Lords of Waterdeep Review

Intro

Welcome to the political underbelly of the most famous city in Dungeons & Dragons lore. Lords of Waterdeep drops you into the role of one of the city's secret rulers, complete with a fancy mask and a burning desire to control everything through backdoor deals and hired muscle. This worker placement game from Wizards of the Coast serves up 2-5 players about two hours of scheming, with sweet spots at 3-4 players. Don't let the D&D theme fool you into thinking this is some dice-heavy dungeon crawler. With a solid 7.73/10 rating across the board gaming community, it's actually an accessible strategy game that newcomers can learn without breaking their brains, though there's enough depth to keep seasoned gamers engaged.

How It Plays

The game revolves around placing your agents (wooden meeples, basically) on various spots around the board to collect resources and complete quests. You're gathering four types of adventurers: fighters, rogues, clerics, and wizards, plus gold for good measure. These adventurers get spent on quest cards that reward you with victory points, more resources, or special abilities.

Each round, players take turns placing one agent at a time until everyone's out of agents. Some board spaces give you adventurers, others let you draw new quests, and a few let you play Intrigue cards that mess with opponents or give you bonuses. The real kicker? You can buy buildings that add new spaces to the board, and whenever someone else uses your building, you get a little kickback.

The whole thing plays out over eight rounds, with each lord having a secret identity that gives bonus points for completing certain types of quests. Maybe you're secretly the lord who loves Warfare quests, or perhaps you're all about those Piety missions. You don't reveal your identity until the final scoring, which adds a nice layer of mystery to everyone's actions.

Highlights

The Intrigue cards are where this game really shines. They let you pull off satisfying moves like forcing opponents to discard resources or giving yourself extra bonuses. There's genuine tension in deciding when to play these cards for maximum impact, and they prevent the game from becoming a boring resource-collection exercise.

The building mechanic creates fantastic player interaction without feeling mean-spirited. When you construct a building, you're essentially adding a new action space that everyone can use, but you get a reward whenever they do. It's this brilliant risk-reward calculation: do you build something powerful that helps you but also gives opponents new options?

For a D&D-themed game, Lords of Waterdeep does something clever by focusing on the political maneuvering rather than combat. You're not rolling dice to fight dragons; you're hiring adventurers to do your dirty work while you stay safely in your tower plotting your next move. The theme actually supports the mechanics instead of just being pasted on.

The quest variety keeps things interesting across multiple plays. Some quests are quick and cheap, others require massive resource investments but pay out big. Learning to balance immediate gratification against long-term planning creates meaningful decisions every turn.

Criticisms

Let's be honest: the theme integration isn't perfect. Yes, you're completing "quests," but mechanically you're just turning in sets of colored cubes for points. The artwork is gorgeous and the quest descriptions are flavorful, but if you're expecting the narrative richness of an actual D&D session, you'll be disappointed. This feels more like a European-style strategy game wearing a fantasy costume.

The player scaling has some issues, particularly at lower player counts. With just two players, the board feels spacious and interaction drops significantly. You're rarely blocked from taking the actions you want, which reduces the tension that makes worker placement games sing. The game clearly wants to be played with more people.

Some players find the Intrigue cards frustrating rather than fun. When someone plays a Mandatory Quest on you, forcing you to complete a specific quest before any others, it can feel like your careful planning just got thrown out the window. The "take that" elements aren't brutal, but they're frequent enough to annoy players who prefer games with minimal direct conflict.

Conclusion

Lords of Waterdeep hits that sweet spot for groups who want strategy without complexity overload. If you enjoy games where you're constantly making meaningful choices but don't want to spend 30 minutes explaining rules, this delivers. The D&D theme will draw in fantasy fans, but the solid worker placement mechanics will keep strategy gamers happy even if they've never rolled a twenty-sided die in their lives. Just make sure you've got at least three players, and prepare for some light backstabbing between friends. After all, ruling a city from the shadows was never meant to be a group hug.