Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 21, 2011 10:09:18 GMT -5
Quickly: very evocative C'thulhu based boardgame with some RPG elements.
Summary:
Mansions of Madness is a stand alone Arkham Horror game put out by Fantasy Flight. While similar in theme to the main Arkham Horror game, the games use completely different systems and rules and is not compatible. Mansions of Madness is an RPG style boardgame, where one group of players teams up against a single other player. In this case the one group plays investigators while the other plays the keeper.
The game starts with players choosing 1 of 5 stories to play out, deciding which roles they will each be (Keeper or investigator) and then going through an extensive set up phase. Like most of Fantasy Flight's games there are a ridiculous number of bits and cards with this game. I'm not even going to try to list them all here. Set up involves sorting through all these bits and putting them into separate piles or decks and then divvying them up between the players. This part of set up is done by everyone and actually doesn't take too long.
The next part of set up is unique. The Investigators grab the investigator book and begin setting up the board, picking characters and customizing them. At the same time the keeper grabs his book and starts setting up his various decks of cards and 'seeding the board'.
For the investigators: they lay out the board which is made up of various sized rooms. Each room is a mounted, two sided board and includes what you would expect to find in an old 1920s mansion. Each room has a name and larger rooms are divided into areas to facilitate movement. After the rooms are laid out the investigators place some tokens on the board. These include blocked doors, hiding places, cover and other features like altars. After the board is set up the players each choose an investigator to play. They take the card of the investigator along with 4 trait cards. From these trait cards they pick two and that determines starting stats and starting equipment.
For the Keeper: while the players are making the board, the Keeper checks his book and starts getting his cards ready. First off he has to answer questions based on the story. These add variety to the 5 missions that come with the game. For example in the first story a man has gone insane, the keeper gets to pick one of three reasons why. This decision determines what the objective of the story is. The keeper will then have other questions to answer that determine how the board is seeded with cards. All of these questions add more variety and replay value to each story. For example in the first story there are 12 different possible combinations of answers. Once choosing his answers the keeper then builds a mythos card deck and a keeper card deck. The story determines which cards he can pick. He then goes through the exploration, lock and obstacle cards and picks out the ones listed for the story about to be played. Lastly he gathers up the decks he needs that don't change by story, these include combat cards and trauma cards. Lastly the keeper seeds the board. He looks at the story book and then puts the cards into rooms as indicated in the book. Where they are placed is determined by how he answered the questions at the beginning of keeper set up.
Now that everything is set up, it's time for the investigators to investigate. The goal of the investigators is to find all of the clues (number varies by scenario, Story 1 which we played had 3), and then once these are found complete their objective. The goal of the keeper is to complete his objective. This objective is determined by the story and which answer the keeper choose for the first question. Interestingly the keeper knows his objective from the start, but the investigators can only find out their objective by finding all three clues.
The game is played over a series of turns, each turn the investigators go and then the keeper goes. This continues until one of the two sides completes their objective or time runs out, in which case everyone looses. Time is tracked during the keepers turn using an event deck specific to the story being played. Each turn a counter is placed on the deck and when it hits a certain number the next event is revealed. If no one has completed their objective by the time the last card is revealed the game ends. The event card then determines who wins or if everyone looses.
Investigator turn: each turn each investigator gets 2 move actions and a standard action (sorry stealing D&D terms here, I can't remember exactly what they call the standard action). Movement is very simple and just means moving from one defined area to an adjacent one or through a door. Locks can prevent movement, and are revealed when an investigator tries to go into a room with a lock card on it. The lock card is revealed and only discarded when the terms on the card are met. These can include making a skill check, solving a puzzle or finding the right key card. The investigators standard action can be spent attacking, using a card with an action on it, dropping things, running (giving 1 more move action) or exploring their immediate area. Exploring is the most common action and lets the investigators turn over the exploration cards in the room they are in. Exploring can be stopped by obstacles, which like locks require the terms on the card to be met. Also like locks these can include skill checks, solving puzzle or having the right item. Exploration cards vary greatly and include items, weapons, clues, spells, books, etc. Some of these will be integral to the story and others are just there to help the investigators out.
Keepers Turn: the keeper starts his turn getting Threat. Threat is the currency the keeper uses to buy actions. He gets an amount of threat equal to the number of investigators. While he is going this investigators in the same spaces can trade items. After gathering threat the keeper then uses it to do actions. He gets a hand of keeper action cards that each have a threat cost. These include things like placing monsters on the board, moving monsters already on the board, drawing Mythos and Trauma Cards and other story specific things. After spending any threat he wants the keeper then gets to attack with any monsters that are in the same spaces as an investigator. Lastly at the end of his turn he adds a time token to the encounter pile as noted above.
Trauma and Mythos cards: these cards are played by the keeper during an investigators turn. Mythos cards are creepy things that he can cause to happen. Most are keyed to specific rooms and some have a threat cost. They include things like paintings flying off of walls at investigators, lights going out, uncontrollable urges to eat rotting meat, etc. All the stuff that makes Loveccraftian horror what it is. Most of these cards cause the investigators to make a skill test and suffer some Damage or Horror on a failure. Damage and Horror are the two set of Hit Points that investigators have. Damage comes off of health and Horror comes off of Sanity. If Heath hits 0 the investigator dies and if Horror hits 0 the investigator goes insane. Damage and Horror is where the Trauma cards come in. If it's not bad enough that an investigator is going nuts or getting beat up, whenever they take damage the Keeper can play a trauma card. These are injuries played on Damage or Insanities played on Horror. These cause all manor of bad things to happen to the instigators that have long term game effects. Broken legs, fear of the dark, claustrophobia and a bad back are just some of the cards.
Skill checks: a few times above I mention skill checks. These are really simple. The player rolls a D10 and if they get equal to or under their stat they pass. Players also get a set of skill points at the start of their game that they can use to get bonuses to their skill checks. This bonus is equal to their luck stat. Skill checks are made when facing locks, obstacles and mythos cards and also during Combat.
Combat: All investigators and monsters are represented by miniatures (really nice ones at that). Each monster has a card inserted it it's base that gives it's stats as well as a special attack. Combat is done by drawing from a deck of cards that fits the monster (humans, beasts and eldritch decks exist). A card is drawn and on it will be a test. The investigator makes the test and then follows the results on the cards. It's worth noting that the same decks are used for both investigator attacks and for monster attacks and only investigators ever make skill checks, never the monsters.
Terror and Perception: in addition to their combat stats, each monster also has two more ratings, terror and Perception. Terror is how scary the monster is. When a monster enters a room with an investigator they have to make a willpower check modified by the monster's terror rating. If they fail they take some Horror Damage. Evasion is used when an investigator tries to avoid a monster. That is move out of a space occupied by one or more monsters. The investigator tests dexterity and if they fail they take damage.
Puzzles: this is one of the most unique parts of this game. Often when the investigators find a lock or an obstacle they need to sole a puzzle to get past it. There are three types of puzzles included with the game and there are multiple varieties of each type. There is an electrical puzzle in which the investigator needs to complete a circuit of breaker and red and blue wires. Next there is a combination lock puzzle in which the players have to turn dials to match symbols and colours. Lastly there are picture puzzles where the investigators try to form a picture out of mixed tiles. Each puzzle has the investigator taking a number of actions equal to their insight. Actions include turning a piece, swapping two adjacent pieces or drawing a new piece from a draw pile and swapping it for an already in play piece (costs two actions). If a puzzle is not completed it stays on the table in it's current state awaiting the next person to try to solve it.
Other Stuff: there's a ton more to this game that I just can't detail here. There are status effects like darkness and stunning. There are rules for fires. There are dead body tokens. There are altars. The monsters can take samples from the characters. The investigators can learn spells which have random effects. There are probably 20 other things I'm not thinking of right now.
The Good:
Amazing looking game. The art and cards are perfectly evocative of this genre. Flavour text just adds to this immersion. The miniatures are some of the finest I have seen in a game and are going to be perfect for any pulp, 1920s games I own. Almost everything is high quality (see the Ugly below for my complaints about the cards though).
Quite a few very cool concepts here. The puzzle system is one of the most innovative and interesting new game mechanics I have seen in a long time. The Injury and Insanity trauma cards really add a great horror feeling and make every wound taken matter. The random spells add a great unknown and arcane feeling. The combat system is simple and very unique and actually adds to the story instead of just being a randomizer. There are lots of good things going on here.
I was pleasantly surprised to play through a Fantasy Flight game for the first time and not double the suggested playtime. If I remember correctly the game lists 1.5-2 hours and we played for about 3. I was worried after hearing horror stories about Arkham Horror's length that this was going to be an all nighter.
One of the things that, to me, makes a great game is wanting to play it again, right away. After we played this last night, as soon as we were done we were trying to figure out when we could play again. By the end of the night I had figured out I may get to play this game twice more this week, which is awesome. It's not often I play a game and so badly want to give it another go right away. I think pandemic was the last one that did this and it may be fore similar reasons. Loosing as the investigators, as the players did last night is never fun but it makes you want to try again.
The Bad:
Setup takes a long time and really shouldn't be done with everyone at the table. I understand why the game rules say you should do simultaneous set up, and that is because set up takes so long. I'm talking about at least half an hour to an hour here. Maybe it will get quicker with time. Now that I have all the bits in different bags it should be quicker. But no mater what it's going to take a while to set this game up. The other problem is that by doing things simultaneously it's very easy for an investigators wayward eye to see what cards the Keeper has, perhaps where he puts them and even more likely which cards were seeded and which were randomly placed. Now there is a suggestion for doing separate set up and I think I will use this in the future, but it will take even longer to set up due to this.
I worry about replayability with this one. The game only comes with 5 stories. Now the keeper has questions to ask for each one, and each question changes either the objective of the story or how the cards are laid out, but how similar will these slightly changed stories feel? I have to admit only having played once that maybe this isn't a problem. Maybe the 12 variations of the first scenario are enough to keep me coming back for more. I just worry that it won't be.
The Ugly:
While everything in the game is amazing looking, with very evocative art, the cards were made cheaply. They are some of the thinnest cards I have handled and I seriously worry about their ability to stand up to repeated play. This includes all of the cards in the game, not just the smaller sized ones. I don't know if Fantasy Flight is trying to up sales of their card holders or what, but I am serious unimpressed with this.
The other problem with Mansions of Madness is the box. There's a cheap cardboard divider that separated all of the cards from the minis, with the unpunched map pieces and tokens on top. Now that those are punched there's no real way to separate anything. Lots of people online have posted various storage solutions, which is great, but taht doesn't change the fact that the box sucks.
Overall:
Played this last night with a group of 4 experienced gamers and had a great time. Set up took longer then expected and we all complained about the thinness of the cards and the silly box but once we got going we picked up the game pretty quickly. That's saying a lot for a game with so many little rules and components. The game told a good story and the components really added to the immersion. The only worry I really have is that the 5 stories included with the game may hinder replayability. It may not though as the keeper answers questions each story that make each game different. We will see with time how well this one stands up to repeated play. As it stands now I can't wait to give it another go.
Summary:
Mansions of Madness is a stand alone Arkham Horror game put out by Fantasy Flight. While similar in theme to the main Arkham Horror game, the games use completely different systems and rules and is not compatible. Mansions of Madness is an RPG style boardgame, where one group of players teams up against a single other player. In this case the one group plays investigators while the other plays the keeper.
The game starts with players choosing 1 of 5 stories to play out, deciding which roles they will each be (Keeper or investigator) and then going through an extensive set up phase. Like most of Fantasy Flight's games there are a ridiculous number of bits and cards with this game. I'm not even going to try to list them all here. Set up involves sorting through all these bits and putting them into separate piles or decks and then divvying them up between the players. This part of set up is done by everyone and actually doesn't take too long.
The next part of set up is unique. The Investigators grab the investigator book and begin setting up the board, picking characters and customizing them. At the same time the keeper grabs his book and starts setting up his various decks of cards and 'seeding the board'.
For the investigators: they lay out the board which is made up of various sized rooms. Each room is a mounted, two sided board and includes what you would expect to find in an old 1920s mansion. Each room has a name and larger rooms are divided into areas to facilitate movement. After the rooms are laid out the investigators place some tokens on the board. These include blocked doors, hiding places, cover and other features like altars. After the board is set up the players each choose an investigator to play. They take the card of the investigator along with 4 trait cards. From these trait cards they pick two and that determines starting stats and starting equipment.
For the Keeper: while the players are making the board, the Keeper checks his book and starts getting his cards ready. First off he has to answer questions based on the story. These add variety to the 5 missions that come with the game. For example in the first story a man has gone insane, the keeper gets to pick one of three reasons why. This decision determines what the objective of the story is. The keeper will then have other questions to answer that determine how the board is seeded with cards. All of these questions add more variety and replay value to each story. For example in the first story there are 12 different possible combinations of answers. Once choosing his answers the keeper then builds a mythos card deck and a keeper card deck. The story determines which cards he can pick. He then goes through the exploration, lock and obstacle cards and picks out the ones listed for the story about to be played. Lastly he gathers up the decks he needs that don't change by story, these include combat cards and trauma cards. Lastly the keeper seeds the board. He looks at the story book and then puts the cards into rooms as indicated in the book. Where they are placed is determined by how he answered the questions at the beginning of keeper set up.
Now that everything is set up, it's time for the investigators to investigate. The goal of the investigators is to find all of the clues (number varies by scenario, Story 1 which we played had 3), and then once these are found complete their objective. The goal of the keeper is to complete his objective. This objective is determined by the story and which answer the keeper choose for the first question. Interestingly the keeper knows his objective from the start, but the investigators can only find out their objective by finding all three clues.
The game is played over a series of turns, each turn the investigators go and then the keeper goes. This continues until one of the two sides completes their objective or time runs out, in which case everyone looses. Time is tracked during the keepers turn using an event deck specific to the story being played. Each turn a counter is placed on the deck and when it hits a certain number the next event is revealed. If no one has completed their objective by the time the last card is revealed the game ends. The event card then determines who wins or if everyone looses.
Investigator turn: each turn each investigator gets 2 move actions and a standard action (sorry stealing D&D terms here, I can't remember exactly what they call the standard action). Movement is very simple and just means moving from one defined area to an adjacent one or through a door. Locks can prevent movement, and are revealed when an investigator tries to go into a room with a lock card on it. The lock card is revealed and only discarded when the terms on the card are met. These can include making a skill check, solving a puzzle or finding the right key card. The investigators standard action can be spent attacking, using a card with an action on it, dropping things, running (giving 1 more move action) or exploring their immediate area. Exploring is the most common action and lets the investigators turn over the exploration cards in the room they are in. Exploring can be stopped by obstacles, which like locks require the terms on the card to be met. Also like locks these can include skill checks, solving puzzle or having the right item. Exploration cards vary greatly and include items, weapons, clues, spells, books, etc. Some of these will be integral to the story and others are just there to help the investigators out.
Keepers Turn: the keeper starts his turn getting Threat. Threat is the currency the keeper uses to buy actions. He gets an amount of threat equal to the number of investigators. While he is going this investigators in the same spaces can trade items. After gathering threat the keeper then uses it to do actions. He gets a hand of keeper action cards that each have a threat cost. These include things like placing monsters on the board, moving monsters already on the board, drawing Mythos and Trauma Cards and other story specific things. After spending any threat he wants the keeper then gets to attack with any monsters that are in the same spaces as an investigator. Lastly at the end of his turn he adds a time token to the encounter pile as noted above.
Trauma and Mythos cards: these cards are played by the keeper during an investigators turn. Mythos cards are creepy things that he can cause to happen. Most are keyed to specific rooms and some have a threat cost. They include things like paintings flying off of walls at investigators, lights going out, uncontrollable urges to eat rotting meat, etc. All the stuff that makes Loveccraftian horror what it is. Most of these cards cause the investigators to make a skill test and suffer some Damage or Horror on a failure. Damage and Horror are the two set of Hit Points that investigators have. Damage comes off of health and Horror comes off of Sanity. If Heath hits 0 the investigator dies and if Horror hits 0 the investigator goes insane. Damage and Horror is where the Trauma cards come in. If it's not bad enough that an investigator is going nuts or getting beat up, whenever they take damage the Keeper can play a trauma card. These are injuries played on Damage or Insanities played on Horror. These cause all manor of bad things to happen to the instigators that have long term game effects. Broken legs, fear of the dark, claustrophobia and a bad back are just some of the cards.
Skill checks: a few times above I mention skill checks. These are really simple. The player rolls a D10 and if they get equal to or under their stat they pass. Players also get a set of skill points at the start of their game that they can use to get bonuses to their skill checks. This bonus is equal to their luck stat. Skill checks are made when facing locks, obstacles and mythos cards and also during Combat.
Combat: All investigators and monsters are represented by miniatures (really nice ones at that). Each monster has a card inserted it it's base that gives it's stats as well as a special attack. Combat is done by drawing from a deck of cards that fits the monster (humans, beasts and eldritch decks exist). A card is drawn and on it will be a test. The investigator makes the test and then follows the results on the cards. It's worth noting that the same decks are used for both investigator attacks and for monster attacks and only investigators ever make skill checks, never the monsters.
Terror and Perception: in addition to their combat stats, each monster also has two more ratings, terror and Perception. Terror is how scary the monster is. When a monster enters a room with an investigator they have to make a willpower check modified by the monster's terror rating. If they fail they take some Horror Damage. Evasion is used when an investigator tries to avoid a monster. That is move out of a space occupied by one or more monsters. The investigator tests dexterity and if they fail they take damage.
Puzzles: this is one of the most unique parts of this game. Often when the investigators find a lock or an obstacle they need to sole a puzzle to get past it. There are three types of puzzles included with the game and there are multiple varieties of each type. There is an electrical puzzle in which the investigator needs to complete a circuit of breaker and red and blue wires. Next there is a combination lock puzzle in which the players have to turn dials to match symbols and colours. Lastly there are picture puzzles where the investigators try to form a picture out of mixed tiles. Each puzzle has the investigator taking a number of actions equal to their insight. Actions include turning a piece, swapping two adjacent pieces or drawing a new piece from a draw pile and swapping it for an already in play piece (costs two actions). If a puzzle is not completed it stays on the table in it's current state awaiting the next person to try to solve it.
Other Stuff: there's a ton more to this game that I just can't detail here. There are status effects like darkness and stunning. There are rules for fires. There are dead body tokens. There are altars. The monsters can take samples from the characters. The investigators can learn spells which have random effects. There are probably 20 other things I'm not thinking of right now.
The Good:
Amazing looking game. The art and cards are perfectly evocative of this genre. Flavour text just adds to this immersion. The miniatures are some of the finest I have seen in a game and are going to be perfect for any pulp, 1920s games I own. Almost everything is high quality (see the Ugly below for my complaints about the cards though).
Quite a few very cool concepts here. The puzzle system is one of the most innovative and interesting new game mechanics I have seen in a long time. The Injury and Insanity trauma cards really add a great horror feeling and make every wound taken matter. The random spells add a great unknown and arcane feeling. The combat system is simple and very unique and actually adds to the story instead of just being a randomizer. There are lots of good things going on here.
I was pleasantly surprised to play through a Fantasy Flight game for the first time and not double the suggested playtime. If I remember correctly the game lists 1.5-2 hours and we played for about 3. I was worried after hearing horror stories about Arkham Horror's length that this was going to be an all nighter.
One of the things that, to me, makes a great game is wanting to play it again, right away. After we played this last night, as soon as we were done we were trying to figure out when we could play again. By the end of the night I had figured out I may get to play this game twice more this week, which is awesome. It's not often I play a game and so badly want to give it another go right away. I think pandemic was the last one that did this and it may be fore similar reasons. Loosing as the investigators, as the players did last night is never fun but it makes you want to try again.
The Bad:
Setup takes a long time and really shouldn't be done with everyone at the table. I understand why the game rules say you should do simultaneous set up, and that is because set up takes so long. I'm talking about at least half an hour to an hour here. Maybe it will get quicker with time. Now that I have all the bits in different bags it should be quicker. But no mater what it's going to take a while to set this game up. The other problem is that by doing things simultaneously it's very easy for an investigators wayward eye to see what cards the Keeper has, perhaps where he puts them and even more likely which cards were seeded and which were randomly placed. Now there is a suggestion for doing separate set up and I think I will use this in the future, but it will take even longer to set up due to this.
I worry about replayability with this one. The game only comes with 5 stories. Now the keeper has questions to ask for each one, and each question changes either the objective of the story or how the cards are laid out, but how similar will these slightly changed stories feel? I have to admit only having played once that maybe this isn't a problem. Maybe the 12 variations of the first scenario are enough to keep me coming back for more. I just worry that it won't be.
The Ugly:
While everything in the game is amazing looking, with very evocative art, the cards were made cheaply. They are some of the thinnest cards I have handled and I seriously worry about their ability to stand up to repeated play. This includes all of the cards in the game, not just the smaller sized ones. I don't know if Fantasy Flight is trying to up sales of their card holders or what, but I am serious unimpressed with this.
The other problem with Mansions of Madness is the box. There's a cheap cardboard divider that separated all of the cards from the minis, with the unpunched map pieces and tokens on top. Now that those are punched there's no real way to separate anything. Lots of people online have posted various storage solutions, which is great, but taht doesn't change the fact that the box sucks.
Overall:
Played this last night with a group of 4 experienced gamers and had a great time. Set up took longer then expected and we all complained about the thinness of the cards and the silly box but once we got going we picked up the game pretty quickly. That's saying a lot for a game with so many little rules and components. The game told a good story and the components really added to the immersion. The only worry I really have is that the 5 stories included with the game may hinder replayability. It may not though as the keeper answers questions each story that make each game different. We will see with time how well this one stands up to repeated play. As it stands now I can't wait to give it another go.