OUR REVIEW

IMPS BREED MONSTERS

DUNGEON PETZ

THE DUNGEON LORD ORDERED A MAGICAL BEAST

You take a father of three small children. Then you add a hundredweight of imagination, a handful of humor – can be more, if you like, a pinch of irony, a specially created universe and let the father invent stories.

He surely will, as my own father once did, tell new stories in which the rich fabulous world of fairy tales is mixed with the daily events of your live. Or he might, as does Vlaada Chvátil, bring to light a new, in some aspects breathtaking, well thought-out game that he specially created for us, the gamers.

Just as fairy tales have their rules and structures (three sons, the stupid one is the really clever one; a dragon, a princess …), so does a game and this game have familiar mechanisms (blind bidding, worker placement, card management). These mechanisms together with the topic achieve a combination that is usually only known to scientists in their theories.

Let’s take a look now at the mixture of a father’s worries, game mechanisms and fantastic universe of dungeons. If we will feel at ease there as so many others already have done?

In this stand-alone sequel game to Dungeon lords the leading parts have been given to imps and little beasties, which must be brought up to result in real monsters for the Dungeon lords. The game is an economic model of small animal breeding. The complete scenario comprises acquiring of baby animals, placing them in the zoo, looking after their needs, seeing them grow up, winning prices with them at shows and finally selling them for a hefty profit.

But there is a small drawback. In the terminology of gamers you call it a deficiency game. The little beasties do not always want to do what we imagine they should do. Do have the correct cages, the correct food for them then?

There is an old lady, who wants to take loving care of a little varmint, feed it, look after it, and what does the thing do? Instead of eating out of her hand nicely (usually it is so greedy!) it tries angrily to escape from the cage and bites all in reach. The second visit is made by the Great Sovereign who is wishing for an aggressive magical beast. But, instead of making mincemeat out of the cage the creature is playing with a skein of wool in the corner, and in a moment of being unobserved it shits on the boots of the Sovereign. These are the situation we poor players must cope with to achieve as much prestige as possible while always lacking something at every turn. How shall that work out?

Each player commands 6 imps at the start of the game, has a board with the freshly set up zoo and another board with his storage room and the living quarters of the imps. This is a special thing in itself, because the front is playing aid and flappable screen at the same time. A big board is placed in the middle of the table, this is the place where the game itself, the common, interactive part if it is happening. It has room for small animals, room for new cages, room for cage expansions (don’t worry, contrary to other game expansion these are really very useful), room for vegetables, for meat, for gold, for magical items, even room for sick imps. The board is well-organized as in all of Vlaada’s games and as full of small details as are all boards by David Cochard, so that I spent more than an hour at the start to add up and enjoy the 97 little imps and only then noticed the small paving stones for groups of imps – the action spots. Some might be disturbed by such an overfull board, but I cannot imagine one without details anymore and am always glad when another one happens.  Another thing is the same, too, Vlaada has reserved a special location for every small thing! And when there is not enough room for it, then we need another small board. This one features the track for counting rounds and small images of the flow of the game; you also place small tiles representing buyers (Lords) there and also the show rules.

A complete game lasts for 5 or 6 rounds: One round comprises the phases of setup, shopping, need cards, showing off, business and aging. Setup is the phase for replenishing the big board and to cash income. At that point the player is not yet in demand, because this is implemented automatically. Just as in real life, you do not interfere when getting money from the state J. Shopping happens with a vengeance, though. First all put up their screens and then arrange their imps into a maximum of 6 groups. One group can be boosted for additional gold and a group must have a minimum of one imp. Then the screens are folded down again and the player with the biggest group of imps starts the game. He may choose an action spot for this group or send the group back to the living quarters. The next in turn is the player who has now the biggest group of imps, and so on. Strong groups are always in demand, because not each player can acquire a pet in each round, not every player can drag away a cage in each round, not every … I can see you have grasped the idea! Players continuously obstruct and hinder each other and try to assess what will be left over when they can place imps again. When the shopping spree is finished you must get the acquired pets, cages, food, magic items, cage expansions or sleeping draughts home and store things carefully. Your imps themselves are still romping about the supermar…. Oh, sorry, the board was what I wanted to say.

Now we enter the phase of need cards. Each pet has a wheel part underneath that that can be turned revealing colored squares. Each square denotes a need. A green one usually means hunger. A hungry animal should be fed! A yellow square usually means that the pet wants to play, so you should play with it or at least have acquired some toy for it. Red usually stands for aggression and purple for magic; at that point you must take care that the cages can stand the pressure. For each need a player draws the corresponding card. The combination of symbols on the colored card a player has permanently on display on the inner side of the screen. To avoid simplifying this part to “draw at random and place next to the animal”, players have a card in each color in had a leftover from the previous turn. So they can at least safely calculate with one card per color. Should they have been so claver as to acquire a Magic Book they have another card per book in stock. When a player has several pets he draws the cards for all of them and can combine them at this will, only the card colors must be the correct one for each animal.

And then the needs are resolved, and again you find instructions for this on your screen. Did I mention already that I like the screen very much and that he has several purposes? If you cannot meet the hunger needs of your pet, it suffers and is given a suffering token. These are not good at all. You do not want them at the shows and the buyers do not like them, either! Sometimes, the pets fill the cage with poop. You can clean that up; when the pet has disease symbols on the card the number of suffering tokens relates not only to the disease symbols but also to the number of poop heaps in the cage. Aggression cannot be met, it just needs a cage to stand the aggression, but you can assign imps to steady a cage. Should the cage be too weak the pet can undergo mutation or disappear into another dimension and out of the game. Each card can be replaced by a potion. To combine the cards drawn with your cards in hand in an optimum way for all your animals can be a challenge and demands your full concentration and power of combination. This part of the game is the one that slows the game down. Everything else is done rather quickly, but this needs all of a man – a women – a mathematician to get that right.

When the damage due to needs has been assessed shows are arranged. The cards that you assigned in the need phase are relevant here, too. If you come off best, you receive 8 prestige points (in a game of four players), which decide if you win or lose the game. Of course there are second and third and fourth places in the show. The rules governing a show are always known in advance and so players can keep the right” cards on hand from round to round. There are individual shows and comparative shows, one of your animals could be participating or the whole zoo.

Now we have reached the real purpose of the little imp. Because it is their idea that we have to thank for this game (or was it Vlaadas?) Because it is the imp’s idea to which we owe this game, because they want to bring up and train those pets for the Dungeon Lords. Each Lord has other preferences, but each of them wants a grown-up animal – it must be at least two rounds older and more mature than it was when you bought it. Therefore the first buyers turn up in round 3 of the game, but they are visible 2 rounds in advance. None of them wants suffering animals – so the suffering tokens mean loss of points. You sell the animals for money and prestige points. Money earned depends on the age of the pet and prestige points earned are double the amount of correlation between the animal and the demands of the Lords. Should you have been clever and have sent an imp to the rostrum on the market you have tripled this value. And again, you know everything two rounds before the sales hassle starts.

After all this players check if there is an imp left in the living quarters twiddling his thumbs; he should be dispatched quickly to clean the cages. Should there be nothing to clean up there they should prove their value and go and acquire some gold. And with this we have arrived in the final phase of the round. Small cuddly pets turn into teenagers, the food in the living quarters turns bad a little bit or a big bit. Meat for instance, can only be kept for two rounds; vegetables can be used over three rounds. And finally, the imps return home from shopping and the next round can start. During the game players have scored points and at the end of the game their boards are scored again as in a show. If you then have won the most prestige you win the game-

This game impresses with the illustrations of the little pets, most players have the impression that they achieved something and the points are more or less a minor matter. By the way, my favorite animal is the Liffard. And yours?

Monika Dillingerová

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 90

Designer: Vlaada Chvátil

Artist: David Cochard

Price: ca. 40 Euros

Publisher: Heidelberger 2011

Web: www.hds-fantasy.de

Genre: Deficiency game with card management

Users: For experts

Version: de

Rules: cz de en es fr pl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Detailed enchanting board

Witty, cute topic

Good combination of mechanisms

Compares to:

Worker placement and deficiency games, first game with the topic and combination of mechanisms

Other editions:

English at Z-Man Games

My rating: 6

Monika Dillingerová:

A fascinating game, due to the components as well as the topic – and rather realistic, as the dear little beasties always to exactly what they should not do when the buyers appear

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0