"Whats recommended for board games?" Topic

Okay, so there's a TON of dungeon crawling board games out there from the past 10 years or so.

What is recommended right now, as far as boxed ones with lots of nice figures and well suited to 2-3 players? Solo option a plus.

Personally, if you want one that's a good start that can be expanded, the D&D Adventure System games are great buys with 4 games using the system that you can mix and match between as you get them.

The four games are Temple of Elemental Evil, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, & Legend of Drizzt.

If you want to start with a single one, Elemental Evil or Legend of Drizzt are best to start with, if you can get two of them, buy Castle Ravenloft & Wrath of Ashardalon

I've been eyeing those. I assume they're a simplified version of D&D?

Do they come with floor tiles and figures and all?

Dungeon Saga. Great game.

Munchkin Quest

The D&D ones come with floor tiles and miniatures. You do run out of replay after a few times playing the scenarios. The price is good and there are 4 different themes so it could take a while to get through every scenario.

Dungeon Saga. It's interesting. No solo option in the core game and the advanced set to give you solo options is not worth the price. I was in on the Kickstarter and it did not quite turn out how I thought it would from a solo dungeon crawl. Figures are made more for the painter and not board gamer.

I don't recommend the D&D ones. They are very simplistic and during one game gave me a situation where one of the two groomsmen escorting the groom turned out to be an assassin in disguise, and the other turned out to be a lizardman in disguise. True Story.

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In another game the scenario became unwinnable because of the random placement of the board.

I've also tried Super Dungeon Explore (too repetitive) and Krosmaster Arena (too cutesy), but neither hit the spot.

I liked my most recent dungeon crawl game Arcadia Quest:

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but it is chibi – you can substitute the figures with "normal" fantasy figures though.

One game you may not consider a dungeoncrawl is Zombiecide: Black Plague.

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The game components are good, but because it is a co-operative game a domineering player may end up running the whole show. By contrast Arcadia Quest is a more competitive game, where all the parties are fighting the monsters, but can also win by fighting each other.

The problem with out-of-the-box dungeoncrawl games these days is that they tend to come with a ladder camapign of a series of scenarios, so you do run out of new scenarios after a while.

Finally, if you don't mind "kit-bashing" your own dungeon crawl set-up (and I am sure that you don't), here's what I did using Dungeon Command tiles, LOTR figures, and SOBH rules:

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It is a totally solo game with no fixed campaign track, so I can potentially keep playing until I got tired of it (which I did).

Some of the playtest my friend and I did for Frostgrave were also played on dungeon tiles, so that's another possibility.

I like the DnD games. Ravenloft is best summed up by my daughter :the game is trying to kill us!"

Wrath of Ashardalon has some cool features. The Dungeon Command system has add ins as well if you want themed monsters.

Descent 2nd edition, Dungeon Saga and the new Warhammer Quest all fit the bill.

I owned the first edition of Descent but the playtime to set up before anything happened kinda did us in a bit.

You should certainly try Shadows of Brimstone.

See link for example.

Descent is badly broken and extremely 'no fun' for the DM – great value for the figures and boards but the game is naff.

The D&D games are very good, streamlined D&D, loads of scenarios and the ability to mix and match between the 4 boxes. ToEE is very slightly different (but still fully compatible) as it is post 5ed and echoes that change. If you wanted to pick one to try that's the one I'd recommend.

Mice & Mystics
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I discussed it on my blog
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Imperial Assault. The sci-fi skin over top of the Descent engine. There are lots of campaign missions and the boards and figures are well done. After two plays, we got most of the rules memorized so games flow fairly smoothly.

Descent used in combination the Descent app that removes the need for a GM – excellent

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We're playing Descent coop with the new app. It's a blast. I hope they do this for Imperial Assault.

Hmm, didn't care for IA at all – too simplistic and dull. Though the pieces are nice (mind this modern trend for double sided random tiles is a nightmare, increases set up time 5-fold!)

Didn't know about the Descent App – we stopped playing long time ago :)

Does it significantly improve the gameplay?

A second vote for "Shadows of Brimstone".

If you are unfamiliar it is basically the wild west meets Cthulhu. Each game starts with the adventurers searching a mine. These mines can have gates to other worlds. The two core sets and the expansions each have different "heroes" and monsters and a different world.

Games are for two-four players. It can be played solo (using at least two heroes) as new room/corridor placement and encounters are card-driven.

While one-off games can be played it has an excellent campaign system.

Appreciate the suggestions.

Any thoughts on the old Mageknight and World of Warcraft board games?

I suggest you go to Board Game Geek and look up the games mentioned above. Most games have written reviews (under Forum, Reviews on the given game's page) and the more popular have video reviews and/or playthroughs. The latter are particularly useful.

You know, I even had BGG open the other day, to look for something different and for some reason it didn't occur to me yesterday.

I'll go give it a look :-)

Not that it will help in the near term, but there is a Kickstarter project that looks pretty interesting. It's called "Dungeon Crusade".

You can find it here: link

Dungeon Crusade looks incredibly good!! You can tell the creator put a ton of heart and soul into the game. Everything about it, from the open world design, to the combat system (which is just awesome), to the patrol route system (which is very innovative) is just phenomenal!!

I am proud to say I am a backer of this game, and I hope you all will at least take the time to look at the Dungeon Crusade Kickstarter. The game comes with cardboard standees but you can proxy in your own minis instead. Apparently, there won't be any extremely unusual creatures in the game in order to allow people to proxy in their own minis.

Another +1 for Dungeon Crusade, it will be interesting to see CMOn's new game Massive Darkness. But that's 12 months+ away too until production.

Descent has a new app that BGG's enthusiastic about.

Massive Darkness is coming up, if you like da minis!

Massive Darkness (based on how excellent Zombicide Black Plague is) should be quite excellent.

I have a GeekList that is collecting dungeon crawlers and similar games on BGG. The list is more about combat games in corridors or confined spaces but includes dungeon crawlers.
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