Arkham Horror is a massive cooperative board game where you play investigators trying to stop cult members from bringing one of the old ones into the world. It is built around Lovecraftian lore and you go through the town closing portals, finding items, and defeating monsters that show up. As the game goes on, there start to become more and more things on the board and you have to balance trying to find items and things that you want/need to defeat these monsters and portals while staying alive and healing up your sanity and strength. Since everyone is working together, it is a game where everyone can work on strategy and come up with different ways to handle situations.

There are some downsides to this game, and a reason that I wouldn’t recommend this game for a casual gamer. The first reason is that this is a very long game. I think the one time that I played, it lasted just over four hours. If you aren’t really into the game, it is going to seem really long. Even as someone who enjoyed the game, it is very long and it isn’t a game that you can play all that often because of that. Which leads into issue number two. Since the game is long and you don’t play that often,  you now need to remember the rules between your rare plays of the game, and there are a number of rules. Once you get going the rules aren’t actually too bad, but until you’ve played it a few times, definitely couldn’t remember all the rules. If I were to play the game now, I would have to slog through the rules again, and for an already long game, that would just make it longer. Finally, the third big issue is that Arkham Horror is very strategy heavy. Sure there is luck involved in the die rolls, finding items, and what comes up in terms of portals, but this game is so much about strategy. It is a very tough game to win, so you really want to optimize the strategy of the game. This then can mean that some players are left out a some. Kristen is actually pretty good at strategy and with games like Pandemic, Castle Panic, and other cooperative games, and some of it was length of the game, it was even too much strategy only for her.

So, what does that mean for this game? Is this a game that you should avoid or one that you should try and play with your friends? It depends so much on the group of people that you would play it with. As I’m writing this, I’m thinking of some people who I could definitely play this game with and who would enjoy playing this game (and now I really want to play the game), but I also know a lot of the people who I play board games with wouldn’t be a great fit for playing this game. It is too long, it is too strategy heavy, and they wouldn’t care enough to learn all the rules for a game that they probably wouldn’t want to play again. So when you play this game, please play responsibly and play with serious gamers. This is a great game for a longer board game day with people who really want to play board games and that is what they are there for, and maybe let the social board game players play their own games off in their own table (since you’ll need a full table for Arkham Horror), but if you are looking to introduce people to board games AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

Overall Grade: B

Casual Grade: F

Gamer Grade: B+

Now, you might be looking at the overall grade and go, that doesn’t make sense as an average of the other two grades. The overall grade isn’t meant to be an average. It is meant to focus on what the game does, in this case be a gamer game, and look at that and go, can you add in the other one at all? So the overall grade is based more off of the gamer grade since that is what Arkham  Horror is meant to be, but use it accordingly.

Splendor is one of those wonderful games that falls in the sweet spot of having just enough strategy involved to keep it engaging, but not so much that it’s overwhelming. It’s for a small group of players (2-4); if you’re looking for something in-depth and challenging, this isn’t the game for you, but it’s a great one for a little friendly competition on a laid-back evening.

Players of Splendor play as Renaissance-era jewel merchants who are trying to purchase the most possible jewels, in order to gain the most recognition — and even attract some noble patrons. To set up the game, three rows of four cards are laid out. Each subsequent row features gems of higher value and more potential victory points (or prestige points, as they’re called in this game). During each turn, a player may collect gem chips (either three different ones or two of the same kind), spend chips to purchase a gem card, or reserve a card that they plan to save up for and purchase later.

The goal, of course, is to buy as many gem cards as possible — once bought, cards give you permanent purchasing power, meaning that you’ll need to collect fewer and fewer chips as you go in order to purchase more cards. Many cards also have prestige points, which are crucial to collect — the first player to reach 15 prestige points is the winner.

The strategy comes into play in each of these stages. For example, there are only so many chips to collect, so you’ll need to collect a good amount before others do — but on the other hand, cards give you permanent buying power, so sometimes it’s better to purchase a lot of low-value cards at first, which will enable you to purchase higher-value ones later. And then there’s the matter of prestige points; the cards that have them typically cost more, so you’ll need to purchase lower-level ones to be able to afford them, or choose cards to reserve for later — but take too long saving up, and other players might get to the 15-point goal faster than you do. Finally, there’s the noble patrons to consider — to get them to pay you a visit (and thereby receive prestige points from them), you’ll need to accumulate certain amounts and combinations of the different gems. But again, focus too much on them, and other players might use a quicker strategy to rack up prestige points. See what I mean? While it’s not a complex game, there’s still a lot to consider as you play, and it’s fast-paced enough that you have to decide on your strategy quickly, and may have to be prepared to switch gears partway through.

And beyond the enjoyment factor of the game, the sheer aesthetics of it are fantastic. The card illustrations are gorgeous, the setup of the game is visually appealing, and the jewel chips have a wonderful weight and sheen to them. This ain’t no Pretty, Pretty Princess — this is a game about jewels that not only manages to not be cheesy but is a success in beautiful, elegant game design.

While not necessarily a great choice for the hardcore gamer, Splendor is easy to pick up, fast to play, and just plain delightful.

Overall Grade: A+

Casual Grade: A

Gamer Grade: B

Smallworld is won by having the most money at the end of a given number of turns; each board specifies the number of turns. You get money by holding territories, but the board isn’t quite large enough for all the players, so conflict is sure to arise. So instead of a slow and steady march amassing troops through Europe, you take turns running your troops through your opponents’, getting your coins, and then having the same done back to you. Another thing that makes Smallworld better is that while you might start out the game playing Flying Halflings, once you’ve expended your troops, you can put them into decline. A race in decline still gets you money, but are easier for other players to take over, and then on your next turn, you pick a new race. So you could start the game a Flying Halflings, become Seafaring Giants, and end the game as Alchemist Wizards.

So I’ve started to touch on the other aspect that makes this game unique — the combinations of races and abilities. For example, with Flying Halflings, flying is the ability and Halfling is the race. These are split onto two different pieces of cardboard, so that means that the races and abilities vary from game to game. So one game it might be Flying Halflings, and the next week it might be Seafaring Halflings and Flying Sorcerers. This means that each time you play it, the game is going to be different. And after you’ve played it enough, there are expansions. So you can add different races and abilities like Leprechauns or Pixies. The ability to replay this game over and over again is high because of this.

Another cool feature of this game is the fact it comes with four different boards. Each of these boards is for the different numbers of players that you can have. The two-player board is smaller and has fewer territories, and the five-player board is twice as large, with a higher density of territories. This is another great feature, because it forces there to always be conflict. Doesn’t matter if you are playing two players or five players; you will start running into the other player(s) sooner rather than later.

So with all of these things, you can see how the game might be related to Risk, but instead of a marathon of hurt feelings, this game flies through in a limited number of turns with just enough strategy to keep you focused on the game, and it’s simple enough that most people will be able to pick it up quickly. And while a very enterprising player will kind of know who has the most money, as long as people don’t sort their money it’s anyone’s game. I would highly recommend it as something that new gamers would enjoy, that seasoned gamers can break out for a fun time, and that can bring those two groups together easily.

Overall Grade: A

Casual Grade: A

Gamer Grade: B+

If you’ve played Smallworld, what is your favorite combo of ability and race?

Betrayal is a semi-cooperative, narrative-style game, in which everyone plays one of several different creepy adventurers.

And when I say creepy, I mean fairly creepy. There are twelve different characters that can be played — at most, six at a time. Two are little children — no one should ever let a child into a creepy haunted house, and if there is a little kid in there, they did it (every single time), if horror movies have taught us anything. Then there is the professor or priest, (depending on which side of that character card you play), the jock, the sorority girl, and the mystic. Basically standard fare for a horror film.

The group plays as a team of adventurers exploring an old haunted house. You use your speed points to move and explore new rooms, where you could find items, cause creepy events to happen around you, or find omens of the upcoming betrayal by some member of the party. Every time you play, you can build up the house differently. There are three different levels — you can access the ground floor and the upstairs immediately, but you have to find a way into the basement. Ideally, that way is the stairs, but you could also fall down there and get stuck.

The omen mechanic is very interesting, and is what makes this game really strong. When someone enters a room containing an omen card for the first time, they must do what it says on the card (and will often get something out of it that is really good), but at the end, they must roll to try to avoid the haunt. The haunt is the point in the game at which one player could be revealed as the betrayer, and their character would then start trying to kill all the others.

To avoid the haunt after an omen card is drawn, the player must roll all eight dice that are included with the game. The dice each have two blank sides, two sides with one pip on them, and two sides with two pips on them. The goal is to have more pips showing than the number of omen cards that have come up, so at the beginning of the game, it is easy to keep the haunt from happening, but by the time you get to five or six omen cards, it starts to get more stressful, what with all the blank sides of the dice that could show up. If you roll fewer pips than there are omen cards, the haunt begins.

There is a haunt book included with the game that contains more than fifty different betrayal scenarios, and the haunt that is played for a particular game depends on which one item is found in the room the haunt happened in, and which omen was drawn that caused the haunt to happen. You then look at a table in the betrayal book, and it’ll tell you who is the betrayer, since none of the players (including the one who becomes the betrayer) know who it will be before the haunt occurs.

The book could give the name of a character as the betrayer, but if that character isn’t being played, it will give another condition that will determine the betrayer, like the player to the left of the one who caused the haunt to occur, or the player with the highest intelligence score on their character card. The player who has become the betrayer then leaves the room and reads their betrayal scenario, while the other players read about what they have to do to stop the betrayer.

And that’s what I’ll leave you with when it comes to this game. I’m not going to spoil any of the different betrayal scenarios that can happen. But I’ll talk a little bit more about the game itself — as betrayer games go, it is really solid. Since no one knows who the betrayer is going to be until the haunt occurs, everyone is equally suspicious while kind of wanting to work together at the same time. If the players are too spread out by the time the haunt happens, the betrayer might be able to easily complete their goal before another player can stop them, but if the players stay too close together, the betrayer’s scenario might allow them to just stack up monsters and kill everyone quickly. Also, if one person has too many items, it could be really bad if they become the betrayer — or, on the other hand, if they are killed off first by the betrayer. Who’s going to stop the betrayer then?

The game blends intensity, story, and two interesting game mechanics into a good game. But there are only fifty some scenarios — is that enough to make this game sufficiently re-playable? Well, I can’t say one way or the other completely. I’ve played the game four times so far, and have played one scenario twice, albeit with multiple years in between those times, so I didn’t remember all the details when I played it again. However, I do know that when a scenario you’ve played before comes up again, the haunt book tells you to just go on to the next one on the list and play that one. Because of this, I think that by the time you start repeating scenarios, it’ll be hard to differentiate them, and that along with all the different possible combinations of scenarios, items, rooms, and players that the game offers will still make it seem fresh.

This game is really one that most anyone can pick up quite quickly, as long as there’s also someone playing who already knows the rules. There are a number of rules, and once the haunt starts, the game can become more confusing, but the rule book is laid out nicely, so when you read about the haunt, or how to stop the betrayer, the new rules make good, clear sense.

Overall Grade: A

Gamer Grade: A

Casual Grade: B+

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