In Tainted Grail you take on the roles of 1 to 4 characters, these characters aren’t your typical heroes, they are the B-Team. You’re deeply flawed characters with an iffy backstory and something that is a negative for you. When the A-Team, those people from the farmhold of Caunacht who were more skilled and more important than you went missing, you were tasked to find them. It wouldn’t have been that big an issue, but the Wyrdness is starting to take back the land and the Menhir, statues that Arthur and his knights erected to drive back the Wyrdness, are going out. Can you find a way to save the lands of Avalon and keep the Wyrdness at bay, or will it fall? That’s the story of the game, the mechanics for most of the game aren’t that difficult. In it, you spend energy to explore locations move around the lands of Avalon and light the Menhir, but all of this is while you are trying to balance finding the resources you need to keep the Menhir going and fighting off monsters and convince hostile villages and farmholds that you means no harm. And when you fight or do a diplomatic encounter, the game changes. You are now in a tactical card playing phase where you are looking to change together cards to do damage, use abilities on those cards, and most importantly, leave yourself in position where you aren’t taking to much damage. It’s a giant puzzle to figure out as you chain moves together to take out monsters or string words and stories together to convince those doubting people.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is split up into 15 chapters and each chapter can go between half an hour and probably up to two or so hours, maybe even longer as I’m in Chapter 2 and I’ve been playing for an hour and fifteen minutes, but I’m also streaming it (Here on Youtube). I think, if I had hit a couple more ideal battles, I’d be in a much better position, but you can check that out. So there is some luck in how long it takes, do you explore in the right direction, do you not find too difficult encounters, things like that. And I think that there is a little bit of early scaling that might not be quite correctly paced, I’ll talk about that in a second when I talk about some issues. But it really is this massive branching story which is even more impressive. I believe even as early as Chapter 3, depending on what you picked in Chapter 2, the game can branch into different parts of narrative and how you choose to solve everything. So this 30+ hours of game play is replayable as you can pick different paths to take, which ism extremely impressive to me. If I were playing with more than a single character, that would make a difference as well for me. I am really digging that piece of the game.

So, let’s talk about my first negative for the game quickly, and I hinted at it before, I feel like the monsters level slightly too fast. I get that this is a grim dark setting and it’s supposed to be hard. In Chapter 1, you have the first tier of monsters, I’m not going to say level 1 monsters, because some of them are a lot harder than others, in level 2, I added in tier 2 monsters, and maybe because of how I went about the game, I wasn’t able to level up my character as much, but right now I’m running away from 90% of the encounters that I face just to get as little damage as possible. I think either having more tiers of monsters or adding in a partial grouping of tier 2 monsters and encounters, and then finishing adding them in chapter 3 and slowing down that progression a little bit would still keep the game hard, but I’d only be running from 67% of them instead of most of them. And some of that is my fault as well, I am the type of poker player where I want to see the flop at least with almost any hand, and I know that’s not a good strategy, so I often hang in combat for a round and then drop out when I should just know to drop out right away, but I want to see if I can draw that one card that will help me crack the puzzle and win the encounter. This is a minor negative.

My other negative and this one is slightly larger, is that when you die you have to restart the game. If you’re smart, I’m not, you have a nice save sheet that you can use between chapters to save the game and come back, but I’m not smart, and people who are playing multiple chapters at a time are going to have the same issue. I wish that it was an official rule that you have to save between every chapter so that when you die you can restart the chapter. This game is really tough, and if I’m in chapter 8, I don’t want to start again at Chapter 1, even though I’ll know how to rush through it. Or, better yet, I wish that the beginning of each chapter told you how to reset the world, so yes, you might have to reset your character or take a hit to your character, but to be able to have a starting option for each chapter so that you don’t have to replay would be nice, because it would mean that if you are playing through, you’d be able to quickly get into the game again if you die. It could also work if you don’t want to do Chapter 1 again and get to where it branches faster, you’d be able to do that, because Chapter 1 is a bit of a prologue. Now, I just came up with a solution for some of my issues, and I’ll have to go back and implement that for myself, save at the end of every chapter, but it would be nice to have something more official.

Next, I want to talk about some things that others have brought up as negatives. It’s the time that the Menhir are lit and the amount of food that you need. People have claimed, and I can see why, that the game forces you to farm for certain things, you need to farm food so that you can eat every night, not become exhausted, and heal and have your terror go down (eating is good). But you also want to be exploring and doing other things not just farming food. The same with the Menhir. You need some resources, probably magic, so that you are going to need to farm that. One of the characters can produce their own magic, so that’s good for them, but the one that I’m playing actually needs an extra magic because of his flaw, so I need to farm even more magic. But all of that said, neither of those things are negatives for me. First, my character can produce food if I really need it in a pinch, so while it does take up energy to do that so I can’t do as much in terms of exploring and traveling I always have that option. It also is fine, because we knew the game was going to be like that going into it, or if people paid attention to the kickstarter and rules and so many things, it was obvious that this game was going to be tough to survive. The grind is going to be part of it, and I feel like most of the grind isn’t even that grindy, because it is going to drop you into a combat which is such a fun puzzle to try and figure out that it doesn’t just feel like wasted time. Though, as you can see, I think that the encounter level does go a bit fast. Mainly, this piece of the game is very thematic, and the Menhir running down it adds to the stress of the game, and you can do things to play in more of a story mode, and I think there are interesting ways that you could “cheat” if you wanted it to be purely story mode, but that would lose some of the challenge and tension of the game.

But there are so many good things about the game, let’s start with the Exploration Journal. This thing is massive, and it has so much story in it. You feel like you’re always jumping into it, and there are so many options and statuses that come from it, that I don’t think it would ever be possible to get them all or read through all of it in a single game, and I love that. Plus, that then makes it really replayable. It also makes the world really immersive. All of the locations that you can go have a lot of history and depth built into them, and I’ve started running into side quests and things to explore that might create a more interesting story and more history that can be unlocked so that I can fully understand the world. And there are going to be two more expansions to the game, one before and one after the time frame of the base game, so I’m going to unlock the world history. I also can see, because of the amount of exploration how it would be fun to just be the keeper of the book, almost a game master, and lead other people through the journey so they aren’t getting spoiled to.

The encounter system, both combat and diplomatic, I really like as well. I’ve called it a puzzle and it really is. Cards connect on various keys and open up other various keys (I’m going to mainly give combat as the example), and you are trying to chain those together in the best way possible. The first card you play down is always free and doesn’t have to connect to anything, but ideally it does so that it’s not a wasted card, but it might be that you need to put it into play in order to combo something onto it later. Because some cards have a symbol that allows you to chain it together as a bonus move, and you can chain multiple of those together and hopefully in the first round take it out. It’s also a puzzle though because various levels of damage changes how the monsters responds to you. So if you’ve done 0-2 damage to them, they might hit you for one damage, but if you’ve done 6 and they need 7 damage they might run away. So, you won’t want to hit 7 damage, but it might be 6 damage on the monster means you get 3 wounds, so that isn’t ideal, so you’re trying to set-up a combo so that you can rush to the finish from 2 damage. I really enjoy the puzzle nature of it, and diplomacy works similar as well, but now you’re trying to move it up using different skills.

Finally the characters, that’s the last thing I want to talk about. I love how different they are. There are six skills and each character has a different set-up of those skills. That means, that Beor, for example, is great a combat at the start, but horrible at dealing with diplomatic encounters. Arev is a more balanced character. Beyond that, each character has their own unique upgrade cards for combat and diplomacy, now if you’ll see them, who knows, but that allows them to feel more thematically developed in terms of characters. I also like that each type of character, there are four archetypes that will be showing up throughout the base game and expansions, has their own combat and diplomacy for that archetype. Finally, each character has something unique that they can do, an action that is unique only to them. In Arev, that’s that he can always find some food, one food for two actions. But to balance that out they have a weakness as well. Arev’s is that he needs one more magic than required to light a Menhir. If a Menhir doesn’t have a requirement for magic, there’s not a requirement for a single magic because of Arev, that offers your own unique challenges for playing each character and adjusts how you can deal with certain encounters for combat and diplomacy or what options you might choose in exploration.

Overall, you can probably tell that I really like the game. Is it a perfect game, no, there is no such thing as a perfect game, my favorite game of all time, Gloomhaven, isn’t a perfect game. But Tainted Grail is an amazing game. I think that it might not work for someone people because it might be too dark in the story, but I think a lot of people are going to love it, and with it shooting up the lists on BGG, it is clearly being enjoyed by those who have it. The story part works so well, and the mechanics are actually quite simple for how large a game it is. Even if someone doesn’t like the story element of it, they can tune that out if other players love it and just hunt down combat and other encounters for their character. This is a really well done game that looks beautiful on the table.

Overall Grade: A+
Gamer Grade: A+
Casual Grade: B+

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I’m going to start with Tainted Grail which I’ve just started playing. I did an unboxing and some game play on the Malts and Meeples Youtube Channel, so I’ll have the videos in here at the bottom so you can watch them. But I’ve only done about 30-45 minutes of game play in the videos and I’ve done the learn to play scenario that comes in the box to teach you the mechanics so you don’t need to read the rule book fully in order get the game onto the table.

Tainted Grail is a massive story driven game where you are playing in the land of Avalon. This isn’t some grand Arthurian adventure, though, Avalon is a land between realms which King Arthur and his knights fought for and claimed inch by inch, and that was 500 years ago. They erected Menhir, statues that can drive back the Wyrdness that corrupts the land, but now the Menhir are starting to fail and the land of Avalon is being claimed again by the Wyrdness. So, you’re some adventurer who was tasked with going out and finding a way to save Avalon? Not quite. There were more heroic people than you out there and they went off first to make it to Kamelot, but they haven’t come back. You’re part of the b team, those who weren’t quite good enough to go the first time, and you’re just hoping to find some answer.

What drew me into this game originally was the setting. The grim fantasy nature of trying to survive this darker version of Arthurian Legend just seemed fascinating. It wasn’t the standard sword and sorcery (not just the game, but that genre of fantasy) fantasy setting where you were epic heroes, in this game, you’re just barely more than being some guy. So while you are going to be the main character of the story, you might not be considered heroic to those in the lands. Plus, the fact that this is so driven by the setting and the story in the setting is awesome. There is so much text, I’m not sure how many total different location cards there are, but there are a ton of them, and the exploration journal is massive in which you read story. Compared to some other campaign games that I’ve played, this one is much more focused on the story.

But let’s talk a little bit about how the game works. During the day, you have a certain number of action points that you can take that then reset every day. You can either move around, explore a location or do some sort of special action. The game has a fun mechanic where you can push yourself for more actions on a given day, but that tires you out so you can’t do as much the following day. It’s one of those mechanics that makes sense in the game thematically because it makes sense in the real world. If you push yourself too hard one day, you’re not going to be up for doing as much the next day. What I also like about the things you can do during the day is that they aren’t that difficult, you’re mainly going to be moving and exploring locations. The rules for those things are straight forward.

Let’s talk a little bit more about exploring. Exploring really drives the game as it helps you figure out where you need to find things and brings the story together. When you explore a location you get to delve into the massive book that contains all of the story, and the book is massive. And with exploring, you might be able to do several different things, or if you have certain statuses or are a certain character, it’ll unlock different things for you. For example, in my first play, had I been playing Maggot instead of Arev, I could have done something different at the second location I explored. Or when I took an exploration action in the first day, I ended up getting a status for it. The fact that the story will branch and change depending on the statuses that you have, and because of choices you make, you might get a different ending to the campaign, that is awesome, and a testament to the writing that Awaken Realms put into the game.

I think that the other thing I should talk about is the encounters. This, being such a story driven game, seems like it should have some more focus on dice rolling, kind of the normal ameritrash style mechanics. But, we don’t have those at all. Combat and Diplomatic encounters is really focused on an interesting card play mechanic. When you go into an encounter, you draw a hand of cards and you play them down chaining symbols together. These, depending on the move can give you more damage or could allow you some card draw or another affect like ignoring damage in an attack. It makes combat and diplomacy much more of a puzzle to solve, and there are a lot of times when you don’t need to solve the puzzle, you need to escape and taking an opportunity attack is going to be better than taking damage, especially if you’re low on food, because when you’re dead, you could restart to the last save point, or you could just need to restart the game. This is a mechanic that some people might not love, but I think it has a bit of a Gloomhaven feel, mainly for the fact that you’re using cards, but it’s really about creating this combat or diplomacy set-up where it can chain into what you need.

So I’m already able to talk about a lot of stuff, because the mechanics are well thought out and I have already experienced a number of them, but since it’s such a story driven game, I want to get through Chapter 1 before I really determine how well I like the game. Right now, through the limited play and tutorial, I have it rated as a 9.5-10 out of 10, and I think it’ll stay around there, but will the grim nature of the story eventually wear out it’s welcome, we’ll have to see. I believe that Awaken Realms is going to do some sort of retail release, because this game was a kickstarter and if you didn’t get in on that or the late pledge, you can’t get back in on it between waves, but if you like heavy story driven games where the story really matters, I’d say that Tainted Grail is going to be solid for you, like it is for me. The combat/diplomacy might be a bit trickier to get into, because it’s different than your normal ameritrash mechanics.

If you were part of the game and have played your kickstarter copy or gotten your kickstarter copy, what do you think of the game so far? If you weren’t part of the kickstarter, with reviews and the game getting talked about, what do you think about it? Do you wish you’d gotten it?

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It was a long holiday break, mainly because it’s also generally a Kickstarter deadtime so I didn’t do a Kickstarter show, but I’m back to streaming a game. This time it’s Tainted Grail by Awaken Realms. This is a massive and immersive story set in a dark Arthurian legend.

I’m playing as Arev, a resident of Cuanacht Farmhold. I used to be a mercenary, but no more. Now I’m just a simple farmer. When the Menhir in the town started to fade, the best from the town went out to find a way to save us, but they haven’t returned. Now, even though I’m not one of the best, I’m going out to explore in hopes of savings my town and all of Avalon.

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon is a story driven game where you explore various locations, meet people, and try and survive the wyrdness that is creeping across the lands by keeping Menhir lit. In the first chapter my goal, thus far, is to find out how to light Menhir. I’ve made it two days in, and thus far, I still don’t know.

You can join me again probably next week as I’m going to continue the story again. I plan on streaming every other Thursday around 7:30, but, because I’m really enjoying the game thus far, it might be more often than that.

And, of course, it’s Malts and Meeples, and while there were no Meeples showing up in the episode, I of course had a malt. That is, I had Dragon’s Milk White Stout from New Holland Brewing. This is a very enjoyable beer. It has a good flavor to it, but I do think that compared to regular Dragon’s Milk which is a very big beer, 12% or so, barrel aged beast of a beer, the White Stout, while barrel aged doesn’t quite hold up.

Bottoms up!

New video up on the Malts and Meeples Youtube/Twitch channel. It is a bit shorter game than some, but it’s also not game play, it’s just an unboxing of Tainted Grail.

Tainted Grail is a big story driven game from Awaken Realms who have done games like Nemesis and Lords of Hellas. In Tainted Grail, you play as not that heroic characters who are pulled into adventuring as the Menhir (statues that drive back the wyrdness) are starting to go out. Can you keep them lit in order to complete the quests? It’s a story game, but also a survival game as you are dealing with diplomatic and combat encounters. I don’t spoil any cards in the video, don’t worry, or the adventure journal which really drives the game.

The beer last night was from O’Dell Brewing Co. A big barrel aged beer, I really enjoyed Barreled Treasure Imperial Stout. It’s barrel aged as I said with cold brew coffee as well. I think it’s a beer that is better a bit warmer because you get more of the flavors. It’s also sitting at 11%, so a good beer for a cold winter night.

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Starting with the most popular

Roll and Write: This is a genre of board game where you are rolling dice and then filling in numbers, lines, areas, of a game board that is probably just your game board to try and get a higher score than other players. The original example of this game is Yahtzee. Yes, roll and write is that simple of a genre, but it’s having a huge moment now with the biggest game being a German game, Ganz Schong Clever. They’ve evolved past Yahtzee in their scoring, and while it’s a genre I haven’t gotten into, they tend to be a bit more clever in their game play versus Yahtzee which is just telling you the numbers.

Then moving to the classic

Euro Gaming: The next is also a genre of games, they can also often be called worker placement games, though that is a slightly separate genre. These games are the ones where the result of the game all comes down to math. You can figure out an optimal strategy and there isn’t going to be all that much that can be done to stop that strategy. They started to change that, as of late, with making the boards tighter so that you had to plan out things a bit more or taking it away from everyone having to do everything to score enough points to win.

Point Salad: I wanted to put this one next to Euro gaming as a lot of them can be point salads. What this means, is like a salad, you can have a ton of different things in there. So in a game, that means you are scoring points at the end of the game in six or seven different categories that make up your total score. Games like Five Tribes and Seven Wonders are two prime examples of those games. It allows you to customize your winning strategy based on another a things.

And now to one that’s more a favorite

Card Drafting: Card drafting can be a mechanic in a game or the basis of some games. The idea is that you have a hand of cards, you are selecting one card from that hand to play and then passing it on to the next player who is selecting a card from that hand either until all the cards have been played, or there is one left in the hand. This can be done several hands during a game, or it can be a lesser part of the game, maybe just at the start of the game. Two games that use it as the basis of the game are Sushi Go! Party and Seven Wonders. In those games, drafting is the whole game as you’re trying to make sets and score points based off of different criteria. A game like Blood Rage uses it at the beginning of each age to help you strategize and then you play with those cards, it’s similar in Near and Far where you draft cards at the start of the game.

Hate Drafting: So, clearly tied into the one above. Normally when you are drafting, you want to draft cards that are best for you. But in games like Sushi Go! Party and Seven Wonders, you will have an idea of what the other players want or need, so you might draft a card that doesn’t really help you, but it stops other players. Generally, this isn’t a great strategy for the person doing it, unless all the cards are equally as bad for them, but sometimes you do it to stop a large number of points just to keep yourself in the game.

The another genre that was popular and still is going strong

Deck Building: It’s a genre that has cooled off a little bit, probably more so because there are fewer games coming out in the genre that are new, and more expansions instead for older games. In these games, you have a base deck, or some resources to start buying cards, that builds up your hand and your deck. So by the end of each game, the players deck is personalized to them. The biggest game in this genre is Dominion. It has a pasted on theme of medieval times and is really about quickly drawing cards, getting money, and buying victory points. There have been a lot of games since Dominion got the genre to take off that have come out like Marvel Legendary, Xenoshyft, Hogwarts Battle, Clank!, and many more. This also can include games like Arkham Horror LCG and Magic the Gathering. They take it a slightly different way in that you are building your deck before the game is played, but the deck can still be customized to what you want.

Abstract Game: These tend to be the logic based and puzzle based games. A game like Quoridor or Blokus fall into the abstract game. It’s about thinking through and figuring out the puzzle for your given game situation. They also tend to have little theme on them, or if there is theme, it’s pasted on and there is disconnect between the theme of the game and the mechanics of the game. Dominion is a solid example of a game that could be an abstract game without any theme and it would still function just as well, but the theme makes it a more visually appealing game.

That takes us to one of the last overarching genres

Ameri-trash/thrash: It’s really Ameri-trash, but Ameri-thrash is more fun to say. These games are all about theme, whereas a lot of Euro games, their big genre counterpart, focus in on a lot of minute details and figuring out logically how to win, Ameri-trash have more luck involved. They also tend to be a lot more steeped in theme and have theme tying into the mechanics of the board game. Games like Gloomhaven or Near and Far are two prime examples. Ameri-trash games also have more randomness in their games. While Gloomhaven doesn’t have too much randomness, for Near and Far, you are rolling a die quite often to find out if you can complete a skill challenge or win a fight. You see the randomness more so in dungeon crawl sorts of games, such as Star Wars: Imperial Assault.

Gloomhaven takes us into another genre of game as well

Cooperative or Coop: These games are as they sound, you are all playing together on the same team and playing against the game to see if you can beat it or not. There’s no special mechanical piece that is tied into this, beyond that you are all on the game team. The game that caused this genre to take off was Pandemic which has come out with a ton of version and variations on the base game. Gloomhaven and Star Wars: Imperial Assault are also games that fit this genre, but Imperial Assault only does because of an app, before it fit into another genre.

One versus All: This is the other genre. Classic RPG’s fall into this as well as dungeon crawl board games. In these games one player is playing the bad guys, or the antagonists, and everyone else is playing cooperatively against them. In an RPG, that is going to be the game or the dungeon master and it’s a similar situation in dungeon crawl games.  So Star Wars: Imperial Assasult, can be played as a dungeon crawl where one person plays the imperial characters and the other players play the heroes against the bad guys. The app changes that so that no one has to miss out on the story. There are also other games that don’t fit into either the RPG or dungeon crawl genres, like Not Alone where one person controls a monster that is trying to track down all the red shirts from a crashed alien ship.

I probably should define this category next

Dungeon Crawl: I’ve mentioned it a few times, so you probably have some idea what this is, so I’ll talk about it fast. This is a game where you are going through a scenario or going up against bad guys moving through a game board, exploring new areas, and trying to complete some objective(s). Games like Gloomhaven, Descent, and Star Wars: Imperial Assault fall into this genre. You might be thinking that you don’t remember any dungeons or many in Star Wars, but that’s more of a genre given name now that a specific.

Back to more coop games for a second

Semi-Cooperative Games (Hidden Traitor): This is a genre that is closely related to cooperative games and probably wouldn’t be as strong if it wasn’t for cooperative games. In these games you are basically playing a cooperative game where all the players have the same objective. That is, all of them but one (or more depending on the game). Those players are trying to sabotage the mission for the players or have their own objective. However, they are trying to not be found out. Games like Dead of Winter, Shadows over Camelot, and Battlestar Galactica are the biggest in the genre that really needs to get more games.

Social Deduction: This is the category that seems to be stealing a lot of the hidden traitor games. In these games, you have players who are in secret roles and you are trying to figure out who the werewolves, fascists, cannibals, or whatever the games theme says the bad guys are. It is similar in some ways to a hidden traitor game but there is one huge difference. These games are built around trying to draw out that information and all the mechanics are around that deduction piece. So games like One Night Ultimate Werewolf, The Resistance (Avalon), Donner Dinner Party, and Secret Hitler are all examples of this, but the best one, in my opinion, is Deception: Murder in Hong Kong as there is more game to it than games like One Night Ultimate Werewolf or The Resistance.

That brings me to one final trio of definitions. There are so  many more things that I could write about, and I might do a part two, but this will be enough for now.

Light Weight: Probably an area that I could have described games sooner, but games are generally put into three different categories of weight, though the last one you never really hear the weight added to it. A light weight game is going to be a game with fewer rules and fewer options in the game. There can still be more strategy to the game, but it’s simple to sit down and play that game. weight in game can refer to strategy, complexity of the rules, and length of set-up/number of fiddly bits, but generally mainly the first two. Games like Splendor and Ticket to Ride are light weight games to me. While they are a bit more complex than the standard of Monopoly, they don’t offer that much strategy and complexity. Interestingly enough, a strategy abstract game like Quoridor also falls into this category even though it has a lot of strategy and thinking too it, because the rules and game play are very simple.

Medium Weight: Medium weight games are, shockingly, a step up from light weight games. They are going to offer more complexity in their interactions. You have to think through more of what you are going to do, and you can plan out multiple turns, but are more apt to have to adjust on the fly. They still aren’t getting into the area where they are too mathy or too much strategy where you are having to plan out a lot of turns in advance. Five Tribes is a great example of this where you have a number of decisions and options that you can do, and someone can take your move from you but also might not. Century Road: Golem Edition, is another game that is a bit on the lighter side of medium weight games, but builds up good strategy in the game and gives you quite a number of options.

Heavy: Heavy games are steeped in strategy and complexity of the game. A game like Gloomhaven falls into their category. There are a lot of rules to keep track of, there are a lot of little fiddly bits, there’s a lot of set-up, and there’s a lot of strategy. A lot of larger Euro games also fall into this category because you have to figure out what is going to be your best possible turn to get the most possible points from the game. I do want to point out that these games don’t always have to be the hardest games to play, once you know how to play t hem but they can often be more difficult to learn and have strategy that you need to know to be able to play the game well.

There are a lot of definitions, are there some terms that I’ve missed (or haven’t gotten to yet), that you are curious about?

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The other one is too many rules and or roles. While it’s fun to have one group of players doing one thing and another working on yet another thing, that can be challenging. Some of it can be a challenge just to play, but more so, there is a fair amount of time setting up the rules before the game. People lose track of what they are doing, rules are explained multiple times or a rule can even mean different things for different people. The point of playing a larger group game, most of the time, is to start off the game night with something simple and getting people into the game playing mindset. If a game is overly complex, it’s going to be harder to teach to that large of a group. To get that type of game to the table, start with a smaller group and add one or two people at a time.  Now, there are exceptions to this rule, which I’ll give an example of as a larger group that people can play.

To move away form pitfalls or things that could be difficult in larger group games, what are some categories or types of non-party games that people play with a larger group? There are times where party games are good, but what games can you branch out with?

The first category is actually just a game itself, but it’s been themed and reskinned so many times, I think it’s one that you can qualify now as it’s own category. That is Fluxx. Any theme you can imagine has been put on this, I have the Lovecraftian one, but there is environmental fluxx and there is space fluxx. Whatever theme works best in your group, you can probably find it in Fluxx. To explain how fluxx works, you are trying to match cards you’ve played to the objective, however, the rules of the game are in a constant state of flux as people play new rule cards or change the objective of the game to keep someone from winning or to get themselves closer to winning. It’s draw a card, play a card sort of game as the base though. It’s okay as game, but it can run long, so I’d lean towards playing this when I know I’m waiting on someone for a little bit.

The second category of games is social deduction games. Most people are familiar with the concept of mafia. It’s a game where some people are citizens or police and others are mafia. The mafia try and kill off the citizens and the police try and get the mafia. That’s the basis for a lot of these games. They are trying to figure out who is some character or role and keep them from winning. There are three games that I would most strongly recommend out of this category of game: Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, Secret Hitler, and Donner Dinner Party. Clearly they are all nice and happy things here.

There are other games like The Resistance, Avalon, or One Night Ultimate Werewolf, that are also social deduction games, but these games are missing one important aspect. These games miss an important aspect that the others have, which is the introduction of imperfect but useful information.Yes, there is very imperfect information in these games, and you can find out more information, but at the end of it, they all fall closer to the mafia basis of the games. This just means that they end up being a little bit simplistic at times.

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong introduces a component of the forensic scientist who is trying to help the investigators find out who committed the murder and who is the accomplice. Each player in front of them has four clues and four weapons. Then the standard thing is done, everyone closes their eyes, except for the game master, the forensic scientist, who asks the murder and accomplice to open their eyes and the murder to select a murder weapon and clue from in front of that player. Then everyone closes their eyes again and everyone opens their eyes. The forensic scientist then, without speaking, selects options from cards that they have to give clues to the investigators to help them narrow down who is the murder and what the weapon and clue were. The investigators eventually end up guessing, and if one of them gets the combo right, we catch the murder. But the murder and accomplice are trying to distract people but not too obviously.

Secret Hitler and Donner Dinner Party work on similar mechanics. The imperfect information combo. In Secret Hitler, the two people who are it, chancellor and president and that changes each round. Each player has a role, and the fascists are either trying to get Hitler to be chancellor or to complete so many objectives. These objectives,  however, are completed each round, but could be good for the players or could be bad for the players who aren’t fascists. But what works well with this game is that the president draws three bills and then has to pass two on to the chancellor who then selects a bill. So you have some information, but it’s possible to draw three fascist agendas, in which case, you’re stuck with what you pass. In a similar way, the Donner Dinner Party has you hunting for food. Each player, minus the current camp leader, gets to draw too food cards and pick one to play. Poison is bad as it poisons the whole food supply, squirrels are good, because you can feed two people with squirrels. But it’s possible that you can be a settler who just happened to draw two poison cards so you have to screw over the group. Add in to that the played food cards are shuffled up means that no one really knows who played what, but let the accusations fly.

Turns out that there is going to be a part three to this, because while I’ve gotten to some games here, there are still even more games to go. These have all fit into a certain category, minus Fluxx which is it’s own category, but what are some other games that can work well, that’s what I’ll come back with next time.

What is your favorite social deduction type of game?

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The biggest reason it was awesome, in my opinion, is because of the forensic scientist. First off, we had a good one running our game, but the ability to give clues and having to give clues, that is very interesting. How it works is that someone is a murderer and you have an accomplice and a witness. Each person has some clues and murder weapons in front of them and whomever is the murderer, during the closed eyes phase like all these games have, picks on of their clues and weapons, and that is what the forensic scientist has to go off of. The accomplice knows who the murder is and what they’ve picked, and the witness knows who the murderer is, but not the accomplice. Then once all that information has been disclosed, the investigation starts. This is done through clue cards that the forensic scientist has. These cards have stuff like: Where the murder was committed at, what did the victim look like, what time of day did the murder take place? And then a number of options for the forensic scientist to pick, and then each player has done guess per game as to what the clue and weapon are.

What I really liked with the forensic scientist is that not all of the information cards are useful. If someone died in a operating room because the murder picked surgery, what time of day it is, is pretty irrelevant. But, the forensic scientist can’t just skip over a card, they have a certain number of cards that they have to give. So as the investigators on this case, you have to try and figure out which clues really matter the most as well as thinking about what murder weapon and/or clue could go with the information that we’ve just gotten from the forensic scientist. That seems like it would make it really difficult, but the forensic scientist (who isn’t allowed to speak except for in game stuff so no commentating) has more of these information cards than they can have out at one time, this is determined by some fun looking bullets, so they have to play, eventually, all information cards. That means that they can replace some of the cards. If there was the time of day question for surgery, maybe they swap it out for another tile so that we aren’t focusing in on the time of day.

The other interesting thing about the forensic scientist is that whomever is running that part of the game, they do have to listen to what everyone is saying. Maybe the murder is trying to get people to look at another player, so they want to try and keep someone from guessing what that other player has. Maybe a clue that they thought would be really helpful has led the players down the wrong path. They get to still play the game, even though they aren’t guessing, by trying to direct what the investigators are talking about and possibly having to adjust on the fly if, for example, the players are onto the right murder weapon, but not for the reason that the forensic scientist would have thought.

This game plays quickly, it’s very interactive, and while you are going to eventually accuse someone of murder with a certain murder weapon and clue, everyone is involved in the game to some level. I’ve gotten to play as both the investigator and the witness, and both were a ton of fun. As the murderer or accomplice you are trying to steer people away from the murder, but as the witness you’re trying to steer people towards the murderer, but not in such a way that it’s obvious. It’s a really fun balance as compared to other games, like Avalon, that have a similar mechanic such as Merlin, this one seems to work much much better as you are able to hide your witness-ness in the conversation much easier.

Overall, for a social deduction game, I’d really recommend this game. I plays fast, it plays a large number, and I hope to play it again soon. The theme, while it is solving a grisly murder isn’t dark, and the murder weapon and clue cards aren’t dark. I think this is a good game for a party as well because it has a very interactive aspect to it, but isn’t just silly, and because it is so interactive, even if you aren’t talking at a point in time, you are still involved in the game.

Overall Grade: A

Casual Grade: A

Gamer Grade: A

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