Lords of Waterdeep Review

Strategic or Tactical? Yes. Engine Builder? A Little
Long-term planning is absolutely possible in the form of buildings and/or “plot quests” that reward the player not with VPs, but with some benefit that will increase their momentum throughout the game and allow them to accumulate either more VPs or more actions. However, on a turn by turn basis, it’s a very tactical experience as you try to guess at which spaces won’t be available by the time it gets back to you again.

I use “momentum” to describe play, because I’m avoiding using the term “engine.” While miniature versions of what Euro-gamers describe as an engine exist in Waterdeep, your last turn is going to be pretty darn similar to your first couple turns. Sure, you’ll be scrambling to complete that last quest or two and will have an extra meeple to use, but you won’t have unlocked new abilities that change play meaningfully. That makes the game more of a tactical game of chicken where you try to be the last to leapfrog everyone on the VP track with your final quest turn-ins, avoiding the “take that” cards that will usually end up with whoever’s winning in the mid-game.

The Beauty of Directional Purpose
Waterdeep is not the most complicated worker placement game. It’s not the most innovative. It’s not the prettiest. It’s not the most thematic. For clarity, it doesn’t necessarily lack those things, but you can find other games that have surpassed it. So why its continued popularity? And why do I continue to enjoy it, play after play, years after having graduated from other well-respected gateway games?

Waterdeep never wavers in its purpose and experience, and remains strategically deep enough to reward numerous plays. But what do I mean by “never wavers in its purpose?” A more recent worker placement game might have separate actions taking place on your personal player board, or a secondary (or tertiary!) score track where you’re weighing the cost or benefits to prioritizing one track over another. This is fine, and can add depth, but it can also distract from the central experience if it’s not careful. If you like worker placement, I can’t imagine you not liking Lords of Waterdeep, because it delivers the choice and tension of the genre without anything that I’d consider extraneous.

Some will graduate from Waterdeep and not want to play it as much. This happened to me with others, like Ticket to Ride, which I enjoyed until I was just kind of done with it. Waterdeep has bucked that trend, and remains more than just a gateway for me, even as I’ve played and enjoyed worker placement games that have twists on the classic mechanics and/or more going on as a whole. Sometimes I just want good worker placement, without the bells and whistles of many other fine games. Waterdeep is a reliable vehicle for scratching that itch.

Scoundrels of Skullport Expansion
Perhaps because the base game is “enough” for me, I have a mixed relationship with this expansion.

There are two modules that can be added or left out (technically three, but the last is just stuff for a 6th player). The first just adds more stuff – buildings, quests, intrigue cards, etc. – as well as a new section of board with new places to place your meeples. The highest-point quests are bigger, but can also be more susceptible to player-blocking when, for example, you need a bunch of a particular resource.

The second adds more of the same, but more importantly adds a new Corruption mechanic that can end up giving you negative points. It’s a new risk/reward mechanic, basically, since actions involving corruption tend to confer slightly better benefits than others.

Let me first say that adding in these new quests, Intrigue cards and buildings is perfectly fine, and can actually add some new options without changing the complexity or play time, which is cool. The only caveat with that is that you’ll need to remove anything involving the Corruption tokens. But the expansion marks the cards that include the corruption mechanic, so it’s easy to remove them. These days, I keep the non-corruption stuff shuffled in with the base game at all times, and my games haven’t suffered for it. I think technically I may be doing something wrong by not removing some of the base game’s cards, but again, it hasn’t affected gameplay.

With the corruption elements, the risk/reward of doing deliciously evil things will appeal to many gamers. For players who enjoy Waterdeep as-is, it’s not going to revolutionize a ton, but for those to whom the game has gotten a bit stale, this will add new decisions and considerations and likely reinvigorate things. This module – as well as a 6th player – will also add time to your game. At max players, the base game is close to the limit of how lengthy I want my session to be. So I personally won’t use the corruption module unless we’re playing with 2-4.

Who Won’t Like This
The genre and traditional fantasy theme will not appeal to some for whom those simply aren’t their thing. And while I won’t use terms like lightweight or midweight to describe LoW or its competitors (I think those terms are largely broken due to the wild variance in how they’re applied in the hobby), there will indeed be gamers whose preferred level of complexity is higher than this. While I personally think this is heavier than most we call “gateway” games, it’s also lighter than many that have followed it.

The Verdict
Lords of Waterdeep is a perfectly representative example of a solid worker placement game, one that hides a surprising amount of strategic and tactical nuance, has accessible rules and an apparently hit-or-miss theme that will appeal to some.

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