Designers: Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson

In Lords of Waterdeep, you are the leader of a great house in the most notable city in the Forgotten Realms D&D setting (that would be Waterdeep, of course). You send out your agents (i.e. workers) to perform various actions for you. The most notable is collecting adventurers for you, who you can then use to complete quest cards in your hand, which are the primary way to earn the victory points you need to win.

Lords of Waterdeep is basically a gateway Euro game. It’s ridiculously easy to teach, and you can complete a game with a full table in about 75 minutes. It’s not going to satisfy people who like Caylus or Viticulture, but it may help you find and groom those players. The game almost never fails to provide a satisfying, tight experience. The downside is that the production values of the game are a tad flat, and at some point you will crave more complex experiences.

Favorite Mechanic: Building Buildings. One key action your agent can perform is to build a building at the Builder’s Hall. Doing this will let you add a new worker placement option to the board. This placement option tends to be much better than the standard locations on the board, but anytime a worker is placed there, the builder of that building takes a cut. Not only does this mechanic offer a different direction and activity for players to pursue, it also results in a dramatically different set of worker placement options each game, increasing the overall replayability of the experience.

Bonus Favorite Mechanic: Corruption. The Scoundrels of Skullport expansion adds a reasonable amount of depth (and playtime) to the core Lords of Waterdeep experience. The best part of the experience is the addition of a Corruption mechanic – new buildings may offer huge payouts, but at the expense of corruption tokens, which are worth negative points at the end of the game. The exact value of corruption tokens is based on how many are taken, which results in a press-your-luck game of chicken with other players. If you like the base game but feel like it needs just a tad more oomph, Scoundrels of Skullport is definitely a value add.
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(Photo Credit: Toko Board Game)