It's kind of odd really, to be several games in to a successful D&D campaign with people I first met in the 1st session and to mostly be posting about board games. But it's my current passion. Not just any people to play with (my local besties B and L), and not just any games. All the games I have posted about that I love are games with action, mystery, adventure, and whimsey.
When I first moved into my new town a few short years ago I looked into local board game meetups. But unfortunately, the gamenuts present had long since moved on from some of the games I loved, and on to others. Games that I didn't find especially inspiring. There was one game where you built different colors of coral. Yawn. Another popular one was Stone Age. I was excited to try it. Mammoths and hunting! But no, turned out it was all worker and resource management, something I find about as exciting as two flies breeding. I gave up on that scene fairly quickly. But I soon met B and L. They were looking to get into D&D and tapped me to run the games. The group went well for a few months, but when it folded for the usual reasons, I decided to try and get them into the board games i wanted to try. B and L already went to a local bar that had over 100 board game free to play, so they were no strangers to them.
At first, I got them into my old copy of Talisman, and they liked it enough to quickly buy one of the more recent versions. Soon I was buying games I wanted try with them, mostly seen on Will Wheaton's Tabletop show. King of Tokyo, Epic Spell Wars, Dead of Winter, etc. We played and continue to play the hell out of them. Some others as well. But the one that sat on the shelf since I know them went untouched. It was Eldritch Horror.
A relative of Arkham Horror. EH was a complicated game, with tons of cards, tokens, and a huge number of fiddley rules to unpack. I was fairly intimidated by it. When I first got it almost three years ago I broke it open and tried a few rounds to learn it, and man, I was baffled. Too much. So it remained stashed away.
But recently I was like "what the hell." I kept studying on it, and got some info locked into my brain, but the only way to learn it was to actually play it with people, and B and L were up for it. Honestly, just taking the half hour or so to set it up made you learn a lot. Many of the decks involved are identified by artwork, often very similar to different decks, which makes it harder to organize. So far we are maybe three sessions in with it. We devote our entire game day to it, but never seem to finish it. Usually, things look bad and rather than try to hang on with our characters for another hour or so, we pack it in and play some shorter games to end the evening. B and L are fairly competitive, but unless money is involved, I'm about the journey. I don't really care if I win or not. I'm a role player.
Not to say it isn't fun. It's awesome. It has a lot of role-playing elements that appeal to me. The interesting characters, the different story beats that can happen. It kind of plays like a more epic, international Call of Cthulhu campaign.
You basically choose of of several Old Ones, including Cthulhu, and build things around that deity. One card deck you actually have to work on to apply to that specific God, organizing it in particular layers. Then your characters travel around the world locations, doing actions (travelling, shopping, etc) and having encounters. As you play gates will appear (during the games turn; the "Mythos Phase"), and monsters as well. It's hilarious, but B and L have almost no Lovecraft experience, so I'm constantly explaining what things are. The Mi Go takes out your brain and fly it to Jupiter or whatever. Hounds of Tindalos come through angles to get at you. Etc. But playing last night a Colour out of Space showed up, and they got excited, having recently seen the Nick Cage movie of that name. We're playing with Shub Niggurath as the deity, and had to keep telling them to mispronounce it because it has an unfortunate similarity to a word we should not say out loud. I kept saying "no, say "Shub Nagrath." I'm serious, did Xenophobic HP Lovecraft purposefully use that unfortunate pronunciation?
The game play is fun and very deep, so even if you aren't a Lovecraft fan, if you are cool with learning a lot of awkward (yet strangely effective) rules, and are willing to put like 5 hours into a game (some will be a lot shorter just due to bad luck), you might like it. We love it (B and L specifically asked to play it yesterday), but a little goes a long way. So many games to play, so little (generally speaking) time.
