Happy Easter!

God or no God, enjoy the holiday with your family!

Blogging re-starts after the weekend…

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I’ll be starting up again shortly. My older son is starting a blog as a writing project, so I’ve been showing him the ‘ins and outs’. 🙂

Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon

So, I’ve played a few rounds of this game and let me give you some pluses and minuses:

Good

1) Great Atmosphere: With the minis and the tile board it captures the full game very well. It really scratches the D&D itch.
2) Nice Intro to 4e rules: a few rounds of this game and my 12 year old will be ready to go to the full game. Even my 9 year old is getting better with the rules.
3) Game likely plays in under 90 mins

Bad

1) Be ready to interpret the rules a bit: Like Full D&D, the rules can be a little gray on how, for example, how a spell works, how a trap affects the group, etc.
2) Bad Cards: Some of my cards curled as soon as I opened them. They are still playable, but this can point to a problem during the treating process of the cards.

Overall 8.75 out of 10. See the video below for more detailed review.

Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon

Well, something new to try. 🙂

So I tried to intro my kids into D&D with mixed results. My kids were around 8 and 11 when we tried.

• Using Dungeon Mapp with the IPad on the TV worked well.  Using it to keep the hit points was OK at best, because I don’t like to make that public.  Also it could use more graphic options, but for the price it worked great.
• The downside was my kids invited other kids their age to play.  My wife and another adult played as well, but I didn’t feel it really worked out.  Too many kids.
• I tried to scale it back to my wife and my kids.  I think that might work at some point, but I can’t trust my sons (certainly not the younger) to keep track of spells used, etc.  Just too much record keeping at this point.  I think my older son is ready, but I can’t focus on him and my younger to keep things straight.  This is something I can DM around, but I’d like for them to learn.
• I’m going to try and figure something out in the summer, until then I picked up Wrath of Ashardalon.

I think this might solve a number of issues…

• I think this will give me the structure needed to keep things in control.
• The watered down version of D&D 4e will show them the ropes of record keeping a bit more.
• I can play on the kids ‘team’ and have fun that way.

I never thought I’d buy a D&D board game (just play the real thing), but I think this might work out.  I’ll do a review later.