Special Episode 04 - Arkham Horror (2nd Edition): Nun With a Gun

Hello there! Thank you for joining us on this very special bonus episode, one of our series where we review out of print or unusual titles.

This one is very near and dear to us, being the janky behemoth that got us into the hobby proper. But is it any good? It might be tough for us to be objective on this one, so with that caveat - I hope you enjoy our appraisal of this mildly bananas gem.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Well, hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Board with Each Other. We are the review podcast that looks at board games through the lens of playing as a pair. So your BFF, your significant other, or perhaps that robed, shrouded figure that stood outside the tube station handing out pamphlets on the esoteric order of Dagon.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Hey, everybody needs a hobby, alright? I said I'd be hoping with it in a hard I was.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

So for those of you who have done at least a couple of stats into perception, you will notice that I'm not your usual host. But don't worry, your usual host, Al, is here, so you're not going to miss out on his uh witticisms and clever banters.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Incredible banter, charismatic overload. No, nobody misses me, love carry on.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Say hello, Al.

unknown 0:58

Hello.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

And I will be your host for this evening. My name's Hannah. So this is, as I said earlier, a bonus episode, and that's because we are reviewing a game that is no longer in print. It's something I'm very excited to be talking to you about. It is the absolute beast that is Arkham Horror 2nd edition. So this isn't a podcast to teach you how to play games, and I'm quite thankful for that because it's definitely probably up there with one of the more complicated things.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

I need you to explain all the rules. We're all counting on you, we believe in you. This is going to be a four-hour podcast, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

So what we'll do is we'll just give you, or I will give you a relative sort of overview and kind of take you through a turn so you kind of get the gist of how things are played, but this is by no means a teach or a learn-to-play session. Um I guess at its heart it is a dungeon crawler.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah, kind of. An adventure.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

RPG element to it?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yeah, adventure dungeon crawler. Uh very thematic, things on a map kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Um you will take the role of an investigator, or in our case, we play double-handed, so we each take two investigators. And your investigators are travelling through Arkham, so not Batman's Arkham, but in fact Lovecraft's Arkham, so think Cthulhu. Um, in an effort to stop an elder god awakening.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

A great old one.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, a great old one, is that what they're called? Great old one. Um, you do that quite simply by sealing or closing gates or portals, if you like, to other realms that appear. And I'll explain a little bit about how you portals appear or gates appear in a moment. You are then battling um an old one, did we see? A great old one. A great old one. Um, and that is represented by a investigative sheet, um, and each of them have their own sort of flavour of how they're gonna fuck things up for you. It might be that they make uh certain monsters harder, it might be that they give you penalties or disadvantages, um, but each of them have their own sort of unique ability. Quirk. And quirk. Um, it also has rules for final combat on that that sheet, which we will kind of hopefully come to by some point. Um, and at the bottom there's something quite important called the Doom Track. And the Doom Track fills up as time goes on every time a gate opens, and uh each of the gods have a different number of Doom tokens that are needed to finally summon them. Yeah. So if you fill up the Doom Track, bad times.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

You've got to fight it. Yeah. You have to fight Cthulhu. There's never a good, never a good time.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

No, no, that never ends well. So the idea is that you stop that from happening. Um, so that's your your who you're fighting, and then you will each have one, or in our case, two investigator cards. Uh, those investigator sheets have um a little bit of narrative there um about who your player is and why they're in Arkham and why they're walking around in the streets of a very, very disturbing place. Um, it gives you things like your starting stats, which are sanity and uh stamina.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Um, it might give you a bunch of items and some clues, and we'll talk about why clues are important in a minute. Um, but also quite importantly, at the bottom of your investigation sheet or the second half of it, you have a series of skill sliders.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

For the most part, your skill sliders are your skills are fixed. So, for example, you will have um on on the top bar you will have speed and stealth, yeah, and you'll have a series of numbers and you will be able to change those skill points, if you like, um, during the upkeep phase. Not for everyone, but for the most part, that's kind of how it works.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

You have sets of paired skills, yeah. Um the sliders of it works on a sliding scale, so if you put speed up, your sneak will conversely go down, for example.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

And during the game, you will be required to make a number of attribute tests based on where your current skill slider is. Yeah. Let's walk through kind of what a turn or a round would look like. I'm going to start not with the mythos phase, which is actually technically first, but I'm going to start with oh no, last.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yeah, but you do it before you start the game.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Um but we'll start with movement. So, first of all, you have Arkham movement. So you'll look at your little skill slider, you'll see that your speed is three, for example, and then you will move three spaces. The game is played over a large map, and each of the map has a number of street locations and then a number of actual individual locations off the side of that. So the idea is that you'll end up in an actual location rather than in the streets.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Yeah, I think there's like sort of eight distinct neighbourhoods which all have two to three locations in each.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah. So you'll move, and then if you end your movement in a location where there are any clues, which are represented by little green sort of magnifying glass tokens, you'll pick them up and collect them. It might be that in your location there is a gate, and that gate um appears and will be triggered through a number of different uh mechanisms. But if you are in a location with a gate, you will get sucked through that gate into another world. That brings us neatly on to the second part of the movement phase, which is other world movement. So you either get sucked through a gate, or you get to step across from one side of the world to the other, or you get sucked back through the gate back into your original location.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Yeah, all of the other worlds, I think there's seven or eight off the top of my head, each are split into two halves, so you move across to the left-hand side half, and then you'd move across and then eventually move back into Arkham.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah. After everyone's had their movement, you then move on to the encounters phase. So Arkham encounters. If you're in a location, you will draw from a stack of cards. So they're all all of the locations are colour-coded, and there are a relatively small stack of cards that you will shuffle and draw one, you'll then find the corresponding um section with flavour text, and you'll read it out. And they're all quite thematic. So if for example you're in the black cave, you know, uh it might be, oh, you see something horrible drawn on the walls, and you need to make uh an attribute check, like a law check, otherwise you're gonna be stuck here next turn. So maybe then we should talk about ability checks.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

So you will look to your uh investigator sheet and you will look for the appropriate stats. So it'll tell you to test your law, perhaps, or your fight, or something like that. You'll see what the number is, and then there will be a modifier on that card, for example. So it might say make a law minus two check. So you take your ability, your attribute stat minus the appropriate number of um dice, um with the number, and then you roll that number of dice, and it's a traditional d6.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Yeah. Um successes fives and sixes.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Fives and sixes are successes. There are some times that you can modify that, but generally speaking, fives and sixes are successes, and then if you get the appropriate number of successes, um, usually it's one, but sometimes it will say you need to make have two successes, then you would pass that. And usually that means that nothing bad happens to you. Sometimes it means something good will happen to you.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Really, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Don't always have to have an encounter. Sometimes you can each location, some some locations have special abilities, so for example, the asylum, you can go and spend like an hour or two on the sofa with Freud and just miraculously regain all your sanity because that's how therapy works. Um, or you can um trade in tokens and and all sorts of things. You can also attempt to seal a gate. You do that by looking at either your fight or lore. You must always use fight or law to seal a gate, um, and you will look at the gate token that's placed on the board, look at the modifier. So if your law was five and the modifier was minus two, you'd have three dice, you would need one success. If you manage to pass, you would then close that gate. If you then spend five clues, which you'll remember you can gather as you go around the board, you'll be able to seal that gate. Usually that means it's always sealed, but not always.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Well, it's an expansion thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

But yeah. Then we, after all the uh investigators that are in Arkham have had uh their encounters, then we move on to other world encounters, and then you have a huge stack of cards, it's like absolutely massive. Yeah, it's like you you can't hold it in your hand, and then you draw cards until you draw a card that matches one of the little coloured symbols on your other world location, and then you check to see if it's listed there. If it is, you read that flavour text. If not, there'll be a space for other. Um, and usually, usually bad stuff happens. Um, again, sometimes you might be asked to make um an encounter, uh, an attribute test, uh, an attribute role, or maybe sometimes a monster appears, or in some very, very rare occasions um a god can appear and just eat you and devour you home. Yeah, and that's the end of it. Um, I should point out that if you ever get devoured in this, it's not like your turn's completely done, you just get to draw a new investigator for the bad startup. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah, it doesn't knock you out of the game and such.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Um so once you've then had all your encounters, you move on to the mythos phase. So if you thought the other world deck was massive, then the mythos mythos card deck is even larger. Um, there's lots of information on these cards, but generally speaking, um, it will tell you where to put a gate. So a gate will open somewhere, um, in which case you take a gate token and you put it on the respective place. It will tell you where a clue appears and you put the clue on that place. When a gate opens, you obviously need to put a doom token on the elder one's um doom track so that you're keeping track of how soon before it awakens. Um, and you also put a monster on that gate, sometimes multiple depending on various complex rules. Um, it then has a handy little series of symbols to tell you which monsters move because monsters will move, they don't just stay where they're put. They will move across the board, they might fly off into the sky, and it tells you what direction they move in, according to using a black and white arrow system. And then you have some flavour text, and that flavour text could be something like um a headline, so release two monsters into a particular area, it could be an environment, so for example, it's icy, so speed checks that made it a minus one penalty, um, or in some horrible situations it could be a rumour, which are incredibly difficult things that you have to do to stop bad things from happening, but ultimately sidetrack you from your main aim, which is sealing and closing gates. The payoff is though if you do get a rever, generally something pleasant happens to you.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yeah, given they can be quite powerful if you actually do them.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Yeah. Um, the only thing that we haven't talked about is fighting and about monsters. So, do you want to maybe talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

We've got to breathe. Um, so various monsters get summoned via gates or via mythos cards, sometimes sort of say, like, put monsters into the streets. Basically, you you put all the we use the classic sort of like car key bowl with all the all these monster tokens in.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

No swinging with monsters.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

No, no swinging with monsters. Um basically you put all of them in this big in a bowl or bag, whatever you want to do, and you pull them out um randomly. You place them, they will move around, and they all have different values for how frightening they are. So when you first encounter a monster, you have to make a horror check, and if you fail, you lose a certain amount of sanity.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

So that's using your will, and your will is normally um oppositional opposed to your fight.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

So you can either be really very brave or very fighty.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Um if you pass that and you haven't gone insane, uh you then fight it, and it'll have a combat rating, and then it'll have a toughness, so somewhere between one and three, which is how many successes you need to kill it. Um successes don't carry over, so if you fight something, you know it's a it has got three toughness, and you hit it twice next to it and you've got to hit it three times again, all over again. Um if you successfully do that, you take the monster as a trophy, so you basically take it into your inventory, you can spend those on various things later on. If you fail, it does damage equal to its damage question. You can also sneak past monsters, so each monster's got an evade stat on the front, and that is basically where you test your sneak to either move past it or if you're in the same space to hide from it. Um a lot of them do various different things and have extra nasty things that they do, and extra effects if you kill them, but uh, there's way, way too much to go into.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah. Just to note that some can have magical immunity, some can have physical immunity. Yeah, and some are just absolutely fucking awful. Like the Hound of Tindalos that doesn't move, is impossible to kill, you can't sneak past it, and if you roll a four, five, or a six, it does it does damage to you.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Yeah, it does horrible things like that. I think what we haven't talked about is how you win how do you win?

SPEAKER_01 13:22

So how do you win? Very rarely is that it's very rarely is that we answer, although, you know, I think probably we we win more now than we we did when we first start playing. Um you have to seal or close a number of gates depending on well, you have to seal number of gates depending on the number of players, but equally you can win if there are no open gates and all the gates are closed up to a certain point. Um if the Doom token or the Doom Tracker, sorry, fills up, um, or you have s lots and lots of gates open again, predetermined based on the number of players, then the um then it's really bad times, really. And the elder god awakens and the old one awakens and he will fight you, and it's usually exceedingly tough.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Yeah, I mean most of them are borderline impossible to take down. There are a few. Usually the rule of thumb is they have if they have a very short doom track, they're put they potentially killable.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Azototh, for example, I think he's probably only got like eight or two.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

No, Azatoth's the one that the the the game just you just lose immediately. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

There's another one that's only got like eight or nine, and actually he the the idea is you don't before you don't go and kill closed gates, you just go and tool up. Um it's worth noting that there are shops, so you can go and buy magical items and common items and also spells from the old magic shop if you are that way inclined or have the skills and aptitudes to cast them. But yeah, that's kind of it in a nutshell. There's so much more to this, but I mean it kind of gives you a whistle stop of what a sort of a turning around is like. There are numerous expansions for this. It is not possible to play the game with all the expansions. I think you would be there for probably about 15 days to want to do that. I think the rule of thumb is two large box expansions and one of the smaller expansions.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

A lot of people say that one big and one small is the limit. We play with two big and one small.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah, and it's probably a little bit too much.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Um it's just it adds a lot of rules and complexity to an already complex, janky rule system.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Um and sometimes it falls over a little bit because there's just too much going on, and there's only so much you can sort of cope with in terms of keeping rules in your head and what have you.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

So, in terms of runtime, um I can't imagine a game just playing the game, not set up and stripped down, taking less than two hours. No. I've so we we've had games that have gone four and a half, five hours. Five hours before. Yeah. Um so it is not a quick game to play. It is not. Um, and as I said, this is out of print and unlikely to be back in print given it's been superseded by Arkham Horror 3rd edition.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Yeah, it won't come back into print, I've got a new edition now.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah. Um so we have not played. Which we have not played, so full disclosure we've not played it. I am somewhat tempted, perhaps more so than that.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

I'm less tempted from what I've read online, but we'll get into that. It could be leaping ahead of it if I said why I didn't like it. I didn't like the whole idea of it.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Um, so what were your first thoughts about playing it?

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Well, I can go back a little bit further than that. I think I mean this is this is a very, very important one for us because this was the game that ultimately got both of us into the hobby.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Um I think if you listen back to our session zero uh that we did right at the start of all this, I'd always been into sort of like Miniatures Games and Warhammer and Magic the Gathering, and then I introduced you to Magic the Gathering, and you really enjoyed that. Um but we'd never really done any proper sort of board gaming together.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

So Magic the Gathering, do this!

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Well, I was about to get on to that. So I decided one day to visit a board game shop in in uh central London.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

The Orcs Nest.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah, the Orcs Nest. And um I I don't really know what possessed me. I just, you know, I was like, oh, I'm gonna go check this out. Like there was no prompting of anything, and I just had a look and I was like, We just moved in together properly into our own place at the time. And I was looking at I just walked into this land of wonder, just these endless shelves of board caves. I walk up. I thought, oh, that looks like things I really am fan of sort of HB Lovecraft. I was like, oh, that looks really cool, pick this off the shelf. I was like, okay, I'll have that, give it a go. I brought it home, and you were a bit like, what the hell is that? That was a bit smoothie. Um I sat down and read the rules, and I was like, oh dear god, why am I done? Um but I decided to persevere and we cracked it out, and um, to your credit, you jumped into it with both feet. You immediately took to it, you loved, I mean, the next I think the next couple of days you were printing off flow charts to help with the rules and stuff from uh from work.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Good use of energy resources.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah, good use of resources. Um and then we just got a little bit obsessed with it after that. I think we started playing it pretty much every week.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

And then we kind of grew into the hobby from there. So this was the our first and greatest love with with board games.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Yeah, and do you know what? I'm gonna say it probably still is. There's a lot of reasons why we don't play it.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah. Time being the main one.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Main issue. But I think it's always there on the shelf and it's never gonna get put in the no, we will I will I will never get rid of it.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Never. Um it it it me it's it it means too much, it symbolises too much. And like I say, we still play it whenever we can.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

So shall we then crack on with the ratings?

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Yeah, because I think we've got quite a lot to talk about, yeah. Yeah. And obviously, these might be a little bit biased given the story that I just told you.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

I think you were in love beforehand, otherwise it was bold to us moving in with you.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

We had moved in together, so it'd be a bit on the fancy. Maybe. This is the thing that made you want to okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

So, under general, we have our first uh scale, which or first scoring criteria, which is components.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

And that includes setup and teardown.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Yeah. Well, can I just say after playing this for like 15 odd years, we now have very clearly defined tasks, and we probably streamlined it to the best of our possible ability.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

However, it still takes half an hour. At least that's a slight exaggeration. I don't think it takes half an hour to set off.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

I think on your own it would take half an hour.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Yeah, possibly. Um there are an endless supply of draw decks. So you haven't just got loads of sort of big decks of cards, you've got like 20 different decks that you have to lay out to the table. For each of your locations. Mythos desk, you've got the deck, you've got the um Otherworld deck, you have injury and madness cards, items, you have allies who can join you on your travel skills. Yeah. I think out of aside from Gloomhaven, which you kind of expect with the size of the box, this it's just the amount of stuff is is insane. Um, which I know is something that they've streamlined in the the third edition. But I think uh part of that is part of its charm. Yes. And I'll get onto that in a different category, I think. But yeah, setup and tear down, particularly after a grueling five-hour game, can can be uh something you really don't want to do because it does take a while separating everything back into its piles and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

And you said this to begin with, like you were really into miniatures. There are no miniatures with this. So these are all cardboard player tokens and sandees, lots and lots of tokens. So if we mention the number of cards, well you've got twice that number in terms of tokens and different types. You've got tokens for first orders, you've got tokens for explored, you've got tokens for terror levels, which we haven't even talked about. But lots and lots of tokens.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Yes, huge amounts of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

The artwork though is really cool. Yeah, it is as you would expect for something Live Cra Lovecrafty, and it is thematic and horror uh horrifying. You've got tentacles all over your cards and your investigator sheets or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what came before this, but if you play the LCG, a lot of the artwork almost seems directly lifted from the is very much in the same style. Um, it really, really works. Um, some of the artwork for the great old ones are really like really really cool.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Yeah. Um, and I don't know whether this fits under components, but I I would say that there is a huge synergy across the whole game. It's very narrative driven, and so you get flavor text, which actually is a really important part of the game and is what makes it, I think.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Yeah, it it's the immersiveness of the theme that this nails in a way that I don't think anything else I've ever played has nailed. Um I think Nemesis Nemesis is similar, comes close. Yeah. Um, in terms of really diving into the theme and making you really feel like you're part of this world. And I think the components do go somewhere, particularly the art. Work and the style, and everything goes some way towards doing that. I mean, everything is is functional. There's nothing deluxe in this, but I think you'd be looking at a sort of 150-pound package if they if they upped the you know the the deluxification of it in any way. Um I think they've obviously made a choice to completely pack this box with as much stuff as you can possibly get in there and still have a reasonable price point, um, which I think is a plus. And I think thinking back to what I paid for it, I don't can't remember exactly what I paid for it, but it was less than£50. And I think compared to some of the stuff you get for sort of£60 nowadays, I I think that was an incredible deal compared to you know what you know things have moved on a bit. Um so yeah, I think as is always with Fantasy Flight, there's a lot of small, fiddly cards, which I'm nobody's a huge fan of. Um the cards for items, etc., are all very, very small and they can be a bit fiddly, and you get a propensity to you know get an elbow on them and lift them up by accident.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah, and you knock all your skill sliders. I'd also say that the map itself is absolutely massive, and then with each of the bigger box box expansions, you have additional maps, so we have to play this on our entire table, plus two chairs, yeah, plus usually another surface for cards. It is a big old, big old table hog.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yeah, yeah, it's but it's the worst table hog we have.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

And even your investigators, because you will buy equipment or you will have equipment and skills and uh all sorts of things, they take up a huge amount of table space as well.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Yeah, you need a lot of player space as well as the board and all the stuff that all the draw decks and everything, so yeah, unless you've got a large table, but it's it's got these band, etc. You don't have to play on the floor. It's just and I think we did when we first got it, we used to play it on the floor.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, quite possibly. Um so all that said, how did you score it?

SPEAKER_00 23:47

I gave it an eight.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yeah, I started an eight, but I decided to downgrade it to a six just because of this stret stripped down setup.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Yeah, fair enough. I mean, I just I think it's an incredibly good package for what it used to cost. I know it's a bit irrelevant.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Come on, let's shelf life.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Yeah, true. Yeah. Um yeah, maybe you're right, maybe I'm marking it up for the wrong reasons, then.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

It's fine. It stands.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Okay, well I I stick by it. I think it's a wonderful package. Again, huge amounts of affection for it, but yeah.

unknown 24:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

So I scored it a six.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Okay, eight for me.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Um, complexity. So that includes things like arguing about the rules, um, analysis paralysis, but also how comp how the complexity suits the game and how much how well does it serve a purpose. So Al's already hinted that after we played it the first time, we were like, what the fuck is this? And we had to go online and find some wonderful person who put this fantastic flow cheat flow sheet together so that we were able to work out what was supposed to happen. Because I don't think we'd even played a game that had, you know, phases within rounds, let alone splitting those phases out between Arkham and Otherworld, plus all the other shit that you have to do. Yeah, yeah, it was a good thing. Counting the numbers of monsters that are allowed on the board, number of gates, like it's just it's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Yeah, I yeah. Um this this game seems to have been designed by somebody that discovered rules and they were the best thing they ever discovered in their life, and they just wanted all of them. All of the rules, all the time, at once. Um it is so ridiculously over-engineered that it's almost it pushes it into vaguely satirical ends of the spectrum, and I go past it being annoying. You know, there's enough rules and complexity to be great, and then this is just stupid. It actually goes beyond that to actually this is great again.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

But I think now I just feel like some absolute hero for knowing what rules are supposed to happen at what time and some sort of like rules guard. Yeah, like I know what's happening, I understand.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Galaxy brain over here, like I know what's going on. Um I mean, yeah, you put out if we played as much as we do, it becomes sort of second down, but even now, I mean there's still rules that confuse us.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

And I think this is the thing, like we got the base game and we got the cool game, then we got one expansion and that was great, and that was fine, but with the second big box expansion, I don't even fucking understand what happens over in like Innsmouth.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Just don't fucking go to Innsmouth. Don't go there.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

There are people patrolling the streets, there are like big baths that are gonna awaken and eat you, like just don't go there.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Yeah, don't go to the Innsmouth. Um, but yeah, I mean this is such a this is such a ridiculous one. I f if if I had to draw this directly, like objectively down the middle, how well does the complexity serve the game? It's probably a one because it's so daft, it's so over-egged in terms of its rule set. But it makes it a unicorn, it makes it something that I've never encountered in my days of board gaming, and I kind of love it because of that. Um I mean I come from the school of Warhammer and reading 200-page rule books and codexes on top. Like, I'm not I I I know I know how ridiculous things can get. I kind of like it.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

I like how much there is going on, I like how labyrinthinely complex it is.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

And if you go back to that whole thing about narrative, well, actually, you know, your investigators are not, you know, well-versed in Cthulhu mythos. They are just, you know, Bob, the bank manager. I don't know what you do. So he's travelling salesman, Bob, who's just wandered into Arkham and got embroiled in all this complexity. Like it kind of makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

It makes thematic sense, yes.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

You know?

SPEAKER_00 27:47

And I think it's one of those things that, you know, you you get very, very well-designed rules, and they create exceptional, very tight games. But with when you as you add that sort of tightness in, you lose some of the variety, you lose some of the stupid stuff that can happen. And this has got so much going on that there's just an enormous space for the game to exist in and for things to happen. Like people all say, like, oh, two games are the same. No, two games are the same. Like, it is always completely and utterly different. And I mean, me must have over a hundred plays of this over the years, I reckon. And it's never it's never got repetitive because it's so ridiculously over the top. So yeah, I've given it an eight.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

I fair enough, I scored it a three because that's fine.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

I am a ver I 99% of the population will be with you. I'm a weirdo.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

But I also think, again, you know, we we have tried to teach this to other people.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

I've never seen so much blank stares or people just like wandering off and not coming back at the parties. I think we cracked out a pie. People are like, what are you doing? It's like, shut up.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

It's my birthday, and we'll play what I want to play.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Get back in here before Cully Awakens. Um, yeah, it's it's not it's not one to crack out a party, no. Um strange time in my life. Um, but yeah, I I think that's fair. This is a ridiculous. This is a bonus episode, it's a ridiculous score, but I'm gonna I'm sticking with it because it is one of the things that I love about it. Yeah. And I wouldn't change it.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

It's claft.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Um, okay, so our next category is shelf life, including things like value for money and replayability. So, I mean we've already you've already said it, no two games are alike. You've got um we now have, I think, probably like 12 to 16 different um old ones, great ones, elder gods, whatever you want to call them.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yeah, we've got almost 20 now, and we've got about 40 of I think we've got 40 investigators.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

We have m yeah, we've actually even got investigators we still haven't played yet because we randomise, yeah, we randomise it every time we start. So not only do you have an infinite, pretty much an infinite pool combination of investigators and um big bads, but as you said, the decks are just massive. Yeah, there's so much variety, you know, and so every time you turn over a card, even in like locations, it because you're visiting lots of different locations to go hunting for clues, it just constantly feels fresh and it constantly is something new. There's no way that you can gamify this beyond trying to make sure your skill sliders set to the max to be able to fight, you know, whatever monster or you know seed a gate. Yeah, and that's I think one of the reasons why it we just all love it so much. We still love it so much.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Yeah, it just it just never gets stale.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

It it has never got stale. I think again, you find all these games that will have uh a smaller pool of characters because they they are very well balanced, and I obviously respect that from a game design point of view. These characters are not even vaguely balanced. Like they just don't give a shit. Like some of them are absolutely useless, and some of them are just like gods. And again, I love that, but you just don't get that anymore. Like, you everything's like balan everything must be balanced, everything must be like you know, it's just that almost gorilla style of like, no, this this guy's absolutely useless. Good luck.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Yeah. Um we've said this before, like, there is absolutely no way this game would get made today.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

No, absolutely not. It would never make it through.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

I mean, I'm sure they play tested it.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Well, I'm sure they did. I just don't think people cared as much back then. I don't I don't know. In terms of like sort of quality control, I think it was just a bit looser. I think it's such a major industry now.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

And yeah, I don't think it's lacking quality. Let's just put that out there. I mean it's not, but I just don't think by today's standards this.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

I think there'd be some exec which was just people like what the fuck is this?

SPEAKER_01 31:41

No.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

What are you doing? Take that out, streamline that for goodness sake. And also, this character's completely unusable why is either box. It's an old dude that works at the observatory, why not? Um it's just got such a charm because of that. Yeah, but again, I'd say this under shelf life because that's one of the things that brings me back to it so so much. The characters, because because the balance is out the window, the characters actually do genuinely play very, very differently. Yeah, I think there's one of the main issues I had with Mansions of Madness is all the characters at the end of the day just seem to play pretty much the same. Yeah. Um, there wasn't that huge swinginess in it. Um, and it just adds that challenge as well. Because if you do get somebody that you know is rubbish, it's like, oh, I'm gonna have a really hard time at the start, but you know, but you have to find a function, you have to find a role within you know within the investigators that you've got, you know.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

And quite often it this again it it's very reactive, so you can have really well laid out, clear plans. You get then you you you you can't because you can't get out the door because there's a horrendous hound of tinder loss that in front of you, and or you've got some holy water, which by the way, is what can do the job.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

Yeah, um, so yeah, yeah, I mean it it it it is endlessly replayable. In terms of value for money, um kind of a boot point with it being out of print as it always is, yeah. But it I I mean for ours for what I paid for it, it was exceptional. Funny, really, really good value.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

So how did you score a nine? I gave it a ten. Yeah. And I gave it a ten because if it weren't for the time factor, I probably still would pull this out at least every couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Yeah, yeah, so yeah, yeah, which is saying something.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah. And then fun. So is it any fun?

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Yeah. Yes, it is an enormous amount of fun. I think the thing that's always stood out to me above everything else is we often talk about emergent storytelling. This is the king of that. And I feel like I've been chasing the dragon ever since.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Um the stories that this game manages to create through the system of the characters that you play, the situations they find themselves in, what's on the cards, but also what's not on the cards. Um there's so many over the years, like that we still we still regularly refer to.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

We have house rules. The only time we've ever house-ruled something based on a narrative story. So if any of our investigators get devoured, that's fine, but you have to get a Bob out.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Yes, because Bob Bob is Bob is champion. Yeah. Bob is for whatever reason, whenever anybody uses Bob, he just ends up getting distracted and delayed everywhere. He gets distracted by everything.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

Until such a time as he doesn't, and he comes out like all guns blazing and cleans the house and completely wins the game. Um, so yeah, we and then we don't have any other house rules really that we play. Just that one. Just that one.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Bob has to come out. Um, none with a gun. None with a gun. There's a none character, and whenever we play with her, we make it our mission to get her absolutely tooled up, usually with a flamethrower and machine gun, which is always good fun, and she just seems to do incredibly well in combat. Um, there are so many memories and stories we've got from this game that the only thing that comes close to it is nemesis for me.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

And even then, I don't think it's a patch on this.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

No, because there isn't a variety deck. There's the you know, nemesis is quite contained. That's just anything can happen in this, and you never know.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

And we've talked about how narratively driven the whole game is, but you know, not only do your investigators have flavour text, your cards obviously uh contribute a huge amount to you know the theme of it, and you do, you sit and take the time to read it all because it's just so uh uh all-encompassing, and you want to find out and you want to know. Even the monsters on them, like the monsters on the back of them, will have a quote from the text, yeah, from the the original material, and it's just really cool.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Yeah, no, it's awesome, and um there's just there's no right or wrong way to do things either. It's such a wide open play space that you know. I mean, yes, you need to do things and you should be doing things, but if you don't, you can still have fun.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

Yeah, and you quite often as well you're up against it, and you know, you you don't always win, and quite often you will lose. And actually, it's there's a sense of camaraderie in it that I don't think I've had with other games.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

There's this constant sense of sort of like gallows, I don't know if you call it gallows humour, but that kind of side of things where you just you know you know you're screwed, um may as well have fun on the way down, kind of thing. Yeah, um yeah, it it it's just and I think everything in the game, particularly around sort of like combat, things like that, winning is so unlikely that when you do actually pull off a real like clutch moment thing just out of sheer blind luck, it's amazing. Like we've had people, unarmed people, go up against these hideous monsters with their fists before, and for some reason you've rolled three sixes on an attack roll, and they've they you know they've they've done it. Likewise, you've had people dying to cult us to the easiest monsters in the game. So you know, it's just that variety and that that swinginess of it and that crazy complexity that just I just find so much fun.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Um, I don't think I would change much of it.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Some of the expansion stuff I would like, oh but we've talked about this, and I think it's just it's too much effort now at this point to strip out. We can have to spend like another six to twelve hours stripping out expansion stuff. Um, but I think again, we went all in and we were so excited by it. I don't think we necessarily thought, just because we can, does that mean you should?

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Yeah, exactly. Um you shouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Um no you shouldn't, is this is the actual.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

But I don't think that takes away from the core experience. That's just uh that's an us issue of putting too many expansions now really. Um so yeah, I mean uh got anything else to say uh around fun.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

No.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

Yeah, so I I am going to give it a ten.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Yeah, I also gave it a ten.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Yeah, it is unbelievably good fun.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Lightning in a bottle.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So if we top up all the scores, we get a total, an average out, as we always do, that gets us a general rating of eight, which I am very pleased by.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

Alright, so then on to our two-player ratings, and the first of our two-player ratings is table talk and slash getting to know you.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

So I think I mean I played a lot of co-ops. The the chatter is constant, it's never-ending. You're constantly talking about what's happened, you're constantly talking about what you're gonna do, you're constantly joking about the stupidity of it all. Uh, you're scratching your heads together, trying to work out rules. It it is a non-stop interaction. There is no AP, there's no sitting in silence and working out what you're gonna do. It just doesn't happen in this game. It's just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

You start the round by planning out roughly what it is that you're gonna do, and then get fucked up along the way, and you have to make plans on the hoof, um, and yeah. Are you dispairing together as well, I think.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Obviously, yeah. It's cause of reading of cards to each other, it it it's just a never-ending stream of interactivity.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Yeah. And I would say that there is an awful lot of reading to each other, but it never gets old.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

No, because you're so invested in what the other person's reading. Yeah. You know, what's happening. Um I don't know if there's much else to say on the subject. I just I again I don't know why it manages to do it in such a way that no other game I've discovered has. But in terms of like getting to know somebody, I mean this is just perfect.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Um, I mean, if they don't run away screaming when you pull the rule book out, which is how I knew you were the one.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Yeah, probably not a first date board game. No, probably not even a twelfth date board game.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Probably probably do what I did and wait till they move in with you and then and then spring. And just sign a tendency agreement for at least a year, maybe on the year. Um, but yeah, I've given it a second ten.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

Um so I gave it an eight.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

Um why did I give it an eight? Because I don't think there is a huge amount of getting to know you. Whilst there's a lot of talking, whilst there's a lot of interaction, I have I don't think I necessarily learnt that this is how you strategize or anything like that. And I had also just given it two tens, and I felt I couldn't give it another ten.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

Yeah, I mean, getting to know you as a game player, perhaps less, but getting to know somebody as a person, humour, how they how they deal with constant barrels of like shitty stuff happening. Um they deal with just getting devoured if somebody's a bad loser, that you will find that quite quickly in this game because you are constantly pummeled with things that are completely outside of your control, and some people cannot handle that. Um, so yeah, no, I stick by it.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Alright, fair enough. Um, and then competitive slash, or in this case, co-op, so our co-op rating. So, yeah, you are absolutely in it together, and you are absolutely working together in quite a coordinated fashion. What I will say is there is still an element of you playing as a solo investigator, because it's not like you can fight monsters together. So when you've got something really, really horrible on the board, you can't necessarily go and fight them together, and when you've got some of the masked monsters, for example, you still have to do it on your own because obviously successes uh don't don't carry across. You can't necessarily ski share things like clues, for example, which we did a long time.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Yeah, you can't trade clues, but you can trade everything else.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Yeah, so there is an element of you are still an individual player, but I think the upside of that is quarterbacking is almost completely impossible.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

You can't quarterback this at all.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

I don't even know how you would even begin to try. Like you just you could say, well, go there and do this, but I mean that's not you know, you can't engineer what what card is going to come up, you know. So there is a huge amount of free choice and um still that option, you know, to to be an individual and play your own game.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Yeah, but I think what makes us truly cooperative is there is a very clear end goal. It i it if you go back to the the granddaddy of co-ops, it reminds me a little bit of pandemic in a way, because you all have these different characters, they have their roles, but everything you're doing needs to serve the greater good of winning the game.

SPEAKER_02 42:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

If somebody decides to just nope out of that, you're probably gonna lose quicker than than otherwise, because you need to be con there's only so many clues on the board, they do run out. Um, you need to be very careful about who is doing what and what their end game is. If you don't plan that at least, like, oh okay, I've got this amount of clues, I'm gonna go and try and seal that game. If you don't plan ahead like that, and you don't work together, not so necessarily together doing the same thing, but together in the great bigger picture, it it all falls apart.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

Yeah, but does it? Because actually, there have been so many times where we've had characters that for want of happenstance, like where they've ended up in their situation, they are just swanning around the ball doing diddly squat.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

But I think that's also been a conscious choice between the two of us with like oh, this person can't really achieve anything, let's not let them go off on monster duty or something. That's usually the punishment we send the characters off on when they're not doing anything actually valuable. Go have monsters, buy or do not.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

With your crucifix and your match your map.

SPEAKER_00 43:13

Yeah, with your butcher's knife and I hope. Um, but I think so. I think we slip into you you as a character, not as a player, but your characters slip into roles depending on the situation of what's happened on the board, and I think you have to keep readjusting that interactivity between the characters, going, okay, so-and-so is doing this, so-and-so is doing that. Again, like we said a couple of times, yeah, we play double-handed on this, so we play two characters each. But you all four of those characters need to, as much as possible, be reworking in concert, because if they don't, things will fall apart. Yeah, and uh often you get a character that does get a bit tooled up and is quite good at combat, so you send them off to sort of rescue other players so they can move around and do what they need to do, which is the business of seeding gates or buying stockpiling. Weapons or magic items, and you have money, so you get a character that gets surprisingly rich that might meet up with another one going, Here you go, here's some money. I think there's a great deal of cooperability in this, like huge amounts, and I think the game punishes you for not doing it. Because I think when we first started playing, we used to play much more individualistically, but as we started to understand the mechanism of the game, we knew that you can't do that.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

And actually, the game forces you to ignore the main goal. So all the all the all the stuff that it does is it's like, why don't you go and have some side stories?

SPEAKER_02 44:36

It loves to distract you with.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

It loves to distract you. And so side stories are these big things that are um sort of it's an expansion, so these are for each of the uh investigators, they have these little narrative stories that you have to go and accomplish and usually spend clues in locations in order to get a really great reward, and it's it's shiny and you want to go and do it and loves to distract you with side quests.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

If you go on any of the side quests, you are fucked.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

Pretty much missions, missions are these things that you can get from shops instead of actual helpful, useful things like I don't know, a shotgun. You can go on a mission and spend clues in particular locations in a particular order in order for you to get some sort of kind of reward. Some other shiny, but in the meantime, like six gates have opened and you believe about the start of the trip, yeah. Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

But yeah, I mean I I I think this is exceptional, it's not as tight as something like pandemic.

SPEAKER_01 45:29

But also then that's the whole point though, quarterbacking is absolutely rife in something like pandemic. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because you have one person sit there and orchestrate everything.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Yeah, there's a clear route to victory a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

Like it's a clear well, I mean there's there's a there's a clear route to definite failure.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

Yeah, yeah. Um, whereas this is a lot more open, but I don't think it makes it less uh less of a stellar carp.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Yeah, no, I don't think I was necessarily criticising it. I think there's still that element of individuality within your play that allow it means there is no quarterbacking. Yeah. That keeps that sandboxy feel to it, because there is quite sandboxy.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Oh, yeah, it's definitely a sandbox.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

But whilst you are still definitely all failing together.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

Yeah, all failing together.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

So how do you rate it? Nine. Yeah, nine.

SPEAKER_00 46:12

So, okay, cool. Alright, this is an interesting one.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

Scalability. So how much how well does this play at two, and how much does it miss other people round the table? I'm gonna split this into two things for me. Rules as written and mechanisms, and practicality.

SPEAKER_02 46:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

So rules as written, you play one character each. And this game is nine and impossible to win it to.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

Have we played it too? I think we have.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

Oh, yeah, we did. We started out playing it as two, but we quickly graduated to two characters each. I think we did it. We started off doing the pandemic thing of a shared character that just wasn't really working, a third shared character, and then we just went, screw it, let's just play two each.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Um can I just interrupt just to say part of the reason why um four is a a good play number is because uh victory conditions are based on the number of investigators that you have, um, monster limits, so there can only be a certain number of monsters on the board, again, based on your number of investigators and other factors as well.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

There's a lot of scaling that goes on depending on the player count, like a lot of things mathematically change depending on how many players in the game. And two is horrifically punishing.

SPEAKER_01 47:35

And the board is large, bearing in mind, you know, in order to move through spaces, for a lot of your investigators, you're gonna have to max out your speed in order to be able to traverse that kind of range of distance. Yeah. So, you know, you'll have spent about five turns just trying to gather enough clues to seal a gate before, you know.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

And I think the kicker comes in that at the end of every turn you get a mythos card. That mythos card doesn't scale at all depending on how players they are. No. And that mythos cards are nigh on almost always brutal. Yeah. And if you're playing with two, you have two turns, you get mythos. Two turns, mythos. Playing with four, you get four turns of mythos, four turns of mythos. It just is not mechanically designed to be played with two characters.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:15

Two players, however, playing multiple characters, I feel is the sweet spot. Because the issue with this, if you get more people around the table, and we played this with five before. I played it at one, two, three, four, and five. The length is ridiculous. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:34

Not to mention the learning.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

Yeah, I mean, you try and teach this and play a five-player game, you're gonna be there for ten hours.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

I think even our most dedicated of our ball game friends. Eyes glazed over.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

Yeah. So it's it's a it's a tricky one because does it need more players? I think definitely not. In fact, I think it hurts it. Does it need more characters per player? Yes. If you're gonna play it with two. Um so I've given it a seven because of that. I think if it played just as well at two characters as it did at four, I would have given it a ten, because you don't need more people at all, but it doesn't. And sometimes taking on multiple characters it can be way too much for for some people.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

Yeah. I so I scored it an eight, kind of for the same sort of reasons, but mainly because it is lightning in a bottle. And I wish that I we could share it with more people.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

You know, um, rather than I don't think it works perfectly as it is, and in some ways I think it is absolutely perfect, the fact that there's two of us, because again, we've played it for such a long time, trying to introduce somebody new to it, is just it it's it's not gonna work, it's never gonna work. It's our game, I suppose. It is our game, and um I imagine anyone else who's played it and loves it probably has very similar feelings, it's just not something you can crack out. But I do wish that I could.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

That's not but there are lots of reasons why we we can't, and you know, yeah, yeah, but yeah, I think it's it's it's a tricky one. It is a tricky one, but I think seven is where where I'm at.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Yeah, that's why it's called it an eight.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

Okay, right. So if we add those up and average out, that gives us an 8.5, and as always, we round, and that gives us our first two-player 9 rating, which I'm very happy about because this is near and dear to both of our hearts. Yeah. Um, it's one of those things I guess is a bit irrelevant now. I don't know how easy it is to get hold of a copy of this. But if you are a board game lifer as such, and you've never tried it, I I would recommend picking up a copy and giving it a go, even just for the experience. Because maybe there are things like this out on the market. If there are, please do do let us know. But I've never found anything else quite like it. Yeah, it's very unique.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

It is the game that got us started, and it's still and it's still one of our absolute favourites, it's an absolute stellar game, and I definitely think every ball game should play it at least once.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 51:11

Um, so that's it from us. Um, we have our socials come over and give us a like. Um, if you would like to leave a review on the podcast, that would be awesome and very much appreciated. Um, but until next time, be good to each other and play lots of games.