Rook's Comics and Games

I have been playing a few new games this week so I thought I would give some reviews.

Dungeon Lords

Dungeon Lords is a new boardgame by Vlaada Chvatil.  Vlaada is an great game designer and has made some great games like ‘Galaxy Trucker’ and ‘Through the Ages’.  Dungeon Lords is a lot like the computer game ‘Dungeon Keeper’.  The idea is to use your minions to administer your own dungeon.  Periodically adventurers will line up at the entrance just waiting to wreak havoc upon your dungeon.  To combat the adventurers players use a variety of monsters and traps.  These monsters and traps come at a price however; they cause your evil score to rise.  If you get top high on the evilometer ( a real term in the game), the paladins come to get you and those guys are not nice.  I really enjoyed playing this game.  It reminded me a lot of Agricola with a better theme.  Combat between monsters and heroes is a little tricky to get the hang of but after that the game is really easy to play.  All in all this is a great game with a fun theme and is easy to learn.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying

The new iteration of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying by Fantasy Flight is a really cool game.  Fantasy Flight took their knowledge of boardgaming and applied it to the roleplaying world.  That being said, this is still very much a roleplaying  game.  The really unique thing about this game is the way the dice work.  There are good dice and bad dice.  The players get good dice to roll for being skilled at the task or because of fortuitous circumstances.  The GM gives players bad dice based on the monsters they are fighting or other factors that make the action challenging.  Once the dice pool has been set the player rolls all the dice.  Certain faces on the good and bad dice cancel each other out and if there are more good die left you succeed and if there are more bad die you fail.  The great thing about this is that the GM doesn’t roll dice.  This frees up the GM to take more time storytelling and interacting with the players.  There is also a subset of good and bad faces that can affect the outcomes of actions.  An action can succeed overall but fail in the fourtune department.  A good example of this is picking a lock.  You pick the lock successfully but something bad happens like your pick breaks or the guard comes sooner than expected.  I only played a short session but what I saw I liked.  I like the fact that the dice rolling is offloaded to the players.  The rules are also pretty light.  This means that the GM is going to be making a lot of calls (which I like) and the game is much more about storytelling than other games.  If anybody is interested, Rook’s has an open copy I would let anybody look at or use for a test session.

Magic the Gathering: Worldwake

Okay, so this isn’t a new game to me.  It is a new set however.  Wizards has done a very good job lately of making the sets very unique while at the same time playing well with the other sets.  Worldwake continues the theme of allies.  Allies are a new creature type that buff themselves when other allies come into play.  I don’t think they are going to be good enough for large tournaments but for Bozeman allies should be pretty strong.  The mechanics of Worldwake aren’t anything new.  I view this as a goodthing.  Sometimes adding to many new mechanics can clog up the game and make it confusing.  Worldwake is pretty straight forward so a player can draft or build a sealed with relative ease.  Overall I am very pleased with Worldwake and it’s interactions with Zendikar and Shards of Alara.