[Board Games] Welcome to the Dungeon
This is a fun little card game that's pretty quick to pick up, and doesn't take very long to play. It's a perfect filler game for those times when someone in your gaming group is running late, or if you just want a fast play to end the night. At its heart, this is a press your luck game. You're betting the other players that you can beat the dungeon, based on the limited information you have about what monsters await the adventurer who enters. Or, if you've decided you don't think you can beat the dungeon, you want to make the dungeon harder for whoever ends up going in. But you need to consider your actions carefully, or it may just be you that ends up taking on the dungeon.
To break this game down, let's begin by talking about the components of the game. The game starts with an adventurer in the middle of the playing area. There are 4 to choose from, each with a specified amount of Hit Points (HP).
Each adventurer also has some special items to help in defeating the dungeon. There are 4 sets of adventurers & special items, but only one set is used at a time. Each item either adds HP to the adventurer, defeats a certain type or types of monsters, or gives some other special ability specified on the card.
The monsters in the dungeon are represented by these cards. Each card contains a power rating, as well as some helpful symbols to help you remember which special item defeats it.
Players take turns drawing monster cards and then deciding to either place the monster facedown in the dungeon, or remove the monster from the game, along with a special item of their choosing. Monsters removed in this way will not be faced by the adventurer who enters the dungeon, but they will also not have the use of the special item that was removed. Instead of drawing a monster card, each player may also choose to pass. This means that the player will not enter the dungeon this round, and also will not draw any more monster cards this round. To aid in your decision, the game comes with this handy player aid.
Play continues in this manner until all players have passed but one. This player is the one who enters the dungeon. When a player enters the dungeon, all facedown monster cards are flipped over in order. If a monster is not defeated by one of the special items, the monster's power is subtracted from the adventurer's HP. If the adventurer's HP is reduced to the zero before all the monsters cards are flipped over, the adventurer is defeated. If not, the adventurer is victorious, and has beaten the dungeon. If a player is defeated twice, they are out of the game. The first player to beat two dungeons is the winner.
My group had a good time with this one, and we played with 3 and with 4 players. It's everything a light, fun, quick card game should be. There aren't many complicated mechanics and it's easy to learn. There's a bit of good-natured bluster when someone gets stuck with a dungeon they didn't want, and cheers all around when that last card flipped over means victory. All in all, it made for an enjoyable time with friends, and that's really what games are all about for me.
Good review
Love this game!
Thanks for checkingout my review.
Nice review :)
I saw this at a local store recently and got me curious while looking for a "small" game (not too hard, not too expensive, not too long).
I ended up picking Titan Race because I have a weakness for stuff with miniatures, but this looks like fun and I really like the artwork, so I'd definitely consider it next time I go shopping for games.
This game is definitely all those things, but it feels like it wouldn't get old quickly. You're really playing against the players rather than the game, so it would be very different depending on who you were playing with, if that makes sense.
How is Titan Race? I was intrigued by that one as well.
I've had some vision tests today and I can't see well -.-, but I'll try to write a proper review of Titan Race tomorrow or over the weekend.
As a short summary: I found it lots of fun, it works kind of well even with only two players, and it's not hard to learn at all. I've seen it called "tabletop Mario Kart" and it's kind of fitting.
Looking fw to your writeup.
Hey! Here's the entry as promised :D
https://steemit.com/boardgames/@sasurai/board-game-review-titan-race
Sorry for "self promoting" in your post, but I don't know any other way of letting you know (I tried mentions when trying to let another user know of a post and he told me he didn't get any notification)
No problem. People get worked up about that but i don't much care. And in this case I really was interested in your post.
Sounds like a bit of fun.
Yeah, it was a good time. And I like the artwork. Just cartoonish enough to not scare the littles.
"Just cartoonish enough to not scare the littles"
Yeah my partner and I go to a board games night at our local game shop once a week and it's pretty much only adults that go there. We've had a couple of teens before but not frequently. However, I have played some of our games with my nephew before.
I did that the other day with him and we were playing Coup. He was pretty new to that game. I don't know if you know that one but it involves bluffing and pretending you have cards you might not have etc and my nephew asked me while playing "How do you lie?"
I think he probably knows how to do that.
He didn't like the idea of the game Kittens in a Blender though. I asked him why he didn't want to try it and he said "because kittens are cute". I can't argue with that.
I love Coup. My kids are 7 and 9, so I'm always on the lookout for games I can play with them. I don't think they're quite ready for Coup yet.
Yeah my nephew turns 9 this year and he managed to get the gist of Coup and do alright but I don't think his strategy was quite there all the time. He got a big trigger happy with accusing me of lying a bit too much at the start to where it lost him the game due to me not lying, but he started to realise just calling me out all the time wasn't the best strategy after a bit. He did reasonable enough that it would be worth trying again and he will work out the strategies more as he goes along.
It's the same when we hop on the computers and play Overwatch. He enjoys that a lot but he hasn't quite learned the whole working as a team bit yet and will be the one who runs off to kill that person way over there rather than focusing on the goal. I've tried to teach him about choosing characters to suit what other characters people are playing but he doesn't quite get the idea of team balancing and just plays whoever he thinks is cool. Not that he's alone in that. I've seen a lot of people choose the wrong characters when it is down to only them to choose and we need something different to what they ultimately choose. Towards the end of a game I was playing with my partner last night, the person playing the healer in our team randomly changed to a non-healer character right at the end when things were intense and we needed a healer, so people do dumb stuff like that sometimes. I had died around that time anyway so I changed when I was dead to a healer and came out instead, but I don't understand why that person randomly changed because that could have cost us the game if we just continually died at that point. So my nephew definitely isn't alone in not working around what other people are playing as. He loves playing it though and I figure eventually he'll realise these things.
The other day when we playing Coup we also played Bears vs Babies, Fluxx (Regular show Version) and Card Wars and he seemed to enjoy all of them. He loves Card Wars. If you don't know it, that's the game from Adventure Time ("Floop the pig"). He's good with math too so that probably is part of the reason he likes that game as well. He's played that one with me a bit so I've actually seen his strategies improve over time playing that one.
Thanks for the recommendations. I've stayed away from Card Wars because it seemed a bit expensive for what you get, and I didn't want to get sucked into buying multiple sets and booster packs. Maybe I'll have to give it a second look.
I want to play Fluxx, but don't really want to buy it because it's such a polarizing game. If I buy it and hate it I'll be <sad_face_emoji>.
I didn't realise Fluxx was so polarising. I don't think I've come across someone who outright doesn't like it. One of our friends wasn't a huge fan of bears vs babies though. Keep in mind Card Wars is only a two player game though so if the kids ever play without you or sometimes only one kid wants to play it with you it might be a good choice, but it won't work with three. Also (while I can't guarantee your kids won't pester you for them) you don't need to buy multiple sets and booster packs for Card Wars. One base game works fine. I'd just give it a look and see what you think. It isn't one of my absolute favourites by now (so there might be better options out there for you) but it is solid and it is fun to play with my nephew who quite enjoys it.
There's also junior versions of some of the games too. I haven't tried them out but if you like Carcassone or Catan but don't think your kids are up to the normal version yet, I know those have junior versions.
We actually have Carcassonne Jr, but they're starting to outgrow it a bit. It was good as an intro game, though.
I have played it with my group. It requires good memory and risk management.
Doesn't last very long so it is good for a finisher game for us.
I agree. Once we got the mechanics down, it moved very quickly. The only downside was when a player is eliminated they're just out of it, watching from the sidelines. I always like it when games keep everyone engaged the whole way through. But it was a fun one, for sure.
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