Last year I reviewed the quirky card-based dungeon crawler Guild of Dungeoneering, developed by Gambrinous, and followed that up with the review of their first expansion, Pirate’s Cove, which added more cards, more quests, a new class and a host of new and horrifyingly hilarious monsters and lyrics for that cruel bard.
Last month, Gambrinous released a brand new expansion for Guild of Dungeoneering called Ice Cream Headaches which has a massive heat wave strike the Guild’s homeland. The Guild Master, ever the wise and humble man, decides to pay a visit to the icy mountains of the Ice Cream Monks to ask what is going on, why they haven’t released their tasty treats. But on arriving he finds them under the heavy assault of Abominable Snow Men, Ice Cream Elementals and worst of all, Brainiacs, living, moving and very powerful disembodied brains.
So, after recruiting the Monks into the Guild of Dungeoneering, the mission is simple, to liberate the mountains and bring ice cream back into the land…for the Guild Master’s voracious appetite.
Guild of Dungeoneering: Ice Cream Headaches brings even more cards, lyrics for the cruel bard, a new class and new monsters to the mix, and just like Pirate’s Cove and the base game, they are absolutely phenomenal, and had me laughing even when I was losing.
But what separates this Guild of Dungeoneering expansion from simply being more of the same is the new ruleset in place, and I’m talking about the Runes of Favour. There’s a chance when putting down your dungeon cards that one of them will have a rune. Collecting these grants you ranks of “Favours,” which you can exchange for neat party tricks like getting rid of one card for the rest of the dungeon, which is amazing if you have Stupidity cards. But it’s the final favour that earned a nice place in my heart, since it burns the opponent’s current card and when those annoying Ice Cream Elementals pull those 2 physical & 2 magical damage cards, you want nothing more than to tell him to discard it!
The Monks are a weird bunch, they have a fantastic ability that ups physical damage, but only if their hands are free. If you equip anything there, bye bye bonus. It makes dungeon progression a bit harder but frankly it’s just worth it every time. There are so many quick physical cards in the game that you want to boost their damage as much as humanly possible!
If you already have Pirate’s Cove, or even if you just have the base Guild of Dungeoneering, then you should definitely get your hands on Ice Cream Headaches, it’s absolutely fantastic!