Review – Lords of Waterdeep by Wizards of the Coast

I am not normally big on board games (though I play a mean Monopoly!). Recently, I had a chance to play a few rounds of Lords of Waterdeep. Here are my thoughts on the game.

Lords of Waterdeep is a strategy board game set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. In this Euro-style game, players send off their Agents to recruit Adventurers and use them to complete Quests.

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#1 – Lords of Waterdeep – The Contents

To be fair, I don’t own a copy of the game myself. Having played it, I can only say that the physical game, the board, playing pieces, cards, etc.. are all top-notch quality, with lots of great D&D artwork to go with the Forgotten Realms theme.

The game comes with the following components, that all neatly fit in the included box-tray:

• Game board
• Rulebook
• 5 card stock player mats
• 121 Intrigue, Quest, and Role cards
• 130 wooden cubes, pawns, and score pieces
• Wooden player markers
• Card stock tiles and tokens representing buildings, gold coins, and victory points

Lords of Waterdeep on Amazon sells for £32.19, which seems a lot for a board game (basic copies of Monopoly or Risk go for under 15 quid, though obviously there’re plenty of board games out there that are also far more expensive than this one).

Either way, if you spend the money on Lords of Waterdeep, you will get a very well made and designed game. No doubt there.

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#2 – Lords of Waterdeep – Gameplay

Lords of Waterdeep is heavily advertised as “Euro-Game”, and thus the core game is all about collecting resources (little cubes of different colours that represent D&D fighters, wizards or thieves, and not things like wood, cotton or stone), which in turn are spent to complete quests.

Successfully completed quests (usually) yields victory points and the player with the most victory points in the end wins!

Of course, there are a few complications to this, which add the spice to the game.

Player Roles

At the start of each game, players get a “player role” (or character) that they represent in the game itself. These are kept secret. There main purpose is to encourage player to pursue different types of quests, as the player rules grant bonus victory points for completing certain types of quests.

One player may thus get more paints for arcane quests (and thus be recruiting Wizards heavily), while another will be favouring the martial side of things with warfare and/or commerce quests.

For the base game, all but one player role are symmetrical. It felt more as if the kept players focused on different parts of the game board, and not compete too heavily on some parts, than truly change the play-style of the players.

It is easy to see however, how player roles could be great to add variety through expansions. A few more, and more different player roles in the base game would’ve been nice though.

Collecting resources Adventurers to complete quests is the main goal. Adventurers are collected hired by sending your Agents (you’re a Lord of Waterdeep after all) to various places on the game board (a map of Waterdeep).

There are no die-rolls, etc.., and you are free to send your agents to any free (!) spot on the map. Sending an Agent to “The Plinth”, for example, gets you one Cleric (white cube), while sending an Agent to “The Grinning Lion Tavern” nets you a pair of Rogues (black cubes). Sending Agents to other locations gets players more gold, more quests, allows them to play Intrigue Cards and more.

The complications are twofold.

1. There are limited spaces available. If the player before you send an agent to “The Plinth”, it’s taken for that turn and your agent (usually) can’t go there.
2. Players can build more buildings (places for agents to go) during the game. These tend to be better than the default buildings on the map, though came with the caveat of also aiding the player who built it, as well as the player who sends and agent to it, if they are used.

Intrique Cards can be played to give yourself an edge or hinder your opponent. A lot of intrigue cards are a bit double-edged, such giving yourself a few extra resources Adventurers, but also force you to give extra Adventurers to an opponent. This makes for a nice balancing act.

I actually found Intrique Cards to be a big bottleneck towards the end of most games, as they are really useful, but there are limited opportunities to play them (usually by sending an Agent to a field – the Harbour – that allows you to play an Intrique Card).

The above doesn’t cover all the complications that can arise in Lords of Waterdeep.

The main game, however, follows from these elements… players send out Agents in turn to a limited number of spaces to get the resources they need (without aiding your opponents too much) for the quests they want to complete.

This clearly is a fun, tried and proven system that works well. The D&D flavouring, for me, didn’t really come through so much. I never truly saw the little orange, white, purple and black cubes as hardy D&D Adventurers looking to go on quests.

Despite this, the many “trade-offs” that appear in the game, both in buildings and cards where your best option is also helping opponents, make for lots of interesting decisions in the game.

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#3 – Lords of Waterdeep – Verdict

Overall, it’s a fun game. Above all, I really like the following things about it:

• Very high production value.
• Lots of interesting “trade-off” choices to make during the game.
• Easy-to-learn game-play. The ~60 Minutes game-play time noted on the box is spot on, even with people who never played it before.
• Scales very well from 3 to 5 players (I haven’t played it with just 2).

The following, in contrast, aren’t necessarily “bad”, things, but points that should be mentioned.

• Rather pricey for a board game.
• Re-play value is limited, as it very much feels “the same” after a few games. There are expansions for Lords of Waterdeep, which may help to shake things up a bit.
• The “D&D theme” didn’t come through for me (though it’s not needed to enjoy the game).

Have You Played Lords of Waterdeep?

• Have you played WotC’s Lords of Waterdeep? If so, let me know what you think of it?
• Have you played it with some of the expansions?
• Do you play board games at all?

Leave a comment!

Z.