Mansions of Madness - First impressions...

 I got to play the boardgame MANSIONS OF MADNESS by Fantasy Flight games for the first time on Sunday evening. I really enjoyed it. There were four of us there - Aneurin, Kes, Neil and myself. It was Aneurin's game, and he was the "keeper" - running the adventure and controlling the monsters etc... 

I have played two of Fantasy Flights other Lovecraftian themed games previously:

 

ARKHAM HORROR - which is a very long game, has a huge variety of expansions - and ultimately I found to be quite tedious.

 

ELDER SIGN is a much better game than Arkham - essentially it is a dice rolling game, you have to roll the correct sets of symbols to complete tasks to stop the big bad beasties from taking over the world. I got ELDER SIGN OMENS for Carolyn's Android device - and sold my copy of the boardgame immediately - the game works much better as a solo game app - and is much more thematic too.

 

The artwork on all 3 of these games is very nice indeed - and a big chunk of it is the same in all 3 games - artwork is expensive, so I can see why Fantasy Flight did that.

 

There is new Fantasy Flight boardgame with a Lovecraftian theme called ELDRITCH HORROR which folks are saying replaces Arkham as a better game... I haven't played it, and I'm not really tempted by it now that I've played MANSIONS OF MADNESS....

Right from the start of the game, as a player you are immersed in the creepy horror theme of the game. In the scenario we played, the three investigators were searching a sinister mansion in a race against time, looking for clues as to the whereabouts of a missing lady... we found a dead body, which one of us was mysteriously compelled to eat a part of... a running flaming zombie..which we had to fight, and that left parts of the building on fire... there were axe wielding maniacs who were trying to take samples of our hair for some unknown black magic ritual... one of us was killed by a maniac - and two of us went completely insane! - In the end things were looking pretty bad for us - but in the last turn Kes managed to pull off a crazy last minute dice roll using his special ability, and he killed the main maniac guy. The decisions you make in the game create a horror story which you really feel you are part of. The mechanics of the game are pretty easy to pick up - and I really love the little puzzles you have to do to open doors and re-wire circuits to try and get the lights to come on in darkened rooms. It's not good to be in the dark. Not in a house like this......

Aneurin was really lucky to get his copy of Mansions of Madness for half the retail price off ebay...It is quite a pricey game brand new - but there's a load of quality components, and the figures that come with the game are great. He's suggested we try and play once a month - sounds good to me - this is by far the best horror themed boardgame I've played to date - Can't wait for the next game!!

 

 

Kes pulls off his crazy dice roll!!