The Dwarves
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Based on the first novel of the Die Zwerge tetralogy [Eng. The Dwarves] by author Markus Heitz, the goal of the cooperative game Die Zwerge is to keep evil from flooding Girdlegard. During set-up, players choose one of the dwarves from the novel, each of which is equipped with a unique special ability and different stats for fighting, crafting, and movement.
Before each player’s turn, the forces of evil usually break through one of the four big gates – which are guarded by different dwarven tribes – and further the spread of the Perished Land. On his turn a player spends two action points to use two of five actions. He can:
Fight against the advancing enemies (orcs, trolls, and älfar [Ger. albae], i.e. dark elves).
Travel to other locations.
Lobby the dwarven council to give advantages to all players – and without the favor of the dwarven council, everyone suffers disadvantages.
Solve a minor quest for rewards.
Take on the current major quest, revealing the next major quest if successful. Completing these quests is the only way to win the game.
For most of these actions, a player must succeed in a dice-driven challenge. If the players cannot control the flood of evil while simultaneously solving the major quests in time, they will lose.
Collector’s edition:
additional:
New box cover
5 hand painted dwarf miniatures
10 cards Albae expansion
60 page artbook
5 art prints of the dwarfs
A3 poster "The smiting of Keenfire"
stein with motive "Krasnolud"
coaster "DIE ZWERGE"
numbered COLLECTOR’S EDITION certificate.
Ages | 10+ |
---|---|
Players | 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players |
Play Time | 60m – 90m |
Designer | Lukas Zach, Michael Palm |
Mechanics | Cooperative Game, Dice Rolling |
Theme | Novel-based, Wargame, Fantasy |
Publisher | Pegasus Spiele |
Bombadillo
A modest game taking its inspiration from the umpteenth unoriginal fantasy book series, The Dwarves looks and feels like your typical euro-fashioned ripoff of the best cooperatives around: in fact, as you’d expect in a German game, it’s all about its streamlined game mechanics whereas theme is kept to a minimum. This gets even too evident as far as the materials are concerned: apart from the five characters’ miniatures, they didn’t even bother to come up with something fancier and sightly more attractive than differently colored and sized wooden cubes to stand for the different kinds of foes, which kills any attempt at immersing into the setting. As far as the game plays, The Dwarves is just decent, nothing more: in fact, even in the dead of the game you never feel concerned with the events nor compelled to stop the evil cubes’ invasion. To tell the truth, you don’t even care about the outcome, whatever it is: you only play to reach the end soon and see what happens next, with no emotional transport. As usual, never trust a whatever-themed eurogame: will betray your trust. [i](November 2012)[/i] [b]Update[/b] - I’ve never had the chance nor felt the need to play The Dwarves again for the last three years: thus I can’t be blamed if during my Fall 2015 rating revise I lowered its rating to 4, which better reflects how attractive I find this game.
BountyHuntA
A simple coop game. The Quests / Tasks are boring simple like "meet here with another player" or "make a skill check with dice". The only interessting thing is the movment of the faceless enemy. There is a feeling of a flood is going on.
CrazyBlueDwarf
.5/1 Storytelling .5/1 Effort to fun ratio in line with complexity 1/1 Variety in play/strategy 1/1 Art .75/1 Appropriate level of setup for it's complexity .75/1 Meaningful Decisions .5/1 Likelihood to skip similar games for this one 1/1 Keeps me engaged .5/.5 Immediately want to play again .5/.5 Theme .5/.5 Components .5/.5 Subjective/Evangilization