Board Gaming - Dungeon Petz

It's been quite a while since the last board gaming post. My group was on break while the host went to Essen and Japan. I did get a game in, which I mentioned during this post though. Despite the long break, I only got to play one game this time, as it took a while to explain and I needed an early night.

Dungeon Petz

^{The initial setup of the game. It took a while to set up, and a while to explain what everything did}

Going in I knew nothing about this game asides from the name, which was enough for me to try it out. You play the part of an Imp master, controlling a group of imps that will do your bidding. You need to obtain pets, and facilities to keep them in as well as feed them. You're intention is to raise them up and sell them at the market. The game only runs for 5 rounds, ,but there are a few steps to each round.

Grouping your imps, and giving them gold if you want is done secretly, and larger groups are placed first, but obviously mean you get to do less things. Some actions have minimum requirements, such as 2+ imps to buy a new cage, or having a coin to buy a pet. One of the actions doesn't return your imp at the end of the round, but when you actually sell a pet. Some of the pets like meat, and some veggies (and some don't care). There's some special artefacts, and there is poop. lots of poop.

^{An example of my fairly conservative imp allocation. They're hiding in the dark unfortunately}

After all the imps have been placed and their actions have been done, you have to take care of the needs of your pets. As they get older they have more needs, and things can get a little troublesome if you can't provide for their needs safely. escaped pets, mutations, suffering or even death. All of these could happen, but we somehow managed to only have 1 mutation and 1 suffering through the whole game.

^{Imps placed on the board. It's the final round, but this process doesn't really change over the game}

Next up, from the second round of the game, is the exhibition. You know ahead of time what the exhibition is judged on, so when you fulfil your pet(s) needs, this might be something you took into account. anyone that scores positive will get some renown (victory points), so it's important to at least score in.

After the exhibition, from the third round on-wards, you can also sell a pet. You also know ahead of time what things the purchaser is looking for, so you might be able to plan how you fulfil their needs on the turn you sell them to maximise your points. This is the main way of scoring, or it was for us, so it's possibly more important than winning in the exhibition.

And then it's the next round. All the supplies refresh, and it's repeated. In the 5th round, there is 2 markets to sell to, but you can only sell 1 pet to each, and after the 5th round, there are 2 more exhibitions that are scored based on your remaining stocks.

^{This was after the supply refresh before the third round of the game. Lots of pets for sale. Some were bound to be mysteriously turned into 'excess meat supply' in the market...}

With the group I was playing with, this was a hilariously fun game. There was much joking and fun had by all players. I'm sure it could be not as good an experience if some/all of the players aren't getting into the fun or are too analytical and taking things far too seriously, but for us it was great.

^{Such a close game! So much change to the scores in the last round and additional exhibitions}

As a bit of additional background, it is some sort of a sequel/follow on from Dungeon Lords, which itself was an attempt at a board game version of the Dungeon Keeper computer games. Yeah, the pets you're selling are kind of monstrous, and are bound for some of those dungeons.

Look back here for my previous boardgaming post