I've been rummaging through my collection for the last few months marking down games that are older that I haven't played in a long-while or games that are older that I have yet to play - this is not limited to my physical collection either. I recently was bored with work or rather I was bored at work yet again, so I was thumbing through my phones previous downloads as this would let me better grasp what I had already purchased as I knew there were some games that didn't make it over to my new phone due to incompatibility with the new iOS - sorry Pandemic. Here I came across Lords of Waterdeep which came out in 2012 and I'm sure I downloaded it sometime around 2013-14, making this one of my oldest digital games. LoW has been out of my mind and off my phone for a minute, and that's easy to do as I don't own the game in its physical form - out of sight, off of shelf. So, let's dust it off and give it a go as I remember it being sorta fun.

Sorta is not the correct word, LoW is fun. And, yes, before you ask this is a Dungeons and Dragons world based game, but that doesn't matter. The game just carries the D&D moniker in thematic ways and you are in no way required to understand or know any lore - just pick it up and play. However, I will say that since this game does carry a lot of theme from the D&D world, it makes it very story rich and nails a thematic experience that some games of equal caliber may miss on. This is a powerful weapon for the folks at Wotc (Wizards) for as long as they pump out games that are good and have a solid foundation of gameplay, they have an endless amount of story to slap on those boxes. With the new movie on the horizon they should be doing a push of all these boards games of theirs, especially with the huge growth the industry has seen over the last 2-3 years.

Lords of Waterdeep is a worker placement game at its heart, tasking you as one of the realms Lords in gaining the most control over the city through strategic planning, backstabbing, trickery, buying of buildings, and the completion of quests. This strategy game is for 2-5 players and will take up to about 90 minutes of your life per playthrough. Set-up is pretty fast and simple:

• each player be dealt a Lord card, placing it face down as it has a secret objective for you to complete
• grab a player board
• 2 random quests and intrigue cards
• 4 gold to the starting player (each subsequent player gets 1 more gold than the player before them)
• Agents (meeples) per player are different depending on how many players in the game:
  - 2 players = 4 agents per
  - 3 players = 3 agents per
  - 4 players = 2 agents per
  - 5 players = 2 agents per
  

• turn face up 4 quests cards and put them in the open space at the Cliffwatch Inn
• 3 building tiles in the spaces at the Builder’s Hall - shuffle the rest as they are replaced when one is bought
• Place 1 VP token from the rounds track on each Building tile available for purchase.
• Intrigue and quest cards are shuffled and placed face down on their designated board spots

With set-up now complete, time for questing. Each player will take turns placing their wooden meeps (agents) on the board in one of the cities or buildings, taking the resource denoted and adding it to that players pool (tavern) until no player has any actions left to take. Each space provides some sort of resource or action you can take with some providing more than others like two resource cubes (adventurers) rather than one. Let's take a second to go over the spaces to provide a better understanding of what you get/can do:

• Blackstaff Tower - take 1 Wizard (purple cube) from the supply and place it in your Tavern
• Builder's Hall - Choose 1 Building, pay its cost in Gold, and put it into play under your control. (Place one of your control markers on the building tile to identify the owner). You will also score any VP points for the purchased building now. Replace the buiding with a new one
• Castle Waterdeep - Take the First Player marker, and draw 1 Intrigue card
• Cliffwatch Inn - 3 actions available:
  - Take 1 face-up quest card from Cliffwatch Inn as well as 2 Gold from the supply and place it in your tavern
  - Take 1 face-up quest card from Cliffwatch Inn, and draw 1 Intrigue card
  - Discard all the face-up quest cards from Cliffwatch Inn then draw new quests from the quest deck, and place them face up in the open spaces. You will then take 1 face-up quest card from Cliffwatch Inn adding it to your pile of quests that you are attempting
  
• Field of Triumph - Take 2 Fighters (orange cube) from the supply and place them in your tavern
• The Grinning Lion Tavern - Take 2 Rogues (black cubes) from the supply and place them in your tavern
• The Plinth - Take 1 Cleric (white cube) from the supply and place it in your tavern
• Waterdeep Harbor - here there are three spots all are treated the same when used - play 1 Intrigue card from your hand. However, after all Agents have been assigned in the round, each player with an Agent in Waterdeep Harbor reassigns that Agent to another action space currently available. Start with the Agent in the action space numbered 1 then proceed in order

When it comes to the advanced buildings as in the ones players are buying utilizing the Builder's Hall, there are 24 in the base game. I don't want to go over all of them, but I will say that when a player other than the owner assigns an Agent to this building, the owner immediately gains the benefit stated on the "Owner's" line. Place any cubes or gold gained in this way into that owner's tavern.
The quests that players can attempt are - commerce, warfare, piety, arcana, and skullduggery. These quests all have the commonality of needing adventurers (cubes) and/or gold to complete, however, they will require more of a certain type of adventurer depending on what type of quest it is. Say for example a piety quest - it will usually require more clerics than any other adventurer as opposed to a skullduggery quest which will require more rogues. The rewards will not be dependent on quest type though, so you can complete an arcana quest which normally requires more wizards, but you could get a reward of just gold, vp, an off-color adventurer or a mixture of all three. Keep in mind this is a great way to mask your Lord's secret objective - by completing quests not aligned with your Lord, but getting rewards that will help fulfill quests that do align with your Lord. This will help minimize the amount of turns it takes to gather the correct adventurers to finish other quests.

So, how are we winning and when do we complete quests? Well, after an action is taken (any action), players can then complete quests - i.e. pay for them with cubes and coins. This allows you to take full advantage of a space you use in order to gather the resources then complete quests. There will be some timing issues on some quests and agent pulls, and I do come across a couple of them during my recorded game - so check it out. Last thing I would like to mention is about those intrigue cards, as in how to get them and how to play them - these cards are really useful and help a tremendous amount by allowing a player to get essentially more actions per turn than their number of agents would allow. You get two random ones off the rip when the game starts and then also by the two action spaces that I broke down above. You can only play them at the Waterdeep Harbor space, or if a card would tell you otherwise - as in part of a reward. The power of these cards should not be underestimated, they can be incredibly helpful to bolster your resources and attack your opponents. Not all are attacks though, as some will give you something but then you'll also have to give an opponent of your choice something - maybe creating a temp alliance for when that opponent needs to do the same.

The game is really tight and the actions do feel limited, especially if you play with more opponents as this limits the number of agents you start with. You can also pick up more "agents" by completing certain quests and constructing buildings. There is a quest that gives an award of a lieutenant (acts as another agent/meeple) - this will be with you the whole time once the quest is completed, so if you have it do your best to get that extra meeple ASAP! Another way to get more meeps is to construct the building that awards the player an "admiral" for using the building. This isn't a permanent gain though as it is then assigned to a different player the next round.
There are some other caveats to the rules I should mention as they aren't too minor. Whenever a player must draw from an empty deck, shuffle all the cards in the respective discard pile to form a new deck and place them face down in the appropriate board space. However, do not shuffle any completed Quest cards back into the Quest deck. Also, if at anytime during the game there aren't enough of a particular adventurer type in the supply to hire, you can hire only as many as available.

The game ends at the conclusion of the eighth round - it is here that all players reveal their Lord's true identity - can be done before counting VP or when it's your turn to count. Players will then tally all the points they earned from all their completed quests, extra adventurers and gold. Don't forget that your Lord will grant you extra points for those quests completed that aligned with what the lord asked of you (denoted on the Lord's card). VPs are gained through completing quests, constructing buildings, playing intrigue cards or having other players use your buildings. Don't forget that if you completed a quest that stated "gain an extra 2 VP for completing X type of quest" you should be taking those VPs as soon as the quest is completed, not at games end. The player that collected the most victory points after 8 rounds is the winner.

You can check the game out here on BGG Lords of Waterdeep, and the expansions: here. LoW is a real blast of thematic, euro-style resource gathering with its own twist of quests and intrigue to give an identity, and a worthy spot on anyone's gaming shelf. I have yet to jam any of the expansions, but I'm sure they won't disappoint, even if it's just adding more quests, intrigue, and Lords - that would be enough. I'm very happy that I decided to give this game a shot as I had a blast, and it fits my preference of worker placement style euro-games really well. I enjoyed every game I played regardless of outcome, and I loved attempting some of the more resource intense quests. Since I don't own the game I can't offer any pics of the physical version, but I will certainly be picking this up very soon.

You can pick up it to play digitally only on Steam: Lords of Waterdeep. Check out the publishers website Wotc for more info on Lords and a huge library of games, D&D, Magic, and other games.

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