Brian Modreski
United States
Thornton
Colorado
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You might say Lisa and I are fans of some of Vlaada Chvatil's earlier games. Or you might say we're die hard nutcases for them, with a truly excessive amount of time spent playing Galaxy Trucker and Space Alert. We also both used to enjoy the old PC Dungeon Keeper game a lot. So when we heard about Dungeon Lords, we were interested. When we realized it was by Chvatil, it went straight to a 'Must Have' on the wishlist.
Then they had the nerve to post the rules.
The rulebooks is written with the humorous tone that made the Galaxy Trucker and Space Alert rulebooks such enjoyable reads. The humor was great. The rules looked cool. But I think what really grabbed us were the combat trainings.
Combat Training
The back of each of the player boards includes a little teaching tool called combat trainings, which CGE nicely posted on their website. These are just sample situations with a group of adventurers, and a set of monsters and traps to use to stop them. They are essentially little puzzles, and very fun to try to solve!
Must...play...Dungeon Lords...
So we were well and truly hooked. But...ahhhh, it will be so long before it gets to the US! But we want to try this so much! How does it all come together? How cool is a fight when its not a precisely designed puzzle? We HAD to know!!!
So we started joking about just playing a game with what we knew now. Wouldn't be the first time. We've played other games with improvised components (usually while the game was busy shipping to us from overseas!). Now, I know, its not the actual experience. Improvised pieces can't compete with the real ones, and its rare to get everything right.
But we really, really, REALLY like imps. Errr...WAIT, that's not right.
We really, really, REALLY wanted to try Dungeon Lords.
We knew all the rooms.
We knew what all the monsters were, though we had to guess at distribution. We went with year 1 consisting of 2 each of slimes, goblins, trolls, witches and vampires, and year 2 having another 1 of each of those plus 2 each of the golem, demon and dragon.
We could see examples of four different year 1 thieves. With 32 heroes total, it was reasonable to assume 4 of each hero in each year and follow the same pattern as the thieves. For year 2, we started with the level 1 heroes having the same stats as the level 3 year 1s, and followed the same pattern (which matches with all the heroes we can see on the box back).
Traps were a problem. We only knew about 7 traps or so. So...we invented more, trying to keep them around the same power level. It will be interesting to see how our traps compare to the real ones.
Spells were even more of a problem. We only know the effects of one spell. We considered just leaving wizard's out, but instead decided to just improvise a bunch of those as well. This is probably the biggest area of error. But, from making us pay food or gold to keep the monsters in the fight to killing our poor imps with lightning, we had some effects to try.
WARNING: PAST THIS POINT LIES A SESSION THAT MAY CONTAIN LITTLE OR NO RESEMBLANCE TO HOW THE GAME ACTUALLY PLAYS, AND IS RAMPANT WITH WILD SPECULATION AND DELUSION
A digging we will go, a digging we will go...
So, with our cobbled cards and counters, kobold minis from D&D standing in as imps, we proceeded to try our half baked replica.
Soooo many choices! Like many resource games, you've got a lot you want to do, and must pick only a few. You want treasure, you want rooms, you want monsters, you want...you get the idea.
I initially had some doubts about the production rooms - using 3 imps to get a gold seemed questionable when the mine action gave you one gold per imp. Well, let me tell you, those production rooms are AWESOME. Because actually getting your imps to tunnel and mine when you want is a nice luxury, and not something you can count on.
Our moves were fraught with blunders. I was happy to get a tunnel building room, then realized the only place I could put it was right in the entryway where it would be attacked first thing!
I already hate the Dungeon Regulation board. First tax phase, one of my players (we played two each) had already received two fines for failing to pay. Damn you bureaucrats! Can't you see what valuable services we dungeon lords provide, keeping the population of adventurers in check that otherwise overrun their natural habitat?
We got some monsters, built some rooms, devised a few cunning trap, and got ready for our first incursion of heroes. We hadn't drawn a single level 1 hero, which was a little worrying. None of us were brave enough to risk the paladin's wrath.
FIGHT!
You know those tidy little sample combats? Yeah, real adventure attacks don't go like that. For one thing, you've got that annoying spell messing with you, which is a very nice level of chaos. Now, our spells were probably WAY off, but I think we got the general feel of it. Even an unexpected fatigue amount can mess you up. For my Blue player, with the tunnel room up front and two missed taxes, I decided I could wipe out the whole party before they could conquer, as long as the first combat card caused at least 1 fatigue. Of the nine cards, four cause 2, four cause 1, and 1 causes 0.
Guess which one we drew?
Combat reminds me a bit of the flights in Galaxy Trucker, where disaster is rushing straight at you and you're hoping like heck you're preparations can stop it. However, you've got a lot of control as well, and the puzzle feel of combat blends with the theme and the unexpected combat cards to create a very exciting and tense experience of preparing your fiendish traps and foes.
With our dungeons in assorted degrees of wreckage, it was time to move on to the second year.
Evil will triumph because Good is dumb. Yeah, right...
I decided to have poor Blue go for a bonus room that would give me extra points for Demons, Golems and Dragons. I was going to get BIG monsters and rake in the points! I got the room, and was poised to get the demon...then I realized a problem.
We were about to hit payday. I'd have to feed my demon TWO monsters, and would lose 2 witches, who are pretty impressive themselves.
I hit my head on the table and took a weaker monster instead.
Next season...I'd already played my monster card and couldn't do so again. Aaaahhh!
I did manage to get one demon. But only at the cost of bringing my evil so high that the paladin decided to come give me a good smiting. But I was sure I could take him.
Now, I could have been thrown off by the spells and combat cards. But mostly I was messed up by just totally failing to appreciate how NASTY that guy is! Healing, stopping traps, majorly tough. Each plan I was sure would work invariably unraveled.
I DID manage to defeat the paladin, though one member of his party left after having his fill of plunder narrowly escaped my wrath.
Lisa, on the other hand, did an excellent job of defending her tunnels, though she realized that two golems without rooms to have them team up in wasn't much help!
When the scoring was done, I had 15 and 20, and Lisa's players had 16 and 31 - a decisive victory! But, halfway through I was having doubts about even scoring positive, and I did defeat the paladin and stayed as the most evil, so I consider it something of an (im)moral victory.
The verdict? Love it. I'm sure it will be much better with the real pieces and correct combat cards/traps, but it was great fun even kludged together.
I've seen people commenting on how complicated it is, and I didn't really get that sense at all. Everything works very logically, and the boards clearly contain lots of visual prompts and guides (most of our problems and missed rules wouldn't have been a problem with the real components which have more info on them!). It all flows very smoothly.
The real "complexity" is in juggling all the elements you need to manage. Our second play, I managed such clever tactics as getting a golem (which you must pay a trap for), which I could only pay for on payday if I could get another trap next turn. No problem - as long as both players before me didn't choose to buy a trap as their first action.
Guess what they did?
This did leave me in a position where I could spend 2 gold for traps...and therefore not have enough gold. Ahh! I never even got to use my golem. 
Or my wonderful planning where I thought "right, I can probably get that room I want as my second action, and two people have their gold unavailable so I can definetely get gold later." Then, I got so lost in deciding what my first action should be that by the time I placed my third action I thought "ooh, a trap would be handy!".
This left me with no gold for my room, and no gold for the trap action I'd used instead!
Second play we didn't even risk the paladin. I was actually going to, but Lisa picked the demon I wanted which would have made me capable of fighting the paladin (and boosted my evil high enough to do so). She made much better use of her demon!
Playing this actually dropped it from a 'Must Have' on the wishlist to a 'Do not buy this for me' - as in, "don't bother, we WILL get it as absolutely soon as possible and are most certainly NOT waiting for Christmas!"
So, apologies to Vlaada for possibly mangling your game in our attempt to try it early. Its only because we're so excited. Can't wait to get the real game!
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Zack Stackurski
United States
Mankato
Minnesota
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I got pumped just reading the rules too, but lack the drive to cobble together a test board. Thanks for the session repor! I'm glad the game lived up to your expectations (and it sounds like exactly what I hoped it would be when I pre-ordered!)
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Greg
United States
Brea
California
This space intentionally left green.
GRRREEEEEEEEENNNN!!!!!!
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StormKnight wrote: But we really, really, REALLY like imps. Errr...WAIT, that's not right.
Man, it didn't take long for trolls to start posting on Dungeon Lords.
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Artur Baginski
Germany
Lemgo
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Thats awesome!
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Jon Murdock
United States
Euless
Texas
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You sir, are my hero.
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Tom Rosen
United States
Arlington
Virginia
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Nicely done Brian and Lisa
Your effort and devotion is really impressive!
The game sounds like a lot of fun. I hope we get a chance to play it together in Dallas next month.
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Timothy Pride
Indonesia
Jakarta
DKI Jakarta
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Your devoted report has blew every doubting ones that judging this game is just another dry, analytical, multiplayer solitaire.
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Peter Folke
Denmark
Lyngby (Copenhagen)
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Amazing
Impressive.
THIS is what being a real BoardGameGeek-Geek is all about. Your enthusiasm is amazing, and it really shines through in your writing.
Sounds like you had a wonderful time! I can't wait for more session reports (with pictures!)
Also, I love how you dropped the game from your wishlist 
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Brian Modreski
United States
Thornton
Colorado
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Thanks for all your kind words.
I'd like to note I'm now 0 for 3 Dungeon Lords - I'm sure this is just because our poorly balanced spells and such favor Lisa. I'm not sure how this would be the case, but that's gotta be the explanation 
Tom - hopefully so! We are going to BGG.Con, and if we can't Dungeon Lords before then, we're hoping to pick it up there.
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Timothy Pride
Indonesia
Jakarta
DKI Jakarta
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StormKnight wrote: Thanks for all your kind words. I'd like to note I'm now 0 for 3 Dungeon Lords - I'm sure this is just because our poorly balanced spells and such favor Lisa. I'm not sure how this would be the case, but that's gotta be the explanation Tom - hopefully so! We are going to BGG.Con, and if we can't Dungeon Lords before then, we're hoping to pick it up there.
Now that the correct monsters distribution, event, and spells are uploaded here, surely you didn't have curiosity to try it? 
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Brian Modreski
United States
Thornton
Colorado
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Quote: Now that the correct monsters distribution, event, and spells are uploaded here, surely you didn't have curiosity to try it?
Nah. I mean, we've given it a try sort of, that's surely good enough to...oh, who am I kidding! Yep, we promptly updated our materials and tried with the correct cards.
We'd guessed correctly on the monster distribution. No change there.
Our first year adventurers were correct. But the second year adventurers follow a different pattern; first year you a level 1, two level 2s and a level 3 of each class. Second year there's a level 1,2,3,4. So the actual second year adventurers were a bit nastier.
It turns out there only appear to be 9 traps; we had 7 of those correct, one with the actual name (I could see that somewhere in the rules) but a different effect - our Kamikaze Imp did 5 (6 in year 2) damage to the first adventurer, while the real one does 3 to the first adventurer and 1 to all the others - and one trap that we were missing. We'd then added a variety of traps we thought up, such as Teleport Traps, Giant Buzzsaws and Mimics. With the actual mix, things would be a little more consistent, but I think around the same level of effectiveness, sorta. I miss my giant buzzsaw though!
The combat cards were the big difference. We'd actually come up with a few combat cards that were very close to the real ones, but in the interest of speed, we'd just made one deck of cards to use for both years, adding 1 to the fatigue values in the second year. The real 2nd year cards are a lot nastier!
Between the nastier combat cards and upgraded heroes, we were really dreading year 2!
The feeling of tension was a bit higher, and the fear of those combat cards was even greater. I think its a bit more exciting with the correct cards! For whatever reason (pushing more to get nasty monsters?) We had more players become Evil enough to draw the paladin's attention, and were jockeying to adjust our Evilometers to not have him, which was fun. I even thought he was going to switch to attacking me after the first round of combat, but Lisa killed him off before he could.
We actually didn't face the nasty spells much 2nd year; very few wizards came out, and one player wound up with all of them! This was good news for everyone else.
I have an improved appreciation of the printing room. Having more control over which hero I got was awesome!
I actually managed to get a golem for one of my players, I had a huge supply of traps (I got the trap building room first turn) and the bonus room for golems/dragons/demons, so I was hoping to get two, but the monster's didn't come up in a way to make that work.
And I actually managed to win for a change! Not with the golem though - my other player, who at the end had a Witch, a Slime and a Demon, and a lot of rooms.
Still eagerly awaiting the real thing!
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Krister Dahlgren
Sweden
Gävle
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Just out of curiousity, what traps did you come up with? Did the teleport trap move the party elsewhere in your dungeon? Or maybe into another players dungeon?
 Was there a classic "falling anvil" trap? And what about the Mimic and Biant Buzzsaw?
Although I can understand why they went with 3x7 traps to lower amount of "luck" and keep the traps more consistent and balanced, it would be very interesting with some new traps as well!
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Brian Modreski
United States
Thornton
Colorado
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Its been ages, but I just realized I never replied to this!
The custom traps we added were:
Teleport Trap - Rearrange the heroes attacking you into any order you want.
Explosive Runes - Deal 1 damage to each adventurer and an extra damage to each wizard.
I prepared explosive runes this morning!
Mimic - Pay 1 gold. The Mimic deals 2 damage to each thief in the party, which thieves cannot reduce.
Giant Buzzsaw - Gain 1 Evil and do 4 damage to an adventurer of your choice.
Nothing says 'cliche evil' like a giant buzzsaw!
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Posted Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:19 pm
