Cavern Tavern

Cavern Tavern has decent production values and, on the table, it does its job without being especially impressive. The problems begin with the rules: the manual feels as though it was written by someone who had just come out of a gulag. I am not at all convinced that we played it completely correctly—probably the opposite—but at least the experience had character.

At its core, it is a worker-placement game with dice, and it reminded me of both Kingsburg and Lords of Waterdeep. You place your people in the available board spaces and try to make better use of your options than everyone else, with dice luck being part of the package.

The interaction is not subtle. The most popular space on the board, at least in our game, was the one that lets you “snitch on” the other players’ waiters. And this is where we made our own mistake: we left out the mini-expansion that helps those unlucky with dice. Also, five players felt like an awkward setup to me; I suspect the game shines more with four or six.

It is certainly not better than either Kingsburg or Lords of Waterdeep, but it holds up, it is fun, and it offers something we do not often play as a group. It left a good impression despite the torturous rulebook and our possible misinterpretations. For the historical record, the Swiss cannibal was crowned winner, despite our mockery. That is how it goes: when hida is absent to show who is ahead, we cannot have properly targeted hatred.

Jingle bells