Castle Ravenloft board game

D&D Adventure System Cooperative Game for 1 - 5 players

Contents

42 Miniatures consisting of

• 5 Heroes (blue plastic)
• 7 Villains (4 grey plastic and 3 bone plastic)
• 30 Monsters (9 bone plastic, 6 translucent blue plastic and 15 brown plastic)

The miniatures are made out of soft plastic but are detailed and most of them are without mould lines. The D&D models are 28mm scale, and have normal proportions (as opposed to GW figures which have "heroic" proportions). 

The hero figures are a female Human Ranger, male Dwarf Cleric, male Dragonborn Fighter, female Human Rogue and an Eldarin Wizard. The villain figures are a Vampire, Dracolich, Zombie Dragon, Flesh Golem, Werewolf, Howling Hag and a Kobold Sorcerer. The monsters are 3 each of Gargoyle, Wraith, Ghoul, Skeleton, Blazing Skeleton, Spider, Kobold Skirmisher, Rat Swarm and Zombie.

Also included is a D20, various cards, tokens, 42 interlocking dungeon tiles, an adventure book and the rule book.  A copy of the rule book can also be downloaded from https://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/Castle_Ravenloft_RuleBook.pdf

Playing the Game

We initially unboxed the game and started playing, but got a number of rules wrong.   We played the second game after carefully reading the rulebook and were able to progress without any major problems.

The recommended first mission is Mission 1: Escape the Tomb if playing solo or Mission 2: Find the Icon of Ravenloft if playing multiplayer.  The solo mission is quite hard, and I would suggest starting with the second mission instead, even if it means having one player playing several characters.

Most of our games we played with 3 players.  With 3 players the game feels quick paced, with minimal downtime for each player between their turns.  The player following you will typically have to deal with a monster and/or encounter that you drew on your turn, and you are watching closely what the player before you is doing because you will have to deal with a monster and/or encounter that they drew on their turn.

Some of the games we wanted more players to help deal with the adventure.  This was a good thing, because it felt more like a real adventure where we wanted to bring in some extra help for the harder missions.

The most useful characters are the Ranger and the Cleric.  The Ranger has an automatic hit attack (though we still rolled the dice to see if the player could roll a 20) and the Cleric was using Healing Strike, that lets you attack a monster and also heal a nearby character at the same time.

The Heroes

Summary of the characteristics of the heroes.

At-Will Powers

Summary of the more useful At-Will powers, that can be used by the different heroes.

The Monsters

A summary of the monsters appears below.  The game includes 3 models for each monster, and the monsters can appear in any mission.  Not shown below are the villains, which are more powerful but only appear in specific missions.