Category Archives: Lonely Gamer

Notes about players:

Wulfgar – low AC, but a lot of hit points. Low bonus on At-Will powers, but he can get angry with +1 damage on all hits when he’s at 4 hit points. But then again….

Drizzt – rather talented, with two attacks with fairly cool weapons with somewhat low attack bonuses and a stance that can reduce damage. Wulfgar could have used a stance power, but I’m going to assume Wulfgar isn’t the brightest hero in the world.

Regis – I like that, when he’s going to draw monter cards, he gets to draw two and pick one. This is wonderful for avoiding trolls, which you very much want to do. His Ruby Pendant is a bit messed up: you can, on a successsful hit, hypnotize a monster to walk to another tile and damage another.

Player order is, from right to left: Wulfgar, Drizzt, and Regis.

Items: Wulfgar gets Wand of Acid Arrows, Drizzt gets Spider Mask, and Regist gets Flask of Oil. Sigh.

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In “Search for Mithral Hall”, your team is tasked with searching the caverns for the Ancient Throne, on which you’ll find a crown to retrieve.

The problem is that Artemis Entreri is hot on your trail and catches up with you at the least convenient time, and you must defeat him as well as getting the crown. At 15 AC, Drizzt has a hard time hitting him with either Icingdeath or Twinkle, and Catti-Brie has a hard time hitting without resorting to her Falling Hail stance, missing out on the extra damage from the Heartseeker stance. Bruenor’s Notched Axe has a slightly better chance. Additionally, if you stay still long enough for Artemis to hit you, he regains health. All of which means you’re going to have to use tactics against Artemis.

Artemis (in gray) is Not a Nice Man.

In the meanwhile, hey, monsters!

I quite like the 4XP monsters. They really draw your fire and force you to make difficult choices vis a vis what to attack, which can easily result in you dying like a punk from the Goblin Archer you thought you left behind three tiles back. Poor Catti-Brie, who soaked up the allocated two Healing Surges for the party, having only 6 HP in her level 1 incarnation. However, her Falling Hail stance results in a +10 2-tile ranged attack with Taulmaril, so if you can keep her alive, she’s well worth it.

Bruenor, as a Fighter, is quite a reliable tank. For your first game with him (where you use the powers listed in the adventure book, rather than selecting them), he only has once stance—that gives him a permanent +2 to his AC, meaning that his AC is effectively 18, and with 10 HP he’s quite hard to take down. Unusual amongst D&D characters in this game, he only has one At-Will power (Notched Axe, which can be re-used against another monster once per Hero Phase if it misses) but his Utility powers make him something of a Swiss Army Knife. Or Axe. For instance, Legendary Knowledge is something no adventure party should be without (in one exploration phase, he can effectively take out three tiles from the top of the cavern tile stack). And with Power Strike, it’s hard to miss that second At-Will power.

I realize that this party would have been more thematic with Wulfgar and Regis, if I have the events of the Icewind Dale series straight. Which I probably don’t, not having read them and, indeed, am still getting through Homelands with Drizzt in the process of being born. I’ll try them out next time.

Basically, I lost this scenario after coming so close to clinching the crown. After Catti-Brie used up the two Healing Surges, Drizzt stumbled upon Artemis in the Broken Door tile, and suffered some serious hits. Fortunately, Bruenor discovered a secret tunnel that led to the throne room, allowing Catti-Brie to skip the @#$@ Spider Swarm and directly access the crown. Drizzt followed her, hoping to circle around Artemis and quickly attack him from behind…

… only to be taken out by a booby trap from the Encounter deck. Realistic, of course. He even had two Scrimshaw Charms for re-rolls, but Lolth really wanted him dead.

The Encounter cards are more often nasty than not. I think the most benign of them is the Volcanic Vent, which you can almost avoid by not being on a tile with a Volcanic Vent, unless you can’t avoid it, this being the way the breaks fall.

So close, I thought, except that Artemis still had full health at that point, but still. So I decided to go up to 5 Healing Surges if that’s what it took. Mentally, I counted up a score for the game: every Surge used means that you score 2^{healing surge} points. The perfect game would score 0 points. Using up the two healing surges would have resulted in 2¹ + 2² = 6. Obviously scores get high quickly, and they should.

Using up another surge for Drizzt added 2³ = 8 more points to the score, for a total of 14. Everyone then went after Artemis, who then managed to take out Bruenor. There went another surge, adding 2⁴ = 16 points for a total of… ow. 30 points.

But we got ‘im.

This adventure was much better than the one in WoA where you rescue some guy’s backpack. Which apparently also teleports you out of the dungeon, because damn there’s a lot of monsters.

Here’s a preliminary, completely unofficial scoring table for number of surges used, low scores are good scores.

Update on missing pieces: Wizards contacted me ((Gosh, that sounds psychotic.)) and told me they’d sent the pieces in the mail! Arrival time is up to 15 days or so.

The Legend of Drizzt is turning out to be a very solid contender in Wizards of the Coast’s D&D boardgame series.

In terms of punch for your buck, it may pack the best, with 8 heroes, some 4XP monsters that in other games were limited to special convention promos, animal allies, and more variety in basic map features (volcanic vents and narrow passages that affect defense, a starting map tile that expands in all directions). Legend of Drizzt has the learnings from Wrath of Ashardalon and the thematic strength of Castle Ravenloft.

Drizzt and friends, dry-brushed so you can see the detailing. Ignore the orc with a hook for a hand in the back. ((He’s from the land of Runebound.))

The first adventure is, as always, a solo experience to let you get the hang of the ropes of surviving in the Underdark. (Or the Castle, or the maze of mountain tunnels.) You’re playing Drizzt, Drow Ranger, and the objective is to escape to the surface after going through caverns filled with goblins, driders, and teleporting wizards that spout fireballs.

Man is Drizzt’s special ability cool: an extra attack each Hero Phase. Does this mean he’s overpowered? Perhaps a tad, although I still died a horrible death the first time I ran through the scenario—you only get one healing surge. But I’m guessing that’s why he only gets a +6 bonus from Icingdeath and Twinkle (his two swords are represented as At-Will power cards), and also why the enemies in this game are… well… a bit tougher at times.

Guess which monsters are 4XP?

Not to say that Icingdeath and Twinkle aren’t great power cards; Icingdeath will deal 2 damage on an 18+, which means you have critical hits built in from the start, and Twinkle is the first card you’ll encounter that allows you to use a stance token. Stances can be used for various things on specific power cards, but in the case of Twinkle, using it allows you to reserve a stance to reduce damage from the next enemy hit. ((I’m sure that’s very thematic. I’ve never read the books, but I want to now.))

The second card to use the stance mechanic is Dancing Serpent, which lets you move a vital few squares after an attack to get out of range of certain attacks. ((See also The Fine Art of Kiting in Wrath of Ashardalon to get an idea of how just two squares can give you a huge advantage in certain situations.)) Significantly, it’s a Utility power that doesn’t flip over (usually ensuring a single time use for most Utility and Daily powers), but does only operate as long as you have a stance reserved for it.

Treasure cards are a mixture of Fortunes and Items. Items are generally not as cool as the loot you get from Asharadlon’s lair, but the Fortunes are quite more handy and applicable than those from Castle Ravenloft (which more often than not would go to waste). The mixture of Items and Fortunes means you won’t be carrying more items than power cards as the game wears on, unlike the beginning half of WoA’s adventures. There’s no need to resort to treasure tokens here.

What Icingdeath and Twinkle can do when Drizzt draws some Bolsters.

Monster cards have a few exciting additions, with the 4XP monsters (gods help you if the Feral Trolls both come out at once) and “Hunting Party”, which pulls out two monsters to play. There’s also two “It’s just a looming stalagmite” cards which allow you to get away with no monsters being placed on a new tile or via encounter card.

Speaking of encounter cards, the deck is meaner than WoA’s, perhaps as mean as CR’s: plenty of red attack cards, and the traps are evil. You do not want to draw any of these, and if you do, you’ll want to use experience from killing monsters to cancel these mofos. They’re probably another compensation for the wicked awesome coolness of the heroes. I fear for the more normal adventurers from WoA and CR should they be thrown into the world of Drizzt. They’ll be troll chow.

Who’s the baddest Drow in the Forgotten Realms?

While the heroes do appear to be stronger in Drizzt, for group adventures I would suggest that for two player games you still play with four heroes, while solo games would benefit from three heroes. We’ll see how that works out in the next adventure, “Search for Mithral Hall”.

Note: my copy of Drizzt was missing one spider swarm and one goblin champion. Sigh. Already sent email to Wizards asking for replacements. ((That sounds a bit delusional, doesn’t it?))