Super Dungeon Explore Review

Alright Ladies and Gents,

I admit I haven't actually played a board game in quite some time. I never managed to get a copy of Space Hulk which I desperately wanted. I played Mordheim back in the day with 40k and Fantasy, also some D&D 3.0/3.5.

My true passion with hobby gaming is really the miniatures and miniature painting. I only rarely desire to try to board game instead of Video gaming, because lets face it...video gaming is more convienent. This year, however, a particular game caught me totally by surprise. That game is Super Dungeon Explore.

PICTURES:

So lets start of with some pictures to get everyone on the same page:

Here are some of the Pictures of the Miniatures and the Awesome Gameboard that was set up at GENCON.

CONTENT:

Alright so the Box has a ton load of miniatures, dice, counters and boards all jam packed into it. You get:

• 50ish totally awesome looking minis
• Bunch of dice
• Bunch of stat cards
• Bunch of Counters
• Bunch of maps
• And the rulebook.

THE BACKGROUND INFO

So a pretty awesome bargain. (You can also buy SDE for ~$70 from Scifigenre when they get it)

I'll tell you all the truth, I didn't hear about the game until it was released. As I said I've been on an island on my own when it comes to board games and stuff. Anyway, the mailing list on coolminiornot was advertising it and they tricked me into almost purchasing it on the post after doing some reading about what other people thought. I haven't been happy to be tricked like that in so long. So far I've only heard positive reviews about the game and all the negative reviews are based on the stuff I'm use to anyway, I'll go into it below.

I'll tell you, I'm not a crazy diehard anime fan or anything. And I don't really like the chibi style at all, I think that stuff is crap typically, but SDE had me sold pretty quick. That and my friends ARE diehard anime fans (currently watching Fate Zero) which they started associating SDE characters with Fate Zero characters.

Chibi style pictured below:

Anyway I saw the Limited Edition of Candy and Cola (an additional limited edition character) for sale on coolmini a while back and I was like.....meeeeh....chibi sucks. Now I am seriously regetting it after playing:

Candy and Cola Mini I had to hunt around the internet to get a copy

(I got mine from Trollandtoad.com)

So I don't really like Chibi style, but you know who does? Girls. you know who doesn't normally play games? Girls. You know who are totally game to play this one? yup girls.

Super Dungeon Explore is advertised to be a light fun, quick and easy to play, difficult to master board game. And It pretty much is. It ends up being a cross between Gauntlet Legends, Dungeons and Dragons, and Anime thrown all together. I like D&D, but I am long past the times where I will sit down with the 155323 rule books and references. I want something simple to pick up and play. I.E. THIS GAME.

DEMO GAMES:

My friends and I played a few games after I assembled some of the pieces, we still used bases for the dragon and the miniboss but all in all a great time. Too good in fact. We started at 8pm on friday night, we had some drinks and sat down for a "quick" demo game. Anyway me, my brother, and a friend started playing 2 rounds. It was awesome. We all had a great time, we were originally just going to play one game, but it was so good we started a second.

By that time our other roommate got back and he wanted in so we started a third game. Sadly, we messed up with the rules in the third game because our "know it all" 3rd gaming buddy just started innately applying rules from other games into it, AND we messed up 2 major game mechanics. Anyway at that point I was really disappointed with the game, because were were having so much fun....and then we started playing by the "rules" and all fun evaporated. (turns out we had been more or less playing by the correct rules for the first 2 games)

That finished around 3am took a break to grab some food. At that point I was super sad and contemplating if I wanted to try to sell off the game or not. Other reviews commented on several things that just didn't happen in our third game. Being disappointed I sat down at the computer and used my googlefu to find out what we missed. Turns out that other friend had totally made us play the last game incorrect and it was horribly broken. I didn't wanna finish my night having had such a bad experience so we sat down to play it correctly.

.......well honestly I have never seen time just freaking vanish. We started at 3.....and at 8 in the dammn morning we were finished. Best Time spent ever. The tension and excitement just exploded in the room it was on! We had sooo many awesome moments where the right die roll could have changed everything. When we finally got a hang of the rules, it was a blast, we all totally lost track of time, granted the first 2 games didn't last that long but lets face it, we were also a little hammered and we probably set up the maps weird. Not to mention we all like to act out moves and stuff going on in the game and hurling crazy taunts at eachother during rolling. Bottom line we were up till 9am just talking about how we haven't had that much fun in a while.

PROS:

-Simple Rules, Allowing you to pretty much jump into it

-Tons of awesome minis

-Chibi style that could get light gaming friends/girlfriends/girls in general to play.

-Variety of heroes and monsters could lead to some serious replayability.

-Complex enough where strategy and tactics still matter. I.E. new gamers can enjoy it, but so can hardened game veterans.

CONS:

-Chibi style (depends on if you like it or not for pro or con, I didn't initially but now I'm loving it)

-The Rulebook isn't always super clear on certain things. We need an included full demo match kind of like they use to do in the old 40k rulebooks. For the most part the game is pretty explanatory, but there were some phrases that had us confused. Examples of things we did wrong (I'll also admit no one had completely read the book before we got started)

• Instead of drawing ONE loot card for ALL the heroes, we accidentally let every hero draw a loot card.
• We also only allowed 4 skulls of spawning a turn (In reality it is 4 skulls per spawn point)
• We also only had the consul moving 4 skulls in response to a player turn, i.e. we missed the rule about after the hero and the consul take turns until the heroes have all been activated, then the consul gets to activate all the rest of the people

-I want a real quick reference sheet with the spray patterns and stuff

Regarding other reviews:

A LOT of reviews and people complain about the assembly required for SDE. HONESTLY STFU WHINY BUGGERS. CLEARLY, none of you have had to build an army in 40k just SHUT UP. Yes there is a little bit of assembly, but compared to all my other games, ha! It didn't take that long just make sure you expect to take some time to do it. I also still just used bases in some cases. W/e I am really excited about getting to paint my guys. I am a painter!

Also in case you were curious, and have been looking around for stuff about the game, you might find that there were some manufacturing defects. Yes, my counters were off centered on one side. No, it didn't bother me much or effect how much fun we were having.

Things I want to see in the future:

OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE SODAPOP MINIS GIVE ME EXPANSIONS WITH MORE MONSTERS AND UNDEAD GUYS.

The game is awesome. I haven't played enough games to be bored of the kobolds yet but MOAR MINIS is always what I want.

CONCLUSION:

I'm a grad student on a budget, and there are like 4 games I really want that just released right now including Skyrim, and saints row the 3rd. I choose this. Yes, it is expensive, but it is totally worth it. I have not had so much fun with my friends doing a gaming thing in a long time. This game is pure awesome. If you fail to purchase it you suck....and you can cry alone in a corner about the assembly time because my givadam-o-meter reads nothing.

Finally:

Post your completely painted minis on Coolminiornot!