Hey Fan of Fanatsy flight games,

I just wanted to share with you a website that is worth following for VIDEO reviews,

Check out http://www.boardtodeath.tv

Enjoy the video reviews of fantasy flight games!

-Luca-

ha ha ha needs a lot of cards, and thats bad, spells are bad...................!!! well we like it like that

Though to be fair people do complain about the spells being boring compared to the unique items.

I want that card "dispenser", lol!

One of their complaints is the need to do basic math? Seriously? Any game that involves dice requires basic math.

The Liberian (Daisy Walker?) loves spells plus there good to feed to Rat Things... yea guess there is allot of adding/ subtracting so I use my calculator 2+2= uh let me get my calculator. Neat idea though will have to check out the other videos.

Hello,

You're right about that, but sometimes, when you're rolling 13 dice and playing with younger people, you need to mention this in reviews.

We test the games by playing with people of all ages, and even with people who are more slow then others. Not all gamers are nerdy geeks that can add 13 dice in 3 seconds. All we said is that there is Basic math, which is true, which doesn't make us wrong for writing it.

Reviews are intended to let people know about the game, on all aspects.

-the Board to Death team-

Yes, BUT you listed it as a complaint about the game. Doing so will make some people think that the math required for the game detracts from it, which it does not. You do not have to roll and then add up the result of 13 dice, you have to roll 13 dice and check for successes. You take your fight, add you bonuses, subtract the monsters penalty and then roll a hand full of dice and count the number of dice that rolled a 5 or 6.

Something like this should be listed under the "Neutral Information" section and not the "What's Not" section. Actually for some people, concerning younger players, this could even go in the "What's Cool" section. My brother loves playing dice rolling games with my Nephew, who is 7, and because of it my nephew's math skills at his age are at the top of his class.

You are right, it was supposed to go into the Neutral, must have been a mistake with the data entry of the website. We will fix this, thanks for bringing it up.

With the help of forums like this and people like you, we can make justice to games and come up with a great collective review of games.

Thanks again for pointing this out.

-The Board to death team-

Two gripes with the review:

Minor gripe: I disagree about the spells being boring/corny. Over-complicated for new players, yes. Boring and out of context with the Mythos, hell no. That said, I can't remember offhand what spells are included with the base game...Love the spells in Dunwich in King in Yellow. As I say, minor disagreement.

MAJOR GRIPE: This is the only FULLY CO-OPERATIVE board game of come across... There may be others around but they seem hard to come by. The fact that there's no competition between players whatsoever has allowed at least 12 friends of mine to overcome their distrust of complicated boardgame, join in and enjoy. This is mentioned only in passing by the reviewers, whereas, in practice (read "my experience"), it's an extremely important draw to the game.

Shaaaaame!

Otherwise, fair play: the site's looking very nice indeed. And the review did give a beautiful breakdown of the game. Kudos.

Board to Death TV said:

Glad to help Only other review I've had time to watch is Chaos in the Old World, makes it very tempting to buy, but we have too many new games already!

Mylo said:

Well Pandemic is still pretty easy to come across, I see it in my game store every time I go in. And it's fully cooperative. There is also A Touch of Evil which I've seen often in game stores which can be played either competitively or fully cooperatively. I think you may just want to look harder. :-)

In general I liked your review as well. Of course the people on this board will probably rank this game 9.5/10 or higher, we like it enough to frequent the game's message boards, after all!

You do have some good points, it's space intensive, the dice are pathetic (first thing we did was get a bunch more 6-siders and toss them in the Arkham box, still think we should add more sometimes). Regarding Steve's spell criticism, I can see it both ways. I do think spells are thematic in a game like Arkham, but I also agree with Steve that the spells that are included in the base game are a tad boring and a little lackluster. As you were just reviewing the base game, your criticism is fair. However, with the many expansions that go to this game, Fantasy Flight really added a whole host of new spells with interesting abilities, and in general really cranked up the awesome as far as magic is concerned.

I found it odd that you both seemed to enjoy the final battle so much. Many people on these boards consider it a weak point of the game. Many of the Ancient Ones are too easy or too hard, especially depending on which expansions you have mixed in. Often times, I do not even fight the final combat, as it's usually easy to tell what the results are going to be before you even go into the battle.

awp832 said:

- you haven't played the game dozens of times, already

- you didn't plan / prepare for final battle

Since I got Kingsport, I'm looking forward to final battles again. Using the epic combat cards, it is definitely a new and quite difficult challenge. I'm especially fond of the AO plots, of course. They can add this extra bit of nasty surprises - until you know them all (which will hopefully take a long time!).

There was little mention of the Lovecraft subject matter or the replayability due to the amount of in game and additional content. I'm surprised that a game that touches on the occult would be criticised for containing spells. I agree with the comment on the dice but sorry, moaning about a container for the chits is a bit lame. Having said that, a nice velvet bag would've been welcome! I use a velvet bag of my own which holds all the chits together when the game is stored. A fun review!

i think a lot of it is to do with time maybe, how long does it take them to do a review of an easier game, this one for example, has more rules and a longer playability and break in period, maybe?

jhalen, I didn't mean that the final battle was too easy. Sometimes it is. But *more* often it's too hard. There is an entire host of AOs that my play group doesnt even fight if they awaken, we just say "okay, we lose". Yog, Zhar, Nyogtha, Cthuga, Quachil Uttas, Tsotthogua, and Chaugnar Faugn are all on the list. Depending on how the game has gone, several more AOs can easily be on the list as well, including Ghantathoa, Shudde Mell, Bokrug, and Rhan-Tegoth. So, of the 20 AOs that I own, half of them are too hard (note: shudde Mell can easily go either way, depending on monster surges, but if he wakes up and we only have like 2-3 rounds to fight, we just throw in the towel, so I think he's on the list).

Ithaqua, Yig, Hastur, and Nyarlathotep are the AOs generally complained about being too easy. That's under 1/4 of the 20 base/dunwich/innsmouth AOs, which seems to imply to *me* that people are seriously screwed in the head for getting all upset over a handful of AOs being on the easy side, while final combats that are near impossible are actually more common.

If you thought any of my suggestions were borderline beatable, you might also have noticed that the above was based on a no-kingsport stance. So lets see what happens if you throw Kingsport into the mix. I doubt anybody will seriously say that Kingsport adds any easily beatable AOs in final combat. And if no-one else, Atlach-Nacha gets added to the Impossibles list. Epic battle might 'fix' Yig, Nyarlathotep, Ithaqua and Hastur, but it's going to put all those borderline AOs securely into the 'way too hard camp'. This is why I am not impressed with epic battle, despite generally good reviews.

awp832 said:

Thank you. I was beginning to think no one else saw it like I do. We too often throw in the towel and if we don't, we generally only use Epic battle against the AO you list. That hasn't been a formal decision, just the way we've done it.

awp832 said:

As I had previously reported here, I had 5 seals for most of the game but I still found it impossible to win by seals or by closing gates. So, I used all of those nice trophies I had collected and hired all remaining allies (getting a total of 8).

It's definitely extremely difficult, but not at all impossible if you plan ahead.

Final combat against Cthulhu is often a lot more frustrating. In one game Cthulhu ended up with more doom markers than when I initiated combat :-(

jhaelen said:

Shouldn't be possible. Cthulhu's text: "After Cthulhu attacks 1 doom token is placed back on Cthulhu's doom track if it isn't already full. "

Dam said: