Post by masterdecoy on Jun 22, 2009 19:21:17 GMT 10
Opening thoughts:
To play World Of Warcraft: The Board Game [WoW:TBG] is a daunting task, the gargantuan box, is packed to the brim with all sorts of goodies. Picking up the box in a store and flipping it over, you will be able to feel the bulk within, and it will be easy to be dazzled by the promise of the sheer content within. That being said, once you actually open the box, it will be difficult not to be a little intimidated by what you behold. With over one hundred plastic miniatures alone, and possibly thousands of components, you may well wonder what you have gotten yourself into.
In this particular review, I will talk about the basic board game, and then follow up with how the two expansions (The Shadow War [TSW] and The Burning Crusade [TBC] add/change to the core game. Beware however; this is going to be a monster of a review, I will do my best not to lose focus on any one point, however the very nature of the game will make this difficult.
Game Overview:
If I hadn’t already gotten it through to you, this game is BIG, and you will require a very large area to play it on, A standard dining table will probably only just be big enough, and after adding TBC, you will be requiring at least a 5”x8” table. Make no mistakes about it, you will have to get out of your seat often in order to reach various components, stat sheets and of course the game board.
After setting up (you will require a lot of zip lock bags and elastic bands to organize everything, or this step alone could take at least 45minutes), the players are split into two teams, the hoard and the alliance, each player takes turns picking a character (or two in the case of a two player game) until there are either 4 or 6 characters on each team. There is only one character per class and the character sheets are double sided (one for hoard and one for alliance) so there is only ever going to be one of any said class in the game at one time.
Once you have picked characters, the hoard place their characters in Brill (the hoard starting area and safe zone) and the alliance in Southshore (The alliance starting area and safe zone) and then they draw their starting quests. Each quest is basically the same, go to a specific region and kill a few creeps, so each quest will tell you to spawn one or more “quest specific” creeps, either red or green monsters, or purple in the case of some of TBC’s quests at a region. These creatures are the ones the players need to kill in order to claim the quests reward. It may also tell you to spawn some generic blue creeps to get in your way. Blue monsters are considered “random creature encounters” and yield no benefit for killing, unless you have TSW in which case they will give you a small reward instead.
Starting with the hoard side, each team takes an entire turn and then passes control over to the alliance team, with 30 turns in total for a complete game, that means each side will only have 15 turns to complete as many quests and earn as much XP, while gathering the best loot they can and still manage to slay the boss monster before turn 30, a daunting task to say the least. TBC removes the 30 turn limit however and the game will keep going until one team slays the boss monster, but the boss monsters that come with TBC are a lot scarier and hide in dungeons (A mechanic not found in the basic game) so the game could go for a lot longer.
On each teams turn they advance the turn marker on the turn track, if it is a special turn (denoted by icons on the track) something special may happen, a random event perhaps or more loot added to the merchant deck. TSW also adds a persistent timed event deck that will range from making the end boss’ harder if not tackled in time, or may make you gain xp faster, or give bigger rewards for killing blue creeps. After resolving these events the players may take their turn.
During their turn the players may each take two actions, these are defined by: Travel, Town, Train, Fight or Rest and once each player has made their two actions, they may do some character management and their turn ends.
A travel action allows the character to move through 2 adjacent regions, or utilize a flight path (two flight paths basically just count as adjacent regions). However if you move into a region containing a blue creep you cannot move any further. Some items or abilities may allow you to ignore certain restrictions, or to move slightly faster. In TBC a travel action also allows you to enter a dungeon.
A Town action may only be imitated at a town (go figure), and allows the user to buy equipment from the merchant deck, gain HP and/or Energy back, as well as buy new abilities.
A Training action allows the user to buy new abilities anywhere on the board.
A fight action must be initiated in an area with a blue creep, or at an area containing one of your team’s quest monsters (you cannot kill your opponent’s monsters)
A Rest action allows the user to regain a lot of HP and/or energy back (even more if initiated in a town region)
During character management you can equip new items and abilities (if you are high enough level to use them), and you cannot change this configuration until the end of your next team turn. TSW does add a few items and abilities (mainly dealing with blue creeps and opposing players) that may be equipped at the start of any action however.
Fights are simple affairs (albeit sometimes time consuming), each participating character takes a turn to fight, each character completing their combat round before the next participating character has theirs. The first step of the combat round is called the dice pool step, the active player goes over their character sheet and picks up as many dice as they are aloud to roll, (paying appropriate energy costs for any abilities used) and rolls them. The dice are divided into 3 colours, Blue for ranged damage, Red for melee damage, and green for amour.
They then look at the creeps stats for the threat value, for each die that equals this number or beats it is put to the side. Some abilities or items may allow the player to roll more dice, or add more damage if they can spot certain numbers (generally 8’s) on certain coloured dice and certain monsters will have abilities that will trigger when the player rolls certain numbers (generally 1’s), they then roll all bonus dice and trigger monster abilities, putting all new success to the side (which may result in even more bonus’).
Once a player has finished rolling all the dice they are allocated, the next step begins, and this is called the re-roll step. Like the name suggests, the player will go over all his abilities and items and tally up his re-roll value (paying appropriate energy costs for new abilities they are using). They may then pick up as many or little dice as they wish (up to their re-roll value) and rolls them again (no die may be re-rolled twice, however certain abilities and items may allow certain dice to be re-rolled before the re-roll step begins, not counting towards their re-roll quota). The new values may trigger new monster abilities, or new item abilities juts like in the dice pool step, and once all of these bonuses are resolved and new successes added to the success pile, the next step begins.
The last step of a combat round is called the place token’s step, the Active player will put an amour token in the defense area of the combat area for every green success, a damage token in the defense area for every red success, and a damage token in the damage area for every blue success, they will then go over their character sheet for the last time and tally up any attrition they may deal (once again, paying any energy costs for abilities they are using this step), and places a damage token in the attrition area for each attrition they may deal. Repeat for every participating character.
If there is enough damage in the damage area at this point to kill a monster (as denoted by its health on its stat sheet), you remove that many damage tokens from the damage area and remove the monster’s miniature from the board. After that any surviving monster attack back, look at the surviving monsters attack values and combine them, then take out 1 armor token per hit until you run out of tokens, then start removing damage tokens for the remainder of the damage, if at any point during the attack process you cannot remove a token, the characters lose 1 health per hit divided equally among them. After the monsters have attacked, move all remaining hit tokens into the damage area from the defense area and attrition area, if there is enough damage in the damage area to kill any more monsters, remove that many tokens and remove the monsters miniature from the board.
Once all the monsters are dead or the party is wiped out the combat ends.
As soon as your team has killed the quest creeps any players that participated in the slaying of said creeps gets a dividend of the reward (divided as evenly as possible). The reward typically has a certain amount of XP, some gold, and a draw from the item decks, some quests may reward specific Named items from the Epic Deck. Finishing quests is the only way players will be able to earn XP, so you will often ignore the blue creeps unless they are absolutely unavoidable, and due to the limited time available to earn XP, your time will wholly be devoted to finishing as many quests as you can, in the most efficient manner possible.
TSW does add some small rewards for killing blue creeps, as well as the persistent event deck that will often force you to eliminate a threat, but this will just add to the tension as even more time must be rationed, and deals may even be made with the opposing team in order to ensure that said threats are eliminated. TBC removes the time limit altogether, and in doing so encourages players to take side quests, be a bit more liberal on how they move, and pursue actions that would otherwise be deemed too inefficient.
Once a player has accrued enough XP, his character will level up(Max level 5, or 6 in TBC), regaining all HP and Energy as well as increasing their stats. They will also be able to pick a new Talent. Talents are like abilities but are persistent and often buff certain abilities allowing the player to specialize his character (there is generally 3 specializations per character) or just to improve the abilities that the player likes.
Play continues back and forth until turn 30 or a team defeats the boss monster. If neither team has defeated the boss monster at the end of turn 30, the two teams fight each other to establish who gets the “minor” victory. With TBC play will continue past turn 30 and continue until one team manages to defeat the boss monster.
Component Overview:
The box is packed full of countless miniatures, cardboard tokens, cards and reference sheets left, right and center equaling over 500 easily, and after numerous games all the components have stood up to the punishment quite well, Although the smaller tokens are fairly easy to lose if one isn’t careful. As mentioned above a large collection of elastic bands (to keep the cards together), and zip lock bags (to keep the components separate) are a must to things organized, or the game would be an absolute nightmare to set up and pack away.
Both TSW and TBC add even more cards, miniatures and reference sheets to the mix, and all are of the same standard that came with the original game.
Closing thoughts:
WoW:TBG is a wonderful experience to complete if you can find a few gamers with enough patience to complete a full game, with a minimum game time of 4 hours (yes you wont be finishing it any faster) and a minimum of 8 hours if both expansions are included, this could easily lead into a whole weekend activity. Not a game to be taken into lightly, you probably wont play this one as much as others in your collection due to the sheer amount of time it takes to finish, However when you do, you will be left with a feeling of achievement few other games can rival.
This game is probably best suited to players familiar with the online game of the same name, as the board game does a exceptional job of emulating the feel of an online RPG. Others players may be left wondering what the point is.
If you do buy the game, I strongly recommend you also get TBC and TSW as they add to the game elements that perhaps should always have been included in the origonal box and unlock the full potential of the game.
Components: 4/5
Game play: 5/5
Replay Potential: 2/5
Theme: 5/5
Price: 3/5
Overall: 3/5
PM me if you would like a demo game
To play World Of Warcraft: The Board Game [WoW:TBG] is a daunting task, the gargantuan box, is packed to the brim with all sorts of goodies. Picking up the box in a store and flipping it over, you will be able to feel the bulk within, and it will be easy to be dazzled by the promise of the sheer content within. That being said, once you actually open the box, it will be difficult not to be a little intimidated by what you behold. With over one hundred plastic miniatures alone, and possibly thousands of components, you may well wonder what you have gotten yourself into.
In this particular review, I will talk about the basic board game, and then follow up with how the two expansions (The Shadow War [TSW] and The Burning Crusade [TBC] add/change to the core game. Beware however; this is going to be a monster of a review, I will do my best not to lose focus on any one point, however the very nature of the game will make this difficult.
Game Overview:
If I hadn’t already gotten it through to you, this game is BIG, and you will require a very large area to play it on, A standard dining table will probably only just be big enough, and after adding TBC, you will be requiring at least a 5”x8” table. Make no mistakes about it, you will have to get out of your seat often in order to reach various components, stat sheets and of course the game board.
After setting up (you will require a lot of zip lock bags and elastic bands to organize everything, or this step alone could take at least 45minutes), the players are split into two teams, the hoard and the alliance, each player takes turns picking a character (or two in the case of a two player game) until there are either 4 or 6 characters on each team. There is only one character per class and the character sheets are double sided (one for hoard and one for alliance) so there is only ever going to be one of any said class in the game at one time.
Once you have picked characters, the hoard place their characters in Brill (the hoard starting area and safe zone) and the alliance in Southshore (The alliance starting area and safe zone) and then they draw their starting quests. Each quest is basically the same, go to a specific region and kill a few creeps, so each quest will tell you to spawn one or more “quest specific” creeps, either red or green monsters, or purple in the case of some of TBC’s quests at a region. These creatures are the ones the players need to kill in order to claim the quests reward. It may also tell you to spawn some generic blue creeps to get in your way. Blue monsters are considered “random creature encounters” and yield no benefit for killing, unless you have TSW in which case they will give you a small reward instead.
Starting with the hoard side, each team takes an entire turn and then passes control over to the alliance team, with 30 turns in total for a complete game, that means each side will only have 15 turns to complete as many quests and earn as much XP, while gathering the best loot they can and still manage to slay the boss monster before turn 30, a daunting task to say the least. TBC removes the 30 turn limit however and the game will keep going until one team slays the boss monster, but the boss monsters that come with TBC are a lot scarier and hide in dungeons (A mechanic not found in the basic game) so the game could go for a lot longer.
On each teams turn they advance the turn marker on the turn track, if it is a special turn (denoted by icons on the track) something special may happen, a random event perhaps or more loot added to the merchant deck. TSW also adds a persistent timed event deck that will range from making the end boss’ harder if not tackled in time, or may make you gain xp faster, or give bigger rewards for killing blue creeps. After resolving these events the players may take their turn.
During their turn the players may each take two actions, these are defined by: Travel, Town, Train, Fight or Rest and once each player has made their two actions, they may do some character management and their turn ends.
A travel action allows the character to move through 2 adjacent regions, or utilize a flight path (two flight paths basically just count as adjacent regions). However if you move into a region containing a blue creep you cannot move any further. Some items or abilities may allow you to ignore certain restrictions, or to move slightly faster. In TBC a travel action also allows you to enter a dungeon.
A Town action may only be imitated at a town (go figure), and allows the user to buy equipment from the merchant deck, gain HP and/or Energy back, as well as buy new abilities.
A Training action allows the user to buy new abilities anywhere on the board.
A fight action must be initiated in an area with a blue creep, or at an area containing one of your team’s quest monsters (you cannot kill your opponent’s monsters)
A Rest action allows the user to regain a lot of HP and/or energy back (even more if initiated in a town region)
During character management you can equip new items and abilities (if you are high enough level to use them), and you cannot change this configuration until the end of your next team turn. TSW does add a few items and abilities (mainly dealing with blue creeps and opposing players) that may be equipped at the start of any action however.
Fights are simple affairs (albeit sometimes time consuming), each participating character takes a turn to fight, each character completing their combat round before the next participating character has theirs. The first step of the combat round is called the dice pool step, the active player goes over their character sheet and picks up as many dice as they are aloud to roll, (paying appropriate energy costs for any abilities used) and rolls them. The dice are divided into 3 colours, Blue for ranged damage, Red for melee damage, and green for amour.
They then look at the creeps stats for the threat value, for each die that equals this number or beats it is put to the side. Some abilities or items may allow the player to roll more dice, or add more damage if they can spot certain numbers (generally 8’s) on certain coloured dice and certain monsters will have abilities that will trigger when the player rolls certain numbers (generally 1’s), they then roll all bonus dice and trigger monster abilities, putting all new success to the side (which may result in even more bonus’).
Once a player has finished rolling all the dice they are allocated, the next step begins, and this is called the re-roll step. Like the name suggests, the player will go over all his abilities and items and tally up his re-roll value (paying appropriate energy costs for new abilities they are using). They may then pick up as many or little dice as they wish (up to their re-roll value) and rolls them again (no die may be re-rolled twice, however certain abilities and items may allow certain dice to be re-rolled before the re-roll step begins, not counting towards their re-roll quota). The new values may trigger new monster abilities, or new item abilities juts like in the dice pool step, and once all of these bonuses are resolved and new successes added to the success pile, the next step begins.
The last step of a combat round is called the place token’s step, the Active player will put an amour token in the defense area of the combat area for every green success, a damage token in the defense area for every red success, and a damage token in the damage area for every blue success, they will then go over their character sheet for the last time and tally up any attrition they may deal (once again, paying any energy costs for abilities they are using this step), and places a damage token in the attrition area for each attrition they may deal. Repeat for every participating character.
If there is enough damage in the damage area at this point to kill a monster (as denoted by its health on its stat sheet), you remove that many damage tokens from the damage area and remove the monster’s miniature from the board. After that any surviving monster attack back, look at the surviving monsters attack values and combine them, then take out 1 armor token per hit until you run out of tokens, then start removing damage tokens for the remainder of the damage, if at any point during the attack process you cannot remove a token, the characters lose 1 health per hit divided equally among them. After the monsters have attacked, move all remaining hit tokens into the damage area from the defense area and attrition area, if there is enough damage in the damage area to kill any more monsters, remove that many tokens and remove the monsters miniature from the board.
Once all the monsters are dead or the party is wiped out the combat ends.
As soon as your team has killed the quest creeps any players that participated in the slaying of said creeps gets a dividend of the reward (divided as evenly as possible). The reward typically has a certain amount of XP, some gold, and a draw from the item decks, some quests may reward specific Named items from the Epic Deck. Finishing quests is the only way players will be able to earn XP, so you will often ignore the blue creeps unless they are absolutely unavoidable, and due to the limited time available to earn XP, your time will wholly be devoted to finishing as many quests as you can, in the most efficient manner possible.
TSW does add some small rewards for killing blue creeps, as well as the persistent event deck that will often force you to eliminate a threat, but this will just add to the tension as even more time must be rationed, and deals may even be made with the opposing team in order to ensure that said threats are eliminated. TBC removes the time limit altogether, and in doing so encourages players to take side quests, be a bit more liberal on how they move, and pursue actions that would otherwise be deemed too inefficient.
Once a player has accrued enough XP, his character will level up(Max level 5, or 6 in TBC), regaining all HP and Energy as well as increasing their stats. They will also be able to pick a new Talent. Talents are like abilities but are persistent and often buff certain abilities allowing the player to specialize his character (there is generally 3 specializations per character) or just to improve the abilities that the player likes.
Play continues back and forth until turn 30 or a team defeats the boss monster. If neither team has defeated the boss monster at the end of turn 30, the two teams fight each other to establish who gets the “minor” victory. With TBC play will continue past turn 30 and continue until one team manages to defeat the boss monster.
Component Overview:
The box is packed full of countless miniatures, cardboard tokens, cards and reference sheets left, right and center equaling over 500 easily, and after numerous games all the components have stood up to the punishment quite well, Although the smaller tokens are fairly easy to lose if one isn’t careful. As mentioned above a large collection of elastic bands (to keep the cards together), and zip lock bags (to keep the components separate) are a must to things organized, or the game would be an absolute nightmare to set up and pack away.
Both TSW and TBC add even more cards, miniatures and reference sheets to the mix, and all are of the same standard that came with the original game.
Closing thoughts:
WoW:TBG is a wonderful experience to complete if you can find a few gamers with enough patience to complete a full game, with a minimum game time of 4 hours (yes you wont be finishing it any faster) and a minimum of 8 hours if both expansions are included, this could easily lead into a whole weekend activity. Not a game to be taken into lightly, you probably wont play this one as much as others in your collection due to the sheer amount of time it takes to finish, However when you do, you will be left with a feeling of achievement few other games can rival.
This game is probably best suited to players familiar with the online game of the same name, as the board game does a exceptional job of emulating the feel of an online RPG. Others players may be left wondering what the point is.
If you do buy the game, I strongly recommend you also get TBC and TSW as they add to the game elements that perhaps should always have been included in the origonal box and unlock the full potential of the game.
Components: 4/5
Game play: 5/5
Replay Potential: 2/5
Theme: 5/5
Price: 3/5
Overall: 3/5
PM me if you would like a demo game