‘Tomb of Annihilation’ Board Game Review
Over the past five or ten years, the Dungeons & Dragons brand has reinvented itself not only as the most popular RPG system in the world but also as a diversified range of board, card and video games. Since 2015, the range has included a line of board games that take the core RPG system and simplify it into an accessible board game. One of the first in this line was the recently reprinted Tomb of Annihilation, and we’ve been lucky enough to receive a copy.
Tomb of Annihilation sets the scene around a group of adventurers who are preparing for an epic journey through the jungles of Chult and into the titular tomb – one of the most famous settings in the Dungeons & Dragons mythos. Hired by Syndra Silvane to find a creature known as the Soulmonger and end “The Deathcurse,” our group of five heroes has a lengthy campaign ahead of them. Some venture for loot, others for vengeance or salvation — their reasons are hinted at, but the players are encouraged to tell their own story.
Right out of the box, the available characters in Tomb of Annihilation are relatively unusual in comparison to some of the more classic role-playing choices, and it’s pleasing to see that Wizkids have chosen to support a more inventive set of narrative choices. Playing as the tabaxi bard, for example, can offer some unique support opportunities in combat, whilst the saurian paladin is more elegant than the classic orc barbarian in the tanking department.
There are a couple of traditional options in the form of a human ranger and a druid, whilst instead of an elf, we have an aarakocra wizard (a type of birdfolk) which is of course, not traditional at all. These latter choices are somewhat specialised, so whilst their race and/or class might be familiar, the actual way in which they play feels quite exciting and different. Overall, this is true of all the characters, which is somewhat to do with how Tomb of Annihilation streamlines play to enable newer players to step in with confidence.
Like the other boxed Dungeons & Dragons games, Tomb of Annihilation offers players a sample of the full role-playing experience without any of the complexity. Setup is a simple matter of choosing one of the numerous adventures from within the adventure book and then building a chosen character by selecting a number of starting skills. The exception to this is when Tomb of Annihilation is played in a campaign mode, which introduces a simple and easy-to-manage way of levelling up characters in between missions.
Each character comes equipped with a specific class skill, but may then choose one daily skill, two utility skills and one additional class skill, each of which will be unique and interesting. Daily skills are very powerful and will usually only be used once per mission, whilst most of the other skills will be flipped when used, but can be recharged when needed. Base class skills remain active for the whole mission, and represent a standard or default attack, more often than not.
For players working through the campaign, there are some simple rules for how the characters can spend their gold or experience between missions. As a result, it may be possible for characters to obtain additional treasure cards, spells or abilities that help them in the later, tougher missions. When levelled up, the character card is flipped, to show how their attributes and skills are enhanced. Again, this is massively simplified compared to how classic Dungeons & Dragons works, but it’s effective as a proxy for newcomers.
With a mission chosen (or reached, if you’re playing the campaign) all characters will be placed on a specific starting tile that has one or more arrows pointing from it. On each player turn, a hero will first move and/or take an action (such as attack, search or disarm a trap) and, if their turn ends adjacent to the edge of a tile, they will perform the exploration step. Exploration is very simple, and just involves placing a new tile (drawn from an upside down pile) onto the board next to the tile edge that it was discovered from.
Most tiles align based on an arrow system, although the manual doesn’t mention that some tiles don’t have arrows. Either way, the tiles clip together cleanly and the rules for how to move across tiles are clear and simple. After placing the newly explored tile, features such as traps (depicted by tokens) and monsters (drawn from a deck and then represented on board by excellent miniatures) are placed, which is usually bad news for what comes next. After exploration, the player will deal with the villain phase and then the monster phase, which are more or less the same, but set a logical sequence.
In the villain phase, any monster that is known as a villain (named enemies, for example) will activate, in accordance with their character tile. The villain tiles each clearly articulate how a villain behave. In one example, the villain will attempt to cast spells when at range or bludgeon the heroes with melee weapons when up close. Some villains are more complex than others, but all are presented in the same, accessible way, and none are especially difficult to deal with.
Monsters are similar but act after villains. Each monster has a card that will also detail the behaviour for that monster, including how and when it attacks. Both villain tiles and monster cards detail the base attack and armour class of the creature they represent and any damage tokens can be placed onto them until their demise. On that note, combat is ridiculously simple to resolve, which will be welcome to anyone who has been put off dungeon crawlers in the past.
Simply put, Tomb of Annihilation uses a single D20 to resolve combat, based on a comparison between the strength of an attack and the armour class of the target. Successful hits will deal a set amount of damage (which can sometimes be modified) and that’s that. Wounds equal to the damage caused would be placed onto the target and some wounds deal status effects like stunned, weakened or similar.
As an example, a lightning bolt has a strength of plus seven, so the sum of the D20 added to seven needs to beat the armour class of the target. A modified roll of twenty would therefore beat an armour class of eighteen, and the lightning bolt would deal two damage. If a natural 20 was rolled, then the spell would deal one additional damage as a critical hit. The lightning bolt doesn’t cause a status effect, but if it did, that status would be placed onto the target as a token that reminds the players of what it does. Tomb of Annihilation has an absolutely massive bag of these tokens to work with!
After the villain phase, the next player takes their turn and so the game continues. With five players (or five heroes, rather, as Tomb of Annihilation can be played entirely solo) the board is built out very quickly, and the combat is fast-paced and exciting. In the version we have for review, the miniatures look fantastic and really bring the world to life, however, there is also a pre-painted Premium Edition of Tomb of Annihilation which no doubt will look even better.
Fans of the Dungeons & Dragons universe will recognise many features that occur in the story, even though it is only presented through occasional paragraphs in the adventure book and on some of the encounter cards. There are several famous characters either referenced or who exist in the game, with the Soulmonger one of them, and several of their lieutenants also represented here and in the wider fiction.
Stone titans, veteran warriors, mages, skeletons, goblins and all manner of other horrors appear in the dungeons and tombs of Tomb of Annihilation, whilst the number of quests is on a par with the amount you’ll see in most dungeon crawlers of this kind. Wizkids has been unusually generous here both in terms of the number and quality of the minis, but also the narrative quests that you’ll use them in, and playing the game as a campaign will take most groups several months to work through.
Each mission takes about sixty to ninety minutes, which means that a dedicated party could play through one or perhaps two in a single evening. The pace is fast and the level of difficulty, I feel, is not prohibitively high. The variety of skills that characters have access to make them feel unique and powerful, whilst the enemies appear ominous and dangerous. Newcomers will feel that they are doing powerful things in the game and that the enemies they face are capable of doing powerful things back to them if left unchecked.
Defeating villains through good use of skills makes players feel fantastic about themselves, even if it’s relatively easy to do so, and I can tell you from personal experience that most of the enemies in Tomb of Annihilation would make mincemeat of a novice player in either pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons or in one of the numerous videogame interpretations. Whilst this may seem odd to experienced D&D players, it’s important to novices that big, bad enemies get chopped up from time to time.
Whilst Tomb of Annihilation feels aimed at the fairly casual end of the marketplace, that doesn’t stop it from being extremely enjoyable. With swathes of interesting and exciting enemies to cut through, zap and shoot in the knee, and a lot of missions to work through, there are few better places to begin your tabletop dungeon crawling than here. Tomb of Annihilation looks incredible and it plays very smoothly, and the only warning is that it may not appeal to the most experienced gamers out there.
