by alienux
I bought the Castle Ravenloft boardgame a few weeks ago and read the rules right away, but didn't actually get a chance to play until today.So, as suggested by the rulebook, I started with the first adventure to escape the castle.
Things started off pretty well. The first monster I drew, which was a wraith, missed me (natural 1, yes!) even though I had drawn an environment card that gave him a +2 attack bonus. On my Hero Phase, I hit him for 1 damage, and then when I drew a Dungeon Tile, it had a white triangle (yes again!). The next monster hit me, but I shook it off.
Things kept going pretty well and after defeating a few monsters, I drew a treasure card that let me trade in 5 XP to level up. Things were looking good. I kept drawing mostly white triangles, too.
Then everything fell apart. Encounter cards laid out traps on several tiles, and even though I was the rogue with a +5 bonus to disable traps, I couldn't roll higher than a 4, so I didn't disable a single trap the entire game. Monster attacks were all high enough to hit my now level 2 AC, and my attacks were back and forth, with hits and misses pretty evenly distributed.
I got to the point that I had drawn 9 Dungeon Tiles and I realized that I only had to draw 2 more to get to the Secret Stairs, and I was still alive. Unfortunately, I had used all of my special powers by this point, I had used both Healing Surges, and I only had 5 of 10 HP left.
Still, I had a little life left in me. I had been able to attack the last monster that attacked me (which had missed) which was when I had used my last special power. I took some more damage, leaving me with 2 HP, but somehow, there were no monsters left on the board, and I only had to draw one more tile before getting the Secret Stairs. And because I had been fortunate enough to draw a lot of white arrow tiles, Strahd was about 5 tiles behind me.
I drew my 10th Dungeon Tile. It had a black arrow. I drew the monster card and it was a measly swarm of rats. That shouldn't be too tough. Then my encounter card told me to roll the die and only take damage on a roll of 1 to 5. That should be easy. I rolled a 2. Well, I still had 1 HP and needed to survive a rat attack.
The rats rolled a 17 and that was it. Game over.
I was close, but didn't make it. This was a very exciting game for my first attempt, and I can't wait to give it another go.