Heroes of the Borderlands Review! The BEST D&D Intro EVER?!

he Heroes of the Borderlands is the new, premium starter set for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition. While 5e has had a slew of starter sets over the past decade, this is the biggest one by far, with not only the most stuff inside, but also the largest scope.

Based on the beloved introductory adventure The Keep on the Borderlands from 1977, this set manages to pack far more content into the box than I ever anticipated. While I didn't grow up with the Keep being a touchstone of gaming, thousands of people did. I can't speak to the quality of the adaptation, only to the quality of what's in the box, and I'm pretty impressed by it.

If I have one quibble with the box out of the gate, it's that Wizards of the Coast is actually calling it a "board game" in their marketing materials, and even on the product page on DDB. When I asked Justice and Makenzie about this at Gen Con, they talked a lot about the amount of focus groups and testing they did with non-D&D players and tabletop gamers, using that as a way to bring them into the game, where calling it a TTRPG or even just an RPG might keep them away.

And while there are definitely cool board game-like elements that I enjoyed a great deal, this is not a board game. I still feel like it might come as a bait-and-switch to board game purists whenever they get it to the table. I've played D&D board games and loved them. This just isn't one. It's a D&D 5e starter set. A dang good one, too. But it's not a board game. That's just marketing spin.

That said, I think there's way more good than bad in Heroes of the Borderlands, so let's talk about that.