Women Like Board Games: Review - Lords of Waterdeep

Man, I really wanted to be the builder. Everyone knows I like being the builder. At least they think I'm the builder - I bought buildings in the first three rounds to trick them, and now they're buying buildings left and right to try to stop me from getting any more. This is a win-win situation for me, but nothing else this game is going my way. I just finished a quest and need to pick up a new one, but only arcana and peity quests are available and I'm Durnan the Wanderer, the Lord who is hell bent on completing commerce and warfare quests. Oh well, I gamble and place my agent on the option to reset the quests and pull 4 new ones: arcana, piety, skullduggery, skullduggery. Dang it! I grab a skullduggery quest and it finally gets replaced with a commerce quest - which one of my opponents quickly snaps up and refills with another piety quest. DANG IT! It's my turn again, hmmm... The wizard spot is taken so I decide to recruit a cleric and smile inwardly as scowls form across my opponent's faces. I didn't need a cleric, but they did...

Lords of Waterdeep is a game that takes placed in the Dungeons and Dragons world, but doesn't feel like D&D in any way. It's a standalone game that I wouldn't have even known was related to D&D if it hadn't said "Dungeons & Dragons" on the box. You don't have to be familiar with D&D to play the game and there's little back story or explanation on the cards or in the rule book, though if you're familiar with the series you'll enjoy the references on the board and throughout the quests.

For those of you, like me, who aren't interested in D&D or want nothing to do with D&D, don't let that deter you from this excellent game. There's no role playing, no dice rolling, and completing quests isn't about telling stories, it's about collecting different colored cubes representing adventurers such as rogues, clerics, wizards, and warriors to earn perks and points.

The way you collect cubes is through a mechanism called worker placement. Lords of Waterdeep is my first introduction to worker placement games, and I have to say I'm a fan. In this type of game, you put a marker on a spot to claim a specific action, and since Lords of Waterdeep limits your placement to one Agent (marker) per action it means that once claimed, no one else is able to take that action.

Since there are only so many ways to collect cubes each round and all of your opponents have the same goal as you, it allows for passive aggressive conflict without actually having to do anything to your opponents. It also means you have to come up with plans and backup plans to accomplish your goals, in case someone takes a spot you wanted.

Your backup plans might include playing intrigue cards which allow you to collect extra cubes, remove cubes from your opponents, or require an opponent to take on a mandatory quest (a quest that must be completed before they can do anything else). Or your backup plans might include building a lot of buildings so that you'll get extra cubes, gold, or points any time your opponents visit one of the buildings you own. Or perhaps you'll take on a lot of quests with different cube requirements so you always have options available.

Taking on the right quests is important, though. At the beginning of the game you get a card that tells you what Lord of Waterdeep you are, and each Lord is interested in different types of quests (with the exception of the builder who just wants to build a lot of buildings). You'll want to make sure you're taking on and completing the kind of quests your Lord enjoys so you get more points at the end of the game. You'll also have to find the right balance between quests that earn lots of points and those that earn fewer points but give you more perks, especially plot quests which give you perks for the remainder of the game. Quests that earn fewer points usually require fewer cubes to complete, but the high point quests will help you win the game.

And in order to win, you'll have to balance all of these decisions in real time, adjusting you plans based on what your opponents are doing. It requires you to think, but isn't too mentally taxing, which I enjoy. It requires you to keep track of your opponents in order to strategize, especially if you're trying to figure out what type of quests they're after in order to thwart them, but includes enough randomness that you can't strategize too far in advance. It's also a game you can still play and enjoy after a few beers have been consumed, which makes it a great game for game night!

While I'm a fan myself, I can imagine explaining this game to someone and getting a response of, "So, I put my little guys on a spot to collect some cubes and gold, and I turn in the gold and cubes to get points. Yeah? And I'm trying to block others from collecting cubes that will help them get points. That's about it, right?"

No, no that's not it! You make this game sound so boring!!

Then again, this hypothetical someone just might be right - in essence that's about it. While Lords of Waterdeep can be a really fun game, the abstract nature of it takes away from the theme. People who love Waterdeep will make it sound like a cutthroat game of discovering rival faction's secrets or quelling uprisings with your adventurers, but for all intents and purposes the summary above is pretty accurate. If you're not into it the game can become rote, going through the motions of picking up cubes and tossing down more cubes to complete quests, "OK, I've finally got 1 purple, 1 white, 2 black and 2 orange cubes... plus 4 gold... and now I've impersonated an Adarbrent noble for 18 points. Woo."

That's where dndeeples come in: adorable little warriors, clerics, wizards, and rogues in the same colors as the cubes! Beyond the cuteness factor, they really bring out the theme of the game and make it much less abstract. You'll feel like you're actually hiring adventurers to go on your quests, and it's fun to see them all hanging out in your tavern waiting for their big moment. I got the original wooden ones from etsy and I love them, but you can find plastic ones on Amazon if you prefer acrylic to wood (my husband would have preferred plastic ones). While the price of dndeeples is about what you'll pay for the game itself, they're a highly recommended purchase. They'll help you and your friends go from liking the game to loving the game.

And that's where I am with Lords of Waterdeep right now; I love this game! Even with two players there's plenty of tension in where you place your agents, who will choose the coveted first player marker, hoping others don't take the spots you need, keeping track of your points and your opponents points and which adventurers you and your opponents need to complete quests, trying to figure out who is playing which Lord, etc.

There's so much going on in this game, and although it's more passive aggressive in the conflict department, the intrigue cards offer plenty of direct conflict and flair to keep my interest (sorry hon, but yes, I had to play two intrigue cards in a row to get two clerics out of your tavern - it was the last round of the game and you would have completed that 20 point quest!). I also find myself constantly thinking while playing this game, which is one of my favorite things about board games.

Towards the end you'll expend your mental energy coming up with final plans to eke out the most possible points (or keep your opponents from getting points) in the hopes that you can maybe win this time, and just when you think you have it all figured out your so called "friend" will take that one spot you needed to pull it off and you have to start planning all over again.

Women Like Board Games Rating: