Trogdor: The Board Game - Review!

Behold in all its glory.

Okay team, My copy of Trogdor: The Board Game arrived in the mail yesterday. I have gotten a couple games in, so lets dive in and look this thing over.

This game is a Co-op only game that runs for 30 to 45 min for 1 to 6 players. There are two main versions, the regular and the deluxe. The regular has wooden meeples as pictured to the right, and the deluxe also has plastic pre-painted figures in addition to all of those. Both sets are quite nice, though I went with the deluxe version. Seriously, I'm not sure I'll ever not use the minis.



The set up is very straight forward. you set up the board tiles, the starting placement of figures, shuffle 2 decks (movements and actions), deal out 3 cards to each player (one identity, one item, and one action card), and get going with your best Strongbad impersonation. The goal of the game is to Burninate the Countryside, setting fire to all 25 land tiles, all three cottages, and eating or burning all the peasants.

On your turn, you draw then play an action card. That tells you how many things you can have Trogdor do, as well as any special abilities he gets for that turn. Then you draw and use the movement card to move all the peasants, knights, and the Archer dude. They each have different ways of hurting Trogdor. Continue until victory or defeat. Note, Trogdor cannot die he just gets bored/frustrated with the game and leaves.

The big thing that caught me by surprise on this game was the tile placement on set up. My thought would have been to just shuffle and deal them out in a 5x5 grid and be done with it. Turns out, this game is Effin! hard. Like Forbidden Island hard. Like in at lease one game I forgot to do a negative mechanic (there's a third Knight, who is tougher than the others) for a third of the game. Nope, still lost.

Oh, and a quick look through the credits real quick. Play testers and designers come from everywhere with skills. Pendelton Ward, Alex Hersch, Ryan North, and more. There is some high quality help that went into the design here.

The final tally on this game is that its crazy hard. Seriously hard, but it is so much fun to play. I kept breaking into poor Strongbad impersonations while I was reading the rules, and while playing.

So, the biggest thing is I am not sure if the deluxe game is going to have a release as well as the regular game. Both are good, the deluxe is better. The game gets a 9/10 Burninated Peasants.