, it allows for social interaction during a game. To me, Talisman is a game that I can play when I am really wanting to hang out with people but I don't really know what I want to do - we can talk and enjoy each other's company, but we can also be throwing dice and playing a game. In this same vein, it is also a game that I could see myself playing on a Saturday afternoon while watching baseball on the TV (yes, I like baseball), and the learning curve of the game is small enough that almost anybody could learn the rules and play it with you (though they might rudely make fun of our hobby, but that's a different discussion).  Yet, with the small learning curve, there are still a few random rules that are easy to forget - like how many spells you are able to hold based on your craft; see, it's a conundrum.

The main unique pro that I have for Talisman is the concept of fate tokens.  How many times have you made the worst possible roll of the dice at the most critical moment?  For me, that seems to be the inevitable time that I will fail any given die roll.  That's where fate tokens come into play.  Each player starts with some fate tokens (based on their character) and you can use a fate token to re-roll a single die (only one that you have rolled on your turn - not one that was rolled against another player, and not one that was rolled against you).  You have to keep the result (even if you're like me and roll the same number again).  You can use this to re-roll for movement, battle, or encountering a location.  This really helps you to avoid being turned into a Toad.... which can happen.  (There are even special cards and figures for Toads - four of them, for in case lots of players are turned into Toads!)  I've not seen anything like fate tokens in any other game, and I think that it is a great mechanic.

One thing that is noteworthy about Talisman but I both like and dislike is this: your character can actually die in Talisman. Whereas in games like Runebound, your character is "knocked out" (and you only lose an item or a few turns), in Talisman, if your character dies you get a new character and you have to start over. I thought that this was interesting and forced players to be much more careful about their life total. With that said, however, if someone dies after a few hours of the game, I personally would prefer that they were eliminated; realistically at that point they aren't going to win either way.

My second point of note is that Talisman is built to have player interaction.  Whereas you can play Runebound (and many other games) as a race to see who can kill the big bad voodoo monster first, Talisman really pushes you towards fighting each other.  There are several spells that affect other players, characters who have abilities that let you steal from other players, and even encounters that will affect the other players - in fact, in order to win, you have to kill everyone else!  Many people will love this part of the game (they probably actually did player versus player combat in Runebound!) but some would prefer that this aspect of the game was a bit less emphasized.  I just thought you would want to know about it up front.

One thing that I didn't like about Talisman is how the encounters were setup. The entire time you are playing the game, you are drawing from the same pool of encounter cards; the way that challenges become more difficult is that you either experience more of them at once or the board causes their traits to be somewhat higher. This setup does not allow for characters to experience monsters that are the appropriate level for their character - you are just as likely to experience a strength 7 dragon when you just start the game as you are to experience a pool of life that replenishes you or a strength 1 wild boar (which in the middle might get a plus two to be a strength 3 wild boar) when you are getting close to the final boss.  What's more, in the base game of Talisman, there are far too many "useful" (or net no-gain) encounters.  From the times I've played, it seems like there are twice as many items that you might find than there are monsters to fight.  So, you might purposefully go to the locations that force you to encounter several cards, just to see what all you can draw (and hope that you don't run into one of the 2-3 dragons).  I wish that there were several decks in the game - one corresponding to each region of the board.

Another thing to note that I don't consider a pro or con is movement. I had heard about the movement of the game for a long time before playing it - how awful rolling the six-sided die was. Whereas, I definitely don't like the movement system as well as I do in Runebound, I did not feel like it detracted from the game. Yes, there were times that I wish I could have rolled differently, but since you are able to have an encounter on every space that you land on (as opposed to only certain ones with encounter markers), the way that the movement works doesn't really help or hinder the overall game play.

Overall, I give Talisman an 8.5/10. I would be willing to play it some more, and I mainly envision playing it while hanging out with good friends and/or watching baseball.

Legend of Drizzt Review

One of my very first reviews (I believe it was actually my second overall review) was of Castle Ravenloft. I enjoyed the game, but felt like it had limited replayability. Now that Wizards of the Coast has made two more Dungeons & Dragons titles, I was willing to try again - this time with Legend of Drizzt.

In Legend of Drizzt (just like in Castle Ravenloft), you are playing Dungeons and Dragons as a board game. This means that the scenarios and monsters are preset, but it gives you the opportunity to play with all of your friends without any of them having to run the game as the GM. Each player takes on the role of a hero and the players collectively attempt to accomplish the goal of the scenario (beat the big dragon, recover the treasure - you know, something heroic). Each turn, the players are able to move twice, or move and attack (or attack and then move). After doing this, if they are adjacent to an unexplored edge of the board, they can reveal a new dungeon tile (and a monster). If they don't explore, then they have an encounter (which never ends well, especially if you are near volcanic vents). Finally, the active player must move all of the monsters that he controls. Play continues like this until one of the heroes has died or until the heroes have accomplished their mission.

The first thing that I like about Legend of Drizzt is the same thing that attracted me initially to Castle Ravenloft - I enjoy that I am able to take part in a nice role-playing adventure without all of the setup time. Compared to a normal campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, you can very quickly start (and play) a game of Drizzt.  And yet, though the game is brief compared to a normal campaign, the scenarios are very well done and I did not feel like the lack of a GM made the game any less enjoyable.

The next thing that I like about Drizzt is that you can customize your character, and that there are several characters to choose from - including some characters that are villains in some scenarios and heroes in others (I thought that this was a nice touch). There are significantly more heroes than players allowed in a game, which means that if you play the game repeatedly, you can use different characters each time. In addition, you are able to customize the attacks and "powers" that your character has each game, which allows you to even play the same character differently and tailor him to the scenario that you are playing.

A third pro that I think is interesting about Legend of Drizzt is how monster control works. On a player's turn, he controls all of the monsters that he has revealed on previous turns. However, so that you don't have to keep track of which instance of a given monster each player revealed, if there are several copies of a monster on the board (such as a Spider Swarm), the player controlling that monster will have to activate each copy of it on the board. So, if you are not paying attention to some of the smaller monsters, you must be careful that you don't allow too many copies of them out on the table, or else they will start activating very quickly! Whereas this is a fairly minor rule, I thought that it was a nice touch to the game.

The final pro that I will mention about Drizzt relates to the replayability issue that I had in Castle Ravenloft - I really like that they have added different kinds of scenarios. Now, instead of each scenario being strictly cooperative, some scenarios are team based, some are cooperative, and some are even competitive! The monsters that are encountered are still the same, but these different scenario types completely change the strategy with which you play the game - thus allowing the playing experience to stay a bit more fresh.

However, with that said, I still felt that the replayability of the game was a bit lacking. My biggest problem with Drizzt was that you are experiencing the same encounters and monsters every time through the game. Yes, there will be some games where you don't encounter one specific type of monster, but in essentially every game that we played, we ran into the same Feral Troll, Spider Swarm, and Hunting Drake. The scenarios are nice, and I do honestly like them, but the problem is that every scenario involves fighting through the same handful of monsters until you either die or get to whatever aspect of the scenario sets it apart from all of the others. Either way, 75% of the game deals with fighting the same grunts as in every other scenario.

The only other real con that I had for Drizzt was the opposite of the first pro that I mentioned. I really like that you can quickly pick up and play a short scenario of Dungeons and Dragons - but the cost in terms of gameplay is that your character will not really develop very much. None of the heroes are able to level up beyond level 2 (and often don't even get that far). This means that you won't have the satisfaction of the character truly becoming "yours." He will still feel like the out of the box character that he was at the beginning of the game.

Overall, I give Legend of Drizzt a 7.0/10. Adding the different kinds of scenarios helped address my largest problem with Ravenloft, and so it helped my score to go up a full point over what I gave to Castle Ravenloft! If you enjoyed the previous games in this series, then I fully believe that you will enjoy Drizzt as well. If you have been curious about the series, then I would recommend that you play them - they are definitely worth playing! I would simply recommend that (if possible) you play them a couple times before deciding whether you want to invest the money into purchasing your own copy.

For a second take, check out this Review of Legend of Drizzt on Play Board Games. And, if Legend of Drizzt sounds interesting, you might also want to check out Talisman Revised 4th Edition, Mage Wars, and Game of Thrones Living Card Game.

I would like to thank Wizards of the Coast for providing me with a review copy of Legend of Drizzt.

Return of the Heroes Review

I finally played Return of the Heroes again, so I felt it was time to review it (disclaimer: I couldn't find the English version on Amazon).

In Return of the Heroes, each player takes on the role of a fledgling hero that is eager to perform tasks and slay monsters in order to gain experience and eventually defeat the ultimate evil bad-guy slobbering super villain. Each turn, the player is allowed to move a number of spaces equal to their movement value (which is different based on which hero/race you play as). Any undiscovered encounters that cross their path cause them to temporarily stop their movement and flip the tile; if it is a monster, they must fight it, but if it is an encounter or a task they have the option of performing the associated action or continuing their movement. Ultimately, the heroes are all attempting to complete their "heroic quest" which allows them to gain a "precious stone". This stone is the key that allows them to enter the lair of the ultimate evil bad-guy slobbering super villain. Once they feel their brave hero is strong enough, they can go challenge the ultimate evil (and then he destroys them... oh wait, I mean, they fight gloriously or something... but chances are he defeats them).

The first pro for Return of the Heroes is the leveling system. Each character has three primary statistics: melee, ranged, and magic. They have a starting number in each statistic, which represents the number that they have to roll less than or equal to (on two dice) in order to pass a check in that stat. There are two different ways that a hero can improve one of their stats; either they can increase the number on their stat (by using a trainer) - thus increasing the odds of the die rolls being successful, or they can increase the number of dice they can use (and pick the best two results) by gaining experience - thus allowing for more chances of getting the lower numbers. It is really a neat system, and is the biggest draw that I have to this game. I wish that more games implemented stat checks and experience like this; it seems to dampen the annoying aspects of everything being completely based on how well you can make a single roll.

The next positive aspect of the game is that the task system actually works. I have played other games in which players are supposed to perform tasks, but they are incredibly long and arduous, and each player can only have a single task at a time, and so it feels like a monotonous grind to complete them. In Return of the Heroes, each hero can have up to four open tasks at a time (and also their heroic quest), and the tasks are normally pretty simple and gain the player experience. It is a nice system that is a change of pace from many other role playing games.

The final pro of the game is that Return of the Heroes feels like a more quick-paced role playing game (seems like an hour time frame). However, with that said, I mentioned that the ultimate evil monster at the end of the game destroys you. It seemed quick until we realized exactly how difficult that challenge was. Which leads me to my first con.

I thought that the final monsters did not scale well with the rest of the game, and I felt like the game would be a monotonous grind in order to actually get your heroes strong enough to defeat him. Perhaps this was just the monster that we were playing against (he healed every time he wounded you), but the difficulty from defeating the "Nameless One's Guard" (the second most challenging enemy in the game) to defeating the "Nameless One" was astronomical. We each breezed through all of the monsters until we got to the final enemy - and we were all killed. (The official rules state that if you are killed, you get to keep an artifact and lose all experience and other items. We just said you were killed and moved on.) I really think for the game to not get boring at the end, you may need to play with house rules to make the final enemy challenging but not quite as hard as the game has them.  One reason that the game would get so boring at the end is that the players would have plenty of extra dice; the experience that they would need would be increasing the number on their statistic (the number that has to be rolled less than or equal to).  To do this, you must hire a trainer, and to do that, you must have money.  At the end of the game, there is really only about one way to get money - kill the thief.  So everyone would have to chase the thief, kill him, and then go hire the trainers and hope that the thief comes back out near them.

The next problem with the game is that the rules were horrible. First, they are written as if the heroes are explaining them to you, so it is all written in dialog. This makes them unnecessarily lengthy and also makes it more difficult to find anything. After reading through the rules, we were often unsure of how certain things worked, and spent quite a bit of time blindly wading through rules with no success.  Part of our lack of success was because many things (I think) were simply not covered by the rules.  A good example of this is that, even though there is a "quick start" setup guide, it doesn't actually tell you where everything goes to start the game. We just assumed that everything went how the picture depicted them and hoped that they were showing the "official" setup and not and example setup.

The final problem that I had with the game is that it needed more diversity of monsters. There were a handful of monsters that started the game as random encounters, and there were the Nameless One's minions (that came out when his chit was pulled from the bag). However, the Nameless One's minions are removed from the game after they are defeated and are all essentially the same monster, anyway. I thought that there should be more diversity in starting monsters - especially since they go back into the bag to get redrawn. Essentially, there are about 5 monsters that you will see repeatedly throughout the game.

Overall, I give Return of the Heroes a 6.0/10. This was one of the most difficult games I have ever assigned a number to. I pondered whether the difficulty of the end boss made the game "broken" and should get a sub-5 rating. I also love the leveling system, so I was tempted to give it around a 7.5. However, I wound up splitting the difference. As opposed to most games with scores this low, however, Return of the Heroes will stay in my collection for the time being.  As awesome as the leveling system is, I'd have to recommend that you try either Runebound or Talisman instead.

Runebound (Second Edition) Review

Now I have the privilege of reviewing a classic role playing board game: Runebound (Second Edition).

In Runebound, each of the players takes on the role of a sissy little hero. Unfortunately, there are giant evil dragons (or other things depending on if you use expansions) threatening the entire known world. Therefore, you, Mr. Pansy, must bulk up, equip yourself and find friends in order to take these wretched monsters down. To do this, obviously, you will want to practice on wimpy monsters. Fortunately, you know where these guys are hiding, because the map has nice green gems to mark their locations. Ok, ok. Here's how it works: each turn you will get 5 movement dice (4 if someone is fatigued or injured). You roll these dice, and they determine where you are able to move based on what symbols are on the face of each die. Once you have moved, if there is a colored gem at the place where you stopped your movement, then you have an encounter (fight a monster... or have other stuff happen and then fight a monster. There's always monster fighting, though). Once you see this monster, you can either try to flee as fast as you can (I forget the rules of this because I never bother), or you can fight it. When fighting it, each round you choose one trait to attack with: melee, range, or magic, and you must defend in the other two. You continue fighting in this manner until someone is knocked out - if you, then you lose lots of stuff and return to a city; if the monster, then you gain money (for buying more stuff) and experience points. Once you have enough experience points, you can level your hero, thus giving him a stat boost in some area. If you were not wanting to fight a monster on your turn, the other option is going to a city. If you go to a city (end on a city space instead of a space with a gem on it), you can go to that city's market. In the market you can heal your character (and allies), and you can also buy sweet new stuff (like allies and giant weapons and such). Anyway, the game continues like this until someone has bulked themselves up enough that their hero (who is hopefully not a sissy anymore) takes on the High Dragon. And defeats it (if you lose to it, then the game hasn't ended, but you have embarrassed yourself a little bit).

Now that I have completed my length intro, its time for pros and cons. Here's the first pro: replayability. I cannot express how much I appreciate the fact that Runebound has a lot of heroes (12 to be exact). It also has enough item cards that you won't see them all in a single game. This is what sets Runebound apart from a lot of other role playing games like World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game. Whereas in the WoW Adventure Game you only have enough heroes for the number of players (4), in Runebound you have a ton. I realize why WoW is set up this way - to sell the expansions, but Runebound has even more expansions and yet gives you more in the base game.  I like being able to play through a game and still feel like there is more for me to discover; that my next adventure will be different.

Now for the next thing that I like about Runebound: allies. I like the fact that your hero is only able to attack in one trait each given round. This adds to the importance of your allies because each ally can also attack in a trait each round. This means that if you have two allies, then you are able to attack the monster in every trait each round. Without this, you are only able to damage him in one out of every three rolls of the dice, but with allies you can hurt him every time.  Obviously this means that a player that is able to hire two allies will have a distinct advantage over a player that is unable to hire any, but I still like the fact that you can essentially "build your party."

A third positive for Runebound is how the movement works. Whereas I'm yet to play Talisman (its on my "to do" list), I have played some other role playing games like Prophecy and the aforementioned World of Warcraft, and when comparing them, I significantly prefer the movement system of Runebound. I feel like it is fairly intuitive to use, but gives you the freedom to explore the map. A lot of the benefit here comes from the map itself. Whereas so many other games use a simple Monopoly-esque map where you roll a die and can move that many, Runebound is a hex based map where each hex is a different type of terrain. You still have the possibility of not being able to move very fast in Runebound, but most turns you will be able to go at least 2 or 3 hexes based on the dice you rolled - no more getting frustrated about rolling repeated one's on the dice.  Instead Runebound actually represents the difficulty in moving through things like mountains by having the mountain symbol be on less faces of the die than, say, roads.

Another aspect that I liked about Runebound is the leveling system. I have played RPG's where I felt like I was spinning my wheels the whole game, and I've played ones where I felt like I was actually making progress.  Fortunately, Runebound falls into the second category. Since you actually improve your stats each time you level up, you do not feel like you are a wimpy character after a while. In addition, after you level up your hitpoints, you are no longer able to pick on the lowest level of monsters - this helps prevent the stronger heroes from preventing the weaker heroes from getting any kills. The fact that Runebound has a different amount of experience based on the level of each hero is also a nice feature of the game.

With all that said (in case you can't tell yet, I really like this game), there is at least one con in the game: it can get somewhat lengthy. This is especially true if you play with a larger number of players, and so I normally try to keep my games around 1-3 (2 being my ideal). Really, this trait more than any other has kept Runebound from hitting my gaming table more often, though I realize that this won't be something that bothers many gamers.

One final point of note before the score: Runebound has rules for player versus player combat. I did not mention them previously because I have never actually used them. All of the games that I've played have worked out quite nicely without them. I have heard that they can add more length to the game, and I have also heard rumors of it degrading into the person in the lead picking on the other players, which would obviously detract from the game. My solution for that is to simply not play with that person, but that may just be me.

Overall, I give Runebound a 9.0/10. This is the best role playing game that I have played to date, and I enjoy busting it out. I have recently come to own several of the "big box" expansions, too, so I am looking forward to playing them (and more reviews are to come on this system).  If you are looking for a role playing game to add to your collection, I would definitely recommend this one.

If Runebound sounds interesting, you might also want to check out Legend of Drizzt, Star Wars: The Card Game, and Heroscape.

World of Warcraft Adventure Game Review

The time has finally come for me to review World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game (yeah, that just means I finally got around to playing it again).

In the World of Warcraft Adventure Game, each player takes on the role of a fledgling Hero that is attempting to make a name for themselves by completing quests. Quests gain you victory points, and you play until someone has acquired 8 victory points. The quests may involve defeating Overlords, traveling to different places, or even knocking out your opponents in combat. On a given turn, a player will get to roll a movement die (which determines both how many spaces a player can go and how much "Energy" they have to spend), then they can have some sort of exploration, where they can heal, discover items, draw ability cards, etc. Next, a player will normally have an encounter with a monster, and finally the character will be able to equip any new items and collect his quest tokens.

The only "new" concept to me for the Warcraft Adventure Game was the concept of "Energy". When rolling the movement die, the more movement you get, the less Energy you get and vice versa. This Energy is used to be able to play your ability cards and to initiate some character powers ("at the beginning of movement spend 2 energy to...").

Overall, I did not like the Warcraft Adventure Game, and I have had a difficult time deciding exactly what it was about it that I did not like. Because of this, the "cons" section of this review may be more of a rambling monologue than anything else, but here it goes anyway...

Warcraft's leveling system (how to gain levels) was not very good. Whereas in most games in the role playing genre, you get experience points for defeating monsters and turn in the experience later to level in some way, in Warcraft defeating monsters gives you items, many of which you can't use because your Hero does not meet the equipping restrictions on the item you gained (Magicians can't carry the giant axe, Orcs can't use the magic wand, etc). When this happens, you just spent a turn that in no way advanced the game. In fact, to level up, you must go to a certain location and defeat a special encounter. However, if you fail, you will have just wasted another turn, which leads to the next problem...

Warcraft uses a 6-sided die to determine combat results. I much prefer the 20-sided die, because it allows you to have luck involved but to a much lower degree. In Warcraft, it seems like all of the combat is complete luck as to whether you successfully defeat your encounter or opponent instead of actually based on what your character's stats are. The character I used had an attack of 1 (even at the higher levels), which meant that for her to defeat someone with a defense of 6, I had to roll a 5 or higher - even when I had leveled up several times! Speaking of the pointlessness of leveling...

Leveling was not especially useful. Here's an example - I leveled up from Level 1 to Level 2 (there are only 4 possible levels), and I gained one hit point. I gained no bonus to my attack, defense, or damage dealt. At this rate, your character's stats will be almost the same at the maximum level as at the beginning level. The main thing that gaining levels allows you to do is enter areas that require a higher level (you cannot enter a "Red" area until your character is at the "Red" level), which makes me thing of another frustration...

The Heroes don't have much depth and there aren't very many of them.  Whereas most role playing games give you several different characters that you can use for replayability, the basic game of Warcraft only gives you 4, which means that they are all in play if you are playing with the maximum number of players (I think that they have expansions which you can buy to get more Heroes).  Also, where most role playing games have several stats, such as mental, melee, and ranged, and you fight or defend against your opponents in each of these, Warcraft only has Attack and Defense.  (They do have the concept of Ranged versus Melee attacks, but this only factors into when the damage is dealt.  Essentially, a character with a Ranged Attack has "First Strike.")

The next problem that Warcraft had was related to how movement works. Since so many of your quests relate to getting somewhere, you will often want to simply spend your turn moving as far as you can. Unfortunately, you are completely at the mercy of your die roll for this. I realize that this was designed so that you would either get to have lots of movement or lots of Energy, it winds up not working out well. When all you are trying to do is move 8 spaces and don't need energy for anything, and you repeatedly roll a 1 that also has 3 Energy markers on it, your turns get frustrating very quickly.

Overall, the mechanics of World of Warcraft the Adventure Game "work" (though I did not like several of them), so I will give it a 5.0/10. Some people may enjoy this game, but to me it quickly turned into drudgery. My recommendation: go play Runebound instead.

If World of Warcraft sounds interesting, then you might also check out Talisman 4th Edition, Dungeon Lords, and Legend of Drizzt.