Tag: A Touch of Evil

April 2023 retrospective

Hey everybody,
April is already over, and so it’s time once more to take a look back at the month and see what has been going on in my little corner of the internet. At least it seems to have been a bit more exciting than the month of March, which was a bit of a washout thanks to all the germs that were doing the rounds – although I was tragically struck down with some kind of bug over Easter, which then seemed to turn into some kind of sinus infection. We’re hopefully out of the woods now, of course, but I think overall the month has been pretty good! 

My gaming had taken a little dip at one point, I think due to generally not feeling that great, but I’ve begun to get some classics to the table once again, including A Touch of Evil and Runebound!

Gaming!

I love playing this game. One of the best things about it, for me, is how it allows you to kinda role-play the game without the need for any kind of in-built timer forcing you to keep an eye on the clock. There are a couple of timing mechanisms, of course, but generally speaking you can just go around the board, playing the game, and enjoying the theme, without the need to worry about getting from x to y in a certain time, or whatever. I do understand, though, that some people tend not to like those sorts of meandering games, and along with the mystery card, The Hour is Late, the first web villain for the game, the Delion Dryad, brought a couple more ways to ensure the game is kept moving along at a pace.

I haven’t played with the Dryad for a very long time, indeed my boardgamegeek stats tell me it’s almost ten years since I played against her. While that isn’t perhaps a surprise, as the game in general went unplayed for so long until I got it back to the table last autumn, I am nevertheless eternally surprised at how long ago some of these games were last played.

The Dryad is an interesting villain, and you can read more about that here. I had expanded the game quite a bit, all told, also using stuff from Hero Pack One and the Allies supplement. The Allies is one of those web exclusive card packs where you have to pretty much pay a premium to get if you live outside of the US; I think when I last looked at this, I was paying around £40 to get a dozen cards and the rest was shipping. But A Touch of Evil is one of my all-time favourite games, so I didn’t really mind it at the time, of course! I think these days I am a bit more circumspect, of course – there are new card supplements that I want to get, but again, shelling out £40+ for a dozen cards, or whatever it is, isn’t really top of my priority list!

The game, though, was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed playing it a lot. The Scarlet Shadow hero (from Hero Pack One) has the very interesting effect of having to take a Cunning test if he ends up in town, or else he loses investigation (the currency of the game). It’s all very thematic, of course, with him being a highwayman, and it led to some very interesting game decisions because he couldn’t always cross the town safely.

In the final showdown, most of the elders turned out to be evil and I was lucky to get both Lord and Lady Hanbrook on my side. Sophie had actually joined the villain, though, and made things a bit more difficult, but I was able to prevail thanks to some lucky dice rolls and a couple of flammable torches, which I suppose I used to set the Dryad on fire. That’ll learn her…

Runebound

I have also had a game of Runebound this month, using a couple of the small card expansions as well. I have actually talked about this game on the blog, but I just want to reiterate how much fun it can be when you play a magic user and are able to tool them up for magical combat. It’s also wonderfully thematic to play a game called Runebound and use magical runes when you’re playing!

I have noticed that I have procrastinated a lot over playing bigger board games like these of late. Given the choice, I’d much prefer to go for one of the living card games (heh, I’d much prefer to go for Marvel Champions, let’s be honest). It’s a bit daft, as well, because I think there is an expectation that a big board game is going to take a long time to play, plus set-up and clear-up time, whereas my game with A Touch of Evil didn’t really take that long at all. I suppose there’s also the fact that I used to take ages playing these games, because I had the time and the inclination, whereas nowadays it’s a case of just trying to find the time to fit in a quick scamper around Terrinoth, or whatever!

I’ve talked about this before, I think, as well, but the other thing at play here seems to be a slight unwillingness to deviate from my 10×10 list, as I feel like I have to play something from that list of games back in January for it to “count”. It’s funny really, because this is precisely the situation I wanted to avoid, but I’ve ended up in a place where I only want to play a game so that I can get that closer to my goal, and not because I’m in the mood for playing a game, if that makes sense?

I think I need to have a word with myself! 

Lord of the Rings

At any rate, I’ve been able to tally up a few more games for the 10×10 challenge, and have in fact reached my second goal on that list, with Lord of the Rings LCG now seeing ten games from me this year. After recently having been playing the Ringmaker quests, a cycle that broke me back in the day, I have found myself a little more tentative with coming back to this game, however I have now made it, so will probably continue with my various cycle play-throughs but at a more relaxed pace. Overall, though, I’ve played 41 games since the start of the year – so I’m ahead of schedule if you think that we’re only a third of the way through the year, but I’ve played more than a third of the games on the plan!

Marvel Champions continues to see play as well, even though I had reached my goal of ten games for that back in February. Indeed, my current tally for the game is 28 plays this year, which I find quite funny. It’s such a good game though, and with it being quite new to me still, I’m finding that it’s difficult to grow tired of it just yet. Marvel Champions was the game I played to mark my blog’s ninth birthday the other week, using the Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch decks. There’s always so much to enjoy about this game, I am forever impressed with how it plays.

To help increase that excitement, we finally had the announcement this month of the next campaign box, NeXt Evolution, which will bring X-Force to the game, starting with Cable and Domino. We’ve also now had a preview for Psylocke, who is our second Psionic hero and her deck looks like it could be very exciting indeed, so I’m looking forward to getting my hands on all of that, from the late summer onwards! I think it’s very safe to say that it’s an exciting time for Marvel Champions, still!

Necromunda has seen a new Law & Misrule campaign begin, of course, with my Delaque vs James’ Venator Gang. Game one was a crushing blow for the House of Shadow, so we now need to figure out the next scenario while (hopefully!) my Delaque can survive it! Much like Marvel Champions, we’ve also had new stuff come out for Necromunda this month, principally the second part of the Succession Campaign, The Vaults of Temenos. I keep meaning to write a blog on the lore of this campaign, because it has been really quite amazing so far. I’ll have to try harder on that front! The book has got some very interesting narrative scenarios, anyway, which I might possibly purloin across for our campaign, even though we’re not doing anything in the Ash Wastes. We shall see!

Gaming!

Let’s move on to the hobby side of things now, then, and see how April has been going on that front. The short answer is, pretty damn well! I think I talked about this in a previous blog, but I’ve decided to give the White Dwarf “hobby bingo” a try, and see if it will work to help focus me on getting some projects done throughout the year. I know I have my 2023 resolutions, and we’ll get to them in a bit, but I would like to see if I could churn out some more units as the year goes on. I’ve adapted the White Dwarf grid, because a lot of the options I would just never do (how many lords of war do people generally paint in a year?!) so have a more personalised, achievable grid to work from.

In April, then, I have added three more squares to this grid, getting ten more Delaque fighters fully painted (mainly the Prospects and weird gribblies), then five Flesh Tearer assault marines as I embark upon a Space Marines army, and finally the three Canoptek Wraiths that I have had waiting for paint easily for the last five years.

I’m really pleased with the Delaque, as it has given me quite a lot of options ready to go, even if most of them aren’t in the starting gang. However, I did fall prey to the temptation of the weapons upgrade pack back in the day, so a lot of these fighters are built with improbably-expensive weapons, meaning I’m unlikely to be able to use them in the current campaign. That has actually required more building, so I have a couple more to paint up for the campaign soon! Luckily, I had more Delaque from the Hive War box, so have a lot of bodies to draw from to build my gangers.

The Space Marines force is a very slow-grow style of thing, and while my initial thoughts had been to get it ready for 10th edition in the summer, I’m now thinking of it more as a project for the year, so I don’t think it’s something that will be playable before Christmas. But you never know. Expect more to come on this topic in time!

Finally, the Wraiths are another of my Hobby Goals for 2023 that I can now check off! I’m actually doing really well insofar as those goals are concerned, getting the Crisis Suits and some Hellions finished up fairly quickly. I still have the Promethium Forge, five more Hellions, the Sisters’ Exorcist tank, and generally more Zone Mortalis scenery, but I think it’s still a solid start. Feels a bit like I’m at a proper checkpoint here, the more I’m thinking about it! Well, I guess we’re one-third through the year, so it makes sense to take some stock.

I’ve been tentatively starting to plan the approach to the Exorcist tank, after recently getting more in the mood for painting my Sisters again. While the infantry all have quite light grey armour, I’m thinking I might go for something a bit different for the vehicles, which might help to make them stand out while also tying-in with the rest of the force. Well, I’m sure having a massive pipe-organ missile-launcher on top of the vehicle will help it to stand out, of course! I’ve been thinking about it after building up three Paragon Warsuits, which I had bought as part of the Imperium magazine (saving quite a bit of money in the process!) I was thinking the warsuit would perhaps be of a different grey to the power armour that the Sisters themselves wear, so was considering a base of Dark Reaper rather than Mechanicus Standard Grey. I’m not sure yet, because it might be a really bad idea on the whole. I suppose we’ll see! The other thing, of course, would be go to very light for the tanks, but then I’ve not seen a nice looking pale grey tank, so It could be a terrible idea…

However, I want to try to finish the Promethium Forge before anything else on the list, because that is almost done, it’s just been floundering a bit for the last couple of months!

Old Games

I seem to be on a definite big game high at the minute, folks! Every so often, I really find myself in the mood for playing one of the big, table-covering games from my collection, and I think as we head towards proper winter, that is just intensifying. After it came back on the radar a few weeks ago, I’ve finally had a game of Runebound (my first since November 2014, as it happens!)

It was an absolute blast, and I was excitedly telling my mate Tony all about it as I was playing. It was like the carefree days of 2011, when I was playing this thing very regularly.

Playing just the base game used to feel like a lacklustre experience, but honestly, it’s been so long that it didn’t bother me in the slightest! I think there is just so much to enjoy in the game that it’s hard to have a bad time playing it. So much of it came flooding back to me, as well, that I was really quite surprised at how quickly I was actually able to play, rather than having to check every little move in the rule book.

I definitely want to return to Terrinoth, and soon, but I think I might do so with some of the small expansion packs involved. It surprised me, really, how big the card stacks were for each adventure colour, but I think it’ll be interesting to add some more variety in there, all the same. I have considered doing this in a sort of chronological sequence, as these packs came out in three “seasons”, almost, with a pair each of adventure decks, market decks, and adventure variants per season. But something as formal as that might be better left for the new year.

Runebound is definitely the sort of game that wouldn’t really see the light of day in the modern gaming age, it seems, but I’m very glad to have it!

At the weekend, I managed to make some time to play another favourite of mine, A Touch of Evil. What’s more, it was expanded with Something Wicked, which is my favourite board game expansion ever, I think – it’s very much more of the same, but it somehow manages to equal and surpass the core set, and I just love it!

I thought it was interesting that playing this one seemed to be really quite easy – almost accidentally, I was able to build up a powerhouse duo that killed off the Unspeakable Horror in a single showdown fight round, only sustaining a single wound in return. Interesting, because it almost felt like a let-down, really. I will freely admit that it’s possible I forgot a couple of rules. But all of the equipment that my heroes had was legal, etc, so I’m not sure how I managed to make a monk and a playwright into supernatural monster-slayers quite so easily!!

I want to play this game more, as well, but I also think I need to spend some time with the rulebook and check that I’m doing everything correctly. Just in case…

At any rate, while it’s lovely to be digging into the collection once more and playing these games, which I’ve not had the chance (or inclination) to look at for a number of years now, I think it’s really interesting that I’m playing these old games once again. The board game hobby seems to be plagued with the Cult of New like nothing else I know, and I constantly see online people who are (quite rightly) proud of a growing collection, who want to add new and different games to their roster etc, and who share shelfies of huge numbers of boxes. Impressive stuff, for sure, but when do you find the time to actually play them?!

There’s something really quite lovely, to me, about having a much smaller collection of games (I don’t count individual card packs as expansions, so by that reckoning my game collection is only around 20 distinct games) that I can actually get to play on a fairly regular rotation. True, some stuff like the Star Wars LCG might be going into storage until I can convince the kids of its greatness, but I like the fact that I am actually able to play these games now, and I can enjoy my collection accordingly!!

I’ve definitely been playing a much wider variety of games this year than in previous years, and I’m enjoying that aspect of things, as well. It’s great to be able to enjoy the collection – feeling like a game of Eldritch Horror, so just set up a game! It’s still difficult to balance around the kids, of course, and the game of A Touch of Evil at the weekend was cut a bit short by nap time ending prematurely, but even so!

My goal for 2023 is to increase my plays, anyway. I think it could be good to try to get at least ten games in each month, so that’ll be something to aim for! Of course, I don’t want to turn anything into a chore, but I’ve already exceeded that number for November, so it’s entirely do-able!!

A Touch of Evil

Hey everybody,
I’ve been really enjoying a return to some of the board games lately, almost like it’s some kind of return to my roots or something! I distinctly recall that it was around the autumn time that I really got into this sort of “serious” boardgame lark, starting with Carcassonne and moving swiftly into stuff like Runebound, Arkham Horror, and A Touch of Evil. There’s something that I really enjoy about playing a big, table-spanning board game in the evenings this time of year!

It’s that last that I’ve been playing again recently, after a six year hiatus. I suppose it’s only natural, with Halloween and all! A Touch of Evil is a game that I have talked about many times on the blog already (such as here and here) so I won’t be launching into a massive dissection of the way it plays again. The game is relatively simple, in fairness, and it kinda surprised me how straightforward the gameplay actually is for it. I think, now that I’m steeped in stuff like 40k, it’s a really refreshing change to have a game system where you just roll to move, automatically take actions, and combat is a straight-up slugfest. It really allows a game like this, which is steeped in theme, to shine.

Well before the Shadows of Brimstone kickstarter, Flying Frog used to be really good with their small stable of games, expanding them with regular boxes of great content. A Touch of Evil had two big boxes, two smaller boxes, and two small card packs to increase the content, as well as four web-exclusive villains to fight against. It was terrific, and the gameplay options that each of these brought to the overall experience were just immense.

One of my favourite gaming experiences is to string all three of the game boards together, and have a massive game where you have heroes travelling the length and breadth on an adventure. You can just settle down to a rainy afternoon of colonial horror, and it is often really quite cinematic! Of course, the game does go very long, and you risk diluting the overall experience by getting too much out at once. In that sense, then, having a game with just one of the expansions is usually preferable, and for me it would have to be Something Wicked, because that is one of my all-time favourite boardgame expansions. Dealing with a sinister cult while investigating such areas as the Monastery or the Inn, or maybe travelling to the mysterious island at the heart of Echo Lake… It’s really the stuff of board gaming legend.

Last year, the Tenth Anniversary edition of A Touch of Evil was released, but aside from one or two nice additions, it’s otherwise a blinged-out version of the base game and I think I am overall not impressed. I think the idea to professionally print the web villains was really nice, and the epic villain stuff is an interesting idea as well. Having miniatures for the four corner locations just seems a bit silly though, and plastic tokens don’t really appeal to me either. Plastic busts of the town elders? Hm. I think, if anything, I would have wanted plastic models for the ally tokens in the game. But I digress. The anniversary edition was accompanied by some small card packs for each of the big box expansions, and I’m really intrigued in getting hold of these at some point, maybe when they have a sale. Importing this stuff to the UK can be quite extortionate, and I think I’m looking at around £40 for two 15-card expansion packs. Not really a worthwhile investment at the minute!

The two card packs that I do have are both really quite nice additions, though I haven’t really used them a lot in-game. They sort of work together, in that The Madness is a bunch of cards that can really mess up your plans and cause problems, while The Allies is a nice bunch of useful stuff. Should probably get those to the table more often, now I think about it.

One of the great things about the whole product line is just how much extra stuff that is included in the game. The additional tokens are a bit of a staple for Flying Frog of course, and you’re almost encouraged to make more content for the game around them. I remember doing this a long time ago with some of the tokens from Something Wicked, getting a fairly convoluted mini-game inside the main game through use of the five journal pages tokens:

“More than she knew…”
Setup: Randomize the Journal Pages tokens and place them in five Random Locations. Try to get as much of a spread as possible across the board(s) – feel free to fluff the card draw for this.

1. When encountering a space with a Journal Pages token, you may pay 6 Investigation to make a Cunning 5+ test. If you roll more successes than failures, you can pick up the Pages.
2. Having either Selina or Delani as allies reduces the Investigation cost to 2. Having Lucy herself as an ally reduces the Investigation cost to 0. The Cunning 5+ test must still be passed, however.
3. If you find Lucy’s Diary in the Windmill, and succeed at the test on that card, any further tests to pick up remaining tokens are reduced to Cunning 4+ tests.
4. During a Showdown, if you have more Journal Pages than any other player, you get to roll 2 extra fight dice during the first round. If you also have the counter with X on the back, you get 3 extra fight dice. If you have all five counters, you go first in the first Showdown round.

Some general points on theme:
1. I don’t think this variant will work with the Lucy Hanbrook hero, unless you take it that she is running around the countryside trying to recover her lost Journal Pages? I don’t like the idea, but don’t let it stop you!
2. I feel that it only works with some Villains, not all. The Unspeakable Horror is my favourite to use this variant with.
3. Selina and Delani are taken to know more about Lucy than the other Heroes, so help with the tests by their presence alone; their attributes don’t count for this purpose. Their ability to reduce the Investigation cost also doesn’t stack – having one or both will do the same thing.

Now, I’m not a game developer, but coming up with rules like this back in the day was a lot of fun, and given that games of A Touch of Evil can go on almost as long as you like means that you usually have the time to go faffing around the countryside on a weird kind of scavenger hunt like this! Of course, there is a lot going on in the game anyway, but I don’t think that adding in random bits and pieces necessarily breaks the game.

It’s overall one of the most immersive games out there, and I do love the fact that I have it in my collection. I just can’t believe it’s been six years since I last played it!

#shelfie

Hey everybody,
I just wanted to share this with you all today. It’s a shelfie that I took of the current selection of games, after a bit of reorganisation at the weekend.

It’s by no means all the games I own, as there are plenty more up in the loft, or under the bed, but I have been trying to get a bit of a wider selection here so that they can be accessed and enjoyed! It’s now that time of year when I am really partial to a sit down with a big game, like Runebound or A Touch of Evil, so I’m looking forward to potentially getting more games with these in soon!

I’m one of the crazy folks who logs all my board game plays over on boardgamegeek, and looking at those stats, I’m quite horrified to see that it’s been almost 8 years since I played Runebound, and 6 years since I last played A Touch of Evil! These are two of my absolute favourites, so I definitely want to try and get a couple of games with each of them before the end of the year. I’ve had a lot of fun getting stuff like the new Arkham Horror to the table lately, and while I have definitely morphed into more of a card gamer than a board gamer over the years, I do still have a soft spot for these big games that take over the table!

I actually had a surprise game of Eldritch Horror the other day, just using the base game, and that was a lot of fun as well. So I’m fully intending to try to get more games to the table as time goes on, anyway. It’s great having game nights when the nights are drawing in. It’s only coincidental that I have a fair few horror-themed games and we’re approaching Halloween, as I’m not really into all of that myself, but I suppose it does help to bring those games to the table!

I’m really looking forward to Runebound though. It’s one of the classics of the genre, for me, and I really can’t believe it’s been so long since I had a game with it. I suppose my obsession with Games Workshop has overtaken me though, and I’ve moved away from a lot of the more regular gaming.

For now, though, I have about a dozen games that I can get to without foraging in boxes in the loft, or furtling under the bed, so I’m looking forward to more game nights as the autumn turns into winter!

The Holiday Devil!

Hey everybody!
It’s game day once again here at spalanz.com, and today marks an extra-special game day blog as it’s Christmas week! Whether you’re celebrating with presents and food, or if it’s just time off work – or even if it’s just another week – I hope you’re all having a grand old time! Personally, I find there’s nothing so magical as spending a couple of hours with some supernatural horror, so it’s time once again to take a look at the always-excellent A Touch of Evil, and the second “holiday villain”, as we fight against the demonic Krampus!

You may recall, of course, this was a web villain exclusive from Flying Frog Productions last Christmas – which got me very excited at the time, as I love the amount of elaborate work that often goes into these web villains. While I didn’t get to try him out last year, I have now had the pleasure, and I want to give some brief impressions today!

A Touch of Evil Krampus

First of all, I liked this villain a lot. While not as wonderful as the Volgovian Nutcracker, he is nevertheless an interesting villain to go up against. For those unfamiliar with the folklore, Krampus is a devil who runs around at Christmastime punishing bad children by whipping them with birch rods, like a reverse St Nicholas. Indeed, Krampus punishes these children on the night before St Nicholas’ Day (6 December). For the town of Shadowbrook, many of the original immigrants brought the Germanic tradition of Krampus with them, and regularly celebrate with parades and feasting. And this is where the fun begins!

At the start of the game, Reveler tokens are placed on the dangerous locations, and a pool of townsfolk tokens is created by all the town elders and allies, whose cards are removed from their respective decks. One townsfolk token is placed in each corner location, and the stage is set for the festivities to begin!

Over the course of the game, heroes can search the crowd of revelers for clues by rolling a d6; if you roll a 5 or 6, you’ve found the real Krampus and he attacks you! On the roll of 1-4, however, you can either collect investigation tokens equal to the number rolled, or gain one Egg Grog token, which prevents up to two wounds being done to you or an ally with you. The band of revelers then moves on to a random location, but if they ever enter a space with a townsfolk token, that townsfolk is taken by Krampus and placed in his sack!

While there are of course a multitude of other things going on in the game, which I’ll get to shortly, this is the core of the new villain and how he changes the gameplay. I must admit, it took me a while to “get” this, and for a number of turns I wasn’t interacting with the revelers, which meant they were just nothing on the board, and the game didn’t feel that exciting or different. Reveler tokens don’t stop movement – instead, you search the crowd as an elective action. However, the potential benefits of the Egg Grog tokens (or even the bonus investigation) should get you searching the crowd as often as you’d search a corner location!

A Touch of Evil Krampus

The other big new mechanic here is Naughty and Nice. At the start of your turn, you choose whether your hero is naughty or nice, taking the corresponding token. If you were nice, then nothing immediately happens, and the token is returned to the bank. If you were naughty, however, you keep the token, you gain one investigation for each naughty token you have, then you roll a d6; if you equal or less than the number of tokens you have, you take as many wounds as naughty tokens you have, then return them all to the bank. In addition, if you roll a 5 you get a free event, and if you roll a 6 you get a free town item. Having multiple Egg Grog tokens really helps if you’re planning to push your luck here!

Naughty and Nice also has an interaction with the Minion Chart, which only includes one such minion – the faun – and two Events. Perchta is a follower of Krampus in the folklore, and the result of a roll of 3-4 on the Minion chart. Rewarding the virtuous and good, while punishing the wicked by ripping our their intestines and replacing them with straw, this event gives each nice hero d6 investigation, while forcing d3 hits on each naughty hero. Another event on the chart, Birkenrute, similarly punishes naughty heroes by forcing the discard of d6 investigation, items or allies (the chart also says “wounds”, but I’m guessing it doesn’t mean heal yourself…) Both of these events are very thematic for the villain, and while events seem to so rarely come up in games, they were nevertheless fun when they did!

But what about Krampus’ sack?

Well, folklore describes how Krampus roams the neighbourhood abducting particularly bad children, carrying them back to his lair in a sack, whereupon he eats them. In the game, any townsfolk in Krampus’ sack will be eaten on the roll of 4+ whenever the shadow track moves into a new stage. Hilariously, however, during a fight with the villain, you can target the sack and potentially rescue anyone trapped inside if you score a successful hit. The townsfolk rescued in this way immediately join you, which is nice! You can also attempt to team up with townsfolk still on the board by paying 3 investigation and rolling a 4+ when you encounter them.

A Touch of Evil Krampus

I really enjoyed this villain. The extent to which allies matter is really amazing – and can be increased if you have The Allies supplement for the game, of course! I always like to try to get a couple of extra folks whenever I’m playing, so you feel like you really have a posse going on there, and this has never been easier with this addition. While the potential is obviously there to ignore the revelers and see very little happen with regard the sack, and always choose to be nice, effectively rendering the large part of the game pointless, I can’t actually imagine anyone would elect to play in this manner.

It’s no Volgovian Nutcracker, which remains one of my all-time favourite villains for the game, (and I’m looking forward to going up against him again in my now-traditional game on Christmas Eve), but Krampus is still a really cool villain for the game, and one that I feel is well-implemented and enjoyably different. Variety is always great, and having a huge cast of villains to go up against is awesome.

He’s also free, so what are you waiting for?!

A Touch of Evil – revisited

Hey everybody!
Tuesday is Game Day here at spalanz.com, and for today’s blog I’m taking a look at a game that has already come under the spotlight of awesome here: A Touch of Evil!

A Touch of Evil

I’ve been playing this game a lot recently with only the base game, something that I tend not to do with these kinds of games very much. And this is really what I thought I’d write about today. You can see all about the game in the earlier blog, where the mechanics are explained and whatnot. I’ve been really interesting in my own attitude to gaming lately, so I thought I’d explore this instead, and see where it goes. It might not end up being a very interesting blog, and I may not do many more like it, but let’s see, anyway!

A Touch of Evil

A Touch of Evil is a perfectly fine game in and of itself, and you can have a whole boat-load of fun without any expansions. However, I always find myself playing the game with at least one, and when I’ve played it without any in the past, I’ve always had something of a mediocre experience with it. I find this really interesting, and it got me thinking back to my very first games with it.

I was introduced to the game by an ex-girlfriend, and we played quite a lot of it (though she always preferred the same company’s Last Night on Earth). The fact that it can be played competitively or co-operatively, as well as the historical theme, has always greatly appealed to me. We bought it when it was new out, so obviously for a long time we could only play it with the base game, but we still did so, and we still enjoyed it. As expansions came out, we added them in, and always had a good time – but this is where the interesting thing (to me) comes in. Once Something Wicked had come out, we never went back to playing with just the base game. Even if we were using a base game villain, we’d still use the Echo Lake board.

A Touch of Evil

When I bought it for myself, I bought the entire line in one go, though still played the base game by itself at first, to get to grips with it once more. As I said, I’ve come back to just the base game a few times since, as well, but it has always felt a little lacklustre to do so.

But why?

The game didn’t fundamentally change when Something Wicked was released. Sure, there were more mechanics going on, but the components of the base game are still the same as they were when it was released, so why should something that posed a decent challenge and provided lots of fun suddenly stop doing so?

I suppose the obvious answer here is a change in my own skill level. As my familiarity with the base game increased, I could prepare and play accordingly. However, while this might be something of a knee-jerk response, I don’t feel that it really holds up to scrutiny. The fact that the game involves drawing from decks of cards and rolling dice means that any level of skill is mitigated by the high luck aspect. There are some location cards I’ve forgotten about because I haven’t encountered them all that regularly. There is too much random going on in this game to be able to properly assess the damage certain mystery cards can provide, meaning that almost any card is simultaneously both dreadful and an easy pass, depending on the game state right there and then.

Strategy in such games all-too-often boils down to stock up on items and then go after the villain, even if it means paying 12 investigation for a lair card. Sure, there can be micro-strategies happening, such as always sending your female investigators to fight the succubus, but in the main, there’s not a lot else that can be done.

However, if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you’re not only an amazing person, but you’ll know that I am a huge fan of thematic play, and I will rarely go into this game thinking “I’ll just stock up on stuff and then go in all-guns-blazing”. I like to explore the board, and even when I’m drawing seemingly random encounters, I like to see how I can weave these things into a narrative that is telling the story of the game. Immersing myself in the experience, I like the fact that I don’t get to fight the villain until the end (more often than not, at least!) as it lends an air of mystery to the game. I keep coming across packs of wolves, and what was that succubus all about at the covered bridge? Oh no, it’s a vampire!

A Touch of Evil

However, playing thematically will only take you so far, and I think the issue – for me, at least – is just that I’ve been spoilt by expansions. The base game for any game line will invariably give you a good, all-round experience of the game, but it won’t be particularly mind-boggling (at least, not anymore). It falls to the line of expansions to enrich the gameplay experience further, once you’ve been pulled in by the initial purchase and like the basic mechanics. A Touch of Evil is no different to a whole host of other games in this regard, and I could have really picked any other game in my collection to write about in this sense. In the case of Something Wicked, we have more locations with complex encounters, we have more villains with more complex mechanics, the whole game is taken up a step by the addition of this board. If you add in The Coast, you’re in for the night with that game setup! However, once you’ve experienced that sort of craziness, by paring it back to the base game once again, I for one feel like I’m having a fairly basic experience, which I think is the crux of this entire issue here.

Expansions aren’t always necessary, and can sometimes feel like a real train-wreck. Other times, expansions are necessary to the continued enjoyment of a game, but fail to deliver as they only provide a more-of-the-same feel. Yet other times, expansions add a whole new dimension to a game that makes them virtually inseparable to the main game. While I’ve always been a great lover of expansions, this has always stemmed from the fact that I like variety, and new ways to play a game, though I am opposed to expansions for the sake of it. A game like A Touch of Evil certainly falls into the category of needing more expansions, and those that we have for the game have served to enhance the experience immeasurably. You don’t need expansions to enjoy the game for what it is, but I feel you certainly need them to ensure you continue to enjoy the game.

What about you? Can you play just a base game and enjoy it forever, or are you more of an expansion fiend?

Here be Monsters!

Hey everybody!
Game day here at spalanz.com has a more relaxed tone today. I’m actually on holiday at the moment, but if this scheduling lark works, you’ll be enjoying this blog on Tuesday all the same! I thought I’d share a couple of reviews I wrote initially on boardgamegeek of two of the print-and-play villains for A Touch of Evil: the Shadow Witch and the Delion Dryad!

The Shadow Witch

I suppose this is more of a first thoughts than a review, as I’ve only played one game against this villain, but I just had to share!

First of all, the web exclusives from FFP get a really big thumbs up from me, as I love to see companies promote and support their games in this way. It’s also a nice way to get some really crazy mechanics into play without upsetting the more mainstream physical product, if that makes sense. That the Shadow Witch was ‘released’ for Hallowe’en is extremely apt, because this is one scary villain.

At first glance, the Witch appears to be quite the pushover – indeed, four combat and five wounds would seem like a bit of a pushover, and her ‘Basic Game’ stats only pump her up by 1 combat for each ‘remains in play’ card. While not exactly easy, it is still nonetheless quite straightforward to cancel such cards, so provided you can control things so that you aren’t forced into a Showdown, it should be fairly straightforward to win. Her Basic Game minion chart is also fairly, well, basic really.

But the Advanced Game is where this villain really shines, and I think if you want to play against her, you’ll want to be playing the Advanced Game every time.

First off, the Shadow Witch has the most interesting effect to date on any villain, that of gathering clues. This really helps to make you feel like you’re on a real investigation into the Witch’s past, and I am such a big fan of this idea I want to try to incorporate a similar thing into all my future games! Not only is there a thematic point to this, but there is a very real game reason for doing so as well.

See, the Shadow Witch has some insane methods of pumping herself up with combat dice. As well as having +1 for each Mystery card that ‘remains in play’, she has +1 against any hero with less than Spirit 4 (get thee to the Church!), +2 for every Little Secret revealed on a Town Elder in your Hunting Party, and an astonishing +6 just for being in the Showdown! You’ll definitely want to be on the trail of those clues, just to counteract this ability!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, she’s also very good at killing off the Town Elders. I think every villain has an ability (certainly, most of them) centred on the “Murder!” Mystery cards, bringing out extra minions and whatnot. The Shadow Witch forces a roll against the Town Elders’ Honour, and for every Elder’s Honour that matches the roll, they get a Transformation marker. If these markers equal their Spirit, they are killed, removed from the game, and a Shadow Spectre haunts the town in their stead. Wonderfully thematic! In the basic game, there are 7 of these Mystery cards, but with expansions that number can be as high as 11. That’s a good reason to want to get Sophie the Midwife on your side, if you can!

These Shadow Spectres also loom out of the miasma thanks to a horrible event, the Wrath of the Shadow Witch, which discards the top two cards of each location deck, any allies discarded by this being removed from the game and replaced with these Spectres. Wow. Again, the base game has five allies that can fall foul of this (in my game, three of them left us for good because of it), with as many as 11 more added in with all the expansions.

That would be bad enough, of course, but wait! These Spectres have an additional effect of their own! While a Shadow Spectre is on the board, you draw an extra Mystery card at the start of the Mystery phase! Adding to the chance you’ll get one of those cursed “Murder!” cards, or even something that will remain in play!

By far my favourite mechanic of the Shadow Witch, however, has got to be Solomon the Cat. Remember that marker from Something Wicked, that could represent the Familiar Cat that lurks on the Forbidden Island? Well, here he has a name and a neat little effect that kicks off at the start of each Mystery Phase. Vaguely reminiscent of The Horseman Rides Tonight, he zooms off around the board from Random Location to Random Location, but instead of attacking you, you have to pass a Cunning 5+ test or pay the consequences, rolling on Solomon’s little chart. It’s all basically bad stuff that can happen – indeed, the villain sheet tells us he wanders around “spreading misfortune wherever he goes”. However, if you happen to have the keyword Strange, and fail your Cunning test but then roll a 6, you can get extra Investigation, or 1 Clue. Very handy that, but unfortunately very difficult to pull off – with the exception of Heinrich Cartwright from the base game, every Strange Hero is rolling at least 3 dice for the Cunning test. Unless you roll like me (that is, badly), you might not make it work. Solomon is a fantastic mechanic, however, and I think I’d like to see more of that if this game continues to be expanded.

The Shadow Witch has got to be one of the most original and, I feel, complex villains we’ve seen in this game so far. The game I’ve just played against her was absolutely brutal, but all the more awesome for it!!!!!

The Delion Dryad

Having enjoyed myself so much reviewing the Shadow Witch last time, I thought I’d turn my attention to the first web exclusive villain this time, and regale you all with my thoughts on the Delion Dryad!

Aside from the fact that I really like the look of this magik plant, I really enjoy going up against her in the game, as everything is made so much more interesting due to her abilities! There are some really crazy things going on here as well, that often require a lot of keeping-track, but I find it just makes for a more immersive game.

With the basic rules, the Dryad is already fairly tricky to get round. 6 combat and four wounds doesn’t sound particularly difficult in light of the villains we’ve been seeing in The Coast particularly, but when combined with her Sorceress ability, which makes each hero need a combined Spirit and Cunning of 8 or more or else you only hit on a 6, things already look tough. You’ll need to go off exploring a lot, or else train at the Church and/or Magistrate’s Office before you can actually take her on. So an early-game Deadly Encounter might set you back further than you’d like.

The Basic Minion chart also provides a use for the Living Trees minion markets included in the base game, which is a really nice touch! What isn’t nice is that they are a lot more deadly than the Angry Trees that you might encounter in the Olde Woods deck, rolling an extra fight dice. The event on this chart increases the amount of secrets the Town Elders get, which can get out of hand pretty quickly if you’re unfortunate enough to roll this event. The Dryad also has wolf minions that, in the basic game, have a set number of wounds so you actually have to defeat them, much like the Timber Wolves you can encounter in the Olde Woods.

The Olde Woods is, as you might expect, quite the theme for the Dryad, which is explored further in the Advanced Abilities. Her Dark Spirit of the Woods ability is particularly atmospheric I thought, and as (bad) luck would have it, when I was eventually forced into a Showdown with her it was actually in the Woods. When there, both she and her minions get an extra fight dice, though on the plus side non-Showdown fights and defeated minions are worth an extra one investigation. However, during the game if you’re caught lingering there, you’re attacked on the roll of 1, 2 or 3. A really nice touch, I thought.

She has two really quite distressing abilities, one of which has already been mentioned here as perhaps being a bit too much. Shadow of the Season gives the Dryad +1 Wound Marker whenever the Shadow Track moves into a new stage, either forward or back. So if you’ve been stockpiling Reassuring Speeches to play once the track has moved down low enough to buy a lair card before you drive it back up, you might want to rethink that strategy. “I think not!” really helps, though, as you can perhaps get it down far enough and then just keep it there.

The second ability, Control of Nature, has her spawning Living Trees at Random Locations at the beginning of every Mystery phase. These trees are already no pushovers, but if you leave them too long, all six will be on the board and you’ll be forced instead to move the Shadow Track each Mystery Phase. (As an aside, I’m not exactly sure why the Villain Sheet states you should do this if the number runs out, as this is already in the rulebook as written).

Each Villain, of course, also has an advanced effect that kicks off at the Mystery card “Murder!”, and the Dryad’s is, in my opinion, perhaps the best of them all (as much as I enjoy the Nutcracker’s ability, I should add). The Delion Dryad, we are told, is ‘a powerful force of nature’ who uses spells and witchcraft ‘to enchant all those who would challenge her domination’. As such, her Enchantment effect causes any and all Town Elders with Cunning equal to or less than the roll of a d6 to gain an enchantment marker. At the start of the Showdown, all Town Elders in the Hunting Party plus one other chosen by the first player must make a Spirit 4+ test and, if they don’t roll as many successes as they have enchantment markers, they join the Villain as an Evil Elder. This is just genius, in my opinion! If you want Lord Hanbrook’s extra fight dice, or Lady Hanbrook’s ability to ignore the first hit, then you’re going to have to keep them well and truly on your side! (The Dryad has new keywords, however – Magik and Plant – so both the Reverend and the Magistrate don’t affect her with their abilities).

Luckily, there are ways to prevent these enchantment tokens from piling up, though they aren’t exactly easy. First, the aforementioned Reassuring Speech can be used to remove all tokens from one Elder – which is good, though there are of course only two copies in the event deck. Victor Danforth and the “I Say…” card could be of great use here, of course. The only other way is through the event Creeping Brambles on the advanced Minion Chart. If you pass an Honor 6+ test, for each 6+ rolled you can remove one enchantment token. The advanced Minion Chart, however, also changes the Nature’s Lure event to one that adds enchantment tokens, instead of Secrets, to the Town Elders.

Lastly, as you might perhaps expect, the Delion Dryad is Flammable, so highly susceptible to Fire items, as are her Living Trees minions. So while you have a Torch and you’re fighting her Trees, you get +2 Fight Dice in your favour. Against the Dryad herself, you can discard that Torch to get +4 fight dice until the end of the round, so when you’re up against this one you’ll want to head to the Blacksmith as soon as you have 4 Investigation under your belt!

For all this, however, I still found her a fairly routine Villain to beat. Some really nicely thematic abilities, and the wonderful Enchantment effects, but otherwise it wasn’t too hard a slog to fight her. With just the base set things are a bit different of course, though up against her with Adrianna, from Hero Pack 1 and who determines her fight dice first (to say nothing of forcing rerolls for 2 investigation each), things like the Living Trees lose a lot of their threat. But anyone equipped with a Hunting Rifle will have this edge.

I still really like her, I think the theme that comes out of this Villain is tremendous, but given all the expansions we’ve had since, I feel that some of the edge has been taken away from her.

Delion Dryad

These characters are awesome and, along with the Volgovian Nutcracker and Krampus, are a whole load of fun that can be added into the game for a new experience. Recommended!

The Devil Strikes!

Hey everyone!
Happy Boxing Day, to all those who partake of the season!

Following on from my earlier blog, Flying Frog have put up a new web villain for A Touch of Evil – Krampus, the Holiday Devil! From German folklore, Krampus is the demon that punishes naughty children at Christmas. How wonderful!

The first new content for this game in just over two years, I’m going to try this chap out shortly – have an awesome day!

Download it now:
Krampus, the Holiday Devil
Cover Page (incl FAQ)
Basic Minion Chart
Advanced Minion Chart
Counters

Get cracking!

Hey everyone!
The big day is almost here, so I want to share with you one of my all-time favourite Christmas games – it’s a small web expansion for that old favourite, A Touch of Evil: it’s the Volgovian Nutcracker!

Volgovian Nutcracker

Ah, Christmas! It’s a time of fun and frivolity, lively laughter, good spirits – and evil nutcrackers. Of course it is! Tchaikovsky couldn’t have been further from the truth. When Christmas comes to Shadowbrook, only bad stuff entails…

I thought I’d share some rambling musings on this, my favourite of the pdf villains for A Touch of Evil (and, incidentally, my second-favourite villain of the entire game series so far), so that you can curl up with a cup of chocolate in the twinkling light of the tree and be terrified beyond your wildest dreams. Because there are evil nutcrackers out there…

Yes, my favourite of the web exclusives. FFP deserves so much credit for doing this. When game companies are willing to give you free stuff, it’s always good, but when said company is willing to give you free stuff that is just as good – if not better – than the product that has a price tag, I feel a massive rush of affection for them that usually leads to me spending more money on them. While I appreciate that FFP are of course widening their base with more games and supporting those, not to mention the resources that must go into these things, I still have all of my extremities crossed that there will be more pdfs appearing in due course.

But for now, I’ll uncross some of them to continue with this blog…

Volgovian Nutcracker

The Volgovian Nutcracker is like nothing we’ve seen before, entirely unique, with his own unique minions and mechanics. The first thing that I noticed when glancing through his sheets is that he never actually attacks you, until you get to the Showdown. Whereas you would expect the D6 roll of a 6 on the minion chart to be a villain attack event, instead there is a really nice effect that I’ll describe shortly. While it’s still possible to encounter the Nutcracker himself through Deadly Encounters, you otherwise won’t see the little wooden guy until the end.

There is something quite whimsical about this villain that has such undercurrents of darkness that it strongly reminds me of the circus folks in Batman Returns. The villain himself is a nutcracker, after all, and his minions are toys! Where’s the harm?! Well, have you seen how sinister those Stuffed Bears look?! The Christmas cheer is there, but it has such a wonderfully dangerous edge that it is the perfect marrying of theme in this game. (I’ll come back to this point later.)

First off, then, let’s have a look at the Basic Game. With Toy Soldiers and Toy Cannons, the Nutcracker seeks to strike. These Toy Soldiers have the nasty ability of being able to repair themselves at the end of each fight round on the roll of 4+, which makes them just that extra bit annoying. The Toy Cannons also do double damage on rolls of 6, so even though they’re only rolling 2 fight dice, they have the potential to knock you out in one round. The event that replaces the usual Villain Attack is called “Holiday Ball”, where you roll a die and consult a chart. Rolls of 2-5 are benign, in fact they’re quite helpful; roll a 6 and you might be getting some investigation, but you’re also spawning some Toy Soldiers. Rolls of 1 move the Shadow Track. The Nutcracker himself, sporting a 5 combat rating and 6 wounds, has a wonderful ability called ‘Crushing Bite’ where his rolls of 6 force you to discard an item or ally, or take an additional hit. Those powerful jaws, capable of crushing through the hardest of shells, or the closest of bonds between hero and ally…

Volgovian Nutcracker

But as usual, it’s the Advanced Game that I’m more interested in.

To start with, the Advanced Game adds two more movable bits to the game experience – the aforementioned creepy Stuffed Bears, and the delightfully whimsical Christmas Caravan – more on the latter in a minute! First of all, all these toys become a lot more deadly. The Soldiers still heal, but they also inch closer to the nearest hero at the beginning of the Mystery phase. The Cannons – well, watch out if they’re in any named space! If they’re at a corner location, they bombard that location’s deck, discarding D6 cards from the pile until there’s nothing left. If they run it down, that location is considered to be destroyed and it is treated like an unstable location instead, much like the Sunken mechanic did in Something Wicked, released a few months before the pdf went up. If the Cannons are left in Town spaces, they discard a random Town Item and move the Shadow Track each Mystery Phase. Combined with The Hour is Late, that can be a killer!

Ever thought Stuffed Bears were cute and cuddly? Well, think again! These little horrors are as dangerous as the Vampire’s Wolves, or the Werewolf’s Feral Kin, hitting on 4, 5 or 6! The good thing is they can only take two wounds. The Holiday Ball event is now transformed into something that I really like, too. If rolled, the heroes with a Party Invitation Event card move immediately to the Manor and gain D6 investigation – very handy! You then roll a die for each living Town Elder, the roll compared to each of their three attributes, triggering a different effect for whichever it matches. So, if it equals the Elder’s Honor, that Elder gains a Resolve Token (from the Something Wicked expansion – if you aren’t using this (gasp!), you can use this effect to remove a Mystery card that remains in play on the roll of 5 or 6); if it equals their Spirit, they gain a Secret card, and if it matches their Cunning you can place 2 Investigation at The Manor.

The Christmas Caravan also flits around the board, dropping investigation tokens wherever it goes, which can be very handy. The Caravan also takes on the little chart that the Basic Game used for the Holiday Ball event, so that if a hero encounters the Caravan during the course of the game he will roll on this chart to see what happens. There are some minor changes – rolls of 1 draw a Mystery Card instead of moving the Shadow Track, and you’ll place 2 Toy Soldier minions on the roll of a 6, but in essence it’s the same. Heroes encountering the Caravan can also buy Town Items here.

Collecting investigation from the board is made so much more difficult now, however, due to the Exploding Gifts ability. Yes, any tokens dropped by the Caravan, or otherwise placed through card effects, aren’t just clues lying around to be discovered to aid the heroes, but exploding presents from the Soulless Nutcracker! Muwahahaha! Heroes must pass the Cunning 5+ test to pick these tokens up, or else they blow up in your face and are removed from the board, leaving you with D3 wounds. Ouch!

The Nutcracker has a simply excellent ability that works off the “Murder!” Mystery card, too. ‘Tis the Season…for Murder! makes you roll a die and, on the roll of 4+, you place a Stuffed Bear minion at the same location as the 3 investigation. If you roll a 1, the Town Elder with the lowest Cunning is killed. The Villain’s rules sheet just cracks me up on this point, though – the Elder is considered to be “the victim of a deadly present”! I just love it! Those sinister Stuffed Bears have a lot to answer for…

Another really great, atmospheric ability the Nutcracker has is Winter Snowfall. When rolling for Lingering, you roll 2 dice and take the lower result. The effect is considered to be a permanent Weather card, any other such cards are merely discarded, which forces the Shadow Track to move one more inexorable step towards darkness. So if you’ve got Cannons in the Town, and haven’t yet managed to shift The Hour is Late, you’re in real trouble! Especially so, because the Nutcracker has yet another ability that kicks off from the Shadow Track crossing through stages closer to darkness. Assault of Darkness will place a random minion at 2 Random Locations whenever the Track moves into a new stage closer to darkness.

The Nutcracker also has some new keywords that work off existing cards from the core set, as well as not being forgotten by further expansions. So Magistrate Kroft will be able to lend his +2 fight dice ability against this demonic Construct, as will Sara the Bright Witch. However, the devious Nutcracker will have +1 Combat against you unless your Cunning is 4 or higher, so get ye to the Magistrate’s Office!

Volgovian Nutcracker

I just love this guy! he is definitely not the sort of Nutcracker that would transport you to a magical kingdom of sweets and sugarplum fairies, but instead will crush you betwixt his evil jaws and transport you to hell! The whimsy of fighting against toys like some demented child’s nightmare aside, I think the whole package is highly atmospheric and, through all of these little rules twists, creates an almost-entirely new game, moreso perhaps than any other villain. I also feel that, more than the other two web villains, his abilities feed off the Mystery card deck really very neatly, particularly with moving the Shadow Track. In a very unlucky game, you may only have as many as four rounds before you lose!

I cannot gush enough at just how much work must have gone into this creation. The other two web villains have always re-used previously-released content in their own way, but the Nutcracker has his own unique minions, to say nothing of the Christmas Caravan that is roaming the town dropping off sinister gifts. However, this does pose its own problem. If, like me, you don’t have access to the kind of thick cardstock that the regular FFP stuff is printed on, the Nutcracker experience does become a little fiddly, as minion counters are slid with care across Shadowbrook because of the card available. There is also the issue of how the minions are printed, the intention being that the six Cannons and the six Bears have Soldiers on the reverse. It isn’t exactly difficult to arrange the game so that, when you place a Cannon or a Bear, you remove a Soldier from play until that minion is defeated, but it can become a little bit fiddly. I’m not so craftsy that I can overcome this with ease (heck, I can’t even operate a laminator consistently!) However, these are less than minor quibbles – I’m just thrilled to have more content for the game that I love so much!

The Christmas Caravan is also a really great addition. All its abilities aside, I really like the fact that it doesn’t automatically move every turn, but only on the roll of 4+, so if you want to encounter it but find yourself on the other side of the board, you have a chance at least of getting there. It does tend to be tweaked when I play, though, so that you can’t buy Town Items there. I feel that, had this villain been released as part of a more mainstream expansion (Sinister Celebrations, perhaps, where we see a daemonic Thanksgiving Turkey, or somesuch?) the Christmas Caravan should have had its own deck of cards that you could buy from when you encounter it – candy canes that allow you to discard for +1 fight dice, as you jab them into the eyes of the Stuffed Bears, perhaps? Wrapping paper that you can discard to automatically defeat a Toy enemy, as you wrap it up. Or a massive walnut, which allows you to go first in the Showdown because you jam the jaws of the Nutcracker? Well, maybe that would be a step too whimsy. Anyway, I’m fine with encountering the Caravan and rolling on its little chart before it trots along to its next location, leaving those exploding gifts in its wake. I just feel that it’s a little bit weird that you can buy these items in town as well as out on the Crossroads. The town is the haven of the game, where you can go for good stuff and stuff that can help you – if the Caravan really has brought ‘a host of dark secrets and despair’, it’s enough for me that it drops investigation in its wake.

I said before that he was my second-favourite villain to play against, and the only thing keeping him from the top spot is the fact that I find him so Christmas-themed that it seems almost perverse to play against him at any other time of year. If you haven’t tried this villain yet, what the devil are you waiting for?!

Download it now!
Villain sheet
Minion Chart – Basic Game
Minion Chart – Advanced Game
Minion Counters

I originally wrote this article on boardgamegeek

A little touch of evil…

Hey everybody!
Thought I’d try something a little different today. At the weekend, I had an epic game of A Touch of Evil, using the bulk of the expansions (all except the Madness supplement, and The Coast). Fantastic times! So let’s take a look…

A Touch of Evil

I took Abigail Stern and Eliza the Witch Hunter on a trek to root out the taint that has been infesting Shadowbrook… Things didn’t really start well, with Eliza seemingly constantly going up against enemies she was ill-equipped to deal with, while the rumours of foul deeds around Echo Lake attracted the occult-specialist Abigail…

A Touch of Evil

Eliza followed, the two determined to investigate the talk of cultists performing dread deeds in the dead of night…

A Touch of Evil

The South Dock turned out to be a breeding ground for these depraved rites, with cultists – and other evil creatures – blossoming on the docks like rancid pustules on a corpse. However, the clues began to point in the direction of a greater evil – an unspeakable horror – behind these disturbances, and Abigail and Eliza found themselves at the last place they ever expected to be when they confronted it:

A Touch of Evil

Eliza had sought out several useful artifacts that assisted in the fight, strengthening her conviction to go up against the abomination from the void.

A Touch of Evil

However, most impressive was the way Abigail had managed to learn so much…

A Touch of Evil

When the time came, Abigail was more than prepared to face the horror – in one herculean effort, she managed to send the abomination back into the void, and secure the safety of Shadowbrook once and for all…

A Touch of Evil

This game was tremendous. I love Abigail’s ability to use her Cunning instead of her Combat, combined with the Student ability that improves her Cunning for each book item she has. Last year, I wrote an extensive review of Hero Pack 2, where the hero version of Abigail (she’s an Ally in Something Wicked) appears, and worked out she can max out at a theoretical 25 Cunning:

(For those of you interested, the base game gives two Book Town Items, one of which gives +1 Cunning; there is a Book of the Occult at the Abandoned Keep which gives +2 Cunning (and is an Occult Item); the Book of Town History at the Windmill gives +1 Cunning; the Book of Witchcraft at the Olde Woods gives +1 Cunning, and with a Party Invitation she can carry both the Family Bible and Book of Medicine from The Manor, for a core set total of 12 Cunning. Something Wicked has the Explorer’s Journal for +2 Cunning on the Forgotten Island; either the Keeper’s Registry or the Book of Death from The Inn; the Book of Lies from the Monastery, and you’ll definitely want to add the Scroll of Knowledge Monastery Item to the list, which is a book and allows you to re-roll any Cunning dice, including using Cunning instead of Combat! Something Wicked includes a Book of Riddles for the Manor deck, giving +1 Cunning, so you could swap that out for the Bible or the Medicine book – Something Wicked adds 8 Cunning, or 7 to the running total if you make the switch. The Coast gives us the Captain’s Log at the Shipwreck, a Book with +2 Cunning; Smuggler’s Cove gives us the Ship’s Manifest Book, and the Lighthouse gives us our second Occult Item, the Serpent’s Tooth, for +2 Cunning. There are two books available from Tidewater, but they don’t add anything that the Town Item books haven’t already provided; The Coast therefore adds 6 Cunning and another health box. 12+7+6=25!)

That’s pretty impressive, though during this game I managed a respectable 13 Cunning. However, I quickly found myself amassing Investigation tokens during the game, and had little to spend them on. Consequently, both heroes got to the Showdown with oodles of clues, so the Unspeakable Horror’s Last Hope special ability made for a very easy finish – Abigail basically killed it off in this manner.

However, this is largely because I spent so much time on the game. Well, anyhow. I lost five of the Town Elders, meaning I was actually only one move on the shadow track from the whole thing going crazy!

I love playing this game with the Unspeakable Horror. This was definitely a fitting game for my Big Game Saturday this week!

So, a bit of a session report style thing going on there. Let me know if you liked the format!