Why should I play board games (analysis of the mechanics of Lords of Waterdeep)?

How to deal with the shortage of ideas in the mobile market with the help of desktop games, the editors of App2Top reasoned.

Mobile versions of board games are a separate big topic. It is difficult to say how this market segment works, whether it earns money, what its future is because of its specifics. Digital versions of board games are paid and expensive by mobile criteria applications. And they can hardly become others (with the exception of card collectible projects a la Magic The Gathering) because of their nature. 

Ticket to RideMonopoly, Catan, Ticket to Ride and many others are one-to-one original desktop projects that did not provide for the presence of IAP.

Their introduction would require a complete rethinking of gameplay and balance, which has been honed over the years. 

It would seem that since the mobile market is not on the way with such projects, then you can forget about them. Why look towards niche projects that don’t earn millions?

But in the mobile market, as well as in any other, there is always a shortage of proven ideas, working mechanics. We see the board game market as one of the inexhaustible sources of such things. This does not mean that, looking at popular desktop projects, they need to be cloned, made free and added IAP. Such an approach will not do anything. But it is just possible to borrow interesting solutions and unusual approaches. 

Lords of WaterdeepIn order not to be unfounded, we decided to use the recently released Lords of Waterdeep from Wizards of the Coast as an example. 

GameplayThere is a playing field.

The central part of it is occupied by a map of the city of Waterdeep, along the edge of the field there is a path along which the players’ chips move (the more points, the further along the path the player’s chip moves). The goal of the game is to collect the highest number of points at the end of eight moves. 

At first glance, everything is standard. The most interesting thing is how the set of these points happens.

The game has maps with quests. To get points, the player must purchase a card and then complete its quest. For its execution, the card gives a certain number of points.

To complete the quest, you need to spend resources on it. The amount of resources needed depends on the coolness of the map. 

The resources in the game are non-standard. Since it is assumed that the player performs quests, then for this he needs adventurers (there are four types of them here: priests, warriors, thieves and wizards) and gold. 

Example:The player decided to play a card with the quest “Attack on the fortress of the Orcs”.

To do this, he needs to spend four warriors, two thieves and 4 gold. For completing this task, the player can advance 8 cells along the track. 

The main difficulty in the game is to collect the required number of resources. This happens as follows. 

The player has three auxiliary chips available. These are messengers. To get a particular resource, these chips must be placed on a certain building. 

Example:To get the warriors, I need to put a messenger on the Field of Triumph.

For this they give me strictly two warriors. No one else will be able to get warriors from this location on this turn. If I want two more, I will have to wait for the end of the turn, after that the messengers go back to the players’ hand. On the next turn, if no one gets ahead of me, I will be able to send my messenger to Field of Triumph again.

Each turn proceeds in three stages (according to the number of messengers). In fact, these are small moves inside a large move. In one small turn, a player can send only one messenger. 

With the help of messengers, the player not only collects resources, but also buys maps (there are two types of them – quests and events, about the latter below), as well as build new buildings. 

No resources are spent on events, but a messenger is required to activate them. The events themselves are different. For example, Good Faith gives you two priests, but at the same time another priest is given to the opponent.

Buildings built by the player also provide resources. After their construction, each player can use the building (put a messenger on it). The key difference between the player’s buildings and ordinary buildings is as follows: if the opponent puts a messenger on your building, you get any resources for it. 

Since there are few resources given per turn, and a limited number of messengers — all the time you have to calculate a few steps ahead and be ready to implement at least one spare quest, the competition for resources is great.

By the way, resources are not spent on the purchase of the quest itself, but one small move is spent on their acquisition. The quests themselves are divided into five factions. Fractions only matter in the final scoring.

How?

The third, previously not mentioned type of cards are characters. They are privately distributed among the players at the beginning of the game. Each character gives an additional number of points for each quest of a particular faction.

Actually, everything.

There are a lot of things to use in these rules.

For example, we really liked the long chain to, in fact, the acquisition of the main game indicator (points). 

The player first sends a messenger, buys a card, then collects resources for cards and only after that gets points.

The idea that warriors are also resources is also a good one, but it has been implemented in Clash of Clans for a long time. 

If you make the track endless, as, for example, in Candy Crush Saga, make sure that each player has his own map of the city (with the ability to visit), abandon moves (or tie them to energy), you can get a very interesting project. 

But this, of course, is only a theory. However, as already mentioned, the bottom line is that it is in such large and complex projects that there are interesting and, most importantly, already tested ideas.