Games for the wee ones III

Castle Fortaan got a big thumbs down from Rhys.  He doesn't even want to try it.  He still, desperately, wants to play Lord of the Rings, but he's just not there yet, understanding wise.  I'm back to looking for a dungeon crawler.  The local Barnes & Noble has two of the Dungeons and Dragons games, Castle Ravenloft and the Wrath of Ashardalon.  I would have preferred to get the Legend of Drizit, but I needed a game right now.   I settled and plumped for Castle Ravenloft.

One of my favorite bloggers, Frontline Gamer, did a review of the product which was not super enthusiastic.  The thing is, the things he didn't like about it are less likely to be problems when I am playing with Rhys.  The real thing Rhys wants is a dungeon crawler with minis that is cooperative play.  He wants the two of us to go kill bad guys and he wants it to be done with miniatures.  This game should answer the mail.

Rhys is not reading yet, so I'll be helping him with that part, but he does understand rolling dice and he certainly recognizes a bad guy when he sees one.  The mechanics of the game look simple enough.  The minis don't look like they will take paint very well, since they are bendy plastic, but I am going to hit them with a black wash to bring out some of the detail.  I'll post pictures to show you how it came out.



There is a lot in the box, but I'll point you to Frontline Gamer's review (here again in case you missed the link above) to see it all.  Here is ThinkGeek's picture of the contents.

Picture from ThinkGeek.com

We don't have much planned for this weekend, other than going to see a 3/4 scale X-Wing fighter (more on that later).  Rhys and I will definitely have time to take this for a cruise, hopefully with SWMBO and Owyn.  I'm pretty sure that this will make Rhys a happy little man for quite awhile.  If the depth of play issues are too problematic we can always move on to the Legend of Drizzt.  As well, these playing pieces will work for RPG's as I, secretly (Shhh, don't tell) hope to suck the boys into those once they are a little bit older.

Rhys was blown away with his look through of the box contents, so it bodes well for our dungeon crawler search.  More to follow after the weekend.