Summary: A great game with fun components.  Not exactly the game you would expect…and that’s an AWESOME thing. 9/10

How I Found This Game:  I was walking through the Origins Game Convention and saw one of the smaller booths.  It was late in the day on Sunday and I saw a smaller booth manned by a single person.  I struck up a conversation and was instantly enamored by the quality of the smaller miniatures.  After looking over the small box game of Dungeon Heroes, I decided to buy based on the pitch of the salesperson.  Later, while looking over the game, I saw the sales person was none other than the game designer Michael Coe.  Its always great to buy a game from the person who made it.  It shows the highest devotion to their product.

Mechanics:  DO NOT THINK THIS GAME IS A SIMPLE DUNGEON CRAWL!  The best game to compare this to is almost chess.  If either player of this game players this game as just a tile laying/simple fighting game, you will lose badly.  This is not a bad thing; it makes the game amazingly fun.  The game has asymmetric game play, and for a game that plays in less than 15 minutes, it is amazing!  The heroes have four actions per turn and they can spend those actions to move heroes or activate powers like the wizard which reveals tiles or the cleric that heals people.  The rogue and warrior do immediate actions by disabling traps or killing monsters, respectively.  The dungeon overlord first places four tiles each turn in the passive phase.  How he places these tiles really makes the game and leads to a game of cat and mouse.  What really makes this interesting is the game features a standard set of tiles and a random mix in of tiles so each game is different even if two games are played by the same people.  When the dungeon overlord is out of tiles the game switches to the active phase.  In the active phase, the dungeon overlord then replaces the monster tiles with little figures of the monsters.  This is when it really becomes chess.  All monsters only move one space a turn and only four can move.  The game continues until the heroes find three treasures or until they are all dead.  This is a fun mechanic and despite the complexity involved, it plays quick and doesn’t get stale despite how simple the game is or at least appears to be.  Great mechanics supporting excellent game play.

Art and Theme: The theme of the game is a dungeon exploration of a group of heroes.  It carries through pretty well.  The art is pretty good.  I like it, but some of the text is pretty small on the dungeon tiles.  On the heroes, the icons do get the point across well.  The true winner here is the figures.  The game comes with a number of wooden cut painted figures.  They are well done and look great.  Recently, Gamelyn Games had a kickstarter for mass producing these figurines.  It was funded, and based on this game alone, I gave them money because even if you bought the game and used the figures only, this is a value!

Packaging:  This game was made by gamers who love you.  You can tell this by what’s in the box.  The life dials are dice.  You do not use the dice as dice, but to keep track of hit points.  There is no reason for the dice except to enhance the theme of a dungeon crawl with your friends.  Besides this, the people who designed this game truly love you because of one reason; the game includes smaller bags for the tiles.  As a gamer, when I see this in a game, it makes me think the people who made it care for me.  The designers know I will need them to keep things in order and when they include it for me, it shows they are gamers who want their players to have the most fun with the smallest fuss.

Summary:  This game is great, fun, and fast.  I can’t underscore how much fun is packed in the smallest package.  Give it a look if you see it for sale. 9/10.

Dwarven Miner

I was recently at the Origins Game Convention, and I picked up my copy of Dwarven Miner from Rather Dashing Games while there. Let’s have a look:

Art and Theme-The theme is pretty simple. You’re a dwarf, so you do Dwarf-y stuff like mine and make stuff. It’s pretty classic, but that doesn’t make it bad. In fact the theme and art are very well done. I like the box, card, and placemat art. Everything does feel sufficiently Dwarf-y. As I played and keep looking over the art and cards, I thought this was a fun universe and would love to play more games or RPGs here. Some of the art is somewhat simplistic, but this is mostly on the art for the resource cards and on the dice. It gets the point across, but its not as in-depth as the art for the item. All and all a solid theme with great art: 8/10.

Mechanics-The goal of this game is to get the most number of points that you earn by satisfying victory point cards. Simple enough, but not bad. Points are scored by crafting all the items for a patron. Patrons will want between 2 and 4 items. Each turn, you get six dice. You roll the dice and can reroll the dice as many times are you want. However, if you roll an ork face, you cannot reroll that die. The die faces generate resource cards that you can store or trade in for items. In addition, you can also roll a stealing symbol. When that occurs, you steal a card from a player of your choice. More symbols means you can steal rarer items. This and some additional card effects are really the only way to interact with other players. When you craft the items for a patron, you get the points for the patron. In addition, some patrons give you extra powers or affect the table in some way. The rogue will kill another patron, thus depriving someone else of a power. The engineer will give you extra storage space for items for free. There is a good variety of patrons and they really drive the game with their effects. Also, you can see some time went it to this design as the higher point characters help the other players so the game has an auto-balance built in. It tends to fight the runaway victor problem and all players end up with a close game when someone finally ends the game. You can learn the game in five minutes and play a full game in ~45. That’s the mark of a good game: 9/10

The Good: Solid Gameplay with good art. Well thought out with nice cards and cardstock. Well worth my kickstarter money! I was also able to meet the guys who made the game and their pretty cool. So, good all around.

The Bad: The game feels kind of short. I like the length, but the goal is 30 points. This isn’t a problem, but some of the cards give you 15 points at a crack. Good to see some high point cards, but since patrons are secret you might just have a person win in less the 4 turns. I would almost like the game to be 60 points.

The Ugly: STICKERS! The game comes with 6 blank dice and a page of stickers. You have to make the dice. There are nice directions for that, but still…stickers? You guys get a pass on this one as you are a smaller company, but one day when you have your yacht and you’re summering in the Mediterranean due to the board game fortunes you’ve amassed, I want a deluxe edition with nice carved or painted dice.

So in the end , Dwarven Miner is a great game that plays quick and is fun. Give it a try! For me it’s a solid 8.5/10.