One of the most chilling scenes in the original “Lord of the Rings” movies was the one where Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli entered Dwimorberg, The Haunted Mountain in “Return of the King”. I found the whole “army of the dead” thing creepy. There’s also the Nazgûl, or ringwraiths…I find them to be equally as disturbing. “Curse of the Wymer Stones”, a game currently selling on the “The Game Crafter” (TGC), reminded me a little of all that. Here, players will be trying to avoid becoming wraiths themselves as they attempt to get their Wymer Stones and defeat the cursed dwarves. Before we delve into this title, I’m required by FTC regulations to disclose that I was paid to cover this game. As always, any and all opinions are my own. The only thing “paid” for here was my time.
2-5 Players, Ages 12+, Average Play Time = 60-90 Minutes
Components & Setup
My copy came with a main board, 4 hero standees with corresponding hero cards, 4 cursed dwarf standees with corresponding dwarf cards, lock/relic/trap/Wymer stone tokens, a plethora of relic/trap/wraith cards, two D6 dice, outcome cards, and some wraith standees for those unfortunate to get hugged…I mean killed…by too many traps.
In the primary mode of this game, one player will take on the role of the villain while the rest control the heroes. In the alternate variant, players can all cooperate against the NPC villain who will behave somewhat differently. I’ll cover the co-op variant later.
To quickly overview setup, a number of tiles are randomly placed face-down onto the board depending on the chosen difficulty. On easy mode, it’s one Wymer stone for each player playing, twenty trap tiles, and ten relic tiles. Tile placement can be customized via random or strategic, rules for which are listed in the rulebook. Locks are placed in corridors so that heroes simply can’t move around them. Hero players choose a hero standee and a hero card of the same color, starting on the matching board space.
Gameplay
The game is played over a series of rounds. On each round, the hero players will each take a turn followed by the villain player.
Heroes, at the beginning of their turn, will roll a D6 for a potential bonus. Each hero card lists bonuses for different pip values. If the player rolls a pip value equal to something on their card that provides a bonus, they receive it!
Heroes can then move once, attack once, or both (in any order). They can move a number of orthogonal spaces specified on their hero card. Purple portals are scattered throughout that allow fast travel. They can attack cursed dwarves (only if they have found their Wymer stone), traps, and locks.
After moving, a player flips any face-down tile they’ve past and resolve them in movement order. Traps require a roll and typically benefit or penalize the player depending on the results. A player color / symbol will be displayed in the upper left of the trap card to determine if the player gains a bonus against it. Players have a hand limit of two relics but usually give great benefits.
The villain, on their turn, will be able to place new facedown tiles, a new lock, take any cursed dwarf actions (if they’re on the board), and initiate combat where appropriate. Cursed dwarves come onto the board as Wymer stones are picked up.
Combat is a simple D6 vs D6 with ties always favoring the villain. The same process goes for traps and locks. There are ways to modify die rolls via relic cards, traps favoring a particular player color, and so on. Unlike movement, combat can be initiated from a diagonal space.
Ultimately, players are looking for their face-down Wymer stone of the matching color. Once a particular player collects it, the villain will spawn a cursed dwarf and go after them. The players must defeat all the dwarves in order to win the game.
Players may take too much damage and become wraiths. At that point they’ll draw from the wraith deck, roll a die, and follow the instructions. Their goal is to get back to their starting space to revive. While they can move through walls and jump across chasms, one hit will eliminate them forever. The villain wins if all players are simultaneously wraiths, whether they’re permanently dead or still on the board.
The above doesn’t cover all of the rules found in the rulebook, but should give you an idea as to how the game is played.
The Review
I’ve always been a fan of hidden movement games and while “Curse of the Wymer Stones” isn’t a true and true hidden movement game, the fact that it has a dungeon crawl / discover aspect appeals to me. I admit I had a bit of anxiety when moving across face-down tiles…I had no idea if I’d be walking into trap, multiple traps, or find those coveted relics. It’s all random, so you never know what you’re going to get.
Along those lines, I did find that randomness to be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, randomness makes it easier to setup and makes it easier for younger players to be the villain as they don’t have to think too much. On the other, hero players are at the mercy of this randomness. Luckily, there are both random and strategic setup options available, the latter of which allows the villain to have control over where the tiles are placed. I feel like the strategic setup is the way to go so that experiences and difficulty can be crafted as needed. If I were to “DM” as the villain, I’d carefully plan out EVERYTHING to give hero players a fair chance, but that’s just me.
Some may also be bothered by the amount of dice rolling in this game. I mean, as a hero you’re rolling for pretty much every conflict whether it’s a trap, lock, or enemy. What’s to stop a current string of bad luck? What’s to stop a player from getting trap after trap after trap and always rolling low on the player die? Yes, relics exist…but they only help you find them first. Some traps are worse than others (red background) and will outright kill you if you’re unlucky. You may want to remove these cards from the game if you want things to be less swingy.
I’m very happy to see a “last chance” mechanic in the form of wraiths. Wraith players can move through walls and across chasms, much like the cursed dwarves can. What concerns me is that there’s pretty much nothing to stop the villain from following a wraith and harassing it from turn to turn. Should a player become a wraith due to a cursed dwarf attack, the villain simply needs to follow up with one more successful attack to eliminate them. I feel like there should be a way for the wraith to slow down the cursed dwarf or at least warp to another part of the board to prevent a possible instant death. Video game players, like myself, hate “spawn campers”.
I love the fact that there’s a co-op variant. Here, there is no villain player, but all the tokens start face-down on the board. You can, of course, omit so many tokens of a type depending on difficulty as like in the core ruleset. Dwarves, in this variant, do not move. However, the objectives are still the same. While not in the rulebook, one player could also choose to control multiple heroes and control them and their hands individually. I think this would be especially useful in a two player game following the core ruleset so that the hero player just doesn’t lose on a whim due to bad RNG (random number generating).
Each hero board has a different set of bonuses attached to die rolls, which is great. The yellow hero, for example, is a Paladin that gets a benefit on a roll of 2, 4, or 6 mainly in the form of healing. The green hero on the other hand, a ranger, unlocks locks and can peek at tiles on a roll of 1, 5, and 6. Going back to what I said earlier, I think this game would absolutely benefit from using all four hero characters whether they’re controlled by one, two, three, or four human players ensuring that each hand and entity is treated separately. The attention to detail on these abilities are apparent…fighters feel like fighters, rangers feel like rangers, and so on.
The components themselves are colorful and full of life…even the rulebook is eye-catching. The board itself was a bit…flimsy? I was afraid it was going to snap along the folds. The punchout components were laser-cut resulting in the dreaded “soot on fingers” effect that is not a deal-breaker, but certainly a pet peeve. If I have to wash up after unboxing a board game (a coveted & exciting ritual in my household), well…needless to say it’s annoying. I loathe laser-cut components, it’s just so messy for us OCD people.
Now onto the part I dread talking about…the price. It never fails that the price on TGC is unrealistically high due to no fault of the developer. TGC charges a sizable bundle for making not-in-bulk prototypes and games. Here, this appears to be no different. “Curse of the Wymer Stones” is going for $64.99, which is not what I would call competitive with the other tabletop games out there of the same theme. It really is a tough sell at this price point. Crowdfunding (Kickstarter, etc.) may help to bring production costs down or at least, manageable. While the artwork is great, I was not “wowed” by the quality of TGC’s components for the price that was charged, especially the board. The thickness of the deck cards and player cards were fine.
“Curse of the Wymer Stones” is a fun, light-hearted adventure. It’s chalk-full of random goodness/badness, depending on how much you like rolling dice and discovering random tiles. A couple of house-rules would definitely help to offset some of the main critiques I had and this game is flexible enough to allow folks to implement them easily. The artwork is good and the color schemes appealing. The rulebook was easy to follow and the rules themselves easy to learn. The lack of balance in certain places and price are my biggest complaints, though it’s worth mentioning that rolling dice and having swingy results are by design.
If you’re a hardcore abstract / minimal luck kinda person, you may not enjoy the game. If you thrive on dice rolls and randomness with some basic dungeon crawling with a focus on discovery / finding the hidden important thing, then you’ll probably have a great time with this title.
Want to see what it looks like? Check out the overview video below. You can also try it on Tabletop Simulator, assuming you have access to Steam via PC.
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Score: 7/10 (Good)
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Developer Website: https://www.nukedcards.com/
TGC: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/curse-of-the-wymer-stones
TTS: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2788142291
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