Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn (Dungeons & Dragons Cooperative Board Game for 3-5 Players)

Product Information

Besides the destructive visual depictions of war found in the Shadow of the Dragon Queen fantasy RPG book, the costs of war are also explored through the gameplay of Warriors of Krynn. Though the player characters won’t be directly fighting or commanding the battles themselves – that's for the Alliance armies and the Dragon Queen to do – they will be racing to complete objectives that will assist the people of Krynn to defend against the Dragon Army. For example, in a scenario compared to the evacuation of Dunkirk during World War II, players will be helping the civilians of Vogler to escape the flames and bloodshed spreading through their town via a collection of boats. Players will likely meet and build relationships with the commanders of the Alliance, thereby increasing the stakes of each battle even more. Additionally, Warriors of Krynn doesn’t really give fans of campaign or legacy board games enough to look forward to. It relies on its accompanying RPG book to tell the real story of Dragonlance, offering disconnected intros and scraps of isolated lore instead. There’s no compelling plot tieing events together. This is always an interesting moment because you’re torn between keeping your cards and actions to try and progress towards your scenario goals, while also wanting to pool enough dice to guarantee success. Sometimes you have to do the latter and it’s always a thrilling moment. However, despite a range of difficulties, these challenges are disappointingly faceless and repetitive, with little to differentiate between some Goblin Poisoners and a Red Dragon other than the stat and successes required.

This shoddiness extends to the rules. A close reading will reveal that everything you need is there, but it had better be a very close reading, because many details are not clear. Depending on whether players have the adventure book or board game, or both, they’ll experience these battles in varying ways. If players just have the Shadow of the Dragon Queen book then they’ll play through large-scale battles by making various decisions. Players who only have the board game will play through a total of 12 scenarios without most of the RPG elements featured in Shadow of the Dragon Queen. By combining Shadow of the Dragon and Warriors of Krynn, players will be able to experience the adventure book campaign and decide the outcome of large-scale battles through a wargame board game. The Alliance armies are often outnumbered in the battle scenarios in Warriors of Krynn. | Image credit: Wizards of the Coast/Daarken Despite not being in command, Daviau says the player-characters are very important for combat outcomes. “Alliance armies are almost always outnumbered, and if it weren’t for the player characters, they would lose”, he explains. Takhisis the Dragon Queen has returned to the world of Krynn. Across the land, her armies of fanatical draconians wage a brutal war of conquest. As the Dragon Armies march on the unprepared nation of Solamnia, only the defenders of the city of Kalaman stand in their way. But the Dragon Armies want more than just to crush their foes. An ancient evil in the Dragon Queen’s service seeks a magical weapon that could dominate Krynn for all time.

As players work through the Shadow of the Dragon Queen scenario book, they’ll occasionally enter full-scale battles. When this occurs, the book will prompt the players to (optionally) lay out the Warriors of Krynn board game, with select rules in place. Commanders will be set by the book, as well as certain combat conditions and win scenarios, letting players take on tactical combat gameplay in physical form. The book will be sold alongside Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn, a cooperative board game from veteran wargame designers Rob Daviau ( Risk Legacy) and Stephen Baker ( HeroQuest, Battle Masters). While both can be played separately, they’re meant to work in concert, with players turning to the board game to simulate large-scale battles. The decisions made in those fights and their outcomes will impact both future rounds of Warriors of Krynn and what happens in the story of Shadow of the Dragon Queen. The rules were designed by Rob Daviau, codesigner of Risk Legacy and creator of the entire concept of legacy games, and Stephen Baker, designer of HeroQuest, Battle Masters, and Risk: The Lord of the Rings. "We're inspired by the roleplaying game," Daviau said, "and we're obviously inspired by tabletop battle miniature games. My codesigner Steve Baker has played and designed a number of tabletop miniature games, so we're inspired by both of those, but we've abstracted it down to be a board game to keep the scope reasonable for an evening's D&D session. And to keep the table space down."

Those will certainly come in handy. As a general rule, the evil armies of the Dragon Queen outnumber those on the good side, so the bad guys will slowly push their enemies from the field (which is another loss condition). If there are heroes present on the same tile as the fighting, they can stall this inexorable advance by soaking up hits or using their response powers. You couldn't just drop it into a Rise of Tiamat campaign (or any campaign) without some work. The end of that module could really use something like this. Action economy in Warriors of Krynn also feels inefficient. Players are all working towards the same objectives, some of which mean one player gets to hit the switch and complete the quest while the rest wander the map, farming equipment and trying to find ways to use the four actions per turn they’re given. Beginning in the small fishing town of Vogler, players in Shadow of the Dragon Queen will become familiar with the charming town and its inhabitants before they’re all besieged and set aflame by the forces of the Dragon Army. Despite supporting an entire wargame board game tie-in and revolving a lot of action around battles, according to Wizards the upcoming Dragonlance releases will not glorify war. Instead, the costs of war will be laid at the players’ feet from the very beginning, with the quaint town they’ve come to know being destroyed before their very eyes.While it does function as an independent game, Warriors of Krynn is supposed to be used with the accompanying D&D adventure Shadow of the Dragon Queen - the consequences of success or failure in one impact the other. As I said in my Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen review, "all these soldierly shenanigans give the adventure scope to vary the pace and size of combat encounters, and it grabs this opportunity with both hands." Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen is a tale of conflict and defiance set during the legendary War of the Lance. Create characters from Krynn, the world of the Dragonlance setting, then march them to the front lines of battle against the terrifying Dragon Armies. Introduces a war game experience to D&D 5th edition, featuring heroes who participate in large scale military battles

Warriors of Krynn can be played as a standalone board game, however, and this is how I approached it for this review. Bear this in mind, as I spend less time considering the game as a TTRPG tool in the following sections. You’re still playing your characters,” Schneider said. “You’re having your adventures in the fray or around the edges of battle, doing the things that are important to really turn the tide of battle.” Based on the "hint" at the end we should see Kit and the Blue Dragon army next. will it be an expansion or a whole new Warriors of Krynn? Our brief look at Shadow of the Dragon Queen and Warriors of Krynn made us very intrigued about the future of Dungeons & Dragons, and the potential for more board game integration in upcoming tales. We’ll find out exactly how well this experiment works with an active crew of players when it launches on 6 December 2022. The problems are in the details. Warriors of Krynn relies on a complex web of fiddly smaller rules to maintain its balance. If these weren’t in the game (or were forgotten by the players while still getting to grips with the game, as happened to me on occasion), scenarios would become overwhelmingly easy.

What’s in Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn

Daviau is known in the board game industry as the creator of legacy board game mechanics, a genre of board games that includes his own critically acclaimed Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy, but also award-winning games like Gloomhaven and Charterstone. Legacy games evolve over time, with gags that include hidden components, new rules, and game boards that you write on. Some even require that you tear up cards or character sheets and throw them away, permanently removing them from the game. In this way, Warriors of Krynn acts as a ‘Combat Mode’ for the scenario book, allowing players to immersive themselves in the story by actively taking part in skirmishes and troop commandment. Having a hybrid setting is an extremely nifty idea, and one that should certainly be integrated into more tabletop adventures.

Pairing a dense narrative with a more ‘active’ tabletop component is a frankly ingenious twist, and one that elevates both the board game, and the scenario book. It makes both more involved, and should help players visualise and enact the action of the Dragonlance campaign in grand fashion. this really isn't that big of a deal, but seems like a little bit of "false advertising". It would be easy to fix with an expansion. Think of Warriors of Krynn, therefore, as a novel way to depict what would otherwise be a narrative event in an RPG That dour mood jives well with the accompanying Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn. As a Euro-style co-op board game, a genre popularised by the likes of Gloomhaven, it allows players to take part in massive conflicts during the War of the Lance. Indeed, your party from Shadow of the Dragon Queen can be transferred over to Warriors of Krynn when you reach a specific battle, allowing your party to play out those fights in person (though doing so is optional). This sets the game apart from competitors such as Warhammer Warcry: Red Harvest and even the now-confirmed Dungeons & Dragons: Onslaught. If you are a Sorc you get these 4 cards based the 6 abilities. would have been nice to "build" based on your character, like they were advertising.While I hate to see the relaunch of the Dragonlance setting marred by these kinds of quality and manufacturing issues, there is no denying that the Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen campaign that underpins it all is excellent. But with One D&D right around the corner in 2023, a new version of the game meant to cement 5th edition’s preeminent status as the gold standard in the hobby, this does not feel like a company that is putting its best foot forward. Rather than a victory lap, this release — especially the Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn board game — feels more like it stumbled across the finish line. But this peace does not last, and Vogler winds up being the first town targeted by the forces of the evil Dragon Army, led by the Dragon Queen Takhisis. Her army is made of brutes, including Dragon Army Ogres, and they soon bring Vogler to its knees. But if you rally your heroes together, using the skills of your battlefield leaders, you’ll be able to conquer your goals and move on with the overarching Dragonlance story setting. Once a major Warriors of Krynn battle is concluded, the Shadow of the Dragon Queen scenario book will guide you on your next steps through the main narrative. Image: Wizards of the Coast A World at War: Focuses on the early battles in the War of the Lance and a band of heroes engaging with the war on a mass battlefield