Mansion of Madness

Number of Players: 2-5 players
Age: 13+
Prep time: 45 minutes
Playtime: 90+ minutes

Mansion of Madness is a scenario lead game of occult horror (think L.P. Lovecraft).  This is a cooperative game investigators (up to 4) against the keeper.  

There are lots of pieces to this game when the box is first open, two instruction booklets that have a lot written in them.  Do not let this put you off.  I spent a good week or two (plus numerous youtube videos) to work out how to play this game.   With all the research I did I became dubious about how much I was going to enjoy this game.  I did run two practice runs with friends to really get my head around all the rules.  Once I was confident with the rules, I decided what scenario I was going to run.

I set up some of the cards at home so the set up for the group was decreased.  Each scenario has different tiles that make up the play area (there will be a house, garden and sometimes underground terrain), each person takes an investigator collecting their starting equipment.  They have to walk around and find the clues that help them to complete the story which has been revealed at the beginning of the game.  The Keeper is the only person who knows the conditions for which the investigators or keeper wins.  As the game continues it is possible for the investigators to discover this.

The keeper is trying to kill/stop the investigators from completing the task.  This is done through power cards that they can play, summoning monsters or creating traps and other nasty things that makes the tasks of the investigators a lot harder.

Many times through out the game, for the investigators to discover the clues they must over come an obstacle or a threat.  This can be a fight, a puzzle or some other dastardly event that the fates decide.  

Although there is a lot of learning, and a lot of preparation required for this game.  The actual game play is brilliant.  There can be a lot of story telling and RPG if the group require, to watch the investigators get scared as they see monsters appear more and more and wondering what the keeper is going to do next makes the playing the keeper brilliant.

Score 7/10 (giving a 7 because there is a lot of hard work to learn the game) once you've learnt the game, I'd turn it into a 9.

Dawn

This is the first video of a series to help teach how to play Mansion of Madness

Ticket to Ride

Players: 2-5
Age: 8+
Playtime: 30-60 mins

Ticket to Ride was one of the first games I bought when my interest in board games was rekindled thanks to Geek and Sundry and their tabletop channel on youtube.

This is a great game to play to introduce people to board gaming if they are nervous about playing.  Especially if their own past experience is scrabble, monopoly and the like.

The rules are simple and easy to follow.  There is a lot of strategy in this game but also some luck as you're never quite sure what carriage cards are going to come up.  The aim is to create routes between two locations on the map, the longer the route the more points it is worth.  There is also an extra 10 points for those that create the longest route.

I always enjoy this game, especially when you try and ruin someone's route... I'm mean like that.  I've played it often enough that I can find the locations relatively quickly.  I enjoy the simplicity of the game along side the struggle of trying to get the cards for the route before the other players.  There are a lot of different Ticket to Ride games and a wonderful extension that can be used for any of the board maps Alvin and Dexter.  Well worth the investment.  This extension adds an extra difficulty/frustration level and allows you to mess with other players, which, if you're playing with the right people, is a lot fun.

Score: 9/10

Dawn