It’s cool that the 84 character cards are all unique (except for a couple of copies of some cloned wizard) in terms of special abilities and statistics, but they really have no character whatsoever since there is no character development or advancement beyond attaching items and spells to them. I think Mr. Zinser attempted to address that shortcoming with the treasure mechanic, whereby players can choose to attach powerful (and VP XP-rich) treasures to characters that are lost upon their deaths. So you have a choice to make your people stronger, but you risk losing points.

I’m sure Mr. Zinser thought that was pretty clever, giving the player a choice to increase chances of success while also increasing risk. However, it just doesn’t work and it imparts a MUNCHKIN sensibility to the game where players with the best treasures immediately become targets for other players to actively attempt to reduce points. Of course, when you’re robbed by a rogue they’re going to take your best treasure. And of course when you’re raiding a dungeon the player controlling the monsters is going to pick the character with the best treasure to attack. Getting a really sweet treasure is much more of a liability than a boon and since there’s such an extreme turnaround in terms of characters there’s never a sense that your characters are “powering up”- they’re just becoming bigger targets. I don’t have any problem with “bash the leader” mechanics and I generally like games that have a high fatality rate. But the presence of these traits in TOMB feels more like lazy design than brutally fun gameplay elements.

I am tremendously disappointed in TOMB and I’m frankly surprised at how much I despise the game—broken down along mechanical lines, there are games that are much more crude and primitive, much less soundly designed, that I absolutely adore. DUNGEON is a good example—it’s one of the most brain-dead, idiotically designed game ever published. A game can be practically half-designed and stupendously clumsy in its execution and still be fun. It could be that TOMB tries to be more than that, offering players the illusion of strategy with that whole setup routine and the ability to pick and choose characters. The victory point thing (yes, they’re victory points- get over it) doesn’t have the same attraction or thematic pull as trying to survive the night in the dungeon, or to accumulate the most money, or to beat some ultra powerful boss monster. Instead the game feels like it’s stuck in a loop of dying and recruiting to a degree that there’s no feeling of questing, adventuring, or narrative.

The rules, with their inconsistent terminologies and failure to work without a thorough FAQ, seem like they aren’t quite beyond reproach. I could probably come up with ten or so house rules and rules tweaks that would make the game better overall- aside from the random card distribution mentioned previously, eliminating total hero death is one way as is limiting the amount of treasure that can be lost when a hero dies. However, I don’t buy a $60 board game expecting to fix it up with a pastiche of my own rules and home-brewed variants. If I want to write rules, I’ll design my own game. And it won’t be TOMB: THE HOME GAME EDITION.

There are plenty of really great dungeon crawl and fantasy adventure games on the market right now; in fact, the past couple of years have been kind of a golden age in the genre. Obvious titles like DESCENT aside, games like CUTTHROAT CAVERNS have demonstrated that there is room for innovation and new approaches to the whole adventurers-in-a-cave shtick and it’s unfortunate that TOMB comes up so short with such a promising twist. It fails to make its mark on the genre almost completely and it almost feels like a signal that the Golden Era of Fantasy Board Games may be coming to a close. With so many dungeon crawl choices out there right now, TOMB is going to wind up buried and forgotten once the initial excitement wears away.

Questions or comments for Michael? Send them along to gameshark.feedback@yahoo.com .

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