Thursday, March 10, 2011

Madness


I have fallen for the hype and bought a copy of Mansions of Madness. I like the Cthulhu setting and have Arkham Horror and Mansions looked quite interesting. It looked like it was going to play like Descent but with a slightly different feel.
Reviews were good although I suspected it had a bit of a fanboy following and the bits looked really nice. Cost was going to be a bit of an issue, yes its expensive but you get a lot in the box and currently the game is cheaper than a tank of petrol! (Don't get me started on that one)

On Monday we tried out the game, I played the role of the Keeper controlling the board and the monsters. The three investigators made there way into the house trying to find clues as to what had happened to its owner. It played along quite nicely, I made a couple of mistakes along the way but the game progressed along nicely. The game mechanics work quite well. The investigators need to listen to the narative and try to find and follow the clues. The team got a little waylayed after teh first clue not realising that the time was ticking.

The game ended in a draw, but we all agreed that it was fun and the mistakes made were due to it being the first time we played. I enjoyed being the keeper but could have been a little more evil, I was aware that I wanted everyone to enjoy the game. I forgot to spawn some monsters and left a zombie out in the garden instead of moving it into the house to cause more trouble.

I think the bigest downside to the game is the setup. It takes a while to put together the board and sort through all the cards. There are a lot of cards so this can take a while. I think next time I will sort out all teh cards I need before hand to speed things up but it does add time to the game.
Components are up to usual FFG standards, the minis are great and the abundance of cards and counters are overwhelming. I now need to decide wether or not to paint the minis.

I need to read the rules again and give it another play before it get a BGG rating from me. But so far I am not disapointed.

2 comments:

Steerpike said...

"I left a zombie out in the garden" - now there's a phrase you don't hear every day.

I had not thought of the new excuse for buying games - it's cheaper than a tank of petrol. Maybe time to finally buy 7Wonders :-)

Count Zero said...

We were playing on quite a large table and the zombie was at the far end.
I should have been paying more attention really.