The Most Dangerous Game

We made a quick trip to see Amy's parents this weekend, and her sister's family was also in town for a visit. Matthew and Nathaniel are enjoying the opportunity to spend time with their cousin Daniel. We introduced Daniel to Betrayal at House on the Hill, and our first game was a brief adventure in which the characters started out attending an open house for an old mansion that was for sale. It turned out that Matthew's Shopkeeper Lady was a Russian spy and already owned the property, and was using the open house as a pretense for capturing subjects for her bizarre experiments. She quickly imprisoned the rest of us in a basement of horrors, where we had to battle Cold War-era zombies. Some lucky tile placement, however, allowed us to escape unscathed.

My brother-in-law Ben, Daniel's father, joined us for a much longer second game. This time, we had all received mysterious invitations to a gathering at the house, only to realize that my character, Sports Gal, had sent the invitations and was preparing to hunt the others for sport, a la "The Most Dangerous Game", all the while filming the carnage to create a TV show. As I had Sports Gal roam the halls with her trusty crossbow, the others fled to pursue their own secret objectives. As I later learned, they could win by rewriting the script of the show, but it required succeeding on a series of knowledge checks. Nathaniel's Brainy Kid and Ben's Doctor Guy set up shop in a semi-secure location to pen a new ending to the show, while Matthew's Shopkeeper Lady and Daniel's Dude Bro kept my character busy. Virtually all the heroes were grievously injured, but they managed to create a new ending and kill Sports Gal -- thereby securing a lucrative TV contract of their own!

Mirror Monsters and Ghost Sharks

Betrayal at House on the Hill is one of my all-time favorite board games. As you explore the mysterious house, you have to work with your fellow adventurers to overcome obstacles and acquire useful items -- but all the while knowing that someone in the group will eventually betray you. It's great that Bob found that shotgun, but do we really want him to have all the weapons...?

When Hasbro announced a third edition for the game, I placed my preorder immediately. This morning the game showed up on our doorstep, and the timing was perfect. Matthew and Amy are in Fresno this weekend for Junior Olympics (side note: Matthew is crushing it!), so Nathaniel and I had a perfect opportunity to dive into the game, learn all the new rules, and play the hell out of it.

One of the simplest but most effective additions is the characters' motivation for being in the house in the first place. In earlier editions, the characters have no reason for being there until the "haunt" is triggered and the game switches from cooperative to one-against-all as the traitor seeks to defeat his or her former allies. In this edition, players select a backstory (e.g., they're a team of paranormal investigators, they're searching for a friend who disappeared in the house, etc.), and that backstory determines the possible haunts. My only criticism thus far is that the haunts seem to trigger sooner than in the previous edition, but some might consider that a feature and not a defect.

Nathaniel and I played the game twice today, each time controlling two characters apiece. In the first game, my Sports Gal quickly got sucked into an alternate universe through a haunted mirror while evil mirror monsters chased the other characters around the house, nearly driving my Doctor Guy insane on their very first onslaught. Sports Gal was able to provide cryptic clues from her mirrorverse prison, allowing Nathaniel's Brainy Kid to bring her home and banish the monsters. For our second try, we kept the same characters. Sports Gal again triggered the haunt, this time dying instantly when a ghostly shark devoured her as a magical water-spouting idol threatened to flood the entire house. As the water cascaded down from the second story, the other characters searched for explosives and then rallied in the basement, where Nathaniel's Dude Bro stuffed our makeshift bomb into the shark's mouth and obliterated it. Two missions, two wins! Next time, though, I may opt to leave Sports Gal at home...

New Year, New Games!

We've had tons of fun over winter break trying out new games like Forbidden Sky and logging lots of time on the Xbox. One of the top experiences has been Betrayal at House on the Hill, which provides a memorable story with each and every game session. Betrayal has thematic elements that make it similar to Mansions of Madness, but it's far simpler and faster to set up and play. In our first game of Betrayal, Nathaniel played a plucky twelve-year-old boy who ended up alone in a house full of zombies. Unable to overcome them in physical combat, he had to rely on an eerie music box to lure the undead into rooms where he could trap them. After each play-through, I'm eager to try it again to see what new stories we'll discover -- that's the hallmark of a great game!

Merry Merry!

Hope you all have a great holiday season with your families! Here at our house, we'll have the most gaming-filled Christmas ever, as the boys are getting a long-overdue modern video game system (an Xbox One) along with a handful of games.

I'm still not a big-time video game fan, however, so I'm even more excited about some of the other gifts. They've got one of the Zombicide sequels coming, along with the highly acclaimed Betrayal at House on the Hill and an additional expansion box. Best of all, perhaps, is Forbidden Sky, the newest entry in the "Forbidden" series (following Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, which may be the two most frequently played board games in the Sutton household). The boys will also find their stockings stuffed with the new Space Marine Heroes line of individual randomized models for Warhammer 40k. Perhaps we'll paint them up as Blood Angels in honor of the upcoming 40k animated series, Angels of Death.

Christmas can't come soon enough!