Designers: Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson

I really love it when American companies and American designers put Euro mechanics into their games because the result is usually the best of both worlds. You get the thematic fun factor of Ameritrash games and you get the cleverness of Euro style mechanics. Some of my most beloved games are blending’s of American and European design’s, for example Fantasy Flights Twilight Imperium 3rd edition. Lords of Waterdeep is also such a game, a worker placement game thick with Euro design but layered with the fantastic Dungeons and Dragons franchise from the Wizards of fantasy themselves.

In Lords of Waterdeep you take on the role of one of the many powerful lords in the city of splendors, vying for control of the city through dirty politics, economic exploits and back alley deals. While this theme is prevalent visually through the use of Intrigue and quest cards, like most worker placement games it’s a thin visual layer rather than a mechanical link to the games theme. Sure you’re a Lord of Waterdeep, you have a card that represents who you are tucked away throughout the game that has a special mission for you but at the end of it all it’s a game about scoring points through the management of resources. This game could have easily been done with pretty much any theme you can think of, D&D however was a very good choice as it’s visually pleasing and familiar to most gamers. As a D&D fan, it really did it for me.

To win the game you must score points and like Caylus where much of the design was borrowed there are quite a few ways to do this. It’s all about those little workers representing the very limited resource you have to work with. The player that manages them the best will win the game.

Each round players will place one of their workers on spots on the gameboard represented by different parts of the city. Each spots yields a resource of some sort or allows you to take some sort of action. Typically you earn different types of resource cubes that technically represent mercenaries you hire (Wizards, Fighters, Clerics etc..). Some spots earn you money, others allow you to draw or play intrigue cards. One of the spots gets you the all-important first player token that will give you first dibs on the board the following round, while others allow you to draw quest cards which when completed by turning in the required resources earn you points. You can also place your workers on the only construction spot which lets you add buildings to the board, those buildings become new spots for workers expanding the types of actions players can take in the future, but each time someone uses that spot the player who owns the building gets a reward which is typically more points or resources.

The key to the game is completing quests. Quests come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes from mini quests that earn you 4 or 5 points, to mega quest that can earn you 25+ points. Each quest requires a different amount of resources to complete, so managing your workers to earn those resources, to fill your quests is the most critical way to earning points. However these quests once completed often give you new special powers as well that have lasting effects so there are other advantageous to be gained for completing quests aside from points.

Finally there are the intrigue cards which are a vital interaction between players and create a great deal of tension and sometimes outright hostility. It’s how you can impact the plans of other players and it’s very effective. Often playing a single intrigue card can prevent all of your opponents from completing a quest in any given round, so if used wisely, intrigue cards can lead you to victory.

Lords of Waterdeep takes a lot of its design from the classic worker placement game Caylus, having the same level of strategic depth, but with less complexity. This worker placement game is in fact so easy that you can setup and start playing without explaining the rules and simply learning to play on the run. That in itself makes Lords of Waterdeep a far superior game to the much more difficult to teach/learn Caylus. I think the most attractive element of Lords of Waterdeep is that it’s really tight, every decision you make, every round is a tough one, but the game (when no one is suffering from analysis paralysis) moves very quickly. It’s one of the few games I have ever played that says 60 minutes to play and the game can actually take 60 minutes, even in a five player game.

I think in terms of worker placement, Lords of Waterdeep is probably one of my favorites right now. It’s worth mentioning that while the base game is great, the expansion, Scoundrels of Skullport adds a tremendous level of depth to the game and really pushes this into the love it category for me. It’s really a must have. Scoundrels of Skullport adds new spots on the board, new buildings, new intrigue cards and new quests, but it also adds the new mechanic corruption. Corruption effectively allows players to take advantage of more powerful effects via buildings, worker placement spots and card (quest and intrigue), but using them earns you corruption which are worth minus points at the end of the game. The trick is that the more corruption there is in the city (the more players get them) the more minus points each corruption is worth. There are ways to give players corruption and get rid of your own. This creates yet another level of hostility and competition between the players, it really becomes a knife fight in a phone booth. It’s wonderful and any fan of Lords of Waterdeep should consider their game incomplete without the expansion, it’s that good.

2012 was really a great year for board gaming, we got Star Wars X-Wing, Descent 2nd edition, Robinson Crusoe, REX, Android Netrunner. It was just amazing and Lords of Waterdeep very deservingly should have it’s name mentioned in that list. It would easily make my top 10 of 2012 and if it wasn’t for that damned Star Wars X-Wing I would seriously be considering it for the number one spot, that is how much I like it.

Highly recommend, in particular if you’re a fan of Caylus, this game will easily replace that game for you. I’m not sure I would consider it a good game based on the theme alone though, it’s quite thin so for D&D fans who played other Peter Lee & Rodney Thompson from some of their previous D&D games you should know that the theme is quite thin. This is not so much a good D&D game as it is just a great worker placement game. It’s greatness is firmly in its mechanical design and the clever interaction between players. It’s a no brainer for me, this is a game that deserves previous shelf space.