Cave Troll

Today's review is of the 2002 release, Cave Troll.  For 2-4 players, it takes 45 minutes.

Overview
Treasure!  In Cave Troll, your goal is to get as much as you can, which you do by being in control of rooms with gold symbols whenever the board is scored (board scoring happens several times again- more below).  You control heroes and monsters to thwart your opponent's heroes; with four actions per turn, use your resources wisely.  And beware the cave troll . . . that guy is always bad news.

On your turn, you get four actions and four choices:
- draw and play a card (the cards are generally heroes or monsters; they come into play on stairways or pits)
- use a character ability (some heroes have special abilities)
- move a character (move one hero or monster to an adjacent room)
- use an artifact (you'll get one artifact per game based on a card you can play)

You can do any combination of choices as long as they total four.  For example, you could draw and play 3 cards and move 1 character for your four actions.  On your next turn, you could move one character 4 times, two characters 2 times each, etc.

game in session; image from here

Some cards have hourglasses at the bottom; those are discarded in a special pile after use.  Once that pile has five hourglasses, the board is scored.  Going room by room, the player in control (having the most characters in) a given room gets the quantity of gold in that room, as printed on the board.  Gold varies from 1-5 in each room, and can be modified by certain objects (treasure chests) or heroes (dwarves).  The scoring markers for each player are advanced appropriately, the special pile is removed, and play resumes.  Rooms are scored again whenever the pile reaches five hourglasses and/or at the conclusion of the game (game ends when one player's deck runs out).  Highest score wins!

Use your monsters and heroes wisely.  Your cave troll, for example, should be placed in a high-value room occupied by an opponent, as the monster's presence forces everyone out of the room, never to return.  Your wraith can push heroes out of rooms, and your orc can remove characters from the board.  But hope is not lost; you have heroes that can fight some of these things.  Your adventurers (the most common hero) have no abilities and are basically pawns, but your knight can remove the orc, your barbarian can't be pushed around by the wraith, your dwarf doubles gold in a room, and your thief can 'teleport' around the board based on certain conditions.

Review
This is a good game; a really good game.  I love the 'four actions/four choices' mechanism- lots of meaningful choices every single turn.  Do you focus on positioning your own forces or disrupting your opponents'?  You can prolong (or end) the game based on action management- choosing to draw and play lots of cards will end the game sooner, but give you fewer actions to position your characters.  The strategic options are many.  My one dig is that the components (cards and miniatures) are quite small.  The minis are so small I had trouble distinguishing between some of the specialized ones, and the cards seemed unnecessarily tiny.  They should release a deluxe edition with bigger everything (even the board) for more clarity.  That aside, great game.

Rating: A-