Starting a New Career (as a Dungeon Lord)

During ongoing weekend I got to play the newest board game in my collection - Dungeon Lords.

We had three players, obviously complete newbies everyone of us. Except the yellow player, who was a pro-player and a master in complete randomness and bluffing. It was the non-player-dungeon lord.

But despite this we played suprisingly few rules wrong - we only forgot that trap buying is a little different during second year, and that you start with three tunnels (we played with one). So that is to say that the rules are very well written and there isn't many rule entries that can be understood in different ways.

First game (along with tutorials and whatnot) obviously took many, many hours. The second game, however, took only about two. I guess this is a prime example of a game that is "easy to learn, difficult to master"? We also played the second game with full rules. They seemed quite easy and natural to adapt even after only one game.

Nobody attracted the paladin in either game, though it was a close call a couple of times during second play. I guess we're not that evil yet and the paladin saves itself for a worthy foe.

Both games had in common that one of the players gained most of the titles, so they weren't exactly "close" games when it came to victory. First game scoreboard was 31, 16 and 8 (three dead letters is really this fatal). Second game was 23, 14-16, 13.

One of the more memorable moments in first game was an annoying situation where my dragon was turned into a sheep, and another player had some other monster turned into a sheep, too. And were those sheep bloodthirsty! Both dealt the final damage point to an adventurer.

Special events in second play were Extra Tax and Rats. Neither had a very big effect, since special events came during spring in both years. Only one player had rooms to pay extra tax for in year one, and rats ate only four food tokens, all players combined. If I remember right, it ruined my plans of recruiting a goblin, but that's only a goblin.

Second game also saw a lot more situations where minion token would sit on an order card because there was no space at the order spots. Everyone hated the yellow player at one time or another.

Nobody recruited the demon.

Yet.