Board Game Analysis: Super Dungeon Explore

And now, once again, the deadline informs me it is time to write a board game analysis review thingy. The board game in question this time is Super Dungeon Explore!

Simply the best:

Starting with the best is starting to be a habit of mine, and I see no reason to break that habit anytime soon.

At any rate, the best of Super Dungeon Explore is the build up, and the drama that is brought forth by said build up. For that is something that Super Dungeon Explore does well, because at first our entrepid heroes are living through their wildest power fantasies, taking out multitudes of kobolds and other creepy crawlies, slowly but surely slaughtering their way through the hordes to jab at the spawners with much gusto and bloodshed.

Once enough deaths have occured, the consul then gets the chance to change the mood by bringing out his mini-boss and giving the heroes a proper fight for their money, while they get a little more uncertain as the skull counter ticks towards the spawning of the final boss, the dragon Starfire.

At that point the tables are surely turned as they are now fighting for their very lives, letting both nerves and tempers fly high as every roll of a die now matters more than ever.

While the heroes never survived on our play-throughs, we never felt the dissapointment we suffered at the end of the game like in Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game. Every gruesome end still felt, of not good, then at least not unpleasant. Instead of an flat ‘Oh…’ we got a teeth wrenching ‘Dammit, so close!’, even if it was in fact not very close at all.

All in all, the build up was simply the best of any board game that I have played so far, and it truly enhanced the drama in a good way, at least in this humble writer’s opinion.

The worst:

But it wasn’t all milk, honey and roses in Super Dungeon Quest. The worst part of it was the loot system, which felt disjointed and almost separated from the action, even though it was directly related to it.

The fact that every damaged done by the heroes added a tick on the loot counter, even if no kills were made, felt a bit odd, and it had no relation to what we actually damaged or killed, which further dealt a little damage to our suspension of disbelief. The way it was designed, it just didn’t give us what we felt we wanted, which is all subjective opinions and what not but then again what truly is not, when it comes to reviewing board games.

The Core game system:

Movement, actions, attacks, health, stats, potions, loot cards

The core game system consists of a few different parts, but most are dictated by the special dice that comes with the box.

The game is played out in turns, where either one of the heroes get to move his or her character or the consul gets to activate and move 4 skulls worth of minions, before it’s the turn of one of the heroes to move again.

All in all, when all the heroes have moved and acted, the consul then gets to move the rest of his minions, irregardless of how many skulls they are worth, and then the turn is ended and it all starts over again.

3 are the types of dice that will guide you in your dungeon crawling adventure, the most common and weakest being the blue dice, the more reliable but still chancy red dice and finally the strong and much coveted green dice.

The strengths and weaknesses on the characters and enemies are mainly conveyed through how many dice they get to roll and the colour of said rollable dice.

The stats available to the heroes and enemies on their special cards is attack, which dictates how many coloured dice you get to throw when doing a melêé attack, armour, which dictates how many dice (if any) you get to throw to defend against against an attack (be it melêé , ranged or magic), followed by will, which tells you how many dice you get to throw when attempting to use magic (as well as for rolling for initiative, a pretty important roll which decides whether one of the heroes get to do their turn before some of the monsters), and finally dexterity, which conveys how many dice you get to use on a ranged attack, if your character is capable of doing something like that, that is (n0t to mention a certain character’s special being the option to use her dexterity to dodge attacks instead of relying on armour).

Not only that, the cards also tells you how far you get to move on your turn, as well as how many actions you get to make, for example an enemy costs you one action.

Furthermore there is also health, a very important stat that tells you how many wounds you get to suffer before you die.

Most of the minions have only one health, which further adds to the ‘I am mighty’ power fantasy of the heroes, as they are able to slaughter their way through hordes of them, relising in the massive shedding of blood.

One rather interesting system (but not the most interesting, not even close), is the way heroes get to heal themselves through attacks. Certain dice, well actually only the blue ones, have hearts on some sides, which is in concert with other dice that actually allows the hero to cause a wound, then get to heal either himself or one of his fellow heroes once, or removing a malicious effect, such as poison, fire or even being knocked down.

While a bit odd, it nonetheless somewhat works as a system, and it adds to the drama of the dice rolls, which in this humble opinion is ultimately a good thing.

There is also special actions on each card that you may use instead of attacking normally, such as utilising strange magics or great feats of strength.

Finally there is the potions, the effects of which is unique to each hero. The kicker with potions is that the player is able to quaff them at any given time, giving their usage an extra layer of possible tactical planning, for those who fancy that sort of stuff.

And then there is the two counters, that is slowly ticked up by damage.

One is the beforementioned loot counter, which goes up one tick for each damage the heroes cause to the minions of the consul, and at regular intervals rewards the damaging hero with a loot card, which usually comes in the form of a piece of armour, a weapon or a trinket that gives a small boost in the number of dice that he gets to use in one stat. The loot counter is reset after each turn of the game.

Unrelated but similar is the treasure cards, which the hero gets to draw one of when he opens a treasure chest.

These items are significantly more powerful than those of the loot cards, but then again it is much, much harder to actually get access to said treasure chests, what with the hordes of kobolds, fire creatures and small dragons in the way.

But anyway other is the skull counter, which goes up one tick for each damaged caused, no matter who causes and it affected by it. At regular intervals it goes past a skull (hence its name), which gives the consul another skull point to spend on spawning minions during his next round, which I will go into more detail on below.

The skull counter also decides when the consul gets to spawn his mini boss, and when it reaches the end (or when all spawners are taken out), the big boss is spawned and the fun part truly starts for the consul.

The most interesting:

It is that very spawn system that is nominated as the most interesting system of Super Dungeon Explore.

At the start of each game round, the consul gets to spawn 4 skull points worth of minions near each of his spawners, these minions range from tiny 1 skull kobolds to bigger 2 skull creatures and deadly 3 skull beasts.

And then there is the 4 skulls boss monsters, which the heroes should rightly fear.

As mentioned above he also gets an extra skull to use for spawning for each skull the skull counter has gone past on the previous turn, giving the consul a good chance to recover quite well from a particularly devastating round.

A particularly effective tactic for the consul has proven to be to spawn all his weak swarmers as close to the heroes as possible, and saving his bigger monsters for the spawners further away. That way he gets to earn more skulls for his next round when the swarms are slaughtered, bringing the counter closer to the mini boss and big boss, which he then can back up with his bigger regular monsters and utterly crush the heroes in one fell swoop.

If the dice allows him to, that is.

Target audience:

The target audience given is 11+, which I find to be a suitable age for this game.

It is not a hard game, unlike Battlestar Galactica, nor is it gruesome, at least not gruesome in a gruesome way.

The art style is cutesy, to say the least, and the game play while having the potential to be played in a more advanced way is still accessible for the younger crowd.

The game is quick, easy to get into and I’d say most importantly of all, while naturally highly subjective and purely an unmeasurable matter of opinion, quite enjoyable.

Summary:

All in all, I’d say the craftmanship is of the highest quality, and while it may not menace with spikes of giant cave spider chitin, it is a swell romp and a good way to get people of all ages interested in dungeon crawlers.

Much recommended.

Board Game Analysis: Battlestar Galactica the Board Game

Like worrying about the past and the receding hairlines of today, the time to get back to blogging is long overdue.

In this wholesome and decidedly un-spoilerly blog post we’ll be having the pleasure of analysing Battlestar Galactica: the Board Game. What joy!

The best of the beast:

As a starter, one must say, without any doubt whatsoever that the build-up is the best part of BSGtBG. The journey, rather than the destination, is the most sublime, entertaining and thought-provoking part of this cruel and down-right sadistic little game.

Survival is key, and having crisis after heart-wrenchingly humorous crisis thrown upon you time and time again where one have to juggle the fleet’s ever-dwindling resources while keeping an eye and a half on each fellow gamer for even the smallest signs of treachery has been found to be pretty darn entertaining once one got into the spirit of the thing.

The social claustrophobia one encounters when the whole board is sure they know who the Machiavellian mechanical monstrosity is, only for everyone to lay their suspicions on different heads is always a great laugh, and even with a traitor in the midst the group of hardy survivors does get welded together quite nicely after facing adversity after adversity, sacrificing several thousands of people so that the ship will have just enough fuel for doing another jump away from the hostile robotic fleet.

The worst of the warbles:

Which leads me to the oh so often less fun part of any journey, the end.

Win or lose, it all peters out into a rather un-climactic ‘oh, we’re done?’ which a more witty person could base a whole career in stand-up comedy about.

The end simply can’t measure up to the journey, and in case of a loss more often than not depended on a single dice-roll, further enhancing the anti-climax of the situation. Even a win is a bit of a downer, since like previously said, this game is in this humble opinion all about the journey, and while even the greatest journeys have to end sometime, all that is left is a big gaping whole in one’s soul where all the thrills and enjoyment used to be.

And if one reaches the time where the journey is actually starting to feel a little bit tedious, the ending feels even worse, since while if it would end when it was still, in a word, ‘awesome’, one would still partially be fuelled by the great time one indubitably had.

But then if one was in the state of tedium, the change from almost-ennui to nothingness is still a bit of a downer, because even with total boredom and lack of sleep bouncing in the back of one’s skull, the sudden yet inevitable end still feels like a bummer, which one would guess is a power of it’s own.

After all, if the game wasn’t good, one wouldn’t be bummed out of not playing it any more.

The Core game system:

At any rate, what could be described as the core game system is one big loop consisting of a few but oh so vital phases.

At the beginning of the game, and each subsequent turn of the player, the player in question gets to draw a number of differently coloured ‘skill cards’, more often than not around 5.

After the drawing of the skill cards it is time for the movement phase, where the player gets to move their character to one of the locations available to that character, depending on whether or not the character in question is a human or an outed cylon.

Humans and cylons-in-hiding gets to move around the big ships of the fleet, while discovered cylons have their own locations on the board.

After the movement phase is the action phase, where the player is allowed to make use of an action, either through the location the character is placed on the board, or through skill cards or one of the actions noted on the character’s character sheet.

After that, it’s time for the crisis phase.

The player gets the joy of drawing a crisis card, where the players get the joy of balancing the various resources left on the fleet and sacrificing that which they feel they can afford to sacrifice in order to keep going, even if it is just one more turn.

There are generally two kinds of crisis cards, the skill check crises and the choice crises.

With the skill check cards, the group of players get to band together and use their skill cards in order to work together and get through whatever crisis it is that has befallen them in order to not suffer the penalties given on the card.

Alternatively, they can with stiff upper lips and hardened hearts save their skill cards and ride through the storm, even if it means they lose some oh so precious resources.

This is also a perfect chance for the cylon or cylons-in-hiding to throw their spanners in the works by getting the crises to fail on purpose.

The way it works is that skill cards are placed face-down to avoid card-counting and other rain-man no-good-ness, while promoting sneakiness and scheming. Furthermore two skill cards are drawn from the so-called ‘destiny deck’ and placed face-down amongst the others in order to make it even harder to know who placed what cards and potentially make the crisis even harder to solve.

Each skill check has got a number assigned to it, which denotes how difficult it is to pass it, as well as a number of colours that signifies what types of skill cards gives a positive or negative value to the end score of the skill check.

After all the players have had an opportunity to add cards to the pile, they are shuffled and then flipped so that the cards can be counted, adding the value of the positive cards and subtracting the value of the negative cards.

If the value of the cards is greater or equal to that of the skill check, the crisis is solved and all is fine.

If the value is less then the skill check has failed and the fleet must suffer the penalties.

The second kind of crisis is where one specific player, like the president or the admiral, have to make a choice between two options, usually the situation is best described as choosing between plague and cholera, but they get more important the further the game goes along when certain resources start dwindling faster than others.

The actually win Battlestar Galactica: the Board Game, one have to escape far enough with the fleet so that the cylons won’t bother you any more, or so I’ve been told.

The mean of escape is activating the faster than light, or FTL, jump drive, which is done by filling the jump preparation track up to 5 slots, which is being done through the drawing of certain crisis cards.

Once the jump drive is prepared, the ship will jump and the admiral gets to draw 2 destination cards and, without consulting the rest of the group, pick one and then resolve the crisis written upon that card.

The destination cards also have a number written upon them, which signifies how far the ship have actually jumped.

To win BSGtBG, you have to have a jump-distance of 8, collected through the destination cards and then survive long enough to make one additional jump. That is the only way the humans can win, while the cylon players win when the humans lose.

The ways the humans can lose are numerous.

The first is through damage, if the main ship, Galactica, has 4 damage tokens or destroyed locations, the ship is utterly destroyed and all the humans dies.

The second is by fully losing one of the 4 resources, being Food, Fuel, Morale and Population.

These resources show how well the fleet is doing, and the total loss of any means the destruction of the fleet.

The third is by letting the cylons get a boarding party into the ship and killing everybody from the inside.

The epilektos of the system:

The most interesting system of BSGtBG would be the loyalty system, which basically assigns each player to the role of either human or a cylon infiltrator, which adds an added sense of danger and mystery to each session.

The subterfuge and witch-hunts and can happen are great opportunities for great fun for those who are into that sort of thing.

The actual assigning is pretty simple, at the start each player is given a card, which either reads ‘You are not a Cylon’, or ‘You are a Cylon’. Either way players are encouraged to spend up to 30 seconds reading that card, just to add to the mystique.

If you’re given the ‘You are a Cylon’, everything changes. Your end-goal is now the destruction of the fleet while getting the rest of the group to suspect everybody but yourself, having a big internal laugh while you’re practising your Machiavellian ways.

The rest of the group is bound to be eager to find out who the traitor or traitors are, in order to protect their dwindling resources and sanity, but the chance of actually discovering it are few and far between.

The suspicions, subterfuge and witch-hunts adds a layer of depth to the game, depending on the group of course.

The Target group:

One would say that the target group is mainly scheming bastards of 15 years or more of age, male and female both.

People interested in lengthy board-games, social politics and the Battlestar franchise also comes to mind.

Summary:

In conclusion, one would say that Battlestar Galactica: the Board Game is a great way to kill an evening, along with the afternoon and late night as collateral damage as well.

The hardships, intrigues and scheming are all great ways to knit together a group in adversity, only to break it down again when the accusations and witch-hunting starts.

Only thing that truly marrs the experience is the aforementioned anti-climax of the endings, the way it just fades away into nothingness, and it have been debated and well concluded that the cylon boarding party seems a bit tacked on because of lore rather than game play, and that the game could do well without it as it is just another loss condition and a rather measly one at that.

But other than that, the game is a brilliant romp and a great laugh, if only one had more time to throw at it than one does in today’s society.

That’s all for me for this moment, with plenty more blog posts to come, preferably not as close to their deadlines as this one.