Players Pit: Legends of Andor

Simple and Fun Fantasy Gaming

 Todat we will checking out Legends of Andor, a new 'epic quest' game from Fantasy Flight. This is a game where you build a team of heroes, and work to complete story quests on a large double-sided game board.

Very nice quality game!

After opening the box, I saw some very nice punch out counters, cardboard minis, and very nice game cards. Everything had a nice addictive new game smell. Setup was easy and we played the tutorial mission that introduced us to the basics of the game.

One neat thing is that the main game board is double sided - one with an overland game, and the other with a more challenging underworld campaign. Very unexpected and cool!

First Session: Tutorial Adventure

The game has six campaigns in it, a tutorial one, a normal one and an advanced one. We played through the first one and it was very helpful, and fun to boot. It followed a reduced rule set with no player items - just gold coins you could use to up your stats with. The player has two stats: Strength that adds to die rolls, and Vitality that acts like hits points and determines how many attack dice you roll. The advanced game adds gear and consumables to your arsenal and the monsters look to be tougher. There are about 6 multi-part quests to play through in the box, with the 6th quest being a 'create your own' style adventure.

Fun Factor A

The tutorial game actually was quite fun and I would replay the game starting with that scenario again since you get to keep your characters between games, and if you fail a game you start over with them and keep your earnings. We won the first game by a slim victory by having our heroes plow a hole though the monsters and dropping off the final scroll to the elf village. It took a good deal of team work and using 'team attack' combines character attacks to bowl over the baddies to make it work.

Fighter, Mage, Dwarf, Elf

I played the fighter and the dwarf and Hak played the elf ranger and the human mage. They come with male on one side of the card and female versions on the other so girls and guys can have what they want to play. I feel they didn't have to do that, but this detail added to the quality feeling of this product.

I love my dwarf, I made her fight alone for the most part as she was assigned to pick up monsters before they reached the castle so the main team could dive on to the main mission objective. She had a couple of close scrapes, but she preformed with legendary luck and bravery. The game gives you an epic D&D feel as you race around protecting the kingdom.

Turn Phases and Events

The turn has a 7 "hour" turn track; and you use one "hour" to move a square or attack a monster. The event cards you draw at the end of each turn, are much like Arkham Horror's global story events and have a little role-playing spiel to read before your apply the results. Very nice touch.

Super Fun, Stay Tuned

We took about an hour to play and learn the game. I feel the advanced game would probably take two or more, which is perfect for jack-and-coke gaming. I am actually excited for the next session where we cover the advanced rules. I hope this game gets expansions as well, I can see room for new monsters, more events, and gear. The game is good for beginners, and also has that epic quest LotR style feel going on.

Stay tuned!
~G