Daniel (@dungeondive) reckons Gunpowder Studios have quietly cornered the light, breezy, small-box crawl, and that Bag of Dungeon 2: The Cursed Forest might be their best — a review copy, minis included, which he’s passing to a patron because he prefers the wooden meeples.
The forest is drawn tile by tile as before, but this one leans co-operative. Tagging costs an action to haul another hero into your fight, and early on it’s often the only way anything dies. The eight heroes carry that weight: a rogue who outright kills on doubles, a hunter whose crossbows never break, Moonbeam the fairy with a once-per-combat psionic blast who gets shoved out of her square whenever she’s hit, a wizard paying health for spells, and a changeling who three times can wear the shape of something she killed.
Poison is the clever cruelty — it fills inventory slots rather than simply hurting, so a poisoned hero is a disarmed one. You hunt four brood seeds, each granting its bearer a power, then lay out the entire forest to find the tree and plant them, at which point the boss arrives. Solo gives each hero a single life, which he likens to an arcade run; he hasn’t won yet.
He closes with a daydream: splice Seven Moons’ overland map onto both Bags of Dungeon and play one long campaign across all three.
Daniel wants to repurpose one game’s map as the connective tissue for two others. Have you ever cannibalised games you own into a bigger one?