Dungeon Saga: Dwarf King's Quest

[slev]

Sets I have:
Core Set (out now-ish)
Adventurer's Compendium expansion (campaign/character creation/co-op/random dungeon system, out now-ish)
Return of Velendor (extra figures & extends the base quest book, out next)
The Warlord of Galahir (Greenskins expansion, out next year)
Infernal Crypts (Abyssal expansion, out next year)
The Tyrant of Halpi (Dragon expansion, out next year)

[Ragnar IronFist]

I just got my main package in the mail yesterday. I'm pretty excited to crack it open! I have much painting to do. In fact, I'm pretty anal about that. I gotta spend a few weeks painting it all up before I allow myself to actually play. But first I have to finish painting my Imperial Assault game...which I also haven't played. Come to think of it... I really need to learn to spend as much time playing my games as I do painting them!

[clmckay]

Has anyone played a game of this yet? I've been under the weather but the family tried it out without me (I just watched).

It seems OK, my biggest gripe is all the bits. Sorting it out was like a trip through Descent 1E. The maps are decent size put together, but as otherwise noted, they disintegrate with a bump. There are strangely shaped map components, really not sure how I feel about that yet. Plus all the 1x2, 1x3 map bits are ridiculous (map bits, not even the chits here). Disclaimer: I don't like modular HQ either, so some may love all the random shapes and tiny, tiny segments.

If you get by that, the actual gameplay was fun - for my family. I'm old schoolish I guess. It was more complex than HQ, on par with Descent 2E, maybe (my best comparison, but I don't know tons of games). Why does everything these days have billions of small, different cardboard chits - *very* small at times. I think it's a good game, I'm just a tad disappointed - but only because I think I had higher expectations than I should have.

I'm looking forward to trying it when I'm not sick, and I'm sure we'll play it quite a bit over the coming month, but I don't think it will have much staying power beyond that. Worst case, good use can be found for a lot of the parts in future HQ games.

Edit: I got the KS version with the expansion packs, including their figures. I'm really glad they included the extra box, but I still couldn't come remotely close to fitting it all inside them. The figures are a smaller scale than HQ and aren't the quality of GW, but for the sheer volume of them it was good. The tip/trick of temp shocking does work well for fixing any bent pieces.

[ampersand]

yeh i'd like to hear what fellow Ye Olde Inn members have to say about this game. i think the fact we all converge here is due to a mutual love of a game and what it brings. so would be nice to hear if this meets any expectations

[Lemmeron]

Was very impressed with the quality of the game tiles and the artwork on them, the miniatures all look nicely detailed.

I have a huge amount of self control and put it all away for christmas without opening anything else other than to check everything was included in the pledge.

Got everything, resin traps suck, legendary heroes rock,

cant wait to actually play it with the family Christmas day

[Bouncing Orbs]

I've played a whole stack of games of Dungeon Saga now, with both adults and teenagers and everyone has loved it. The rules are simple (never have to refer to the rulebook after the first game or two) but there are always a lot of options to choose from. I have only played the Quests that come with the game and they are excellently balanced...I have not yet tried the Random Dungeons and/or Invisible Overlord modes, but from what I hear they work well.

If you are having trouble with the board sections getting easily bumped out of position...use one of the mousepad material gaming mats (neoprene???), turn it upside down so the black rubber grip underside is facing up (I use a 3' x 3' mat) and the tiles will not move once placed flat. The only draw back here is when you try to rotate your spells cards after use or when recharging, you can just spin them as they grip too well to the rubber surface (unless you have them off to the side of the mat, I suppose) you have to pick them up and turn them...I minor pain...

[Nuadha]

Picked up the retail copy of the base game over the weekend. I love it! The figures are fantastic and the rules seem to be a lot of fun. Best of all, the board pieces and furniture and stuff are wonderful additions to my Heroquest collection. Very happy with this purchase!

[Lemmeron]

So I was able (barely) to leave the game unopened until we opened it as a family at Christmas along with zombicide Black Plague !!!

My pledge was missing the dungeon critters and the resin traps were awful (which I knew before Christmas)
I also had 1 miscut tile sheet and 1 with minor damage during printing.

It took ages to sort out all the components but ended up buying an extra storage solution (which I will take photos of and post when I get to it) for all the miniatures and tokens to divide them for easy access instead of digging through them all.

Played the intro quests with the family and they went pretty well. The only real issues for my girls was being able to move diagonally and also the whole having to stop as soon as you enter the front arc of an enemy. Not being able to move through each other also was an issue in the 1st quest with the 4 characters. We all liked rolling all your dice together and I really liked the combat mechanics with rolling above armour and then still having to beat the defenders dive to score a hit.

I really really like that a hero can only take a single would from each attack rather than a lucky roll from a gargoyle (or 2 goblins ) Insta killing the poor wizard in hero quest.

The balance of the game is heaps more even than heroquest. They failed the first real quest in DS 2 times by timing out and once by elf bashing the door as last hero and then me as overlord destroying her with a swarm of zombies (I blame playing too much zombicide along side DS !)

The spell system seems robust and the sheer number of spells in the Kickstarter is crazy. It is a little disappointing that the Mage Dranor uses the same spell set in the base game and the expansions that he is in but I guess that is no different to hero quest.

While this maintains balance in the quests between heroes and overlord - the way spells and equipment is upgraded is based on quest number rather than earning gold/glory and upgrading like buying gear in hero quests. This makes the characters feel more generic as you don't invest into customising your character and spending your hard earned loot like in heroquest.

Of course the adventures companion provides all the rules to customise your characters and control your spells and equipment in a similar fashion to hero quest. But it is also that full of errors and is quite unclear on exactly how to apply these rules to the base quests rather than your own.

The invisible overlord also needs work as it needs some heavy house ruling or atleast clarification to stop him issuing stupid orders... So it means for now my family is playing 4 heroes between the 3 of them and I am playing the overlord and trying not to kill them( I am going to add an extra 6 or so cards to the overlord deck and see how that goes to stop the time out victories). Again hero quest has been well and truly playable with only 3 heroes as it is far less dependant on the balance of the 4 heroes vs overlord compared with DS

I thought that once we got dungeon saga my girls wouldn't want to play hero quest as often. But it turns out so far that they would prefer continuing hero quest given the choice.

Overall it was a very worth while Kickstarter investment and Dungeon Saga is now one of the top 3 games we play.
1. Hero quest with all my modular tiles and the coloured combat dice and my custom cards.
2. Zombicide Black Plague (can't wait for the Kickstarter bonuses and the wokfsburg expansion to arrive)
3. Dungeon Saga.

Oh also despite all the issues in the Kickstarter comments I have found mantic very good with customer service. I have recieved good communication and refunds for missing or poor components. It will be a while before mantic sorts out all the issues with the missing quests and adventurers companion but it seems like they are trying hard from my experience to do the best by all their REASONABLE customers.

[lucasdp]

Just wanted to add my as I picked up someone else's Kickstarter version of Dungeon Saga on eBay last week and got it yesterday. Fortunately, the original owner was thoughtful enough to get the corrected version of the Adventurer's Companion, but unfortunately, they did not pick up the extra book box. So I have to figure out a storage solution now...
Wish I had done a little more research on this Kickstarter before suckering myself into an eBay purchase. I really think the retail version would have been a better way to go. Probably would have been cheaper and I would have actually had boxes to put everything into. There were only a handful of KS exclusives on this one and, at the moment, I'm not sure having those outweighs my frustration with the storage situation.
Anyway, my slight buyer's remorse aside, I'm super excited to actually play this game and I hope I get a chance to soon. in my opinion, the minis and most of the furniture look pretty great and I can see them getting use in HQ if I don't end up liking the actual game. There's a chance it may be difficult to get my usual group to put down HQ in order to try something so similar, but I have two friends that lost interest in HQ specifically, but not gaming in general, and I think this might be a fun way to get them back into fantasy adventuring!

[Sjeng]

I got lucky and also got a secondhand KS edition for €100,-, one week after Spiel Essen, where I picked up the Retail edition of the base game and 2 expansions (undead and orcs) for €100,-

Turns out, the KS package also had those same expansions (extra undead stretch goal, and orcs campaign) ánd the Infernal expansion too (demons) ánd the dragon expansion. So I basically doubled up. Now I could keep em and use the boxes for storage, but I think I'll try to sell the stuff I got at Essen for a bit of profit. They're still shrinkwrapped so I can ask retail price I imagine.

I opened the KS boxes, and there's a lot of stuff in there. Certainly a keeper. Love the bases.