I know we never really talk about board games on here but I'll go ahead and make a thread on this. I heard about this through a gamers with jobs podcast and eventually looked it up. Its a DnD board game and it goes by some of its basic rules. Theres 13 adventures you can play on it but the very first one you can play it solo which is what I did to try it out and get a better idea of the rules and how it plays. Basically all the games take place in the crypt of a vampire called Count Strahd. Everyone plays cooperately and theres winning conditions for each adventure and all you really do in the first one and to try and escape the crypt before Count Strahd awakes.
The first game I played I picked the rogue which I found out doesn't work so great when playing solo and I ended up getting boned pretty quickly. The second game I chose the fighter and managed much better and won though it did get a bit crazy at the end. It feels like a mesh of games some of us have played before, like Zombies!! and Arkham Horror. You explore and kill monsters and you get experience which you then can use to level up if you roll your dice right. Theres encounter cards which can mess your game up and even sometimes help you and the monster cards each have their own conditions that they follow to move around the crypt. Though I think thats the most confusing part of it, monster movement can be a bit tricky to figure out when you get into the specifics of some of the characters attacks that are not explicitly laid out in the rules.
I haven't played with multiple people yet but I have a good idea of how turns play out, I know monster movement is a little different when you have more people, some monsters move only on your turn while others can move with each players turn.
All in all its a really fun game and not too terribly complex as some of these board games go and it has a pretty good lasting appeal since theres alot of different adventures you can play. The game materials are pretty nice, it comes with thick board pieces for the game tiles, adventure, and monster tokens. The figurines for the monsters look great as well as the card art. I honestly can't wait to play it for the meet.
