Wrath of Ashardalon: A D&D Boardgame (4th Edition D&D) [Englisch] [Spielzeug]

I got the chance to play this board game last night, and I found it to be a much polished follow up to their earlier board game, "Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game". You do not need to own or have plaid Ravenloft to play and enjoy this game. In fact, I consider this a superior product.

First and foremost it comes with a wide variety of plastic miniatures, these are the same soft minis they release for their separate miniatures line meaning they won't chip or break, but also are unsuitable for traditional miniature painting. They are unpainted, but the plastic color for each is chosen to denote the power and theme of the monster (red for demons, grey for duergar and so forth).

The artwork on the tiles is well done, and the tiles themselves are solidly constructed. There is a huge variety of tokens and cards for all situations in the game, these are all competently put together. If I had to pick 1 complaint, and it would be minor, it is that there are too many different varieties of tokens, and unless you put together some sort of sorting mechanism (plastic baggies work fine) it's easy to get the things you are looking for lost in a pile of tokens.

Gameplay starts by choosing a scenario from the included booklet, which includes everything you need to know to set up this particular adventure. The scenarios increase in difficulty as you go along, but do not require continuity to play, so if you have a favorite you can jump right there. Everybody plays, there is no person running this game for the players, it is entirely player driven. Exploration occurs by drawing random tiles, which are accompanied by monsters and random encounters.

One fun touch are environment cards which are ambient effects that remain in play until another is drawn. These range from an increase in the number of monsters drawn to walls of magma. Players control the monsters they place, which are driven by simple scripts telling you what they do in clearly defined situations (if they are far away, move them up, if they are near attack, etc, etc.)

The rules system will be very familiar to anybody who has played 4th edition D&D, but simple enough for newcomers to grasp. Once the game gets going, it quickly cascades giving a real feel of desperation without becoming unmanageable. The random encounters and events are fairly well balanced, and I found this to be a solid game.

Plays between 1 and 5.

Disclaimer: Bought this from a local store. Paid list value, but supporting local game stores helps keep them in business, and it's a rough market to keep a gaming store running. Also, I do not own, nor have I played Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game, the first D&D Adventures Board Game. Regardless...

Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game (WoA) is a fantastic value at $65 (list). You get 42 (plastic, unpainted) minis (1" scale), you get a nice set of cardboard interlocking(!) dungeon tiles, and you get a fun, very random, board game playable either by yourself or with up to 4 friends.

What it is:
WoA is, in gamer terms, a roguelike in tabletop form. In layman's terms, WoA is a dungeon crawler. You start at the entrance, and have a specific goal (rescue the villagers, survive the dungeon, destroy the altar, slay the dragon). The adventures are built randomly based on shuffling the tiles, and they are played individually as you explore. You can go for a massive linear dungeon based on a little luck and careful planning, or you can attempt to condense yourself in a larger swarm interconnected tunnels.

Some of the adventures feature "chambers", special larger rooms that are all placed at once and filled with enemies and a specific goal that the team must complete to win the adventure.

It's a great way to introduce someone into tabletop roleplaying gaming, it's the perfect medium between a board game and an actual pen and paper RPG.

It's a fun, quick* game to run a quick adventure for some friends taking anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour per adventure.

What it isn't:
A deeper roleplaying game with a full interconnected series of quests over a grand campaign.

A completely accurate representation of 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons rules.

Overly complicated (as most roleplaying games will seem to be for most people.)

What's in the box:
* 42 plastic heroes and monsters
* 13 sheets of interlocking cardstock dungeon tiles
* 200 encounter and treasure cards
* Rulebook
* Scenario book
* 20-sided die

Miniatures:
The game includes 42 minis, including 7 villan, 5 hero, and 30 monsters. The minis are of nice quality. They're clearly just mass produced, but they put some effort into modeling them, just not so much into trimming the leftover plastic in places. Some of the swords will be bent from being in the box. And they're unpainted. However, I don't mind the unpainted state, and I plan on using them during D&D Encounters I'm DMing at a local store. The Ashardalon figurine is very detailed, my *only* (and the only real) gripe is that none of them are painted.
4/5
Cardstock Dungeon Tiles:
They're one of the nicest parts of the set. They're very high quality, the art is nice, and the interlocking design can't be beat. Purchasers of D&D Dungeon Tiles will know how hard they are to keep together without tape, these lock together like puzzle pieces. Wouldn't be hard to use them in a real D&D game, except for the fact that they're somewhat limited, and they're not large open spaces. There are a lot of tokens and HP markers and other things all made out of the same cardstock (including cards for the Villans, your big bad guys, and the Heroes)
5/5
200 Encounter, Monster & Treasure cards
These are drawn during the different phases of the game (there are 3), and they certainly add to the randomness of the game. Everything scales nicely so that you can attempt to run the party adventures solo and it'll still work nicely.
5/5
Rulebook:
The rulebook is the only real downfall I've seen of the box set. It does an alright job at conveying the basics, but other questions I have are just non-existant. Can I spend a healing surge without being dead just to heal? The book itself has card errata on the back page, which is crazy. Other than that, it's not a bad rulebook for being only 15 pages.
3.5/5
Scenario Book ("Adventure Book")
This has 13 adventures to run using the set, each of them varying based on how things shuffled, what magic items get drawn and if there's a chamber, what chamber card gets drawn. The adventures essentially play themselves as you follow the turn orders. There's very little fluff for each of the adventures, but that's what make it D&D, you get to set your own motivation for the adventure, your own background. It's enough to get you going, and you let your imagination take it from there.
4.5/5
20 sided die
AKA, the d20. THE iconic D&D symbol. You roll it, add a modifier and compare it to a set number. That's pretty much it. It's just as nice as the D&D Red Box dice or any chessex dice I've bought. But it's just a d20, nothing special. Nice if you don't have any, throw it in the bag with all your others.
5/5

Overall, I would have liked to see more adventures (that's not to say more aren't coming, the official ones available at time of review require Castle Ravenloft as well, which I don't have yet.) There's only one "solo" adventure, but I played through it and adventure 5 solo. Not sure if a single player could take on Ashardalon himself, but half the fun is seeing how well you can do.

I actually wouldn't mind running a full D&D campaign with similar designs; it's a perfect format for a Megadungeon delve, it's fast, and it's exciting due to the randomness. I'm glad the cards aren't collectable, there's 200, that's all there is.

All in all, if you're into RPGs, or if you've ever wondered if a Roguelike could work in a tabletop format, it can, and it's called Wrath of Ashardalon.

*Edit* I forgot to mention, the initial setup (punching out the cards) takes a considerable amount of time. Like close to 20 minutes. Setup per adventure doesn't take nearly as long (maybe 2-3 minutes)

its amazing, actually. Wrath of Ashardalon has taken the basic themes and source material of the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons and distilled it into *something better*. not only is this a must own gem of a board game, i'd even say its the best thing Wizards of the Coast has released in years. highest recommendation.

(no dungeons and dragons experience necessary to enjoy this game.) also, this is fully playable as a solo experience.