What tactical/strategic decisions can you make in D&D: The Legend of Drizzt board game?

Question

There are a couple of decisions you can make, like what starting powers you want for your character, and which character you choose, but everything else seems like it is already predetermined or random.

If you don't explore edges of the cavern, you get an encounter card. If you do explore the edges of the cavern, you reveal monsters that attack you first (I suppose you sometimes get to determine which player the monster attacks).

Choices for which Item/Daily Power are equally as obvious (the weapon with the highest chance deal damage). Perhaps the only choice that requires any kind of difficult decision is when to use your Daily Power.

Am I missing something, or is there little if any strategy/tactics in this game?

Answer 1

After playing the "Wrath of Ashardalon" game (same system, different scenario), the biggest strategy that came to my mind is sticking together/splitting the party. If you split the party, you can explore more rooms (hopefully getting to the boss quicker), but you have more monsters (and encounters and monsters with ecounters) to deal with. If you stay together, encounters that affect a whole room can cause a lot more headache.

Having only played a couple times, I'm certainly no expert on it, but I'd say choosing how to split the party is a main tactic of the game.

Answer 2

Sure, there are few strategy options in the game, but there are a couple things you might have not considered as strategic elements:

• Stances: Some characters have "stances" available. Many are relevant even to actions happening in other people's turn (or during villain phase). A few examples:
  • One stance I like (from Drizzt IIRC) is a counterattack that's activated the next time an enemy attacks you.
  • Bruenor may heal instead of moving (if you chose the card). And even if you don't need much healing, this is a good option because it won't trigger an event if you don't end on an edge.
• Group coordination: Since most scenarios are cooperative, there's room for a strategy among players; for example:
  • "I'll leave my monster for you to kill so you can flip a card and heal me in your turn".
  • Or something as simple as which edge to explore so that the next player can reach an edge with his movement.
  • Do we explore an edge or get an event? (knowing that exploring might also trigger an event; or that the monster may be worse than the event)
  • Do we pay XP to avoid an event or save the XP for a rainy day? (rainy tile?)
• Villain actions: Sometimes a villain's action could result in different interpretations; for example:
  • A villain will often "attack the nearest hero". When two heroes are equally distant, the active player (the one controlling the villain) must decide who the villain will attack. Sometimes if a specific character is injured, the game could be lost (no healing surges).
  • On some rare cases, when there are still healing surges available, your strategy for winning will include figuring out who gets knocked down first, who gets knocked down second, etc.

Even in these scenarios the strategy you can achieve is not really complex (even limited). And barring rule-interpretation stuff, most times you'll just be choosing between two options.