Defenders of the Realm
Game: Defenders of the Realm with 4 players
Play: Each player is a character with certain abilities that help with the fight against the four monster Generals and their minions (minions!). Each General has a number of hit points, and certain abilities that you have to take into account when attacking it and penalties if you lose. Darkness Spreads cards (drawn at the end of each turn) cause minions to appear on regions around the board and the Generals to move from regions near the edge of the board toward the city in the center. Hero cards help players do things like travel quickly around the board, and are necessary to attack Generals. Quest cards can get you cool stuff, if you get around to completing them, and are worth points at the end of the game.
Fight minions by stopping in the region they’re in, use an action, and roll dice to try and kill them. There is a maximum of 3 minions per region but they can be different colors, so there are three dice for each General’s color provided, to mix-and-match depending on what you’re fighting. That turned out to be much more useful than we originally expected, since different monsters require a different number to defeat (orcs 3+, dragons 5+, etc).
Art: Fabulous minis with amazing detail - the Generals even have crests on their flags! The character cards are gorgeous (I could do without the ’80s hair and metal bikini on the Barbarian, but on the other hand, half the characters are female!). The map is enormous - the only one I’ve ever seen bigger is Arkham Horror - but the art is lovely and it’s easy to distinguish the regions (the spaces you move on) from the background.
The dotted path that shows connections between regions isn’t always easy to see, and finding regions would be easier with a coordinate system like some other boards have. Also, the font on the board isn’t the easiest to read, though we got used to it eventually, and the text on the cards was sometimes too small to easily read, particularly on the Darkness Spreads cards.
Conclusion: The rules could use some editing (for punctuation as well as to streamline them and make them easier to understand) but are generally not bad. There are a few bits included that sound like the Generals mocking the puny humans who come to face them, which are funny and I rather wish there were more.
We played twice, we lost twice. The first time, the cards were against us (or we hadn’t shuffled enough…) plus we didn’t know what we were doing, and we lost pretty quickly. The second time, we were so close! We’d killed three of the four Generals, and then unfortunately I had a totally failed roll against the final general (five dice and not one hit! ouch!) and then everything just collapsed.
It’s essentially Pandemic, with monsters instead of diseases. There are a few twists, but the basic idea is the same. Although there are enough differences that if you don’t care for Pandemic but do like monster-killing games with intricate minis, you might give it a try anyway. I definitely plan to play this again, although because it’s so long (3+ hours) and has a max of 4 players, it takes special scheduling to do so.
