Rating: 5/10

A fairly standard worker placement game. It plays a little bit too much like several concurrent games of solitaire for comfort, with a lot of the interaction being forced through the "building" system and direct aggressive cards. The worker placement elements don't carry enough of the burden, which is strange since that level of competition generally tends to inspire direct interaction in other games of its genre. Additionally, the learning curve to start is simple, but viable winning strategies don't make themselves immediately obvious.
Thematically, Lords of Waterdeep feels a lot like a love letter to the Dungeons and Dragons universe fandom, and not a lot else. The name-dropping especially I found particularly irksome, so overall the aesthetic of the game tended to wear me down, especially across multiple plays.