Yesterday was our monthly Shadow Creek Ranch game club game day. I have not really mentioned it here, but I chair and organize monthly game days in Shadow Creek Ranch as part of the social club committee. If you happen to read this blog, and live in Shadow Creek Ranch in Pearland Texas, you should give me a shout and join us for game day. I had been looking forward to this game day, primarily because we would be playing the fairly newly released Order of the Stick board game from Ape Games. Chris & Keri, members of the game club, had purchased the game when it was released, and were now ready to teach the rest of us to play. I was excited.
The game looks to be pretty complex on first glance. A quick look at the publishers website, and you see a large list of components. Seeing all these components in the box for the first time, along with an enormous rulebook, lends to this vision of complexity.
This game includes:
6 Shtick Decks (120 cards)
1 Battle Deck (158 cards)
1 Loot/Trap Deck (124 cards)
1 Dungeon Deck (54 cards)
10 Xykon Battle Cards
8 Xykon Lair Rooms
8 Stairs Cards
1 Dungeon Entrance Card
6 Character Cards
6 Character Move cards
Are you still reading this?!
6 Quick Reference Cards
6 Wound Tokens
2 12-sided dice
32-page full-color rules
8-page full-color comic!
1 big box to fit it all
Fortunately, Chris and Keri had run through a 2-player game and they were ready to help us get started. Once everyone arrived for game day we sat down, randomly assigned characters and started with the rules explanation. I drew Elan the Bard as my character. I was a bit disappointed initially, but I grew to be quite fond of the little bard. In Order of the Stick, each player is assigned to be one of the characters from the comic strip. The main point of the game is to work your way from the dungeon entrance down to the lower levels, and eventually defeat the evil, undead, sorcerer Xykon. During the course of the game you will explore new rooms of the dungeon, find and fight new monsters, discover useful (or crappy) treasure, search for stairs to lower levels, and try to avoid dangerous traps.
All of this is accomplished through the use of cards. Order of the Stick uses a modular board (card based), on which your characters move. Play starts on the dungeon entrance card. Each player is given a character card which is used to track health. Players also start the game with 3 Shticks. Shticks are weapons and powers characters can use to fight and survive in the dungeon. The Shticks are suitably humorous, and different for each character. You get to select 3 of 4 possible default shticks to begin the game. The remainder of the shticks are shuffled and form a draw pile for use in the rest of the game. You also start the game with a few pieces of loot. Loot is treasure, and what you are looking for is loot that your character drools over. Each loot card has little images of the characters on it. The more images of a character, the more that character drools over the item. You can equip items from your loot pile that you drool over, and offer loot that others like as a method to get them to help you on your quest.
Game play is pretty easy, something that all of the pieces and cards hide on first glance. Once the game is setup, players enter the dungeon and start exploring. You can move up to three spaces on your turn. If you discover a new room in the dungeon as a result you turn over the top card from the room stack. When you reveal a new room you must end your movement. Anytime you end your move on an empty room, no monsters and no other characters, new monsters are added to the room. If you are on the first level of the dungeon you add a single new monster, on the 2nd two monsters etc. To keep the other players in the game, the player sitting to the left of the active player adds the monster to the room. If more than one monster is needed, the player two spaces to the left adds a monster as well, and so on until the needed monsters are acquired. Monsters are added from a hand of battle cards. Monsters have various abilities, some are pretty nasty. Once the monsters are revealed you must defend against the monsters attack. Fighting is a question of rolling a d12, and comparing your roll plus modifiers from your Shticks to a target on the monsters card. If you survive you can continue to battle the monster or stop. Once all of the monsters in the room are defeated, you can collect up to 2 pieces of loot. You also gain experience points from the monsters that you killed. Both loot, and experience, can be traded in for more Shticks and therefore more powers. The early game is spent killing monsters and grabbing new shticks.
You can also rest on your turn which refreshes a point of health, and any special shticks you have which have a limited number of uses. Play continues like this, with players trying to reach to goal of having 8 shticks and 7 loot cards equipped. Once a player has reached this level, the entrance to Zykons lair can be uncovered and the evil lord can be defeated. Once you find the lairs entrance, you can enter it. A different set of room and encounter cards are used here. You will encounter Zykon here, as well as a bunch of cards from the other player. Hopefully, you can defeat all of the monsters, and win the game. Once Kykon is defeated, he dungeon starts to collapse. When all but the last player has escaped from the dungeon, the game is scored. If you defeated Zykon you get 5 points. You also get 1 point for each item you have that you drool over, and one point for each shtick you equipped. Players who exit the dungeon get points based on the order they escaped.
I was able to defeat Zykon yesterday, and win the game. Which I was pretty stoked about. We did accelerate the game end due to time constraints, so who knows what would have happened if we played out the game as it is supposed to be.
What do I think of the game? I think it is pretty fun, but does have the fantasy adventure game length to contend with. The game really is a 3 hour minimum game to play. We played without the player vs. player rules to speed things up. The components are just ok. I would have liked to see plastic character pieces instead of card based markers. The artwork on the cards is great, and fans of the comic will enjoy the humor in the game. Fans of the fantasy adventure board game genre will find a game that has the humor of a game of Munchkin with a lot of the game play from a game like Dungeoneer. I am rating the game as an 8, I like both Munchkin and Dungeoneer. I will play this game again.
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