Fellow investigators,

A few friends are coming over for game night and wanted to try and add another game to our usual AH schedule... I love AH and like the idea of the co-op board games; however, I would be willing to branch out into something different.

So far I have identified to possible alternatives: Ravenloft (board game) and Descent (board game). I have not played either and wanted to know what people thought about these... Also are there any others that I should consider?

I am going to pick up the game tomorrow after work so any thoughts would be great!

Cheers all,

Mike

Arkham used to be my only game also, and I would play 2-3 times a week for the first couple of months. Than I started to look into other games, and when the bug hits you , there's no stopping it. My Arkham is now limited to 2-3 a month now, so it still gets a good amount of plays, so I don't feel too bad.

If you're looking into a deep game that could take 5 hours or more, than Descent is one to get. Especially if you are going to stick with it, than the Road to Legend expansion is a great thing, since everyone sticks with a character and develops them over time in a single campaign. Even if you just want the base game, you have a couple of deciding factors to consider. Do you have someone to be the Overlord and go against all the others, or better, would everyone be willing to be the Overlord and you can rotate at every session, giving everyone else a chance to be a good guy and working together? It is also a pretty complex game, but you play Arkham already so it shouldn't be a big deal.

Castle Ravenloft is a fun dungeon crawl if you don't have 5+ hours to commit. It should only take up 60-90 minutes of your time (we often pair it with a game or two of something else, usually DungeonQuest). There is a good variety of adventure scenarios and plenty more being made all the time on BGG, but when you compare this game to Descent, this game is quite simple. It is a complete co-op though, with monster cards taking care of the monster tactics. There is some strategy in choosing starting powers and stuff, but it is nowhere near the tactical exercise that Descent is. However, we still find it quite fun, and like I said, if time is a factor, then this is a great one.

I will also throw in Defenders of the Realm, made by Arkham Horror creator, Richard Launius. This isn't a dungeoncrawl like the other two, but it is a very strategical co-op. Everyone is working together to stop 4 generals and their minions from entering Monarch City in the middle of the countryside map. You use generic fantasy archetypes (Wizard, paladin, Ranger, etc.) to stop them, each character having their own special powers (as well as each general and minion type having their own stats and powers). I love this game although my win-loss is 3-9. It is a tough game and you need to work together well to stand a chance. Richard has already provided some materials on BGG that you can print out for variant play and the first expansion with new generals, minions, and other new rules comes out sometime this November/December. This game only takes 90-120 minutes to get through.

The last game you may want to check out is Betrayal at House on the Hill. I haven't played it personally (my copy should be on my doorstep as I type this) but it sounds like a fun "social experience" type game. You all work together at the start, exploring a house until someone triggers the "haunt". The haunt (of which there are 50 of them, all different from one another) determines which character is the traitor. Then the traitor reads his rules for that specific haunt on his objectives to win, and the heroes read from a separate set of rules with their objectives. So you know who the traitor and heroes are, but you don't know what each other's objectives are. I can't wait to try this one.

And that is all my expertise on co-op games. I'm sure you can find plenty of reviews on them all that can explain them much better than I did here, but hopefully they at leat informed you of what is available out there.

If you're searching for a co-op game with none being the "bad guy" all other play against, then you could go for "Shadows over Camelot". It's pretty a short game (about 90 minutes) but it's very amazing. Every player plays the role of a knight, defending the Round Table from the forces of Chaos. Every round the Chaos moves, and then a knight has to be challenged in some quest (recovering the Grail, or Excalibur, or defeting hordes of Saxons and Picts, and so on). It's not my favorite game, but if yuo're searching for something quick, this can be your game.

In case one of your mates accepts the role of the bad guy, then you can play "Fury of Dracula", which is a magnificent game of logic and strategy (with the only defect that during combats you have to roll some dice, so in case of bad luck, you can easily lose a game you strategically dominated). A great setting, and a card driven system very efficient and interesting. Otherwise you can play Doom, or Descent (which is a very long game, as DoomTurtle pointed out).

Anyway, just a suggestion. In case you can also consider a non co-op game, go for A Game of Thrones. It's magnificent. Everything is based on strategy / diplomacy, you do not have to roll a single die in the whole game, thus no luck-factor at all.

Descent is great, but to enjoy the game you need to spend some time with the rules and FAQs, as there are issues that are not addressed in the rulebook, and even those that are, will require extra clarification.Prepare to spend some time on the boards here. Also note that Descent is highly competitive in nature, and the two sides(heroes and the Overlord) are not equally balanced. To have a fun experience both sides should play to the best of their ability(granted, I suck with the heroes, but we still manage to have fun. My younger brother is frighteningly good with both sides-yea, it's strange indeed, ha. )

These are great suggestions!!!

Thanks a lot guys, I think I might get descent and possibly the Betryal at house hill. I do enjoy the co op games a lot, there are just so many great boardgames out there and I want to play them all.

I used to be a huge gamer but recently I have had a mini renassance towards board games for some reason. I am 26 and it seems as I get older the pull of these new games just isn't there as much. Don't get me wrong I really enjoy SC2 and I am very excited for Diablo 3 plus the amount of time I dedicated to World of Warcraft is almost criminal; however, board games just seem to bring a much needed flare these days.

Just my brief walk down memory lane and I will post what I end up getting and how my sessions go this weekend.

Cheers,

Mike

msmithamp said:

::Sigh:: I'd love to get Descent, but I don't really have a gaming group. Just a few scattered friends here and there who play games. So, solitaire gaming for me. Oh well... Someday perhaps.

Actually ended up getting Ravenloft and Betryal at house on the hill...

Ravenloft is great; however, like a lot people have said, there is limited explanation of the rules. Compared to AH rules which are carefully refined... some sarcasm there... Ravenloft seems lacking. Many times a complicated idea is raised during game play (it could just be that a everyone has played AH before and wants to plan things exactly) and the rules do not elebrate on these concepts. Not much strategy in terms of monster movement etc, but still very fun. Big con right now as far as I can tell is there are only 10 missions and the first mission is designed to be solo. The second mission is an introduction to the overall game mechanics for your group. Therefore 8 missions in total each about an hour. We only played the first two missions last night to get a feel for the game, but still wish there was more replay there. The minis included with the game are fantastic though. High quality casting that will last quite a while in my opinion.

I do think that some people have created custom scenarios online, but again for the price I wish there would have been more overall quests.

Betryal is excellent. That is all I have to say about it. The game has two phases pre haunt and post haunt. Pre haunt everyone is a team moving around a haunted house exploring rooms collecting weapons etc. However at the end of each turn; each player roles for the haunt. If conditions are met a seperate rulebook is opened and team is split up. One person is now possessed by the house and has a new objective to win the game, while the remaining humans must stop him from doing so. These objectives can range from killing the other team to collecting certain items or going to a certain room etc. They are all very different and interesting. The way the game twists into a PvP concept is excellent and I love the notion that at the beginning of the game your best friend could end up being your worst enemy. Overall it is a unique gaming experience with 50 seperate scenarios. Great game, even better if you can get 4-5 people to play. Last night we had 4 people and while it was a great game, if you had a fifth it would be excellent. No static board either the game builds itself as you explore the house. Lots of replay value for this one.

Took a look at descent also and just could not bring myself to get it. So many pieces and it being another 4-6 hour board game just didn't appeal to me. The fact that I have two full tackle boxes of AH pieces and the realization that I would have to get at least another two for descent made me think twice. That and the threats from the fiance that if we have "more games all over the house, I am leaving you" made me rethink my purchase. As you can tell she is not a gamer by any means.

Just my two cents for people looking to branch out a little bit from AH.

Mike

Haha, yea, Descent is huge but nowhere near as card-heavy as Arkham Horror. There are many tokens and miniatures though.

From your description Betrayal sounds brilliant.I've been itching to get it for a while Too bad it requires a minimum of three players- our gaming group consists of my brother and me- my friends are not interested in board games.

Although I must ask: is it possible to play Betrayal where one player controls two characters against the possessed player?

Thanks for the interesting post. I was very curious about Ravenloft (something related to the nostalgia of my youth, when Ravenloft *was* the RPG setting we all wanted to play with) but didn't know much about the game itself. I'm gonna think a lot about your words, I do not like games with a low replayability. Betrayal seems to be much more interesting, indeed

On the other hand, I hammered 20 plays of Ravenloft just in September alone, haven't even tried all of the scenarios yet (10 plays of the solo Adventure #1 for example, twice with each Hero, haven't tried the other solo one either). There are also two bonus adventure from WOTC online on top of the 13 in the box. And the first two are introductory ones, Adventure 3 and 8 in particular are my favourites. And it plays fast, solo in about 30 min, 2-player in 60 min tops.

And for those into that sorta thing, there are already plenty of homebrews available over on BGG. Personally I steer clear of all homebrews, but if you're not adverse to them, you won't be lacking in adventures.

msmithamp said:

Well, you should probably try to persuade one of your gamer friends to get Descent then ;'D

To msmithamp, I read quite a few complaints on BGG over Betrayal's tiles warping even after only a couple of days. Have you had issues with them? Not really looking to buy, just curious (currently doesn't look like any new games for the rest of the year for me).

@ Dam: thank you for your feedback on Ravenloft ::smiling::

zealot12 said:

It's possible, but it would involve some trickery. The thing about Betrayal is everyone begins on the same side. The Traitor player is revealed halfway through the game and who it is is determined largely by random chance. There's no way to predict who the traitor will be at the start of the game. That said, you could play as normal with multiple figures per player and then have the traitor hand over any non-traitor figures to the rest of the players before reading his traitor scenario. So it's doable, you have to be on your toes about it.

Steve-O said:

That's exactly what my brother and I do. We each start off with two characters, and once the Haunt begins, the Traitor hands over his second character to the Heroes. It works like a charm!

Sadly, the 2nd edition of Betrayal does indeed have cardboard warping problems. It's aggravating and annoying, but not a serious difficulty. And on the plus side, we've been quite favorably impressed with the three of the eight new 2nd Edition Haunts that we've had a chance to play so far.

So far our betryal tiles have not warped, but then again have only played three total games. This actually got my fiance interested because it doesn't contain the usual swords/sorcery role playing. She likes the idea that your teammates could end up being the people you play against.

The experience of revealing the "bad guy" and having everyone leave the room and crowd around the rule book to figure out what is going on is a very cool one. We had people talking in code and passing notes because the good guys don't know what the bad guy is trying to do to win the game and vice versa.

Ravenloft is great but to be fair have only played once, everyone keeps wanting to play betryal, in fact have another mid week session tonight because people want to play so bad.

Just a good change from AH however I had people confusing the rules of AH with this game because of the cards stating a required number of successes etc.

Julia said:

Or the old Minion Hunter for a similar theme. Might be hard to get though. :-)

Alex

What about games like Last Night on Earth or A Touch of Evil? Has anyone here played those? They sound pretty interesting from reviews I've read.

AToE = Sleepy Hollow the boardgame . You got your Town Elders who have Secrets (good or bad), places that are familiar (Windmill, Olde Woods). It's a quicker co-op AH, about 1 hour max, that also has a competitive mode (some mention the co-op rules as being add-ons). Roll and move type movement, but you can stick around the place where you started if you roll too low to reach another place (though at risk of the Villain spotting you and something nasty happening). You got your standard villains: Vampire, Werewolf, Scarecrow and Spectral Horseman. You win by defeating the Villain in final combat, lose if the Darkness track (very similar to doom track in AH) reaches the end. To me, final combat in AToE feels more acceptable, because the power level difference of the investigators and the Villains isn't as great as in AH. Wouldn't mind if it had other win options, but especially in competitive mode, you sometimes just have to attack the Villain now and hope for the best or another person, better equipped will get there first.

For those to whom it matters, AToE also comes with Hero miniatures in the box, unpainted.

I'm also really interested in Runewars; I read nothing but praise about it. Well, aside from complaints about the ridiculous price tag. And here in Israel gaming is an expensive hobby(much like everything else)-the game costs 575 NIS, that's more than 140 $. A shame. Still, I'm planning to get it in a few months perhaps.

zealot12 said:

I have Last Night on Earth. It is great fun to play in a "less serious that AH" manner - ie non-gamers won't have any trouble picking the game up. Basically it pits 4 human players vs one zombie player in a "Dawn of the dead" type game - the humans use shotguns, meat cleavers, baseball bats, chainsaws, etc against the Zombies. There are a number of different missions to play, such as Get out of town (find the car keys, find gasoline, meet back at the truck), Kill 'em all (kill a given number of zombies), Defend the mansion (players lose if x number of zombies storm the building at the centre of town), etc.

The other game I'd recommend (which was mentioned earlier) is Fury of Dracula. Again it's 4 humans vs one enemy player, this time played on a map of Europe as they hunt for Dracula. Sort of a continent-wide game of hide and seek. This one seems to be a bit hit-and-miss with people - some people (including myself) play the game once and absolutely love it, while others play it and are a bit "M'eh" about it - they don't dislike it, but aren't in love with it.