Bardsung: Legend of the Ancient Forge Dungeon Crawl (Core Game) 100+ Hours of Play

This review follows the unboxing, and only playing for a short while. There hasn't been enough time to get through the full campaign and talk about the full experience.First, I am absolutely happy with the number and quality of the models in the box. They accept paint very well and will no doubt be useful in games of D&D and the like. They will be a joy to eventually complete and add to the ever growing collection of gaming models in general.Its worth noting that the Greater Demon is absolutely massive, easily on a scale with the large red dragon that the company produces; personally my only problem with it is that it doesn't have a traditional equivalent somewhere else (it is too large and has too many arms to be a Balor for instance), so we are scratching our heads to figure out how to use it outside of this one board game.On the game itself, it runs off a slightly simplified version of 5e D&D, where the player rolls for both the character and the monsters. A player's attacks and abilities are kept on little cards that explain what happens on a hit/miss/critical and the cards can be upgraded by spending gold/xp between adventures. Character sheets are stored as little plastic clamshells for holding cards and ability modifiers, so you can keep them safe between adventures and can easily reset them for use in a future campaign.The range of abilities and conditions is rather staggering, there are SO MANY cards and tokens in this box, it looks like there will always be some useful tactic and playstyle to come up with. This is not a negative though, as similar dungeon games we've played have just as many bits and gubbins too. So this is just an indicator of depth.Initiative is essentially shuffling the PC and monster cards, going down the order and taking actions. Monsters behave according to preset behaviours which are determined by a separate card, such as "cautious" or "aggressive".Rolling against monsters is against a single TN (DC to everyone else) which applies to both their attack and defense. You roll against it when you attack them, and you roll against it when they attack you and apply the same sort of hit/miss/crit effects that are on your ability cards. Also, ALL non-boss creatures can only take two points of damage, though some monsters have alternative forms when they take damage and get upgraded with different attacks and a different TN.Its a simple system but it effectively reduces the enemy to a single number, with little significant differentiation between goblins, spiders, bugbears, and duergar, other than their range of attacks. So once you've beaten a regular Hobgoblin, you've pretty much figured them out for later adventures. While it speeds things up, it kind of removes a lot of the uncertainty of epic encounters considering that you know how easy it is to defeat things and how long certain battles may go on for.A good comparison for exploration is to the D&D games like Legend of Drizzt or Wrath of Ashardalon, which also create their dungeons from tilesets. Though due to the nature of the tiles, the D&D games can create more random encounters and sequences of dead-ends and unexpected turns, with monsters showing up unexpectedly or in domino-like cascades.By contrast, exploration in Bardsung goes from prebuilt rooms and corridors from the set of tiles, with each tile having their own encounter setup as determined by the campaign chapter and the number of players, of which there are over thirty chapters with multiple branching paths, so the campaign can go on for a LONG time. But in essence there is a greater level of predictability to it, potentially meaning less replayability in the long run.That really boils down my comparison, there is a LOT of content, but content that likely delivers a slightly more repetitive experience. I haven't run through even a fraction of the campaign yet, and while I will be glad to see our party become more powerful and make "meaningful" progress, I get the worry that after ten chapters or so we will only be increasing the TN numbers and not really feeling like the experience is much different from the first few sessions. I look forward to finding out though, and my enthusiasm has not yet dimmed.My main major complaint is the structure of the rulebook, with the tutorial in particular. Which runs very much like a "START HERE" set of introductory encounters getting you used to the game while playing, expecting you to carefully read each section BEFORE moving forward.The problem with the tutorial is that if you are playing it while reading it, as I believe you are supposed to. it refers to rules and symbols that only appear later in the rulebook, with no indication of where or why, which had us in frustration as we were wondering what we should be doing next. Though when it was resolved at least we had a better idea of how to play the game and can see how relatively straightforward it is.This product still gets my thumbs up. I'm happy with it, and look forward to playing some more. When we're done with the campaign (hopefully not too soon!) we can still use the models for other things and still get enjoyment from it.