Pixar Game night 2/28/2011 Wrath of Ashardalon!

Hey Geekshelfers!  Wow.  This has been such an AMAZING week so far!  Toy Story 3 won the Oscar for Best Animated film this past Sunday.  I posted pics of the celebration which you can take a look at HERE.

On the gaming front, Everett bought Wrath of Ashardalon which we played for this week's Pixar gamenight!  For the uninitiated, WoA is a follow up to Castle Ravenloft, a dungeon-crawl boardgame set in the D&D universe.  I've really wanted to give Ravenloft a go but it was out of print for awhile and I never got around to playing it.

Anyway, lets take a closer look at Wrath of Ashardalon!

The game plays with up to 5 players, each of which takes on the role of the classic D&D archetypes (Dwarven Fighter, Rogues, etc.)

I always end up with the dwarf:)

Here's the Dwarf Fighter Vistra's character sheet along with her utilites, at-will, and daily powers.  You'll be needing these powers to survive.

My character and her abilities.

The game also comes with a ton of beautifully sculpted minis.  Another upside is that you can use them for your D&D roleplaying sessions!

beautiful minis!

After about 20 minutes of Everett setting up the game and explaining the rules, the game began with a bang.  As you can see from the picture below, it didn't take long for our crew to become surrounded by a horde of monsters.

our heroes are surrounded!

This game rewards you for exploring the dungeons.  If you end your turn adjacent to the edge of a tile, you can draw another tile and extend the map.  For the scenario, we had to find the "vault" tile and grab the gear within it to win.

As more tiles are revealed, the map grows larger.  I really liked this aspect of the game since the generated map is almost always different with each game.

you'll need a lot of table space

After awhile the Vault tile is revealed! The adventurers must defeat the two creatures defending the entrance and get the gear to win the game.

towards the end of the night...

Here's a close up of the three heroes squaring off against the last Vault guardian.

vault discovered.  Scenario beaten!

All in all, everyone had a great time playing the game.  I was impressed by how close we were from losing a party member during some encounters and even up to the end, there was still a good chance of one of us not making it out of the adventure alive.

At first blush I think I like it better than Descent but I'll have to play it more to really know.

If you'd like more information on Wrath of Ashardalon, visit Boardgamegeek.

Happy Gaming, Geekshelfers!