Wakening Lair Review

Wakening Lair is the latest game from Rather Dashing Games, it’s a fast-paced dungeon crawler that finds you attempting to traverse a 12 room dungeon and stopping the boss from waking up and leaving the dungeon.

Wakening Lair plays 2-6 players, in 30-40 mins.

Rules and Setup:

Setup:

This one has a pretty fast and easy setup compared to a lot of other “dungeon crawlers” Shuffle all the room cards and lay them out on the table, in to form a long line, this will be your dungeon starting closest to you, with room 1 and room 12 at the very top of the dungeon, this is where the “big bad” will be. Randomly select one of the large Monstrous Terror boards and place it face down on the 12th room. Shuffle the monster cards, Deal out the top 8 cards then place the single Monstrous Terror Awakens card in with those 8 cards and shuffle them up. Then place the remaining 16 cards on top of those, congrats you have just formed your monster deck, these are the monsters that will kill you, I trust me they will kill you, more on that later.

Flip over the first room card (closet card to you) depending on the number that’s on the card either 1 or 2, you will place a monster card here face up. Everyone picks a character and places the matching colored token on the first room card. that’s it, you are ready to die in this dungeon.

Rules:

The rules are fairly straightforward, to sum them up each player takes three actions: move, attack, and/or a hero item ability. These actions can be taken in any order and may be repeated.

A quick overview of the rules. At the start of each turn, players roll two dice which in this game you will be using D6’s only. You will add up the value of those dice, These values represent the rooms in the dungeon. Then, awaken the room that corresponds to that value and then populate it with monsters from the monster deck. (IE – I roll up a 4 and 3, This would mean room 7 would “awaken” you will flip the card over and place the number of monsters dictated via the numbers on the card (1 or 2) Place the monsters to the right of the room they’re populating. Let’s say you roll a room number that has already been activated, place one additional monster in that room. Note that a room can only have 3 monsters at a time (For now!)

Now you can take your 3 actions, move, attack or use item. You are free to move to any rooms as are awakened (Card shows the room and monsters to the right of it). If you come to a room that is not awake (The door side of the card is showing) Your movement is over on that card, the room awakens and is populated with monsters. If you have actions left you are free to do them now.

Combat

We fight the monsters using the d6 dice. Every player starts with just one attack die but can increase the amount they roll by collecting weapons. To attack, you will just say which monster in the same room as you that you are attacking and rolls their die or dice. If one of the dice results is equal to or greater than the first (left-most) number on the monster card, the monster takes 1 damage, and the player places a red damage marker over that number on the monster card. Now, if the player rolled more than one die, the next highest die result can be used on the next left-most number on the monster card, dealing damage in the same manner. If your attack type (that is listed on your player character card) matches the monster’s weakness (which is a symbol underneath the monster’s damage numbers) and you deal at least one damage, you may Press the Attack, meaning you can attack again without using another attack action (once the monster is defeated, however, you must use another attack action to attack a different monster). If no damage is dealt, you are using another attack action to attack again.

If you happen to kill the monster you were attacking, you will draw a treasure card and equips either the weapon or magic item. Or if you want you can choose to place the card in reserve, this will allow you to either equip the card later, or you may gift the card to another player.

After your done with all your actions, and if there are still monsters left in their room, the monsters attack you. Each monster rolls separately, and damage is applied to each monster, starting with the one closest to the room. A monster rolls as many attack dice as they have open damage boxes. So, if a monster originally has three damage boxes, but the monster is already damaged (it has a damage marker over one its numbers), then it would roll 2D6 for its attack. Players take damage the same way monsters do. You will place a damage token your health starting at the top going to the bottom if you are out of health, your dead. Get used to being dead.

Play goes around the table and keeps going until the Monstrous Terror Awakens card is drawn from the monster deck. Once this is done the dungeon and boss wakes up, awaken all remaining face-down rooms, but do not populate them. Reveal the Monstrous Terror tile and place it to the left of room number 12. at the end of each player’s turn, if there are no more monsters in the room with the monstrous terror, then the big bad boss attacks the active player. Each one of the boss’ will have different ways they will attack you, you can just read what it says about Monstrous Terror tile. At the end of the boss’s turn, the Monstrous Terror moves down one room, bringing along any monsters and heroes in its current room.

The players win if they defeat the Monstrous Terror before it escapes the dungeon (Makes it from Room 12 to Room 1). The players lose if the Monstrous Terror escapes or one of the players dies before the boss is dead.

That’s a quick overview of the rules, now let’s take a look at what I think of the game.

Artwork and Components:

Wakening Lair continues the trend with all other Rather Dashing Games, amazing artwork, and component quality.

Grant Wilson knocks it out of the park once again, with the art. It’s got a “Cartoon” feel to it, but not too much, it’s enough to make the game accusable for Families and young children, there is nothing shocking here, it’s a unique style, The monsters look great, but scary if that makes sense. The cards themselves are well made, they have a nice plastic feel to them, I think they will hold up well after repeated plays. The wooden tokens both the players and markers are nice and well made. you can tell Rather Dashing Games did not cut any corners.

And big kudos, for the design choice to use both male and female characters on the cards, I love seeing this and I hope that more companies do this.

I have to give a nod to the box as well, it’s designed to look like a book, and it “opens up like one as well, with a flap that you open. There is a magnet in that flap that will help keep the box closed. A unique design. Well played Rather Dashing Games, Well Played.

Gameplay

Mike Richie has come up with a simple yet challenging (A bit TOO Challenging) Dungeon Crawler here.

My biggest problem with the game is pretty simple, the game sets you up to fail, and you will. This is not an easy game at all. In the plays my friends and I did, we died each game, we did not stand a chance, you are at the mercy of the dreaded RNG. The dice will decide your fate, roll great and you might stand a chance, roll bad well your dead. Game over. We did better our second game, as we took the time to come up with a strategy, which was working pretty good for us, even with some crap rolls, UNTIL the Monstrous Terror Awakens card brought the boss out, again we were victims of the RNG here, as we had randomly chosen Soulbane as our Boss.

You see Soulbane is an overpowered boss, yes I just said that. His hit-dice pool zones are all 5’s so you will need roll well and a lot to defeat him, or and let’s talk about the special ability he has. BEFORE he attacks, you will roll 1d6, whatever number comes up he will either heal any monsters that in his room if there are none, he HEALS HIMSELF. And you do this even if he’s in a room alone with no player. In our game, I had managed to do quite a bit of damage to him 20 points (so 4 of his 6 hitpoints in one zone) rolled for his heal and he healed himself back up to full health. Yep.. my whole round was for nothing, he just rolled it all away, and the proceeded to kill me. It was frustrating, to say the least, the other boss we had was not as bad as him, we still lost but we took him to the final room, We sit around talking and decided there is no way you can kill him. as you can’t overcome his heal.

Final Thoughts

The game is fun, don’t get me wrong, we had a blast playing it. We worked together well, and planned out moves and was giving cards to each other as we drew treasure that would work better for someone else. But all the fun is lost when something like the above happens.

I would say just go into the game that you will lose, and you’re at the mercy of the RNG. everything is luck and random here, even with the great plan we had, we just lost because of the dice.

So with the big negative aside, I would recommend this game, as I said we had a blast playing! After our first game, we were looking at the other characters and planning out what we thought was the perfect party (A good mix of damage and heals and special abilities)

Wakening Lair will scratch the itch for those wanting to play and RPG or Dungeon Crawler, but you don’t have a lot time to set up a complex board. It’s a great mix of the 2 genres that is done well, there were times where it felt like a great RPG, as we were deciding which treasures to trade to best “Level” up our characters and give us the best chance to survive.

This is a great way to introduce someone to the dungeon crawler genre, with it’s quick and easy rules. This would make a great family game as well. This would make a great opener to your game night, as your all gathering, probably snacking and drinking some beers, with its quick set up and easy rules this will get the gaming going fast.

Just go into knowing it’s all up to the RNG and Luck, you are more then likely going to die, and my God help you if you pull Soulbane as your boss.

In case you missed it, we did an unboxing video of the game.

Wakening Lair will hit your FLGS on March 22nd. If you would like to pre-order it now, you can head over to Rather Dashing Games.