Castle Raveloft (Thursday Night Gaming)

So... tonight was another fun filled meeting of the Camel City Gamers of Winston Salem. I myself arrived a bit late, but was lucky enough to find a seat in a game of Castle Ravenloft with a few fellow gamers. This was my first time playing the Ravenloft board game and was a bit thrown by the watered down 4th Ed. D&D mechanics of the game. However, this quickly gave way to my pleasure in ease of combat and moreover access to the D&D universe to non-roleplayers. The game is very straight forward with beautiful tile and card art, and the Minis look great and could easily be painted up to add even more to the game as a whole.

Anyway... back to the game we played! So, I chose the Dragonborn Fighter, with the other 4 players rounding out the pack of available characters. The first several rooms and monsters were easy to handle and allowed for quick progression, then around turn 10-11, things got much more interesting. I myself instigated the unleashing of all sorts of nasty when I failed to kill a Spider in my attack, which gave way to a new tile and a Wolf and then an Encounter card with yet another monster (Plague of Rats). Now, I find myself being chewed on by both these new monsters. Good Times!! At any rate, my fellow heroes abandoned me to pursue other rooms leaving me to the beasts! Finally, thanks to a treasure card that moved a couple of the creatures off my tile, I was able to finish off my initial target and open up a new room. Sounds good, right?? Wrong!! The room of course would be the objective room (or in other words the room holding the item we needed to win), and now I'm face to face with not 1, not 2, but 5 ugly mean ass monsters! My fellow heroes are at the closest 2 tiles away and all these guys are getting to beat on me every turn since each player controlled one! After everyone had taken their turns I was still standing with just a couple Hit Points to spare, I failed my first attack on the baddies, and sat back accepting my fate... but my team swooped in for the save! Everyone kicked ass and looted up! Finally, after 4-5 more turns following my fail, we had done it! We killed all the keepers of the medallion and returned victorious!

So, what are my thoughts on Ravenloft... Well, I liked it a lot! I think the overall design is fantastic and the playability is very high even for the non-RPGer.

So, I'd say 9 out of 10 for my first play through of D&D's Castle Ravenloft