Seriously, folks - this thing is amazing. If you aren't familiar with it, it's a board game that contains no roleplaying, but allows up to four adventurers (using the core D&D 3.5 classes and their art etc.) to go up against the "evil Dungeon Master" who controls the mobs and the loot. 11 scenarios in the core game, many others in the two expansions. The weirdest thing is, Hasbro US decided not to release it here, believing that it would cause confusion with the D&D RPG brand in this country - so they sent it to the UK, where it's done very well. I managed to get a line on a big pile of these things, and I'm telling ya, they are WELL worth the money!
Check them out here if you haven't seen them already:
http://paizo.com/store/brand/dungeonsDragons/boardGames
Very, very cool stuff, that I thought should be brought to your attention :-)
The remaindered stock bookshops local to me (I'm from the UK) have been selling this for over a month for less than half RRP. The Torquay store had about 50 last time I was in, so overall I am sceptical that UK sales have been that good.
I can't help suspecting that Hasbro has not been able to shift enough of it's stock of this boardgame in the UK and has consequently shipped some to the USA. The decision not to release it anywhere other than the UK seems bizarre to me.
On the positive side it looked good enough I considered buying one.
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I bought this game around or slightly over a year ago if not longer.
I got it from a game store in the UK and had it shipped here to the US.
The minis are what you would expect from a game in this price range. They are solid colors, purple for the four heroes, white for undead, green for goblins, trolls and carrion crawlers, brown for the ogres and gnolls. The sculpts are also what you would expect for a board game. i.e. not to scale with D&D 3.5 scale, average detail, but decent looking enough. They are certainly better than the bottle caps and old dice being used at some gaming tables!
The game boards are spectacular. They are printed on a heavy cardboard, and the artwork on them is very nice. They would compliment any 3.5 gaming table around the world. The have grids printed on them, and while I am not sure if they are exactly 1" inch squares they are close enough so that you could use these boards in your regular D&D game.
The rules of the game are fairly simple, but are nothing like the D20 rules we D20 gamers are used to.
The scenarios are pretty straight forward.
There are lots of fun little bits that come with the game.
I see there are expansions out too. Being the OCD gamer / collector that I am I am sure I will buy those up when they are released.
All in all I would rather play D&D 3.5 but when the nephew is over this is the game that comes out.
We have samples on their way of the core game and both expansions (which are available now, and you can order them from us BTW), so as soon as they show up we'll tear into them and issue a full report. I agree, it was a very bizarre thing that they shipped them all to the UK, so naturally there are too many for the demand there. We hope to fix that here :-)
So far, these things are going like wildfire, folks have been ordering them nonstop since I posted the blog the other day. Between this and the Q-Workshop dice, we're really hopping around here lately!
Great googly moogly. The samples of each box showed up today (packed with a fantastic selection of English chocolates, MMMM KINDER EGGS!!) We promptly got to unwrapping and playing with the games.
WOW.
You guys have GOT to get this game. We haven't played it yet to see how the rules are, but for bit-feel-factor alone, they are simply spectacular. The main box is just overflowing with rubbery-plastic figures, some of which (the skellies with nets) are the most awesome sculpts I've ever seen in injection molding. The PC figs all represent the iconic D&D 3.5 characters, and all the figs are a bit bigger than yoru standard D&D Miniatures figs, but they would certainly do in a pinch. The critters and terrain, for that matter, would probably work very well on a regular D&D table.
The expansions are equally friggin' awesome. The forest one has a four-part druid fig, but the ice one has a clear plastic ice dragon that is just too cool for words, you really have to see it to believe it. More terrain and game bits in the box, in case you don't want to play the rules. We have plans to get a game going later this week, perhaps as early as tomorrow. As soon as we play we'll report back, but as of right now everyone in this office is just blown away with this thing.
If you want one too, better get your preorder in fast, because we'll be ordering the load of them at the end of this week. We'll be setting aside a chunk to sell at conventions this year, so there won't be many left over if you didn't preorder it. So get yours now! :-)
You can find them here!
I checked back with my local bookshops and the game is still in stock in the Torquay branch of The Works chain. Looks like they have had trouble moving it as the price has now dropped to £8.99, that's under $17 US.
Strangely I have yet to see any of the expansion packs for sale.
It reminds me of the old heroquest board game, judging from the pictures. Can anyone compare directly ?
Stefan
IT
HAS
ARRIVED!
If you have one on preorder, it will ship to you within the next week. if you didn't get one on preorder, you can still get one now, we have plenty to go around. And if you're going to Origins or GenCon, we'll have them there.
But at last, at long, sweet last, they are HERE! Huzzah!
Phil (mildly sore and quite stinky from unloading the skids...)
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How odd, I live in the UK and I haven't seen a single advert by Milton Bradley about this game at all. It would be good for nieces and nephews who are too young to play D&D and still ask me about it. I find when they ask about the rules and I point at 5 stacks of hard backs each over a foot deep that it tends to put them off :) Anyway, as stated, find it odd it's so low key over here.
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Further to previous posts, these are available from "The Works" bookshops in the UK (specialists in remainders and overstocks).
I'm not sure how big a chain they are; I had assumed they were mainly northern UK, but if they have a branch in Torquay (south coast), then there may be many more.
The figures are the selling point for me; many are in the poses straight from the MM. They all occupy 1 square, but that can be remedied with card or a plastic base.
Lidda is very big for a halfling, I'll use her as an elf; Miallee has the most ENORMOUS hair, like a rug.
Regdar and Jozan, however, have proven their worth by standing in for several PCs or NPCs. The fact that Jozan is so blatantly a cleric of Pelor (due to his shield icon) makes him an auto-pick for any Greyhawk party.
The remaining figures are (deep breath):
4 ogres
4 bugbears
5 gnolls
3 trolls
2 carrion crawlers (!)
6 goblins (very big, these. Use them as hobgobs, perhaps)
6 skeletons w/net & trident
3 wraiths/ghosts
2 wights
1 lich
The plastic is fairly rigid, but still bendable (ie like the D&D collectable minis), but has been moulded in a 'chunky' style, so there are few thin pieces to bend.
Of my initial set, I needed to fix only 2 figures; Regdar got a new sword, from Games Workshop bits (more rigid plastic, you see), and one gnoll had a bendy axe, which I took as the opportunity to replace with a GW triple-chain-flail, and hey presto, cleric of Yeenoghu/flind/gnoll boss, which terrorised my own homebrew players, before coming back to kick seven bells out my cohorts in Shackled City...
The rules are nothing like D20, reminding me more of original Heroquest. All heroes & monsters get a varying no and type of dice for combat/shooting/spells/turning/trapfinding, etc.
All dice have icons, rather than numbers, and it is the total of these icons that determine the level of success.
There are 4 types of 'combat' die, with varying strength, plus 3 more dice for searching, disarming traps, and turning undead.
A 'special' die is also occasionally used, which reminds me of the 'Ghost' die in Ghostbusters, in that it can modify a result into a spectacular success or critical failure.
The boards are beautiful, and consist of some interior and some exterior locations. Closed rooms are printed on the boards, which are then customised using tiles to represent doors/archways/chests etc. They certainly would add to the ambience of a session, though, as with all such props, take care not to overuse them (Oh, no! Not the spooky corridor again!).
I now have 3 sets; one that I bought for 20% off shortly after release, one for half-price (from The Works), and one for £5 (80% off!) from the Oxfam shop, proving that you should always patronise your local thrift-shop.
Further to Snorter's post the game is still very cheaply available from The Works store in Torquay. I think The Works are something of a national chain in the UK. There are much larger The Works stores in Plymouth and Exeter and I think I can recall seeing them further afield too.