this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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My absolute favorite is Betrayal at the House on the Hill.
It's just designed so well. The pre-haunt phase allows new players to learn the basic rules of the game by playing. Like, we were playing this, and a somewhat seasoned member of the boardgame crew was late and she missed the base rules. We just shoved her a character, she was confused how no one explained her stuff, but after 1-2 turns of other people, she understood 90% of the base rules without explanation. That's really impressive from a design standpoint.
And then, the game flips into the post-haunt phase, and some antagonist scenario happens. This is when things go nuts. One game, one player turned into Doctor Frankenstein, and Frankensteins Monster was placed on the board. And we as the normal players had to scramble to kill it. In another game, I turned into a giant snake god to kill everyone - but a bad cellar layout saved the players.
In other cases, there is a hidden, randomly chosen antagonist and things go nuts. People steal items from each other, because of good ideas and things go nuts.
I love this game. It starts out as a really approachable coop-game if you know action-point-based games. You bumble around in a haunted mansion, Bob usually almost dies because of bad luck (and we make fun of him), and then the haunt hits and it becomes everyone against Bob, except Bob is a horrible monster now.
No matter if you win or lose, you will have a funny story to tell how Bob is a jerk, or we were heroic.
wow, interesting concept, so it starts out as a coop game but later is a 1vsAll kinda deal?
Maybe. There is 120 different engame scenarios depending on the board state.
Most of them have the haunt-triggering player turn into an obvious monster - Frankensteins Monster, a Hydra, a Mummy. Then it's a fight.
Other scenarios mean that whomever has all the artifact pieces (scattered across the board) wins. So now it's a free for all and it turns into a very messy brawl.
Even other scenarios mean that one secretly chosen player wins, if they have a specific set of items. This one is especially gnarly, because this is the one that causes the words "Alright. I fire the shotgun at Jane as my first action." and everyone is like "Oh my god! wat!"
that sounds like a lot of fun! Is the game with a lot of reading about things that happen?
IMO, no.
Assuming one bloke knows the rules, the game flows fairly smoothly. In the pre-haunt phase, you:
Once the group knows these base rules, the pre-haunt game goes very quickly, because you mostly move 2-3 squares (depending on your move points), draw a room, place a room, draw a card, resolve the card and pass on. If the group knows the game, this goes very quickly.
Once the haunt triggers, you have a builtin bio-break. Both the survivors and the evil guy have a bunch of new rules to read and understand. For my main crew, this usually takes 5 - 10 minutes to read and discuss strategies, and we usually combine this with bio-breaks, drink refills, snacks and such.
Comparing this with games like Arkam Horror, Eldritch Horror, or even worse, actual P&P games like DND, It is very smoooth and low-rule-lawyers to play.
Thank you for the description, I will check it out for sure :)
I've played a lot of Betrayal. I play tested it at AvalonCon back while I was in high school.
It's very random, and has the potential for some really great games and some real duds. I know in the later editions there have been efforts made to tighten up the scenario balance, do maybe things are better. But From my experience, maybe 1 in 3 games has been 'good', 1 just meh, and the last a steamroller for one side. So many of the scenarios depend on thr size of the house, with too large or too small of a house making it unbalanced. Or specific items being useless or over powered. And many of the scenarios have pretty loose rules.
As long as you understand that, it's a fairly light game that can have a decently large group working together.
I've enjoyed my copy, but there was a stretch where it was OOP and going for big money. It wasn't worth that, but for a regular in-print price, it's fine.