Players: 2-4*
Playing Time: 15-60 minutes
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)* Another 4 players can be added for each additional Portable Adventures set.
The review is a close copy of my review of Portable Adventures Set 02, 8th Grade, because they use identical systems. If you've already read the other review, just read the sections on About this Set's Cards and Relationship to Other Games, which highlight any differences.
The Components
Lair of the Rat-King is packaged in a slightly oversized card tuck box which contains:
- 60 cards
- 4 dice
- 1 rule sheet
Cards: The cards, clearly the heart of the game, feature a complex yet attractive design.
Each card belongs to one of five categories: Adventure, Character, Encounter, Event, and Stuff. The name is printed on the spine of the card so it's easy to see when you're fanning a handful of cards. (I found two of the card type's names', "Encounter" and "Event", to be similar enough to cause some confusion. However, some really good color-coding alleviates this, as noted below.)
Overall, colors are very important on the cards. There are five types of characters in the game, and they're color-coded red, green, blue, and purple, plus beige for more generic characters. Most Stuff cards can only be played on certain character types, and that's likewise noted by color-coding (either beige for something usable by everyone or a set of two colors for a Stuff card usable by two different classes). Events follow these same color-coding rules. Adventures, meanwhile, are two-tone black, as are Enounter cards (which are played during Adventures). Some Events can be played on Adventures, and those are black too. Overall, it's very simple to understand and very intuitive.
Getting back to the text on the cards: every card has a name and possibly some categorizations which all appear at the top left: e.g., "The Laughing Ass Tavern" (an adventure) or "Boardsword" (a stuff), which is categorized as "Melee" and "Weapon", or "Tookie" (a character) who is labelled as "Human" and "Kook".
Each card also tends to have rules on it. This text appears on different places on different card types, giving a nice dynamic feel to the set, but is consistent within a card type. There also tends to be a funny quote or two, which are fun to read.
A few icons and stats round out the card. Character points and Adventure points both appear at the top right, Adventure points are clearly labelled AP so that there's no chance of confusion. Finally, some Event and Character cards can be rotated 180 degrees, generally making them less powerful. These are clearly marked with a pair of arrows, and additional stats appear on the bottom of the card, upside down.
There is art on these cards too. It's typically no more than a quarter of the size of the entire card and appears to be line art that's been computer-colored. Some of the art is very simple, but it generally fits the theme of the game and looks good.
If all of this description makes you think the cards are busy, they are. In fact they look quite chaotic. Despite that, there is an innate order to cards that becomes obvious when you use them, and the chaos of the cards helps to keep them lively. I think the graphic artist did a very good job in designing the cards, resulting in an appealing deck to play with.
The cards are printed four-color, double-sided on a medium card stock that should hold up. The cards all have rounded corners. 4 "Me" cards are printed with differently colored backs to make it easy to pull them out at the start of the game. The card backs also exactly match the other set of Portable Adventures, so that they can be used together. Finally, a small icon at the bottom left of each card's front shows the Set it came from, so you can later separate your decks if you so desire.
Dice: The dice are small plastic dice, white pips on red. They're sturdy, have rounded corners, and are overall good quality.
Rule Sheet: The rules are a two-sided sheet, multiply folded. They're printed in black and white. They read fairly well, but were a bit annoying to use for reference during the game.
Overall the components of Lair of the Rat-King are both attractive and intuitive to use, and thus the game earns an above average Style rating of "4" out of "5".
The Game Play
Portable Adventures are about completing adventures through the use of a group of Characters and their Stuff.
Setup: There are 4 special Me cards in the deck, each of which will represent one of the players in the game. Each player is given one of these, plus a starting hand of four cards.
Types of Cards: There are five card types in Portable Adventures: Character, Stuff, Adventure, Encounter, and Event.
Character. These represent yourself and the other people who will join your group. Each Character has a name, a subcategory, and a class (which is also marked by a color: blue, green, purple, red, or beige). In addition there's a Character point value, which is the character's value in adventures and a Character die, which is used to see if a character is hurt during an Adventure. Some Characters also have an Adventure point value.
Some Characters can be flipped, in which case they have a second CP value displayed upside down on the card. Some Characters also have a "turn option"--a special power they can use in return for flipping themselves. Finally, if a Character is flipped who doesn't have a flip side or who is already flipped he's discarded--unless he's a Me card. (This discard-inducing flipping usually comes as the result of an Adventure round, which we haven't met yet.)
Stuff. These are used by Characters (or in a few cases put with Adventures). Most Stuff is color-coded to show which Characters it can legally be played on. Stuff tends to have a name, a range, and a couple of subcategories. Most Stuff just adds Character points to the Character you play it on. Some adds Adventure points to your total. Some has a list of special powers which is activated via a die roll during an Adventure.
Each player can only have one Stuff card, unless the Stuff card says they can have more.
Adventure. These start off Adventure rounds. Each one has an Adventure point value and also tends to have a bit of special text listing a rule for the adventure.
Encounter. These are played during Adventures, typically to benefit your group or hurt another.
Event. These cards are a bit confusing because they have a lot of different effects. Some are played on Characters, like Stuff. Some are played on a group, and some just have an instant effect in the game. They run the gamut from reputations to dimensional rifts and Events that affect Events. Some Events are flippable, just like Characters.
Characters. The four core classes in Lair of the Rat-King are: priest (purple), rogue (green), warrior (red), and wizard (blue). Subcategories are fantasy races such as human, elph (elf), moo (minotaur), dwarph (dwarf), and pfairy (fairy).There's an even distribution of Characters in each color, with 3 of each of the four class-colors (counting the Mes) and 3 beiges. My favorite of the cards is Gnuurgh, an Urk Thug (green). Most characters lose Character points when they're wounded, but Gnuurgh instead jumps from 1 to 3. Rather than saying "Gnuurgh Wounded" as most of the cards would on the flipped side, you instead see "Gnuurgh Ticked Off".
Stuff. The Stuff is the usual collection of fantasy brik-brak that you'd expect. There are 3 group treasures (which each give an Adventure point); also a Magibolt Potion and a Eye of Vik Talisman which can be used by anyone.There are 4 red/green Stuffs, which are various ranged and melee weapons, including swords, axes, and bows; and 4 purple/blue stuffs which include a Rock Golem and three spells, such as Magibolt and Sleepy. The weapons tend to simply add Character points to a character, while the spells tend to require a die roll in combat and sometimes backfire.
Adventure. There are a number of pure fantasy adventures, such as The Temple of Kromm, The Jade Tower, and The Laughing Ass Tavern. There are also a set of Adventures related to the ratlings, beginning with The Hidden Nest, running up to the Undercity Caverns, and ending in The Lair of the Rat-King. They run the spectrum from 1 to 4 APs; the top one is quite valuable, being half of the points you need to win, and I think generally overpowered.
Encounter. Again, a number of these follow standard fantasy tropes, from Kromm Be Praised!, which discards another Encounter card, to The Game Master, which shifts a die roll. Five of the Encounter cards are labelled "ratling", continuing the theme of the set. They're very nicely connected to the ratling Adventures, because some are more powerful therein.
Event. Of the 11 Event cards, 5 are screw-your-neighbor cards, from Lost Stuff! to The Dragon! and one is a defensive card (Visit Village). 4 are effectively Stuff cards, since they affect Characters, including 1 reputation (Either Hero!, +2 CP and +1 AP or if it gets flipped Gloryhound!, -2CP and no AP) and Huzzah!, which is a free Adventure point. Finally there's a fairly random card called Dimensional Rift! which causes cards to be passed around.
Playing the Game: Once you understand the cards, the gameplay is pretty clear. Each player's round looks like this:
- Draw cards up to 5.
- Take an action.
- Play a Character on any group; or
- Play a Stuff on a Character in any group; or
- Play an Event on any Character or group; or
- Play an Adventure card; or
- Use a Character turn option and flip the character; or
- Unflip up to 3 Characters by discarding a like number of cards from your hand.
The rules for all this card play has already been outlined; basically, your Characters go into your group, then you Stuff and your Events go onto Characters and groups as appropriate. The only thing requiring extra explanation are the Adventure cards, which start an Adventure round.
Adventure Rounds: Whenever an Adventure card is played, a new little sub-round begins. The player of the card gets to draw to replace, and then play goes around the table until everyone has passed in a row. Each player can either pass or play a card:
- Play an Encounter card, which explicitly affects the Adventure in some way.
- Play a Character card as a reinforcement, which means it's discarded at the end of the Adventure.
- Play a Stuff card, only on a reinforcement, meaning it gets discarded too.
- Use a Stuff's special power by rolling a die to get a result.
Afterward each participant in the Adventure rolls a die. Any Characters in opposing groups who have an Character die that matches the number you rolled are flipped, representing being wounded in the Adventure. This typically reduces their Character Point value; it can also cause them to be discarded.
Finally, when everyone's done playing and rolling each group calculates their Character point total; the group with the highest number wins the Adventure; they take the Adventure card, which is worth Adventure points, and place it near their group. Some Adventure cards also allow the wnner to take a Stuff card from the discard pile.
Winning the Game: When a player reaches 7 Adventure points, he wins the game. This will mainly be the result of winning Adventures, but also collecting some Events, Stuff, and Characters worth APs.
Mixing & Matching: However, Portable Adventures is more than just this single set. There are current two sets, Lair of the Rat-King and 8th Grade which can be mixed and matched. If you just put them together you can play a larger game with dwarfs and Valley girls freely mixing.
Actually, the game rules offer a number of different ways sets can be combined. There are special "trigger" cards, such as Dimensional Rift, which can cause you to start drawing from a totally different set of cards if you wish. Or, each player can have their own deck. Or, you can create your own deck, using your favorite combination of cards. Or you can totally freeform. Whatever you prefer.
Lair of the Rat-King is one of the Portable Adventures, a set of light, funny games which allow players to form adventuring groups which face the dangers of ... whatever milleu. The other Portable Adventure currently available is Set 02, 8th Grade.
Lair of the Rat-King is one of many fantasy-adventure card games that have been released in recent years including Dungeoneer, Hack!, and Munchkin. Lair of the Rat-King is closest in flavor to SJG's Munchkin, but as I'll note in a second, I think the gameplay works much better for its gaming niche.
The Game Design
The Portable Adventures games are, without a doubt, very light. There's a high degree of randomness and not a whole lot of strategy. Draws from the deck can win or lose the game for you. It's what many gamers classify as a "beer & pretzels" game.
Personally, I don't like most beer & pretzels games. For whatever reason, they tend to be overly long (for their gameplay) with interminable end games, wherein again and again a player almost wins, but then is shutdown by the other players. Inevitably, in most of these games, the winner is not determined by the best playing, or even by the luckiest drawing, but rather by who managed to get to the end just as everyone else ran out of the stop-an-opponent cards. Chez Geek, Spammers, and Munchkin are just a few of the otherwise funny beer & pretzel games that ultimately fail as they stumble into these game design pitfalls.
Portable Adventures doesn't. It works well at a level that's very appropriate for its light strategy. It's random, sure, but it plays quickly and the winner is ultimately determined by the play within the game, not the last couple of rounds. Having a light, fun game that works, when so many don't, is reason enough to give this a look.
Here's some of the other game design I liked:
Very Funny: The humor in the game is well-presented and good satire of its background.
Game Combinations Well Presented: I adore the way that different Portable Adventures can be mixed together, and the fact that the designer offers up a couple of different models, to suit your own sense of reality. Diceland is the only other recent game that has tried something similar, and to date it hasn't been highly successful for me in intergame interactivity because of differences in scale from one set to another; both of the current Portable Adventures are set at the human scale, and so the idea of geeks and jocks warring against ratlings is just vaguelly possible.
My complaints are minor:
Randomness in 2-Player is Excessive: The randomness is high, as already noted, but I think it only becomes excessive in two-player play, where it's much more obvious if one player is plain outdrawing the other. I'd thus suggest the game primarily for 3 or more players.
Rules Seem Complex: In actuality, I think the game's design is very elegant, but for some reason the game seems complex when initially presented. I've had the same experience twice teaching it, where eyes glazed over, but once we started playing it all seemed clear. Let the teacher beware.
Overall, the game design of the Portable Adventures games clearly exceed the average for their beer & pretzel niche, and thus earn Lair of the Rat-King an above average "4" out of "5" for Substance.
Lair of the Rat-King works well on two different levels: as a satirical look at D&D, it's well presented and funny; and as a beer & pretzels game, it actually works well, allowing for quick, enjoyable gameplay. If you enjoy games even if they have a large random element, this one is worth looking at, and I'd praise it high above most of the other games that fall into that niche and have been released in recent years.
