Lords of Waterdeep is a victory point based game that is simple to learn. Because of the different decks of cards, buildings and game mechanics, each game can be quite a bit different from the last. In addition, the game has a great theme and can be played 2 player in a very strategic manner, or 3-5 player for a fun group game with interesting interactions. Overall this makes for a entertaining game with a good balance of strategy and variety.

The game is composed of 8 rounds. In each round players take turns placing their agents in different action spots that provide them with adventurers(resources), money, quest cards, and intrigue cards. In addition once per round a new action spot can be built.

Quest cards provide rewards and victory points when you spend the required resources to complete them. In addition, they sometimes provide special abilities that last for the rest of the game. This provides a good mechanic where players can try to get these cards at the beginning of the game when they have the greatest advantage.

The intrigue cards let players get extra resources or attack other players. Some cards even let the player pick someone to help. These cards end up having interesting interactions with other players and can help stop one player from losing too much or another from winning too much, but sometimes the attack can be too powerful (especially the mandatory quests). Overall these cards are pretty balanced, but I think it would have been better if they had more helping cards and less attack cards. In addition some of the cards are way more powerful than others, which can make the value of taking an intrigue cards a little random.

The ability to build new action spots is a very interesting game mechanic. The player that builds the building gets a bonus whenever someone else uses their building. This can make building the really good buildings very rewarding in the long run if built early in the game. Buildings that don’t get built keep becoming worth more and more points as the rounds go on.

The last twist to this game is the lord cards. Each player gets a secret lord identity card at the beginning of the game. These cards make certain types of quest cards give the player a bonus at the end of the game for completing. This ends up being a great way to keep players guessing who is winning and make the end of the game exciting. One of the lord cards gives a bonus for building buildings, but it seems like in a 4 or 5 player game it may be to hard to build that many buildings and get a good bonus out of the deal.

Overall all these game mechanics make for a very fun game where you must always reevaluate what is your best move. The value of resources, intrigue cards, buildings, and quests are always changing for each player, forcing them to always reevaluate what is best for them and if they need to block someone else.

Overall Rating: 7.25/10
Mastery: 7/10
Variance: 8/10
Randomness: 6/10
Entertainment: 8/10

Have you ever wondered what makes a board game fun? If you stop and think about it, it is actually a pretty complicated subject, especially considering how many different types of board games are out there and the preferences of players.

For simplicity’s sake, lets consider strategy board games. These games typically involve making difficult choices where the best choice that ends up leading to a victory is not obvious.

What makes a strategy board game fun is obviously subjective, but in my experience and my discussions with friends I have noticed some things most people tend to agree on.

Mastery

Games that are very easy to master become simple and boring. The most obvious example is Tic-Tac-Toe. Once you figure out the basic strategy to the game and the result of every game is a tie, the game quickly loses its appeal. On the other hand, games like Chess and Go are very hard to master and can take a life time to be competitive against the top players. One way to measure mastery is how long it takes to get from just learning the game to being a top ranked player.

 Variance

Another important aspect to a game is how much variance it has. If a game is the same every single time, it can be less interesting. I am defining variance to be changes in the game that the player is able to adapt to. Usually games do this by randomly dealing out cards or randomly laying out the beginning state of the board.  You could measure this by noting how many different possibilities there are for the game setup, and calculating how much the setup affects the game. (For example, which player gets to be yellow should not affect the variance score (unless yellow got to go first of course)) Note that the more the player has a chance to deal with the variation and plan accordingly, the more they feel in control and the less frustrating this is. This brings me to the opposite of variance.

Randomness

Randomness is parts of the game that affect the outcome that the player has no control over.  As you can imagine, this is bad as far as strategy games go. It is one thing if you are playing Chutes and Ladders with your 4 year old, but no one that wants to play a deep strategy game pulls out a deck of cards to play “War”. Measuring randomness could be tricky, but it would probably involve simulating a lot of games with an ideal strategy and noticing how many times that player loses anyways.

Game Scores

If we try to estimate a couple games in these metrics and calculate the average score for each game, we can see how they fare.

Discussion

As you can see from the graph, many of the “Euro” style games where you work to get victory points rank very highly. These games typically have good variances, lots of choices, and take a while to get good at. You can’t discount a good game of chess though, but it doesn’t have as much variance in it. There is so much more to explore in this topic. What do you think? You can send your comments and replies to my twitter by using the link to the right.

If you like physical puzzles like mazes and an extreme challenge then the perplexus games are for you. They are maze ball games where you must navigate a 3D labyrinth of obstacles and get to the end with out falling off. It may sound easy but it quickly gets tricky. There are three different puzzles with different difficulties to match your desire for challenge/pain.

Rookie

The rookie has big guard rails and is much shorter. It has 70 obstacles which makes it shorter and easier to beat. However because it is smaller and compact, it can be tricky to see where to go. It is a good puzzle if your looking for something easy or something for younger kids. It took me a couple hours to solve it, which seems a little quick for me.

Original

Spiral obstacle in the Perplexus Original

The original puzzle is where it starts to get really interesting. It has 100 obstacles and 3 start points so you can practice each part. It has some really interesting obstacles that really make it unique and cool. My favorite is the spiral in the middle, you have to go all the way around it, fall through the hole into a bucket, and then fall back onto the other side of the spiral and come out. The trickiest part of this puzzle is probably getting onto the “tight-rope” obstacle. It can be tricky not falling off while trying to do so. I also really enjoyed how the original had some parts with no guard rails giving a good challenge.

Epic

Various Challenges in the Epic

You might think at first that they were exaggerating when they called this puzzle “epic”, they didn’t, it is freaking hard. Lets just say I have played at least 10 hours on this thing and only got halfway even with using the provided 4 starting points and some extra unofficial ones. This one has everything: difficult stairways, crazy turns with no rails, bridges, jumps, and a gondola. In total it has 125 obstacles. It is truly a work of genius the way they packed it all in and yet it isn’t too difficult to see where to go in most cases. If your only going to get one game and you want the most for your money, this is it. It
has plenty of play time and is very challenging. Of course if your the kind of person that gets frustrated easily you might want to back away from this one.

 

Here is a picture of all three puzzles on my glowing shelf. They are a great conversation piece for people that visit.

All three Perplexus puzzles

 

Photo credit goes to PlaSmart. Thanks to them for making these great puzzles. You can find them on amazon at the links below or at some specialty toy stores.

Perplexus Rookie - Perplexus Original - Perplexus Epic

Finding good coop games can sometimes be a challenge. There is so much focus these days on immersive RPGs, intense strategy games and casual games. However, sometimes you just want to play a game on the same side with someone in the same room. That being said, here are some great coop board games and video games.

Board Games
Space Alert – Work together to plan how to save the ship from the attacking enemies, there is a catch, you have a time limit. Frantic fun.
Forbidden Island – Work together to save the world
Lord of the Rings – Work all the way towards destroying the ring using cards you draw and making tough choices.

Video Games
Final Fantasy VI (3 in US) – This game was one of the first good coop games, and it is still one of the best. You get to pick which player controls which of the four characters.
Halo- Good old mindless shoot em up fun. Reach was my favorite.
Magicka – Fast paced action game where you get to combine elements to come up with spells.

Let me know on twitter if you know of any other great coop games!