tabletopgaming.co.uk 67of Waterdeep wrestling for control of
di erent parts of the city and doing
quests – it’s called Lords of Waterdeep.
e dungeon stu feels perfunctory
and unsatisfying. e combat system
is entertaining, with lots of satisfying
dice rolls, but luck plays a bigger part
than strategy.
e rulebook is not as bad as you
may have read on the internet, but
neither it nor the game ever captures
the avour of D&D or Waterdeep, and
the game runs too long for what it
is. I kept feeling I’d rather be playing
Lords of Waterdeep and, since I spend
most sessions of Lords of Waterdeep
wishing I was playing Agricola, this is
not a strong recommendation.
JAMES WALLISD
ragons and dungeons: two
things that go together as well
as sorcery and swords. Vault of
Dragons, a game set in D&D’s Forgotten
Realms but produced by Gale Force
Nine, has a bloody great gold dragon
on the cover, so as you’d expect you’re
going to spend the game... running
round the city of Waterdeep?
It turns out that in Waterdeep a
‘dragon’ is a gold coin; someone’s
stolen a lot of them and hidden them
in a dungeon, and four of the city’s
less-nice factions want to nd them.
You play one of those factions, each
with a special ability and unique
action, plus ten little plastic wizards,
rogues and ghters that you use to
occupy areas of the city.
Waterdeep itself is built randomly
from a dozen tiles. Each location has
bene ts if you control it, providing
money, rumours and quests, letting you
buy magic items, and so on. But there’sthe City Watch to be avoided, and other
players’ agents to be brawled.
Once you’re suciently tooled up
you can head to the Yawning Portal and
start exploring dungeons, three rooms
at a time, which yield better rewards –
including secrets. Even though you’ve got
a party of ghters, wizards and rogues, all
you do is make a single roll against a series
of three increasing target numbers – and
that’s how many rooms you get through.
Once you have found three secrets you
can reveal the Vault of Dragons, and beat
it by rolling 20 or more to win.
If that doesn’t sound terribly
D&D-ish to you, you’re right. Vault
of Dragons is a retooling of Sons of
Anarchy: Men of Mayhem, a Gale
Force Nine release from 2014, with
a dungeon section bolted onto its
rear end. It plays ne but has few
surprises. e main body of the game,
set in Waterdeep, is solid and fun, but
there’s already a game about the lordsLooking for a new dungeon-basher? Keep looking
Vault of Dragons
TRY THIS IF
YOU LIKED...
LORDS OF
WATERDEEP
The best bit of Vault
of Dragons is the
action in the city,
and this is different
enough from its
predecessor to
make it worth a look.PLAY IT? MAYBE
It’s fine – there’s nothing actually
wrong with Vault of Dragons, except
it’s a bit lacking in vaults and dragons.WHAT’S IN
THE BOX?
◗ 12 location tiles
◗ Seven dungeon tiles
◗ Yawning Portal tile
◗ 21 secrets counters
◗ 30 rumours tokens
◗ 20 action tokens
◗ 50 treasure cards
◗ 50 magic item cards
◗ Four faction tiles
◗ 40 followers pieces
◗ 12 polyhedral dice
◗ Five casualty dice
◗ Six City Watch tokens
◗ Initiative marker
◗ Dungeon revisited token
◗ Assorted coin tokens90m 2-4 14+ £40