Lords of Waterdeep: Board Game Review

Game Overview

Lords of Waterdeep is a strategy board game for 2-5 players designed by Peter Lee and Rodney Thomson. Players take on the role of the secret rulers of the city of Waterdeep, the most resplendent jewel in the world of the Forgotten Realms. Each ruler is concerned about the safety of the city, but also has a secret agenda and is willing to do whatever it takes to gain power and control the city. What cannot be gained through legal proceedings can always be gained through treachery or bribery. To succeed with their secret plans, the rulers hire adventurers to undertake quests on their behalf and earn rewards. They can also expand the city by buying new buildings that open up new actions available in the game or by playing Intrigue cards that can hinder their rivals or advance their own plans. By completing quests and purchasing buildings, players earn victory points. At the end of the game, the player with the most victory points is the winner.

The game uses a carefully designed board that represents the city of Waterdeep and its various locations. There are special spaces reserved on the board for the city expansions (new buildings players can buy), the quest deck, the quest cards and discarded quests, the intrigue deck and discarded intrigue cards, as well as the buildings available for purchase and the building stack.

At the beginning of the game, each player chooses a color and takes the corresponding player’s mat in front of him. The mat has special places reserved for the player’s agents (the Agent group), hired adventurers (the Tavern), completed quests, and the player’s Lord of Waterdeep card.

Players receive a random Lord of Waterdeep card, which defines their character and secret agent. It is placed on the bottom of the player’s mat, face down.

Each player starts with a predetermined number of Agent Tokens (based on the number of players) that they can assign to different locations in the city and use to hire adventurers. Hired adventurers are represented by different colored wooden cubes, each representing a different type of adventurer: orange (fighters), black (rogues), purple (mages), and white (clerics). During setup, each player is also dealt 2 random face-up quests, 2 face-down intrigue cards, and some gold. Each quest, to be completed, requires certain numbers and types of adventurers and sometimes also some gold and rewards players with victory points and sometimes gold or adventurers. Once completed, missions are placed in a special spot on the player’s mat. Some quests are annotated “Plot Quests”, indicating that they have ongoing effects in addition to providing rewards. These are placed face up near the player’s mat to remind the player of the current effect. Intrigue cards can be of three types: Attack, Utility, or Mission Required. Attack cards hinder or penalize opponents while helping the player who played them. Utility cards only benefit the player who played them. Mandatory quest cards are given to opponents and must be completed before other active quests, slowing them down. Intrigue cards can be played when agents are assigned to a certain building, “The Port of Waterdeep”. Once all agents have been assigned by all players, Agents placed in Waterdeep Harbor are reassigned to another empty location on the board.

The game consists of eight rounds. In each round, players take turns and each turn can assign an unassigned agent to an unoccupied spot in the city. That location’s action is taken immediately and then it is also possible for the player to complete a mission, provided they have met all the prerequisites. There are 9 basic buildings in the city where agents can be assigned, but more can be purchased over the course of the game. Actions that can be performed on buildings include: hire adventurers, earn gold, buy buildings, earn or play intrigue cards, undertake new quests, hire an additional agent “The Ambassador”, take the first player marker, earn points of victory and more. When purchasing a new building, players pay a cost in gold indicated on the building tile, gain some victory points, place the new building tile on one of the reserved empty spaces on the board, and place one of their control markers. on that tile in order. to indicate that they own the building. Whenever another player assigns an agent to that building, its owner also benefits.

First impressions

The game box is quite large, and the cover features some of the famous Lords of Waterdeep (sadly, the image cannot be described as very enticing). Opening the box reveals a host of beautiful, high-quality components and a special storage tray, rarely seen in standard editions of the game.

The truly impressive rulebook stands out for its elaborate design, beautiful illustrations, and clear text. Then comes the game setup, which doesn’t take long: shuffling the intrigue and mission cards a bit, laying out the cards and buildings, laying out the player and agent boards, and voila! The game is pretty simple and works smoothly: assign an agent, do the building action, possibly complete a mission. Next player please! I was very excited when I completed my first game (for 2 players) and looking forward to playing many more games. That’s a pretty good first impression, isn’t it? Let’s get down to business and analyze individual aspects of the game:

Components

The components are of a high quality, as you would expect from a major publisher like Wizards of the Coast. The game board is huge and impressive, with basic buildings drawn on the Waterdeep city map and empty spaces around the board for city expansions. There are special locations on the edges of the board to place the quest deck and quests available for purchase, quests discarded, the Intrigue card deck, buildings available for purchase, and future buildings. In general there is a place for everything and the board is very well organized and fully functional. The card design is impressive (let’s not forget that Wizards of the Coast is the publisher of “Magic the Gathering”), with elaborate designs and made of thick, high-quality paper. However, sleeves are recommended, especially for Quest and Intrigue.cards that will soon suffer repeated shuffling.Building tokens are made of thick cardboard and cleverly designed,leaving a special spot in their southeast corner for player control markers to be placed.This way the markers don’t hide the construction text. nor interfere with the placement of Agents. Agents are shaped like meeples which is more convenient and are made of wood. So is the first player token, as well as the Ambassador and Lieutenant tokens. Score markers are also made of wood.A Special Mention Must Be Made Player Mats: Each player takes a player mat that matches the color of their Agent.E he mat is beautifully designed and has separate spaces reserved for placing Agents (the “Agent Party”), adventurers (the “Tavern”), control markers, completed quests, and the player’s Lord of Waterdeep card. Awesome job! The adventurers are represented by wooden cubes of different colors. There’s a sense of failure here, as players are used to thinking of wooden cubes primarily as resources: wood, stone, gold, etc. After a while, you start to forget that cubes are adventurers and can be easily caught by saying things like “I put an Agent here and I get 1 orange and 1 white cube” and think of them as materials instead of saying “I put an Agent here.” and contract 1 cleric and 1 fighter.” It’s obvious that some other type of token could be used to represent the adventurers, something that would at least be in the form of a human being. The use of miniatures would be great, but I suppose it would increase the cost of production too much and therefore the price of the game. 9/10

how to play

Playing Lords of Waterdeep is a very entertaining experience. The game has easy rules and runs smoothly. You can think about the location of your next agent while the opponents play. There is a great deal of strategic thinking involved in your decisions about agent placement and luck only plays a small part in the game, mainly in the available missions and the draw of Intrigue cards. There’s also a decent amount of player interaction, via Intrigue cards. The game scales excellently with any number of players and that’s a big plus. When playing with 2 players, all 4 agents are available from the start of the game, plus one that comes into play on the fifth round. With 3 players each player has 3 agents and with 4 or 5 players 2 agents. This is a clever way to balance the game. The length of the game is about an hour, which is an ideal length for me. Not too fast, not too long. Without introducing anything innovative, Lords of Waterdeep is one of the most interesting and entertaining games I’ve played this year. 9/10

Learning curve

The rules of the game are simple in general and you won’t have to read them again after the first time, except maybe for some clarification on specific buildings or Intrigue cards. An Official Rules FAQ has been posted with answers to the most common questions players may have. Players will pick up the game quickly within the duration of the first playthrough, making it equally suitable for experienced players and non-gamers alike. 8/10

Theme

Wizards of the Coast is a publisher renowned for its emphasis on subject matter, and Lords of Waterdeep is no exception. The theme seems to run through every aspect of the game, from the illustrious discussion of the organizations Agents of each color belong to in the rulebook, to the flavor text on Lords of Waterdeep cards and quests. The game board also promotes the sense of theme in the game. The only major objection regarding the implementation of the theme is the depiction of adventurers with cubes. Here an important aspect of the topic is lost: the hiring of adventurers. As mentioned above, players will eventually tend to forget what the cubes actually represent and think of them as some sort of resource which is shaped like this in most other games. 7/10

Replayability

I never get bored of playing a game of Lords of Waterdeep and I think that says it all about this rating category. An ideal game for players and non-players, for 2, 3, 4 or 5 players without compromising fun. The games are fun, challenging, with some player interaction and a lot of strategy, and last the right amount of time. What more could you want? 9/10

Fun:

Well, it won’t make you laugh, but it will always make your time worthwhile. Some interaction between players through the Intrigue cards is a plus for the fun factor. 8/10

Advantage:

• I want to play that game over and over again. I am addicted!
• Scales perfectly with any number of players
• Rich and deep gameplay
• Lots of strategy, hardly any luck
• excellent components
• Very functional storage tray.
• easy to learn

Cons:

• Adventurers represented with wooden cubes!

Overall: 8.3

Find more about the game at:

http://www.boardgamemaniac.com/Games/By-Genre/Strategy-Games/Lords-of-Waterdeep-l115.html