Lords of Waterdeep, Scoundrels of Skullport review

PAX Prime is coming up in the next week, and there's a board game tournament put on by Wizards of the Coast, for the new Lords of Waterdeep expansion. We played last year, and I made it into the elimination rounds on the virtue of having won a game. I won my semi-final game, maybe two...making it into the finals.

I didn't end up winning. I did get an LED-hat with Lolth on it, and a prize pick from the game table. This year, I'm not sure we'll put as much time into winning a spot - the expansion much more variable in what matters. How much more variable? Read on!

[If you read BGG, it's there too. This is just everything in one place.]

I picked up a copy of the expansion at a local game store on Sunday - Green Lake Games in Seattle. I had read the rulebook online and had a good idea what we were getting into...

Lords of Waterdeep as a base game is solid. The theme and mechanics are complementary, the flavor and art definitely sell Waterdeep without the hangup of "I don't know how to play D&D." The rules and mechanics had very little "I can't figure out how this works from reading the card."

The main question for my friends and I: how much does adding the expansion(s) change the game? The answer? Quite a bit.

Components Overview:
Poor. How about cards that a slightly different size from the base game? Slightly different shading on the back? Or the card back not matching the orientation of front of the card? This is Wizards of the Coast - messing up cards shouldn't even be a concern. It's cool they continued the innovative packaging from the base game...except the agents need to be placed head down to fit nicely. Oh well.

It's nice they added a 6th player, but it hasn't been a problem in the past - 5 was the playable limit. It makes some Intrigue cards that much better, but there's so much downtime between actions at that point, you can't guess what might be left for your next one.

Set-up:
You can play Scoundrels as both mini-expansions with the main game (taking out some random main game intrigue cards, quests, and buildings so Skullport & Undermountain would still show frequently). You can also play with one or the other, without taking out main game components.

They also included extra agent figures for the base game - this is necessary if you play the recommended "long game" variant when playing both expansions. (Otherwise, lots of empty action spaces.)

Skullport Overview:
Essentially, every building, quest and intrigue card from Skullport is going to have corruption involved somehow. The mechanics for corruption adds a heavier layer to the game - you'll find yourself constantly trying to figure out if it's worth doing the bigger action for a little bit of corruption. Getting rid of corruption is fairly common, with some putting it on an action space, removing it from the game, or putting it back on the corruption track.

Corruption caution: If you need to take corruption and there isn't any left, it's -10 points immediately. And there are intrigue cards that can give corruption, without you doing anything.

Undermountain Overview:
Lots of interesting buildings, quests, and intrigue cards. Powerful combos & some 40-point quests. There is a lot of "take some stuff, and put stuff on other action spaces" which can lead to some complex wrangling of actions...so you can get those bonus materials that might otherwise go to other players.

Skullport vs. Undermountain:
I liked Undermountain a lot more than Skullport. If you want new mechanics and hard-to-guess "best action" questions, Undermountain got most of them. Skullport is limited because nearly everything is based on corruption - put lots of cubes/rewards on a card, then add a corruption marker or two.

Flow Overview:
You remember earlier, how I mentioned how the gameplay in base Lords of Waterdeep flowed mostly naturally, with little rules questions? One of the challenges in adding *more* to a game, is keeping the game elegant and clear of questions, but still making the expansion interesting.

The expansions add mechanics without answering core timing issues. (One of my gripes with Quarriors, but onward!) For example, there's a plot quest that says you get the owner benefit from your buildings when you go to your own building. Let's say you go to a building that lets you play 3 Intrigue cards, the owner benefit says you draw an Intrigue card. When do you draw it? Or the plot quest that lets you draw and play an Intrigue card when you play one or more Intrigue cards - can you do the draw-and-play in the middle of resolving an action? [EDIT: Owner benefit is last. Resolve the 3 Intrigue cards, then draw-and-play for the plot quest.]

I'm hoping they address some basic core timing issues in a FAQ, so that my friends and I don't have to house-rule constantly, as well as teaching house-rules to friends coming over. (Game designers & developers, keep timing in mind when you're putting out the expansions - *you* have a plan on how things work innately, but maybe a page in the expansion rulebook talking about timing issues is much better than a FAQ after the fact.)

Flow, Part 2:
Expansions are a tricky beast. You need to add new things, but leave enough of the core. In the games we've played, there's just so much going on. You might have 4 plot quests, each doing their own crazy thing. The new rewards can be a lot different (build all three buildings for free!) which just adds to the distractions.

So adding new things is both necessary, and sometimes a downer. The randomness "swingy bits" is a lot more prevalent with Scoundrels. You can't reasonably guess what an intrigue card will do, what buildings you might see, or what quests will pop up. In the base game, you might have a reasonable idea on what could happen. Playing one mini-expansion makes it not likely, and two next to impossible.

Lords of Waterdeep went from a strategic game where you might plan ahead for next turn, to a tactics game where you min-max your current action and maybe your next action.

Overall, LoW needed an expansion. Most of the mechanics were pretty vanilla in the base game after the first several plays - the economy of cubes was straightforward as far as acquiring them and using for quests. We'll play the expansions, even with the rules issues and the wild swings of what's now possible...but there's some sadness at least on my part.

One last thing - the Inevitable Betrayal promo? It's in the expansion, for those who didn't get it before. (Woo!)