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

Product Information

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. Everyone gets four actions per turn. Event cards are flipped to let you know what to expect next, and then you can move or spend a certain amount of actions on activities like using commander abilities and calling for reinforcements. At the end of every turn, the two armies battle. Instead of rolling d20s, results are determined with D6s instead. From there, you'll decide how and where you can help best. Your hero is able to take four actions which include moving, fighting enemy champions, using class powers, and interacting with objectives or board tiles (though the details of these change with the scenario). Many of those actions involve trying to get a certain number of successes on the included dice, and you can choose to spend cards or actions to buy extra dice for your roll. This is the meat of the game and there’s a lot of variety on offer, as each of D&D’s 12 classes is represented, all with their own special powers and ability cards.

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. 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. even Commanders just change their names, and customize new ones. I would use the same abilities to not screw with balance, just change the name and image. 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. i'm not sure what would happen if you made the armies more equal for a different campaign. I haven't dug that deep yet.

This is the beginning of the conflict,” Irwin said. “They are leaving their home, heading off to an uncertain future, but knowing that they have to do what they have to do.” Introduces a war game experience to D&D 5th edition, featuring heroes who participate in large scale military battles This status refers to the mental state of your soldiers, and how they’re faring. Many of them come from the embattled town of Vogler, which as mentioned was an idyllic and peaceful fishing town, making them vulnerable to being scared and losing their strength as inexperienced warriors.

While you can play it as a stand alone game, it still is very specific for that module, because it is scenario based. The campaign isn’t overly difficult as it is; it feels like narrative was prioritised over challenge up until the game’s later scenarios. This design choice makes sense for a tie-in TTRPG product, of course, but it seems to conflict with the part of Warriors of Krynn that still wants to be a strategic war game. Gloomhaven gets away with its impractical setup because it’s one of the best board games out there; the same can’t be said for Warriors of Krynn. The board game comes with a set of miniatures to represent the characters that can also be used on a standard D&D grid, including a towering knight of Solamnia modeled after Brienne of Tarth. Rather than a conventional wargame focused on moving units around the map, Warriors of Krynn will maintain the D&D focus with players having different abilities based on their character class. 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.

What is Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn

Heroes of War: Includes Hero characters representing core character elements from the Dragonlance setting

Set to take place at the very beginning of the War of the Lance, before many of the events of the Dragonlance Chronicles, Shadow of the Dragon Queen is a D&D campaign book that will see players becoming embroiled in a conflict between the people of Krynn and the nefarious Dragon people. Warriors of Krynn, meanwhile, is an upcoming board game that can be played separately from Shadow of the Dragon Queen, but largely serves as a platform for players to experience the various large-scale battles they’ll encounter during their journey through the D&D adventure book. The August Wizards Presents online event where Shadow of the Dragon Queen and Warriors of Krynn were last featured. Because the adventure is so focused on Solamnia, Shadow of the Dragon Queen won’t contain a sweeping gazetteer of the world of Krynn, but it will include a poster map of the continent of Ansalon. Shadow of the Dragon Queen will also provide details on the different groups, organizations and races found in Dragonlance to provide inspiration for player characters. After being initially revealed during the a D&D Direct that took place earlier this year, more details regarding the Dragonlance book and board game were unveiled to Dicebreaker by D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast.

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." 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.