The Game

Arkham Horror The Card Game is a living card game from Fantasy Flight Games. A living card game is like a collectible or trading card game where packs are released and you buy additional packs of cards. However, a living card game isn’t a blind buy like something along the lines of Magic: The Gathering. There is no risk as to what you get in the pack. It is always going to be the same, for some of the games it adds in new characters or villains, Marvel Champions, but for Arkham Horror: The Card Game, it adds in more story and they run through cycles of story.

I took my investigator, Wendy Adams, into the first scenario of the base box of Arkham Horror. You can see how it went, but I talk at the beginning how this is a deck construction game. I could have built my own deck, but that would have added time away from the game, so I didn’t want to do that. Instead, I jumped into the first scenario to see what I could get done.

For a full review on it, you can check out my TableTopTakes on it.

Over the next month, or so, I am going to play through the other two scenarios in the main box with less lead-up and explaining as I play the game. If people are enjoying it I will get some of the Mythos packs for the base game that continue the story from the base box.

The Beer

To continue on the theme of Surly Brewing, I had another one of their tart ales. This time it was the Key Lime Supreme. Not much more to add about it because I already had the mango and the grapefruit that they offer as well. A great slightly tart summer beer. And as it’s pushing the 70’s here in Minnesota, that is what I want to be drinking.

Thank You

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The Game

Deadly Doodles is a “Draw and draw” game, aka, a flip and write. In it you are going on seven expeditions into a dungeon, you are trying to find weapons, treasure, and maybe even a dragon. Along the way you’ll find monsters as well who will want to beat you up, but if you have the the right weapon you’ll be able to beat them. Each turn four cards (at least) our flipped over, and they generally form a pathways or parts of a pathway. Each player must add all four of those cards into a single continuous path, how far you delve in that day. Then four more cards are flipped and the process is repeated seven times. Players can either add to a path that they’ve already drawn or come in another entrance, but all the exploration for the day must be one continuous group. At the end of seven rounds you tally up the score, for any treasure you got, it’s worth 2 points each, plus an additional 2 per treasure if you got the dragon. For each weapon you got, you get one point and same for each entrance you didn’t use (or block off). You get four points if you went through the monster corresponding to a weapon but minus two if you went through a monster without it’s weapon. Plus you lose points for traps and cards you couldn’t use.

The Components

This is kind of a mixed bag, I like the dry erase boards a lot, and the markers, I think that both are good quality and I’ll talk more about those, but a negative first. The rules are very small, which is a solid thing, but it leaves some questions. Mainly, how you build the dungeon out, I inferred that you build in a single line each time, but it doesn’t explicitly say that. If that weren’t the case it’d be tough to get into a situation where you couldn’t use all of the cards. And just some of the layout of the rules feels a bit backwards where they explain stuff like traps before they really teach you how to play the game.

But the actual board you use is great, it has everything you’d want on there. It gives you a spot to keep track of how many treasures you’ve gone through or how many cards you haven’t used. But even better than that, it keeps track of your weapons and monsters. It pairs them up, so as you cross off a monster or a weapon you mark it in the scoring section and you can easily see if you have a pair or not. This makes in game adjustments really easy as you see what weapons you might need to get or what monsters you should go for.

Game Play

The game play is really simple and really fast, and I don’t mind that. I knocked out five games, including teaching it in an evening and that wasn’t even that much of the evening. For that reason I’ll be pulling it out fairly often, and it works well with solo.

The game play itself, though, has just barely enough going on it. You flip four cards and you fill stuff in, it’s easy for there to be variety in what is done, so in the two games played multiplayer we never had similar looking boards. And the game is fairly easy to optimize what you are doing. However, it is really just barely enough to do in the game. And the game feels like it should last a round or two longer. Playing two player, scores were between 10 and 15, which just doesn’t feel like that much. I don’t think scores need to be that high, but a little bit higher wouldn’t be bad.

I also wish that there was maybe one more thing to do, or even if fighting the monsters felt a little bit different than it does. The monsters and weapons all look the same, they just have a different letter on them, that would have been a simple art change that would have made the game feel a bit more thematic instead of here is a sword I slash the generic monsters. On the other hand, because it doesn’t have more going on, it makes it easy to teach and more accessible.

Final Thoughts

This is a simple game and for a lot of players who maybe like the bigger roll and write or flip and write games like Welcome To and Ganz Schon Clever, this might seem like a little bit too little. But I didn’t mind it because it was so easy to knock out a few games in the evening, and sometimes, after working a lot or just generally being tired, it’s nice to sit down and knock out a lighter game a few times to relax. That’s what Deadly Doodles really is, and besides a little issue with the rule sheet, I think people will like how this game works on the dry erase board.

Overall Grade: B
Casual Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: C

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Castle Panic is a classic tower defense style game where you and the other players team up as heroes who are sending out troops, firing with archers and trying to stop the goblin horde that is coming to knock down the walls of your castle and destroy it. The game plays simply where players on their turns play out cards matching colors and ranges to kill off the goblins. But some goblins take more than one hit so can you get them taken out before they start destroying everything. Every turn you are drawing cards, trading them, and hoping to take out a goblin or three. To make it a little bit more challenging there are things that you can do like rebuild castle walls and put up barricades to drive back the horde for at least a turn. And there are boss monsters who will do things like cause you to draw and place more monsters on a single turn or heal already injured monsters. Finally, when placing the monsters it’s a die roll, so if you are unlucky, you might have monsters overrun one of the colors.

This is a simple game that I think works well as an introduction to fantasy games for kids, and as a cooperative game that you can play with a lot of kids. There is a “kids” version, but that is targeting getting kids in that 3-6 age range. The main game they say that it’s for 10+, but that has more to do with the piece sizes than the game itself, I think younger kids would be able to play this and the Board Game Geek community agrees with me as they rate it a 6+ in terms of the age range. The card play is easy, you draw up cards, you can put mortar and brick together to rebuild a wall, you can trade cards, etc. all of this is done in a mainly cooperative way. You can play fully cooperative, but like Marvel Legendary, they suggest that you keep who you’ve killed to see who has done more in the end.

With that said, I do think the game is almost too simple to play with adults. Even in a casual gaming environment with a bunch of non-gamers, the game doesn’t have long term legs. The play doesn’t change up too much and the strategy of the game is fairly limited. You’re really just seeing what you draw in terms of cards and monsters, and where you roll to place out the monsters. There are some things, like discarding and drawing a card that you can push to hope to get a better outcome, but it really comes down to the draws and the rolls. I’ve played games where I’ve gotten the boss who makes you draw more monsters when the bag was almost empty so we couldn’t draw enough, and that makes it easier, or the boss who heals monsters when no monsters were injured, I’ve also had the flip happen as well. I’ve had the one who causes you to draw monsters draw into the tile that has you draw more monster and all of a sudden we’re being overrun by goblins.

With that all said, I don’t think it is a bad game for what it is. It isn’t your normal kids game, Candyland or Snakes and Ladders where you are at the whim of a die or a random card draw. There is decision making that has to go into the game as you are able to plan multiple turns ahead. You never know what you might draw that might change up that plan, but the monsters move in a predictable pattern, one forward every turn, so you can plan your turns out fairly well and trading cards matters more because you want to get the right cards to the right players at the right time with a limited number of trades that you can make. So I think, even with non-gamers who are adults, it gives you something to think about and do for a play or two, and more than that if you are playing with kids.

Overall, this is a game that i still have in my collection. Yes, it is a bit simple, but I know that it’s a game that I can pull out with most people and get the game up and running fast. There is also the bright colors and 3d towers and walls that look interesting to it has a good table presence and people are more interested in playing it. It isn’t a game that I play that often, but as my kid gets older, it’ll be one of those transitional games into a bigger games as it teaches cooperation and planning in gaming.

Overall Grade: C+
Gamer Grade: D
Casual Grade: B-

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In Not Alone one person plays as the planet and the monster on it where a space ship has crash landed, stranding it’s crew. The crew needs to explore the planet and survive until they can get off of it, but the monster doesn’t want that. On each turn, all plays can discuss where they want to go and will play cards face down for the location that they are going to go, they can split up however they want. However, all discussions need to be able to be heard by the person playing the monster. Then the monster will pick a location as to where they are going to go, blocking off and hurting the people who went to that location, but everyone else gets to take the actions of their locations. However, the monster, when they select has ways to manipulate where they are, where people are actually going, or to cause more places to be bad spots for the players to go. As the monsters get crew members, they progress on their track, while the players are trying out last and do a few things to speed up how fast their rescue ship is coming.

This game is a clever cat and mouse game where the players don’t want to accidentally all end up going to the same place and getting caught by the monster, but talking about it and planning can mean that the monster will better understand the strategy. So how much information do you talk around the table is an interesting piece to the game. Plus, cards being discarded and the monster being able to see what starting cards might be left for the crew, it means that sometimes it’s fairly obvious where someone is going to go. The best example of this is the beach as to why you want to discuss. At the beach, you can either light a beacon or use the lit beacon to help speed up the ship, but only one of those actions can be taken on a given turn. So if three crew members go to the beach, you’re wasting two peoples actions there.

Another piece of this game that I like is that the monster can get the crew, but when a crew member dies, that doesn’t mean the person is out of the game. Think of it as Star Trek with their seemingly unlimited number of red shirts. They are getting sent out of the crashed ship every time another crew member dies, so there is no player elimination in the game. However, dying is still bad, not surprisingly, because that means that the monster is getting closer to their goal which is based off of hurting crew members and killing crew members. So, if you aren’t careful, even though you won’t be out of the game, you can be speeding the monster on their way to victory.

Final piece that I want to talk about is the monster cards and ability cards. The game gives everyone a chance to feel unique. There is technology and things that can be scavenged from ship, so that means that as a crew member you’ll be able to be unique. But the monster definitely has more fun cards. There are a number of different things, where a monster can force people to discard cards, or maybe the monster can go to two locations or do something to make the planet block off a spot for players for a round. But the players might not know where that’s going to be, as the monster gets to place after everyone has picked their locations. The cards do interesting things, and you won’t ever go through all the monster cards in a single game, so even if you have played a lot before, the monster is going to feel different depending on the cards drawn, when they are drawn and the strategy of the person playing the monster.

This is a really enjoyable game for me. I like the cat and mouse nature from both sides of the game. I think I’ve played it six or seven times at this point, and about half of them I’ve been the monster, and generally, since I’ll be teaching it as well, once we’ve played once with myself as the monster, someone else will want to play again and try being the monster themselves. I also have the expansion for this, but I haven’t played that yet, but I’m excited to try it soon. When a one versus all game can make it fun to play both sides, I think that’s a good thing for the game, and because Not Alone is a pretty straight forward game as to how it works, after a play, people can figure out how to play the monster, and I think, if someone wanted to be the monster on their first play, it wouldn’t be hard to teach them that as well.

Now, if there were a downside for the game, and I do know people who don’t like it nearly as much as I do, it’s that the game is stressful, and that’s intentional for the game. As the crew, you are worried about the monster catching you and dying, and even though you come back, if the monster is on the same wavelength that you are, you can feel like your letting down the team. I think for some people that is going to turn them off from the game, and the fact that it is only a card game, so it might feel like it’s heavier than the components suggest, though, I would not call it a heavy game.

Finally, let’s quickly mention the theme. I think that the theme is a lot of fun. People know the concept of being stranded on a planet or an island, so there is something for them to grasp onto. If someone has seen Predator, they can get even more into the theme, because that’s a lot what the game feels like, someone has crashed on the Predator planet, because there isn’t much that the crew can do to the monster. Is it a massively thematic game, I think that it’s more thematic than not, and while you can definitely get into the strategy and count cards, the game works best when people are enjoying the theme.

Overall, I really do enjoy this game. I like how much it packs in, in terms of tension , for the small package that the game has. I like the them, those survival on an alien world movies and shows are fun for me. I also like that it’s a larger group game without it being a party game or social deduction game. The cat and mouse feel of the game definitely sets it a part and definitely makes it seem heavier than most games of that it’s size.

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

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The story is that the moon has been blown up and the crazy octopus like creature that caused it is threatening to blow up to the Earth in March. That means that he has time to teach a class of delinquent junior high kids because of a promise that he made. In turn, the government is using those kids to try and kill Korosensei, which is what they’ve named their teacher. The series follows their attempts to kill him, their attempts to improve their stock in the school, and mainly what they learn from his teaching and addressing issues that they have as students. The assassination aspect of the show quickly takes a back seat to the lessons learned.

Assassination Classroom, because of the lessons learned, is a very heartfelt anime. While it is more certainly goofy with an octopus teacher Korosensei and the assassination attempts, you quickly realize that the focus is on the students and the lessons that they learn through assassination attempts but also through the teaching and caring nature of Korosensei. There’s a ton of depth behind a lot of the episodes and the characters themselves. It builds well over time and it’s fun to see relationships grow with Kororsensei and the students and just the growth in the students themselves. The sub plots in the show are often very goofy, but there is something going on with The E Class (lowest lettered class for their grade) and the rest of the school that is often times compelling and unique with how it talks about education.

I honestly can’t say a ton more about it without giving away some of the story, but it goes in a way that you’d expect, especially through the first season. That isn’t a bad thing with this anime. There are parts of the basic story that are always going to go against standard tropes. It makes the story feel interesting, and the fact that an anime that sounds like it should be very violent and focused on that uses it as a backdrop is very nice. It’s also a fairly clean anime in terms of fan service and gore for that matter. It is also an anime that feels like it should have those things which helps subvert the expected tropes for it. The story has some violence to it and that’s always an aspect to it, however, it’s more funny, dramatic, and highly heartfelt. I think that’s some of the issue that other people who have watched it have had with it. They haven’t expected that from Assassination Classroom, and as I’ve said before, it goes against the expectations.

In the end, this an anime that I would highly recommend. As I watched more if it, the more I liked it. I thought there were a few rough sections in the second season, but everything that was rough about it came back and was properly landed as a good story element. Some of that is because some very absurd things happen, and some of it is because they tie in items that you don’t expect together. For me the one part that I didn’t love was the third act, though they did a better job than a lot of third acts that I’ve seen. Some of it was just that I hoped a few things would happen that didn’t happen. None of it was weak, it just felt like there was a little bit unneeded. I felt like a lot of it could easily be assumed from how things were left at the end of the previous episode and it would have carried more weight without the third act. It isn’t Harry Potter epilogue level of bad though (I can write about that and third acts later).

Have you seen this anime? What did you think of it?

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