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March 30, 2005

Games: Return of the Heroes

This is a pretty interesting game where players take the role of Fantasy characters wandering around a board fighting monsters, completing quests, and gaining experience and treasure until one is strong enough to defeat the 'big bad' and, if able to do so, win the game. I thought the game was pretty fun and actually had some real decisions to be made and I would definitely play it again. However, it has a couple of major negatives. First, the characters seem very unbalanced. The Wizard has so little health as to be almost unplayable (and Magic combat isn't a very good specialty). The Dwarf is so slow that his health/money advantage just really can't compensate unless a market comes out early and he can significantly up his speed. Of the other three characters, I have the feeling that the Fighter has a significant advantage. Melee combat seemed to me to be applicable to far more enemies than was Magic or Ranged combat and so he had a big edge. The second problem is that the game has a very large 'rich get richer' issue with basically nothing at all to penalize the leader. I am often opposed to leader-penalization rules but this game I think needs at least a mild one.

In our game, the Fighter was way ahead almost throughout but he decided to make himself basically invincible before going for the win rather than going for it a bit sooner with a 95%+ chance to win. This unwisely gave me a shot to go after the win at a much lower strength level but still with a real chance (probably like 25% overall but it got to the point where I had about an 80% chance to win but blew the rolls). When I failed, he waltzed in the next turn and made mincemeat of the boss for the win. Fun game and very strong theme but with issues.

Posted by aarondf at March 30, 2005 04:58 PM

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