Hi!
It's Ryan from Nights Around a Table, and
this is Lords of Waterdeep, a worker placement
game for 2-5 players set in a fictional city
from the Dungeons & Dragons universe.
But!
This isn't a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing
game, where you're chucking dice and defeating
monsters.
You don't have to know or understand anything
about Dungeons & Dragons to enjoy or appreciate
this game.
So... let me show you how to play!
You and your friends play members of a shadowy
secret government that pulls the strings in
the fictional city of Waterdeep, where you'll
send your agents to rally adventurers to complete
quests both noble and naughty.
Everyone picks a colour, which represents
a faction with a cool name: the Red Sashes,
the Silverstars, KC and the Sunshine Band,
and so on.
You take the agent pieces that match your
colour - the number of agents changes based
on how many people are playing - and you grab
your player mat.
Each of you is dealt a secret role card with
a different Lord of Waterdeep on it.
The Lords all have certain predilections;
most of the time, they'll favour two types
of quests.
For example, Mirt the Moneylender gets more
points for completing Commerce and Piety quests.
The quests come in five different flavours:
Commerce and Piety (which we just saw), as
well as Arcana, Warfare, and Skullduggery.
You'll get two of these Quest cards to start
the game.
The top part of the quest shows the cost to
complete it, while the bottom shows the reward
you'll get.
These differently coloured cubes represent
Adventurers, which are a weird type of human
currency in the game: clerics, fighters, mages,
and rogues.
So if you want to Expose Red Wizards' Spies,
you'll need to send 1 cleric, 1 fighter, 2
rogues, 2 mages, and pay 2 gold, in order
to get 20 victory points and 1 Intrigue card.
In order to drum up the adventurers you need
to complete your quests, you have to send
your agents to the different buildings in
Waterdeep.
Place an agent here, and you get two fighters.
Place an agent here, and you get a mage.
The adventurers you recruit go here on the
Tavern in your player mat.After 8 rounds of
play, whoever has the most victory points
wins!
When you set up the game, new quests go here,
and a stack of Intrigue cards goes here.
In addition to your two starting Quests, each
player also gets dealt two of these Intrigue
cards, which should be kept secret.
The starting player is the last person to
visit a city.
Everyone gets 4 gold, plus another gold for
each seat to the left of the starting player
they're sitting in, since going first is a
big advantage.
3 building tiles get dealt here.
These buildings represent extra places for
your Agents to go once they're built.
3 victory point tokens get stacked on each
one of these round spaces.
Off the top of every round, pepper them across
the buildings, to make the buildings more
attractive to purchase.
On your turn, you place one of your agents
in an unoccupied building (as long as it's
been constructed), and reap the benefit.
The buildings are largely self-explanatory:
you get the Adventurers or money depicted
for placing your agents on these ones.
As long as you have agents to place, you have
to place an agent on your turn.
You can't pass...
unless there's absolutely nowhere you can
place an agent, which probably ain't gonna
happen.
Placing an agent on Castle Waterdeep lets
you draw an Intrigue card and take (or hang
onto) the first player token for the next
round.
You have three options at Cliffwatch Inn:
take a face-up Quest card and two gold, or
a face-up Quest card and a face-down Intrigue
card, or sweep all the Quest cards, deal four
new ones, and take one of those.
You can place more than one of your Agents
at Cliffwatch Inn as long as there are spaces
free, but the one-agent-per-turn rule still
stands.
If you place your agent at the Builder's Hall,
you can buy one of the face-up buildings.
Pay the cost, and put the building in one
of the empty slots at the side of the board.
Tag it with one of your faction's markers
so everyone knows you own it, and deal a new
building into the gap.
You've just created a new spot where players
can play their agents.
If an opponent places an agent on your building,
you get the benefit listed at the bottom of
the building.
But you don't get that benefit for placing
your agent on your own building.
Of course, you get to score any of the victory
point chits that may have piled up on a building
when you buy it.
The Waterdeep Harbour spaces work a little
differently than the rest.
As long as you have an Intrigue card to play,
you can place an agent here and... play one
of your Intrigue cards.
We'll take a look at Intrigue cards in just
a moment.
And just like Cliffwatch Inn, the Harbour
can accommodate more than one agent of the
same colour.
Once everyone is out of agents to assign,
the agents in Waterdeep Harbour get reassigned
to other unoccupied buildings by the Lords
who control them, going from space 1 to space
3.
So these are, like, Go-Again spaces.
The agents can't be reassigned back to the
Harbour.
That's like wishing for more wishes, and believe
me: genies hate that.
The Intrigue cards do all kinds of awful things,
from letting you steal adventurer cubes from
your opponents, to getting you extra stuff,
to saddling someone with a garbage mandatory
quest card that has to be completed before
any other quests.
WHY i OUGHTA...(drawing sword) Finished Intrigue
cards wind up in this discard pile.
After you've placed one agent on your turn,
you can optionally complete 1 quest.
Pay the cost on the card, and then place it
face down here, or face-up here if it's a
Plot Quest that gives you a special ability.
Completing a quest on your turn is completely
optional: if you have all the adventurers
and gold you need to complete a certain quest,
you can just sit on them until the time is
right, or use them to complete another quest
later.
You don't lose any points for incomplete quests
at the end of the game.
At the end of the round, take all of your
agents back.
Sow the next round's VP chits to the buildings.
Whoever began with the first player token
stays the first player, unless someone else
took the token away by placing an agent in
Castle Waterdeep or by playing a certain Intrigue
card.
You begin the game with a certain number of
agents depending on how many people are playing:
a 2-player game gets you 4 agents.
A 3-player game gets you 3 agents.
And 4- and 5-player games give you only 2
agents to work with.
Regardless of the number of players, when
you reach round 5, everyone unlocks an extra
agent from this track.
Play through all 8 rounds to finish the game.
At the end of the game, every two leftover
coins get you 1 victory point, rounded down.
Each Adventurer who didn't get sent on a quest
is worth 1 victory point, and then reveal
your secret Lord card, which gives you victory
point bonuses depending on the types of quests
you completed... or the number of buildings
you constructed if you're playing Tori Amos.
The player with the most VPs wins, and gold
breaks ties.
The rulebook has a great index of all the
Buildings, and a few rules clarifications
if things get sticky.
And now you're ready to recede into the shadows
as a skeevy, cryptocratic puppetmaster in
Lords of Waterdeep!
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