Story Time With Keith

Review: Dungeon Lords

Been looking forward to this since I heard about it. Dungeon Lords is a worker-placement board game where the players are competing evil dungeon lords who each have to dig out tunnels, build rooms, buy traps, and hire monsters for their dungeons. Every year some hapless adventurers come to conquer your dungeon. Obviously that ain’t gonna happen.

Game Contents

So far this is the bitsiest game I own. And it’s the bitsiest game I’ve played. Now, I know you may be ready to argue this point, but hear me out. Sure something like Arkham Horror may have more bits in total, but they are easily categorized and not a pain to deal with. The array of baubles, cardboard, and chits contained in this box are a nightmare of special cases. In other words, awesome.

Some highlights: The first thing you notice are the imps. They’re very well detailed, each about 1cm tall and cast in orange plastic. Very cute looking. The art overall is top-notch. While it makes the game boards look a little busy, the intricate and humorous background art really sets the mood.

Some lowlights: As I said before the boards are a bit busy and there’s a lot of setup to get all of those bits into their appropriate piles and places.  Since each player has their own board and there’s 3 (three!) central boards we’re talking a full banquet table for the 4-player game. In one session we managed to squeeze it onto a card table, but there was a lot of stuff sitting precariously close to the edge of the table.

I’ve recently become a convert to the fishing tackle box method of game storage. The local Walmart had a plano tackle box that fit just right in there. The customizable compartments made it pretty easy to get all the various cards and chits to behave.

Gameplay

It’s very similar to Agricola and Stone Age. The players take turns placing their minion figures (minions, imps, monsters, and ghosts are all separate things) from their own boards onto a central board indicating which actions they will take. This is all done by a roborally-type of order placement where you have to choose which options you’re going to do up front and can’t react as your opponents place their minions. Over all I really like these mechanics together. It cuts down on the analysis paralysis since everything has to be chosen up front. And since there’s 3 slots for each action there’s little chance you’ll get totally screwed out of performing your action (not like that damn sow fields action in Agricola).

So basically you do this 4 times (once per season), digging rooms, recruiting imps, mining for gold, buying food, hiring monsters, etc. After the first year you’re attacked by some adventurers. I really like how this feels like two games in one. First you’ve got the dungeon building part, then the good guy killing part. The adventurers follow predetermined rules for what they’re going to do so there’s a lot of strategy in choosing which monsters to use and how those monsters are going to attack. The big downside is it’s really easy to be totally unprepared for the adventurers; in each game I’ve played so far there was at least one new player who got totally rocked by the adventurers.

After your 4 seasons then attack cycle you do it again. In the second year there’s a few minor differences, chiefly that the adventurers and monsters are tougher. That’s it. You only get to play two years. Now, I know it’ll sound silly saying this about a 2 hour game, but it really feels like the game should take longer. Maybe 3 years? After everyone knows how to play the game really speeds up, at least.

Oh, one last mechanic I like: The evilometer. As you progress throughout the game your current reputation is tracked on a ladder with the rest of the players. If you get too evil a paladin (a super strong adventurer who can do everything) will come to your dungeon with the adventurers to kick some evil ass (yours). There’s several points in the game where the evilometer matters; when assigning adventurers (the most evil gets the strongest) and so on.

Scoring / Wrapup

The end of the game works very similar to Agricola, carcassonne, and lots of “Euro” type games. Everyone plays to the end and the winner is determined by an exciting round of math. You get points based on how big your dungeon is, how much remains unconquered, and you get penalized for conquered rooms and failure to pay taxes. Bonuses are handed out based on a trophy system; the evilest player is the “Lord of the Dark Deeds”, et cetera. Gretyl, a fellow Central Iowa Board Gamer Anonymous member, suggested making victory point chits to hand out during the game to alleviate the pain of last-minute math. I like that idea. Despite the utter bitsiness of the game there is room in the box for more stuff once a tackle box is shoehorned in there to wrangle the bits and cards. The idea of making tangible trophies is also intriguing. I’m thinking of the same scale as the D&D figures.

I really like this game. It’s got a very fun theme that permeates the whole play. I enjoy all of the little fiddly bits and there’s a great deal of satisfaction in moving all of your little guys around to do things. As I said before, scoring is an opportunity that I look forward to fixing. The game time is a bit long, especially for a game night where more people might show up mid-game. But at the same time I keep wishing it were longer. In the end, you have no choice. If you’re a regular of our game nights I’m going to make you play this. Often.