Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPGs) naturally lend themselves to accessories. Maps. Terrain. Miniatures. Dice. In fact, collecting and utilizing the accessories is often as enjoyable as playing the game itself. Intelligent companies caught on to that fact and began to develop skirmish-type versions of their TTRPGs. These skirmish products take all the fun of the aforementioned accessories and combine them with dressed-down rules and game mechanics. This makes the skirmish game quicker to play, in shorter settings, with fewer people. In turn, this also makes the game more accessible to a wider customer base, particularly those short on time or money. WizKids officially released a skirmish version of the D&D intellectual property on January 18, 2023. The offering is called D&D: Onslaught. Does D&D: Onslaught manage to capture the charm and accessibility of a TTRPG-based skirmish game? Let’s do a comprehensive review and find out!
If you are curious how we rated the product below you can find more information here.
- Skirmish to the max
- Fan favorite campaign setting
- Familiar, yet simplified game mechanics
- WizKids miniatures
- Odd choice of factions
- Designed to be quick AND easy
- Painted minis
- Insanely expensive
This game is probably best purchased by the niche D&D collector, or someone looking for a skirmish game, either with money to burn.
Critical Hits
D&D: Onslaught is a masterful implementation of the skirmish rubric. In many ways, skirmish is meant to present itself like a board game on steroids. Skirmish is done best when the product is self-contained, with all the pieces you need, and even more pieces that are nice to have. Does D&D: Onslaught have a richly printed playing surface? It sure does! Does it have miniatures? Hell yes! Does it have stat cards and effect markers and all the immersive bits and baubles you might hope for? Absolutely! D&D: Onslaught absolutely hits all the check marks of being a solid skirmish offering.
Saves
As mentioned in the Critical Hits section above, D&D: Onslaught absolutely nails being a skirmish offering. That said, does it also manage to be a recognizable D&D offering? I believe it does!
WizKids chose one of the largest D&D campaign settings as the basis for D&D: Onslaught. The game is set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Game designer Ed Greenwood created the Forgotten Realms campaign and it has been around almost as long as D&D itself. If you’ve spent any time immersed in Dungeons and Dragons or the surrounding pop culture, you will have some nostalgic tie to Forgotten Realms. This makes D&D: Onslaught easily identifiable as a proper extension of the D&D TTRPG.
In addition, several familiar d20 game mechanics also appear in the skirmish release. Players roll d20s to decide the outcomes of all the game encounters. Players also leverage the concept of advantage on their die rolls. This mechanic is very familiar to anyone who has played under 5th Edition D&D rules. D&D: Onslaught even utilizes initiative to determine the order events.
Finally, even the miniatures used in D&D: Onslaught will be particularly familiar to D&D fanatics. WizKids has been producing Dungeons and Dragons themed miniatures under their “Icons of the Realms” product line for longer than I care to remember. Naturally, WizKids chose to provide miniatures produced in-house for D&D: Onslaught. WizKids plans to release a list of miniatures from their “Icons” lines, allowing players to make swaps for official gameplay.
Fails
For all the D&D fidelity that WizKids brought to the table, they also managed to make a few questionable choices in their adaptation.
D&D: Onslaught is centered around factions from the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. The starter set contains monsters as well as player characters from two specific factions: The Harpers and The Zhentarim. One of the best known mages in all of Forgotten Realms (Elminster) is a Harper in D&D lore. This makes the Harpers a great choice of faction. However, the Zhentarim just don’t carry the same brand recognition. WizKids could have chosen factions such as the Drow Underdark or the Netherese. Either of these would have been fan-favorite, recognizable choices. The Zhentarim seems like a strange choice.
As much as WizKids nailed the skirmish concept with D&D: Onslaught, I have a gripe about the game mechanics. They are too watered-down. Monster characters don’t need to roll for a successful hit. They just do damage. And damage is a set amount for every successful attack. This all plays into WizKids’ intention to have every D&D: Onslaught scenario playable in 90 minutes. Removing the aspect of chance might be a “bridge too far” in the name of simplicity.
Finally, I also question WizKids’ choice to provide painted miniatures. WizKids is just as adept at providing bare miniatures, as seen in their “Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures” product line. Obviously, painted miniatures are immediately playable, and add to the completeness of a skirmish package. But, if Warhammer and Kickstarter have taught me anything, it’s that people will pay a lot of money to buy a game that allows them to paint their miniatures as well.
Speaking of paying a lot of money, that brings me to my Critical Misses…
Critical Misses
D&D: Onslaught retails for a whopping, wallet-crushing $139.99. For the life of me, I cannot tell you why that is! Consider the following:
- For a product with a 14+ age rating, that price is just ridiculous. Even if they are paying teenagers above minimum wage these days, that’s a lot of part-time hours to buy this skirmish game.
- I’ve seen WizKids command a mint for some of their larger “Icons of the Realms” miniatures in the past, but the philosophy of use is different. “Icons” are for collecting; D&D: Onslaught is for playing.
- As I alluded to earlier, providing higher-quality, unpainted miniatures from the “Nolzur’s” line might have justified this price point. But WizKids went the painted route.
- WizKids also stayed very faithful to the skirmish concept of quick gameplay. Is there enough meat on the bones of 90-minute, 2-player game sessions to justify the price tag? I really don’t think so.
In summary, there’s just nothing about this game that I believe would command $140.
The Hero’s Journey
So, who is best suited to buy the D&D: Onslaught skirmish game? Well, you better have some disposable income to start with. After the price for admission, I’d say this game will lend itself to those who are true skirmish aficionados, and will put a lot of miles on a skirmish game, to offset that initial investment. That, or you’d have to be a well-heeled D&D fanatic, who will collect and play offerings at any price point. Either way, D&D: Onslaught priced itself out of the realm of being accessible to the masses. If accessibility is a primary selling point of a skirmish game, then, sadly, D&D Onslaught dies on its own (expensive) sword.
