Tomb pits opponents against one another in a fast-paced board game of monsters, traps, and treasures. After assembling your party from a plethora of random characters at the Inn, you set out for the Tomb. The Tomb is created before the game begins, with each player hiding treasure, traps and monsters in each room, unknown to the other players. Know where you left the chest of gold? Better hope your opponent didn't put a Pain Eater in the same room! No rogues at the Inn today? Hope you don't run into a poison dart trap!
Tomb captures the fast-paced feel of a dungeon crawl without the hours of set up beforehand. Just grab your party and go! Each character brings unique abilities. And with the map changing every game, as well as the available characters, no two games will ever be the same!
I picked this game up at GenCon as a stand-in for nights when not enough players show up for a D&D game. What a perfect choice! This game is never the same thing twice and while it's simple to play, the choices and approaches vary greatly and many different strategies can be employed to try to win this game. Once you get used to the rules, the game is very fast to play, but the 60 minute time advertised on the box is a very optimistic estimate. Party selection, magic item placement and spell selection is very similar to the choices one would make in a fantasy RPG and gives it the RPG feel. I played the game tonight against just one other person and it was a lot of fun. Here are some problems, none of which prevented me from giving it a 5 star rating, which it deserves, but should be worked out in the game's next print run--1) Rule clarifications desperately needed in many places. 2) Some cards and rule references refer to some terminology not present in the game (blacksmith cards). A simple answer fixes this issue, but for a $60 game, I expected a little more quality control. 3) The box is too small to hold all the pieces after they've been punched out from the counter sheets. This means the game box won't last very long, which is too bad because it's attractive.
Still, overall, this is a GREAT board game!! Dozens and dozens of unique characters, combined with unique items, strange traps, weapons, magic, spells, prayers...the variety produced by the simple combinations is virtually endless. The board is two sided, one a smaller dungeon and the other one is a larger one for experienced players and/or larger groups. Well designed--just needs some errata TLC and some tweaking and it'll be perfect. Best board game I've played since Settlers of Catan, hands down.
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