Dungeon Legends Review

boardgamequest.com:

I don’t really like dungeons, or the crawling thereof. Broadly speaking, I find the process to be fiddly and component-reliant, with more time devoted to running the dungeon than playing your turn.

I also think the term “dungeon”, at least in board games, has become unhelpfully broad. The word has taken on a life of its own, to the point where the “dungeons” being crawled in board games more closely resemble scavenger hunts than actual dungeons, packed with hidden trinkets and treasures.

Dungeon Legends is not going to quell my irritation on that point—in fact, it features a whopping zero dungeons. That said, it’s also a lot more minimalistic than your typical dungeon game, and you don’t really crawl around in them. But is that enough to win me over?

Dungeon Legends is a cooperative tower-defense-ish card game for 1-4 players. It plays in around 45-90 minutes, and plays well at all player counts.

Dungeon Legends is loosely structured into a five-chapter campaign (although each chapter can be played on its own), and each scenario has the same basic setup. Players start out clustered around their castle, and over the course of the game, monsters will pop out and advance their way towards it. If even a single monster reaches the castle, players immediately lose the game.

Each player controls a hero, primarily represented by a deck of action cards. Cards can provide a variety of different actions, such as attacking the monster in your current space, moving to an adjacent space, or generating Dust. After your turn ends, you reveal a new card from the game deck, which can either alter the game state through one-off events or add new monsters to the track.

Monsters are defeated and discarded by dealing damage equal to their health. When that happens, the defeating player gets some reward–usually, a new advanced action card to add to their deck. These cards are much stronger than your starting cards and even have an extra-powerful action, which can be activated by spending