Hey Folks
Does anyone know of a dungeon-crawler board game where the heroes face hordes of monsters?
I've played many dungeon crawler games where the heroes face anywhere from a couple monsters at a time to upwards of 10 monsters. But I'm working on a cooperative game where I want the heroes to be facing a sea of monsters (upwards 20-30 monsters). Most of the monsters will be one-hit kills.
My next question is:
Since the game is cooperative, monsters will follow very basic rules to determine what attack to use and who to attack. What options do you all see for activating/operating the monsters?
Every Monster Phase, each monster will have two actions: Move & Attack (or Move & Move if not within range of a hero).
Thanks for the input everyone!
Twenty Percent
You are right; many zombie games can have tons of monsters. Zombicide also can have many monsters on the board at once.
I've wanted to play HeroScape, but haven't.
To give a little more insight into the combat mechanics, there are two phases: the Hero Phase and the Monster Phase. Each hero will have three actions during the Hero Phase (attack, defend, spell, move, use potion), and then each monster will have two actions during the Monster Phase (move/attack or move/move). Monsters will act in order of closest to furthest to the heroes.
I'm shooting for a D&D style combat, in which each Hero/Monster phase will simulate a brief period of time (like in D&D, a round is 6 seconds). So I would prefer to avoid only having certain heroes and/or certain monsters act during their respective phase, but for each hero to act and each monster to act; it just seems more realistic to me.
Arkham Horror has an interesting mechanic, similar to BattleMasters: flip a deck of cards and that indicates what units move, as well as the direction they move. There's a little more to it, but that's generally what you do to control the enemies in that game - which is also a co-op.
I've considered using cards to determine which actions/targets/movement patterns monsters will take each phase, but felt dice provided more excitement. (Cards do have a place in the game, though. There is a "Random Encounter deck of cards players draw to determine which and where monsters spawn.")
I'm not going to bother with a question like,"why?" I'd rather learn the "how." Best of success to you on this project! :D
With as many creatures as I want on the board, complexity needs to be minimized; simpler is better. My initial designs and prototypes were way more complex, and orchestrating them was mind-numbing and overly time consuming.
Right now, the design involves rolling 2d6 for each monster: 1d6 determining which "tactic" the monster uses (which attack, when the monster has multiple options), and 1d6 determining which hero it attacks (ie nearest, furthest, lowest HP...this is a custom die).
While that may seem daunting with 20+ monsters on a board (20-30 monsters max... most of the time probably 10-15), after a round or two, it takes as few as 5 seconds to operate a simpler monster (50-80% of monsters) and 15 seconds to operate a tougher monster (20-50% of monsters). My main goal is to make activating the monsters simple, seamless, and quick. Most of the time playing the game will be during the Hero Phase, since that's when players actually make choices.
The "why?" is simple: I'm shooting for a specific style of game.
My major inspirations are D&D and Diablo. D&D (really Baldurs Gate) because the players are role-playing a single hero each to create a party of heroes in a turn-based, top-down environment adventure RPG. Diablo because I like the idea of having heroes fight against hordes of monsters, most of which are easy-kill minions with a few tougher monsters out there.
Players will have to consider going first for the easier one-hit-kill monsters, or focus-firing on the tougher monsters with stronger attacks (and many of them able to boost the smaller minions).
The game will be less "exploration" (like D&D: Ravenloft board game) and more narrative (like Mice & Mystics). Each game session will be a quest that has it's own specific setup/environment, pool of monsters that can spawn, and objective. So the game isn't about exploring as much as playing through a story and efficiently winning a tactical combat scenario.
Some quests will be as simple as "travel through the stage, kill the minions, and defeat the boss", while others will be a "King of the hill", "Rescue & Escort the NPCs", or "Recover the hidden artifact" quest. Many of the chapters will not even have a boss; the challenge/variation comes from the specific objectives and setups.
I don't know anything about Golem Arcana. At quick glance on BGG and their website, it looks like a ton of fun and innovative.
TL;DR I <3 D&D and Diablo, and am shooting for that style of tactics and scale of combat.