Friday 27 May 2016

Wrath of Ashardalon

Firestorm Peak is a lovely spot for vacation... if you enjoy monsters!

After thoroughly enjoying the Temple of Elemental Evil board game, my gaming group is now half way through the Wrath of Ashardalon which is actually the previous game in the series. It plays very similarly though, with a few obvious differences: there are less traps, there are doors (which might be locked or trapped), and the biggest one is that it is a total slug fest. Yep, the mountain is full of monsters, monsters, monsters!

Monsters everywhere!

Unlike the Temple of Elemental Evil, I don't think there are any tiles that do not spawn monsters and all the mooks are tougher here and in my opinion, have much better figurines. This caught us off balance in the first mission since we "imported" our characters from the other game and their high damage / single target skills.

This was easily fixed though with some skill swapping, and truth be told I find it an easier play than the previous game though it might be due to the whole "imported" characters thing. Or, it might be all the really overpowered treasures and gear you find in THIS game. Doesn't make it any less fun though!

Instead of the powerful bosses Wrath uses the "chamber" system which is my favorite mechanic here. Upon finding it (think of it as "the boss room), instead of drawing one tile you build a whole chamber (potentially 5-6 tiles?) and spawn it fully. When you have things like legion devils that spawn in groups of three the board really fills up quick.

If you like fun dice rolling action (and/or simply liked Temple of Elemental Evil), I highly recommend trying this out and give it five D20s out of five!

Score after re-review: Four D20s out of five.

4 comments:

  1. Interesting, I may give it a try. Looks like it's only $6 on GoG

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    1. Hrm, you sure you're looking at the same thing? I'm talking about board games here, not the computer games. :P

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    2. Oops, I didn't notice that was a board game in the picture.

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    3. It's ok, real life has some decent graphics! ;D

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