Anyway, as I was browsing around one thing that caught my eye was Hero: Immortal King: The lair Of Lich. Now that's a rather laboured title for anything, but it appealed to me anyway. What the game promised was a light dungeony card game that could be played solo. This to me sounded ideal, so nipped straight over to ebay and snapped up a copy. Yesterday it arrived, so after tea I opened it up and tried it out.
The game is pretty straightforward and simple. Indeed, the major reason I found myself revisiting the rulebook (aside from the obvious first time unfamiliarity) was that I was sure there was something I must be missing. You get a limited selection of heroes and equipment cards from which you must choose a starting lineup of 5 cards. Then the dungeon cards come in 4 ranks of presumably increasing difficulty which are shuffled and divided into 3 corridors. The idea is to fight your way through at least one of these to the final boss monster that waits behind them all. When you defeat a card you keep it and it can be spent to activate equipment or special abilities.
Even considering that one of the heroes is an elf this all seems pretty good. Heroes have 3 special abilities: 1 permanent, 1 that can be used by spending a mana point (which can be regenerated by defeating certain cards) and 1 ultimate power that can only be activated by spending a combination of won cards that has thus far eluded me. You also have to spend some combination of these cards in order to activate any magic items you may have taken. Again, whether or not you can actually get these cards is another matter entirely. Combat is pretty straightforward. The monster on the card has a value. You roll a D6 and use whatever modifiers you have available to beat it. If you win then take the card and draw another. If you lose you lose one of your courage tokens and the card remains. When you loose all of your tokens it's game over.
And whilst this is all nice and simple and plays very fast it's also where the problems with this game start to show. Simply put it's VERY easy for the game to stall completely when you draw a set of thing that you cannot beat under any circumstance. I.E. That's how EVERY game I played went. The grounds for success are rather binary, and as such it's far to common to simply hit a wall. This isn't particularly satisfying in gaming terms. It's not even as if you can hurl yourself repeatedly at the monster until you run out of lives hoping for a critical hit. You simply end up looking at a set of monsters you can't possibly fight and then giving up and going home. Call me old fashioned, but that doesn't seem very adventurous to me. I don't mind dying a heroic death in a game. Hell, I don't mind dying a pointless ignominious death as long as it's entertaining.
Turn 3 Chasm anybody?
But that's not really the feel you get from this game. Whilst there's a good idea in here it doesn't quite work. Something is missing. And whilst I get that the idea of the game is to be a simple as possible I think that something is granularity. You have this interesting mechanic of collecting up the defeated cards to use as a resource, but then have very little to actually do with them. All the ultimate abilities have the same cost and are presumably equivalent, but I can't help thinking it would be better if their costs and abilities varied, thus giving the player some choices to make. Do you take the character with the powerful ability you can use once if you're lucky, or the character with the weak ability that you can use more often? The choice of using or saving the cards would, I think, make the game more interesting, but this is not a possibility that is ever really addressed. Sure, you could conceivably face some sort of choice depending on what equipment you brought, but in practice it seems you hit the wall before ever getting to that stage, which is disappointing.
I really want to like this game, since it does have some good points. It's small, fast and inexpensive. It's got some decent art, and the basic idea is good. However the execution is lacking something. I must confess that I find it odd that this whole wall issue never came up in playtesting.
I think that there are a few possibilities for house rules to salvage the whole thing though. Since the difficulty of the cards is, in essence, ranked 1 to 4 it gives us a couple of possibilities. So I'd try firstly a rule where you're able to spend a card for a one time combat bonus. This way you stand more chance of progressing past the wall stage, but it costs you a resource. The other suggestion would be taking the remaining treasure cards and shuffling them into a treasure pile. then, when you defeat a monster you can search for treasure by rolling the D6 and getting under it's difficulty rank. If you succeed then draw a treasure card, if not don't. The next dungeon card is then played face down. I think this would help with the tone of the game a lot, since one of the best parts about Dungeoneering is, of course, looking for treasure. Something that the standard game lacks completely.
I should also take a moment to make a point about the difficulty, or apparent lack thereof as referenced by a couple of the reviews on Boardgame Geek itself. There is a point made that rather than hitting the wall the game becomes ridiculously easy if you simply use character X and Y. I forget their actual names. Now, I'm not disputing that it becomes easier with these characters. Indeed, by the sound of it they would go a long way to fix the whole wall problem. No, the simple issue that nobody seems to have mentioned is that NEITHER of these characters are actually in this set. There are 3 decks overall, which you can mix together if you so choose. I'm sure that adding the various elements together could well make for a more satisfying experience overall, but there is a part of me that baulks at the prospect of having to buy another 2 sets simply to enjoy the one I already have.
So, overall we have a nice idea that sadly lacks something in the execution. The game pieces are all of fairly good quality, and the game itself is simple to learn, but in the end that simplicity works against I think, as it lacks a certain spark to elevate above the whole "reveal card, roll dice, repeat" mechanic. A good shot a creating a solitaire dungeon game, but not quite successful in creating the right vibe.
and before you ask, yes, I've ordered a copy of Dungeoneer now.
I should also take a moment to make a point about the difficulty, or apparent lack thereof as referenced by a couple of the reviews on Boardgame Geek itself. There is a point made that rather than hitting the wall the game becomes ridiculously easy if you simply use character X and Y. I forget their actual names. Now, I'm not disputing that it becomes easier with these characters. Indeed, by the sound of it they would go a long way to fix the whole wall problem. No, the simple issue that nobody seems to have mentioned is that NEITHER of these characters are actually in this set. There are 3 decks overall, which you can mix together if you so choose. I'm sure that adding the various elements together could well make for a more satisfying experience overall, but there is a part of me that baulks at the prospect of having to buy another 2 sets simply to enjoy the one I already have.
So, overall we have a nice idea that sadly lacks something in the execution. The game pieces are all of fairly good quality, and the game itself is simple to learn, but in the end that simplicity works against I think, as it lacks a certain spark to elevate above the whole "reveal card, roll dice, repeat" mechanic. A good shot a creating a solitaire dungeon game, but not quite successful in creating the right vibe.
and before you ask, yes, I've ordered a copy of Dungeoneer now.
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