I feel really burned by this game.

I took it off the shelf to play with my daughter as she wanted to play the evil. its been gathering dust on my shelf for some time. Its going back to gather more dust.

The game was just laughable due to the oversized bases the game designers put into the game. In the final encounter room we had 3 investigators 4 cultists and a shoggoth then the cultists changed into a cothonian.

In other rooms: 3 cultists in a study, a shoggoth in a secret passage. it all looked rather silly and ruined playing experience.

Who playtested this game? the bases are just too **** big! the answer is to forget the minis and use the stackable cardboard chits, but whats the point when its supposed to be a roleplaying mini boardgame affair?

I feel really frustrated by this (in a game hobby context, there are afterall bigger issues in life, but still... money changed hands, expectations were sadly not met)

Wow, you think the game is bad just because the bases for miniatures are too big to fit into drawn stairs/passages/etc ? You'd feel better if all miniatures were the same size of a little finger/ Where is the roleplaying you are talking about then ? When Massive, Slimy, Horrific Shoggoth... is the same size as fragile Jenny Barnes ? Cause if you are such a Role-player you should know that -

“ It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. ”
— H. P. Lovecraft, At The Mountains of Madness

I guess Jenny should stay away from junk food for a while in your case then. No lady likes to be called "vaster than any subway train".

Hi I suppose I asked for that didn't I?

It was just a frustrated rant on my behalf and I'm sure many gamers love it, I for one don't, although I don't totally hate it. I will play it and my daughter has it on her favourites list, but she is 13 and I am 41 (does age have a bearing? possibly, see below.)

The fact is I love the idea and premise of the game: I had very high expectations regarding it as a finished and polished roleplaying/boardgame experience. FFG themselves gave it massive hype and touted it in their awsome trailer and preview posts.

The bases issue is simply the last straw for me in a list of failures including: delays over figure quality (still not that great), delays over gameplay (still shoddy gameplay in places), warping boards, replacement cards before its even hit the shelves, scenarios that don't work due to errors (unless of course you have access to the internet for the corrections), silly game play (you can't shoot through a door way with a tommy gun but you can with a shot gun?) bases that are way way way too big.

But hey, you know, I can see past all that just like my 13 year old daughter does, but as I said I'm 41. As age creeps on you you get less tolerant towards this stuff. When you hand over your hard earned cash for a top notch product only to find out that well ok you'll have to either hand-write over your new cards and rulebook or buy the next expansion for replacements, (which as we know did have its own problems) and your boards are gonna warp and spin/slide about, but don't worry cos the oversized bases will hold every thing down, although you won't be able to quite see what space your guys are in or move too. or which doorway you can't shoot through!

as regard to rolplaying: I got a lot of history with roleplaying and cthulhu in particular so I know how to imagine, how to suspend disbelief, how to create a story and athmosphere, and thats not the issue here. what I'm talking about is frustrating game design that detracts from, or is counter productive to the gameplay.

3 or 4 cultists in a room obliterate the space they are on due to the black ugly bases and most probably have to be stacked half on top of each other. Fact. But wait when they make their special attack you have to grab one, look at it and then restack it again. Investigators invariably have to be in the same space as the monster to attack it - more chaos. Now, the humanoid monsters are no bigger than the investigators so your size comparrison is flawed, why should the cultists have such big bases? And if we are talking scale, then the cothonian would be much bigger.

It seems they hit on the idea of making the miniatures universal for both this game and Arkham Horror so they dreamed up these bases to hold the cardboard chits and the miniature together. Great Idea, doesn't mean it'll work in execution though. The minis must look 10 times worse on the Arkham Horror board where the spaces are too small even for multiple cardboard chits on their own. It's not unusual to have to make stacks of monsters in Arkham Horror. that makes the dual game purpose bases usless for the cost to make and for us to buy

The working solution for me now is simply to use the cardboard chits on the board and then spring a mini when the investigators interact with the monster or minion. However there so many alternatives that would have been more favouable, would have made more sense. Here's one just off the top of my head - a deck of the smaller sized cards would have been better to provide multiple monster stats of the same monster types, could of had a 100 cards all different. Cards drawn would be placed face down with a cardboard number marker on them (even one of the numbered bood splats would double) and numbers etched on the underside of the large figures and on the underside of a coin sized base for the cultists, witches, maniacs etc. Its not exactly rocket science now is it?

It feels like the same design process that gave us the combat cards in Dungeon Quest........ anyone?

ok I don't mean to upset folk here. Like my post said i just wanted to love this game so bad... sigh

Though our opinions differ on our appreciation for Mansions of Madness, I can empathize with your complaints. A recommendation I have for you is if you want a fun fantasy game to play with your 13 year old, try Wiz-War. It's a really fast, balanced, simple to understand, and a very wacky card/figurine game. You can get it for $40-50. The figurines have small bases too. Everyone I have played with thus far loves it and wants to play it again and again.

If you like, you can just use the cardboard chits for the monsters. I understand you bought the game and the figures incur a chunk of the cost. But if the size of the bases really bothers you that much, this may be the solution.

I just got this game two weeks ago and haven't had any such problems with the bases. I'm looking at potentially getting them painted by a friend of mine and then glued to the bases.

Puddingsnack said:

Seconded. I believe that would alleviate some of your troubles with the game.