Lords of Waterdeep: A Dungeons & Dragons Board Game

by Wizards of the Coast

• An exciting Euro-style board game set in Waterdeep, the greatest city and jewel of the Forgotten Realms
• This immersive game casts players as Lords of Waterdeep who hire adventurers to complete quests
• Game play: 1 hour
• Perfect for 2 to 5 players

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 3.1 x 14.1 inches ; 3.8 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: 0786959916
• Item model number: 5513165
• Manufacturer recommended age: 12 - 15 years
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,404 in Toys & Games (See Top 100 in Toys & Games)
  • #11 in Toys & Games > Games > Game Accessories
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (89 customer reviews)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Waterdeep, the City of Splendors—the most resplendent jewel in the Forgotten Realms, and a den of political intrigue and shady back-alley dealings. In this game, the players are powerful lords vying for control of this great city. Its treasures and resources are ripe for the taking, and that which cannot be gained through trickery and negotiation must be taken by force. Lords of Waterdeep is a strategy board game for 2-5 players. You take on the role of one of the masked Lords of Waterdeep, secret rulers of the city. Through your agents, you recruit adventurers to go on quests on your behalf, earning rewards and increasing your influence over the city. Expand the city by purchasing new buildings that open up new actions on the board, and hinder—or help—the other lords by playing Intrigue cards to enact your carefully laid plans.

Product Description

Waterdeep, the City of Splendors--the most resplendent jewel in the Forgotten Realms, and a den of political intrigue and shady back-alley dealings. In this game, the players are powerful lords vying for control of this great city. Its treasures and resources are ripe for the taking, and that which cannot be gained through trickery and negotiation must be taken by force!

Lords of Waterdeep is a Euro-style board game for 2-5 players.

Components:
 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

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Is this good? You better believe it! March 30, 2012

By Tactitles VINE™ VOICE

Format:Toy

If you are a eurogamer but not particularly drawn to fantasy themed dungeon games, please keep reading this. If you are a dungeon game fanatic with no euro experience, you also should keep reading. This game is a straight euro-style game, with a clever fantasy theme wrapped around it. Mechanically, it runs on worker placement and resource management principles. There are some cool cards, but the game pieces are... drumroll... wooden cubes. And some meeples. And some victory point tokens. Eurogamers will rejoice, and dungeon crawl gamers might be surprised. You won't find any miniatures here.

But this is far from an average euro with cubes. It is actually a very well designed game, with many winning ways to approach it. The object is to complete Quest cards, which each show cube requirements (called adventurers) and rewards. Four types of "adventurers" are represented by cubes. Orange for fighters, white for clerics, black for rogues, and purple for wizards. Quests cards are colored as well. So an orange Quest (called a warfare quest) requires, as its main element, orange cubes. White Quest cards require white cubes, etc. But each will usually require a lesser amount of other resources, such as gold or other colored cubes. Victory points are rewarded for completed quests, and a few other hidden bonus points are awarded at the end.

Standard stuff, right? No.This game works so well because it is fairly quick, and actions are tightly controlled because of limited places on the board to deploy your agents to obtain resources. Think Stone Age, but without as much scoring complication. It's not exactly the same, but similar. In addition to getting and completing quests, you can obtain and play Intrigue cards, which give you various actions.... Other actions you can take include getting gold, and purchasing buildings. Buildings provide more spots for players to place agents, and each building gives that player more resources. Owners of the buildings also get something each time another player uses it.

There are elements of several different types of games here, and they all work extremely well together. The fantasy theme provides a nice backdrop, complete with "flavor text" on cards and fantasy-type names assigned to buildings and pieces. It all provides extra enjoyment, added to a fine euro-style game. It's easy to teach and learn, and with one game under your belt you'll be flying through the next game. And you'll probably keep coming back, because strategies that work depend on each game and how the other players play. Replay value is high, as far as I can tell from a limited number of games so far. Everyone who has played this with me has enjoyed it, and complaints are few and minor. It's an excellent game, and one I purchased after just one play, which is quite rare for me. Hope you enjoy it! Read more ›

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic resource collection and quest fulfillment game March 22, 2012

By Kartik S. Santhanakrishnan

Format:Toy

For those who've played Agricola and Caylus, this game uses similar concepts to those two games. Your meeples (people) collect resources or money. I call them resources or cubes but these are fighters, rogues and so on, in the game's terminology. You use these to gain special powers or victory points or build buildings. Meeples can visit any building to get more resources or money than they normally would. However, the owner of the building i.e. the original builder gets rent or resources when that happens. Players can use intrigue cards for one time special effects. Everyone also gets a special secret end of game bonus card such as "Each building you control gives you 6 points at the end of the game". With a combination of these different actions, you aim to gain more victory points than anyone else.

The only reason I'm not giving it 5 stars is that it didn't really leaving craving for more like "Through the Ages" did. The reason may be that it is not too original and is so similar to other games out there. That said, the game is interactive, gives everyone an equal chance of winning and anyone can come back from behind and win the game. I find a game that always keeps players in with a chance of winning to be exciting. There are many different strategies to pursue. Overall, fun game.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great board game for all audiences April 24, 2012

By Jon Cooper

Format:Toy|Amazon Verified Purchase

Lords of Waterdeep is based in the Dungeons and Dragons world. More specifically, in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Unlike the other board games that have been released by Wizards of the Coast over the past few years that are also set in the D&D world (eg, Wrath of Ashardalon and Conquest of Norrath), this game is pure euro. For all intents and purposes, it is a worker-placement game with a pick-up and deliver mechanic (no, really, it's funner than that might sound!).

The idea behind the game is the following: Each player takes on the role of a lord of Waterdeep - one of several actors who essentially controls the politics and economy of the City of Splendor (as Waterdeep is known). To increase their influence, they hire adventurers to complete quests on their behalf. For example, you might hire a few rogues to infiltrate one of the many guilds composing Waterdeep's market economy. The more quests you complete, the better you do in the game - the player who completes the most (and most valuable) quests, wins.

Game play

The game play blends the theme with the mechanics almost seamlessly. The game plays over eight rounds, and each round players take turns assigning their agents to different buildings. Each building procures the player something, but most commonly a collection of adventurers. Adventurers come in four flavors: clerics, rogues, fighters, and wizards (in other words, classic D&D archetypes). After assigning agents to a building and collecting its benefits, a player can complete one quest per turn. To complete a quest, you must return a certain type and amount of adventurers to the general stock. In return, you earn victory points - and sometimes gold and more adventurers, or even advantages that last throughout the duration of the game....

That's basically how the game plays. There area a few extra things, however, worth noting. First, the game begins with several basic buildings that allow players to procure all necessary resources: the four types of adventurers, quest cards, money, and intrigue cards (more on this in a second). But players who visit the Builders' Hall can also build a new building for that turn. This creates more spaces and resources for players to use and collect, and also provides a benefit for whoever built that building: whenever another player assigns an agent to that building, the owner receives a reward, as well.

Intrigue cards allow players to mess with each other more directly than simply blocking one another when assigning agents to buildings. Sometimes they allow you to steal adventurers from other players, while other times you can force them to complete a quest before moving on to their own, more lucrative quest cards. Perhaps most importantly, when you play a quest card, you do so by assigning an agent to Waterdeep Harbor. At the end of each round, everyone who assigned an agent here, that is, played an intrigue card, gets at least one more turn to assign agents to buildings. This mechanic forces players to be in each others' faces.

Finally, at the start of the game, players receive a Lord of Waterdeep card that indicates their particular character. Each character is typically associated with a specific type (or types) of quest cards. For example, a lord may be associated with both Skullduggery and Piety (odd combination, but it happened to me with the character Nindil Jalbuck - an evil doppelganger of an otherwise honest and philanthropic halfling). For each quest of that type you complete, you earn bonus points at the end of the game.

Why we love this game

a. Lords of Waterdeep is easy to learn and pick up, and it goes quite fast. Our games clocked in at around 45-60 minutes. My current gaming group starts around 2200 and we usually poop out sooner rather than later. This means games that are quick to pick up and play, but strategically fun, are a boon. What's more, with the Lord of Waterdeep cards, each player starts out with a clear goal that helps shape their strategy.

b. I like the theme, a lot. I've never played D&D as an RPG, but I've enjoyed the literature and the D&D Adventure Games (we own both Wrath of Ashardalon and The Legend of Drizzt). This game evokes the D&D world in a very unique way. Although I wish the adventurers were something other than classic euro-cubes for thematic reasons (I insist that everyone call the cubes wizards, clerics, fighters, and rogues, and not purple, white, orange, and black cubes!), it still works: you get the idea that you are hiring people to go do stuff for you. Fun, dungeony, high fantasy stuff. I dig it. It just does not feel like a cube-pusher to me. Along with the theme, there's actually quite a bit of flavor text (and incredible artwork) on the cards and in the rules book that make it even more fun (and yes, I read my flavor text, out loud, too, when completing a quest!).

c. Although you keep track of victory points as you complete quests, you never quite know who wins until the end of the game, because it's only then that the Lord of Waterdeep cards are revealed. This means that the run-away front runner will not necessary win - and if they do, at least everyone else feels like they're still in the game and has a chance up until the bitter end!

d. Finally, this is a good game for all numbers of players (2-5) for which we've played (2 and 4). Strategy changes slightly between player counts, but, in our experience, anyway, the core feel and tactics of the game remain constant between 2 and 4 players - a rather rare and well done feat, in my opinion.

In short, Lords of Waterdeep is absolutely fun. I want to note, also, that within my gaming group, I am the only one with any D&D background or, shall we say, enduring and obsessive high fantasy/sci-fi interest. But that did not seem to matter: everyone loved the game and the theme, and this is one of the few games that got a call back from my gaming group. Read more ›

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great gateway to more complex worker placement games (I'm looking at you Caylus) April 3, 2012

By Jeremy Hinton

Format:Toy|Amazon Verified Purchase

Let's get this out of the way first: this game is basically a lite version of Caylus. Caylus, in my opinion, is quite difficult to explain to new players. Consider Lords of Waterdeep to be a gateway game to the more advanced worker placement games. Instead of stacking cubes of resources to build a castle, you send out "agents" who hire cubes of "adventurers" which complete quest cards for points and resources. Actions are taken immediately, similar to Agricola, and points are scored instantaneously on a scoring track, so you can roughly keep track of points as you go. The wrinkle is that each player plays as a Lord of Waterdeep with a secret agenda to score points at the end of the game (for example 4 points per Warfare and Acarna type quests, or 6 points per building you have built). The game plays quickly, and the icons on the board are very readable. Additionally it is very easy to teach. The Dungeons and Dragons theme will probably hook more people than the relatively dry Caylus. This is a game that will get a lot of play on my table.