Lords of Waterdeep - First Play!

2nd May 2022

It's a bank holiday Monday and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun.

Waterdeep, famed city in The Forgotten Realms and home to many a adventurer, ready to brave the wilderness in the search for treasure and glory... oh wait... This Dungeons & Dragons setting licensed game is nothing to do with Dungeon & Dragons... It's actually a political-intrigue themed worker placement game!

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What's in the game?

• Game board: The board shows a map of the titular city; Waterdeep in some detail.
  Buildings: There 9 basic worker-spaces dedicated the various 'buildings' and establishments throughout the city, such as the Blackstaff Tower and The Grinning Lion Tavern.
  Some spaces such as the Cliffwatch Inn and Builder's Hall have additional spaces associated with them (To place certain types of cards basically.).
  Building sites: There are also 9 blank spots which can have buildings constructed upon them during the course of the game.
  Card spaces: There are spaces for the quest deck & discard pile, intrigue deck and discard pile as well as the the deck of building tiles.
  Round tracker: Lord of Waterdeep is played over 8 rounds, this is tracked with VP tokens - which are then introduced into the game over each round. More on this below.
  Agent tracker: Players gain an additional worker halfway through the game, their workers are kept here until acquired.
  Scoring track: Finally, there's a scoring track which runs the perimeter of the board.
• Player mat: There is a player mat in each of the 5 player colours. Each mat represents a different faction active within Waterdeep, the City Watch or the Harpers for example.
  Mats contain spaces to put acquired resources such as cubes, money or agents. There are also allotted spots to place active and completed quest card and to place a player's Lord card.
• Agent meeples: These come in each player and are the game's workers. Additionally, there is a ambassador and lieutenant meeple which may come into play.
• Adventurers: Represented by little wooden cubes, these are recruits that players will be... err... recruiting to their cause to complete quests.
  There are 4 colours of cube representing clerics, fighters, rogues and magic-users. What, no demi-humans!
• Cards: Lord of Waterdeep makes uses of several types of cards.
  Lord cards: These are the Lords of Waterdeep, the secret rules or the city. There are 11 lord cards and each player will secretly be playing one of them. Lord cards feature some flavour text and a method for earning additional VPs.
  Quest cards: Questing is an important part of Lord of Waterdeep. Quest cards contain illustrations and some flavour text. Each quest card also has a cost to complete, typically it will be a number of adventurers such as 3 fighters and 2 rogues and so on, the cost may include money too
  Each quest also associated with 1 of 5 types such as Warfare or Skulduggery. This also determines which type of adventure it primarily needs.
  Intrigue cards: When played, intrigue provide the controlling player with a once-only benefit of some sort.
• Building tiles: These extra buildings which can be constructed and placed on the boards blank building sites for the listed cost in coins. The provide players with extra locations to place workers and new benefits which can be earned. Any player put a worker there but be warned, the builder gets a benefit whenever another player makes use of their building.
  These tiles are sort of square shaped but with an indentation in 1 corner - which is where players' building control marker goes. (More on markers below.)
• Tokens: The game also makes use of various card tokens.
  Victory points: These hexagonal tokens display what appears to be a ruby.
  Building control marker: These come in the 5 different player colours, when a player constructs a building, they put their marker on the corner of the tile.
  Gold: The game uses curiously shaped square and crescent tokens to represent gold. I guess that's what coins look like in Waterdeep.
  First player marker: This token looks a bit like the rook from a chess set and represents Castle Waterdeep.

For the most part, all the components felt sturdy and well made. The player mats felt a little thin and flimsy but that's probably down to the fact they're quite large and will be perfectly find unless mistreated.

​There's a lot of excellent art throughout the game. I'm not sure if it's been created specifically for Lords of Waterdeep or sourced from the large amount of Forgotten Realms/D&D artwork that's been produced over the decades but either way, it's good quality and generously used on all the game's cards.
The other piece of significant artwork is the map on the board, it's very well detailed, although it does make the board look a little 'busy'. Regardless of this I still quite like it.

The game does use a fair amount of iconography, for the vast majority of icons, it's pretty clear what they mean and there was minimal need to refer to the rules.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Player mats: Randomly deal a player mat to each player. This will be that player's faction/colour for the game.
  Also give each player a number of meeples/agents as per player count and building control markers, all  in their player colour.
  Finally put 1 meeple of each player colour on the agent track.
• Lords of Waterdeep: Shuffle the Lord cards into a face-down deck, deal 1 face-down to each player and discard the rest out of the game. Player's should keep the identity of their lord secret, there's a space to put it under their player mat.
• Board: Put out the game board and do the following.
  Quest deck: Shuffle the quest cards into a face-down deck then deal 4 face-up on to their allotted spaces above the Cliffwatch Inn.
  Building tiles: Shuffle the building tiles into a face-down stack, deal 3 face-up on to the allotted spaces adjacent to the Builder's Hall.
  Intrigue cards: Shuffle the intrigue cards into a face-down deck and place them on their allotted space. Then deal 2 intrigue cards to each player face-down.
  Victory point tokens: Put 3 VP tokens on to each of the 8 round tracking spaces.
• First player: Determine a starting player, that player gets 4 gold, each subsequent player then gets 1 more gold than the previous player. Thus for a 5 player game, the starting gold will go from 4-8 gold.

On to play
Lords of Waterdeep uses the traditional turn structure with the active player taking an action and play progressing to their left.
When someone is the active player, they can act in 2 phases.
Firstly they must take their action, a player can only pass when they have no more agents to play.
finally, the active player may complete a quest if possible.

• Round start: At the start of the first and every following round, take the 3 VP tokens and place 1 each on the three building tiles available to buy.
• Place worker: A player action will involve placing one of their agents on to a space on the board and resolving that space. Several spaces will devoted to acquiring resources, others however, will have more specific actions.
  • Acquire resource: A number of the spaces will simply acquire 1 or more of the games 5 main resources (4 adventurer types and gold.) for the player when they place their worker there. I.e., going to the arena will recruit fighters, going to the tavern will recruit rogues and so forth.
    When resources are acquired, they are placed on to the player's mat.
  • Builder's Hall: If a worker is placed here, then the active player chooses one of the 3 available advanced buildings and pays its cost. The building is then placed into the blank building sites. Finally, the active player puts one of their building control markers in the appropriate slot.
    When a advanced building is drafted from the builder's hall, it is immediately replaced with a new building tile.
    Advanced buildings: there are numerous different types of advanced building that can come into play. Each one provides an extra space to place a worker and will provide the player who built it with a benefit whenever another player uses the building.
  • Castle Waterdeep: When a player puts a worker here, they gain the first player marker for the following round. Additionally, they also draw an intrigue card.
  • Cliffwatch Inn: There are actually 3 spaces here.
    First space: This allows the active player to take a face-up quest card then put it on the active quest area adjacent to their player mat and take 2 gold
    Second space: This allows the active player to take a face-up quest card then put it on the active quest area adjacent to their player mat and draw an intrigue card.
    Third space: With this action, all the currently face-up quest cards are discard and are replaced with 4 more, then the active player takes 1 of them.
    Whenever a quest card is taken, it is immediately replaced.
    Quest cards: When a player gains a quest card, it placed along the left-hand edge of their player mat; until it is completed, it has no function.
  • Waterdeep Harbour: This spot also has 3 spaces.
    Each time a player places a worker here, they may immediately play one of their intrigue cards.
    A player may put multiple agents here but is still limited to playing 1 agent per turn.
    Intrigue card: When an intrigue card is played, it is immediately resolved and discarded.
    There are several types of intrigue card which may benefit whoever plays it or hinder another.
• Complete quest: ​After the active player has placed and resolved one of their workers, they may spend resources on their mat to complete one active quest per turn.
  Once a quest is completed, it grants a reward, this may be a once-only or ongoing benefit. Quests with on-going benefits are known as plot-quests and may provide extra places to put workers.
  When a quest is completed, it's VPs are immediately scored.
  Mandatory quests: These quests are not acquired the usual way, they come from intrigue cards and are actually played on other players. If a player receives a mandatory quest, it must be completed before they complete any other quest.
• Next player: Once a player has put a worker into play and chosen to complete a quest or not, play progresses to the player on their left.
• Next round: When all players have placed all their workers, the current round ends and play progresses to the next round. The VP tokens on the new round's spot on the round tracker are placed on the 3 available building tiles.
  It is possible for a building to have more than 1 VP token if it wasn't built in the previous round.
  5th Round: At the start of the 5th round, each player acquires an additional agent/worker they can use for the rest of the game.

Endgame
The game ends at the end of the 8th round and goes to final scoring. VPs come from the follwing sources.

• Score on the score tracker.
• Every agent/worker a player has on their mat earns them an additional VP.
• Every 2 gold a player has on their mat earns them a VP.
• Lord cards will score VPs according to their individual quest objectives.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Now, I'm by no means whatsoever particularly knowledgeable about the Forgotten Realms setting but it's quite impressive how Lords of Waterdeep manages to marry a worker placement game with the flavour of the setting, or at least a part of it that takes place in Waterdeep. It's not vital to the rules or gameplay but conversely, neither is it jarring or hindering.

The game is all about optimising actions to gain required resources as efficiently as possible to complete quests which must also be acquired while at the same time trying to predict and out manoeuvre other players: Most of the locations that confer resources will only have space for a single worker, making it unlikely that players will get all the resources they want in a single round, prioritising is very important because completing quests is very important, not only do quests provide VPs, they can confer useful benefits as well.

This ties in with the Lord cards which are essentially secret objectives.
Not only may players be competing for certain quest types and their respective resources, there's also a higher level of play where resources and quests can be denied to other players, provided their objectives can be guessed of course.

The advanced buildings is an interesting proposition, it adds an element of emergent strategy to the game, changing the status quo, giving players new options and making them re-asses their plans. Constructing a useful building also has the benefit of earning the builder its bonus and inevitably, it'll be used by other players.

There's not much else to say really, the gameplay is solid if somewhat unremarkable; players of worker placements games will find themselves on familiar ground here which may or may not be good thing - depending on your mileage.
Perhaps the playing time is a touch too long for what it is but none of this stops Lords of Waterdeep from ultimately being an enjoyable game.

If the Forgotten Realms setting doesn't put you off for some reason and you want to try a worker placement game, then Lords of Waterdeep is probably worth a look.