I spent my evening getting all my Tainted Grail Wave 2 expansion stuff sleeved and organized into a single box. So yeah, at some point in the next few weeks or so…I’m goin’ in.
I’ll have to keep that in mind. Anything with the word arena in it usually doesn’t work for us, but this looks like, well maybe. And a gift exchange means another group gets a chance anyway.
Good luck!
I’m pretty close to failing my saving throw vs buying Cthulhu Death May Die. I tried searching back in some of the old threads and just saw a couple offhand comments when people first got copies but not much else. That does worry me a little. I’m not really fooling myself either it will probably just get piled on my huge backlog of board games. I have a birthday coming up though so I feel like spoiling myself with something and what better than Cthulhu. I get that the theme on this one is way pulpy. Literally doing battle and murdering the GOOs as opposed to the more traditional prevent them from arriving. From what I’ve seen and heard elsewhere though it’s a fun over the top experience creating great stories and I like those sort of moments. I also have that in Eldritch/Arkham Horror, MOM and the LCG to scratch those more typical Cthulhu-y themes. Plus it seems good solo too.
Any opinions on CDMD?
Yeah, the guys on So Very Wrong About Games have said it’s not really their kind of game, they don’t like that confrontational take on the Mythos, it’s random and chaotic… and yet they love playing it.
I have been looking for a copy for awhile. Finally saw it on the shelf, took a look at the price tag, the play time, and the gobs of unnecessary miniatures and decided maybe it’s not an experience I’m interested in owning. (Wouldn’t mind playing it sometime, just to see, though.)
Made me realize how strong my prejudice against miniatures is, honestly. Wouldn’t have thought it would literally be a strike against a game for me, but that’s what’s happened. Terrible trend.
(I accept that for those who enjoy painting them it’s an exciting trend, but that’s the most conciliatory I will be on the matter.)
It’s always a strike against a game for me, and the bigger the emphasis that’s placed on that side of things versus the actual gameplay, the less encouraged I am. Unfortunately, I am in a distinct minority among fans of the sort of games I’m a fan of.
I am the target audience for this game, so I can understand your temptation. But after watching a few playthroughs*, I had no problem deciding not to buy it. It looks like a slapped together dungeon crawler that doesn’t know the first thing about how to implement Lovecraftian horror as anything other than miniature sculpts.
-Tom
* My experience is that most “reviews” of boardgames are simply some dude making a video explaining the rules, then cutting to a shot of him standing in front of his shelf of boardgames making pronouncements about whether it was fun. It’s much more helpful for me to watch a playthrough.
Hear, hear. It’s come to the point I would pay more for a miniature-less version of certain games to ease on storage.
Very much this. I find that an unbiased review with an assessment of how the game plays and what demographics it might appeal to is hard to find. I don’t mind that a reviewer give their opinion, but I need more than that to tempt a purchase - I also find much more success with watching playthroughs.
We enjoy CDMD. I have only played it twice. I like the level up system/choices. It is a bit over the top and can be random. We have laughed both times we played it, we go in knowing what it is. It has been a while since i played so i don’t remember the details.
Any thoughts on Solomon Kane? You do not play SK, the character, but his 4 virtues.
I failed that throw a few months ago, only to find that it was pretty much out of print. I used that as an excuse to say, “Screw it”, and bought a Kickstarter bundle off of BGG (Core Box, Season 2, The Unspeakable Box, frost dice, Scarlett promo). So take what I say with a grain of salt because, subconciously, I could easily be trying to justify dropping all that dough. And this is my first mini-riffic game, so there could also be stars in my eyes.
That said, I really enjoy it. I’ve played it with my kids, as well as solo, and I dig it either way. I haven’t played a ton of dungeon crawler board games, so I’m not sure that it’s doing anything novel for veterans of the genre. But it’s a (relatively) fast, fun, ass-kicking time.
Of course, it’s your ass that’s usually being kicked. In the negative reviews I’ve read/watched, this was always the sticking point. Some would say that it’s too hard, with the challenging structure (especially the Elder One’s stages) complicated by the random elements. And it’s true that I haven’t won a game yet after multiple attempts. But, every time, I immediately want to set the scenario back up and try it again with different investigators, a different insanity, maybe a different Elder One.
Part of that is because the basic game play is pretty streamlined. It makes the rules easy to understand and the games go quickly, both of which have made it much more appealing to my kids than Mansions of Madness. They were pretty hyped on MoM the first couple of times we played, but the pacing and length of the game combined with frequent losses soured them on it pretty fast. They were hesitant to try DMD for the same reason, but when they saw the variety of characters they could play, were able to grok the actions without much effort, and realized that the game moves at a good clip, they became much more enthusiastic.
And the production values certainly help. If you’re not a mini aficionado (and they are gorgeous, well, as gorgeous as eldritch monstrosities can be), the rest of the art design is very attractive and atmospheric, one of the best representations of the pop-Lovecraftian style that is prevalent in such board games. Purists might not like it, but they were never going to like DMD’s tongue-in-cheek approach anyway, in which you can beat Cthulhu to death with your fists.
Not to mention the fact that insanity is more often than not beneficial rather than punitive. Figuring out the smaller puzzle of how to make both your specific and general insanity work for you in order to solve the larger puzzle of defeating the Elder One is delightful, with the different combinations of the insanity cards and the investigator abilities keeping it fresh each time.
Not that there aren’t annoyances. Set up and tear down can be a bit long, and while the game’s main actions keep things pretty simple, it can require some bookkeeping to make sure all investigator powers, scenario conditions, and enemy effects are being brought to bear for each roll. I have to keep all this straight for my kids when we play, and it can be a little head spinning at times.
But, in the end, I keep coming back because I find that there are plenty of interesting choices to make as things go to hell in a handbasket. There are those who might not enjoy how swingy DMD can be due to the roll of the dice, but I find it immensely entertaining to have adjust my tactics to face these challenges, and, for me, it makes for some truly memorable moments.
If you can find the Core Box in stock for MSRP or less, I’d give it a try. A hundred bucks is a lot of cash to give a game a shot, but I would bet you could get most of it back if you find the game is not for you. If you like it, you could then get the much easier to find Season 2. Or maybe just pick up the two Elder Ones that are sold separately to increase replayability if the six scenarios and the ten investigators are plenty for you.
You absolutely don’t have to shell out some of the insane amounts of cash for The Unspeakable Box to enjoy DMD. I’m glad I did (the bundle I got made it more “affordable”), but you’ll have plenty to choose from without the 18 additional investigators, the two Elder Ones (one of which is not available separately), and the three scenarios. Although it’s a shame the investigator overlays weren’t available outside of the UB, because they really make the investigator cards more manageable. But I’m sure some Etsy genius has already figured that out (yep).
Thanks for the replies on Cthulhu Death May Die. Like Nightgaunt mentioned some of the positives I’ve heard were from the So Wrong About Games podcast and also on Solosaurus. I feel like Tom must have a feed to my YouTube because before I posted I had just watched a “review” video that played out exactly how he described ;-)
I just saw Justin and Seppey’s posts so its good to see some support. Personally the minis don’t bug me. I’m lucky to have plenty of storage for my games though I’m sure my wife would disagree. I get the point thought that the expense of minis in and of themselves often doesn’t directly support the core game design and often detracts by pulling resources from other elements and increasing the overall cost. That being said I never buy a game for the minis. Especially if you have to put them together. I tried painting Batletech minis 30+ years ago and still haven’t gotten over the shame. I still look at my leprechaun Wasp to remind me of my crimes.
I’ve been dropping hints on a few games the last few weeks we’ll see if my wife and kids picked up on it. If they chose this I think I’ll be happy. Reading Justin’s post is a big part of why I thought it would be good with the wife and kids. A step up from Betrayal at House on the Hill but with very familiar mechanics. Then I can hopefully expand to getting them to play Eldritch Horror and AH:LCG.
If anyone is interested in CDMD Boardlandia has had it listed the last couple weeks for 79.99 so more reasonable then some of the other prices around. Full disclosure I’ve never bought from them but they are on the BoardGame Deals Reddit .
Solomon Kane sounds pretty good, very thematic. I don’t know much about SK by Robert E. Howard, I watched half of the movie, but this is the second guy who points out how thematic this game is.
I bought it from ebay, the Puritan Pledge, it was 150% of the original kickstarer price.
Too Many Bones finally shipped today, too. They might arrive on the same day, bummer.
Strange, that nobody on QT3 pledged or mentioned SK. This game was like 2 years late, maybe that’s the reason… This is the second MythicGames game for me. Darkest Dungeon is the other one, but this is an end of 2021 thing.
I don’t know if I even heard about it at the time but I kind of expected it to be a minis-heavy dicey dungeon crawler like a lot of these licensed KS coops have been. Turns out that while it does have minis and dice it’s way more high concept than that. You don’t control Solomon Kane & friends, as I would have thought, but are the classical virtues steering Solomon Kane as a mutual NPC as the shadows of darkness plague him and he, e.g., fends off a mob howling for a man’s blood. And you place the dice in combinations for actions instead of rolling them for outcomes. I can’t justify the cost or space probably, but it surprised me.
I’ve purchased from Boardlandia a few times and they’ve been great. They even emailed me once to let me know that a game I ordered had the tiniest of knicks on the corner of the box. They sent a picture and offered to get a new copy for me or knock $5 off the price.
OK, Tainted Grail, let’s do this.
After scouting around Youtube and reading a number of BGG threads on the game, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s probably enjoyment to be had here…but not by attempting the game with the rules as written. Without spoiling things too badly, I looked at some playthrough videos that showed veteran youtube gamers that I’ve come to regard fairly highly just getting their asses kicked by this unruly beast of a game.
It was Paul Grogan’s “Best of” video from a few months ago that I found him talking about the game and mentioning that he and his partner were at the point of stopping in Chapter 2 when they decided to switch to “Story mode”, and suddenly had a much more enjoyable time…though he thought it left them overpowered in the game’s final chapters (at least in the Fall Of Avalon campaign.)
So what I think I’m going to do is start by using Story mode rules. I’ll play as two characters, but scale things like re-lighting menhirs and such for 1 player/character. And though I think that in theory the T-marker for wounds and energy is a neat idea, in practice it seems to induce an unrecoverable downward spiral for pretty much everyone. So…I’ll de-couple wounds and energy and track them as separate entities, where energy can be higher than the wounds level if you get rest and food.
I’m not bothered by any sort of online epeen gained or lost by playing story mode, frankly. :)
We’ll see how it goes. Life’s too short and there are too many good games to play down a dead-end at Tainted Grail a half-dozen times before I get lucky enough to advance past chapter 3 because the designers of this sprawling, messy thing couldn’t balance and test their design properly. I think there could be fun to be had here despite it, due to the worldbuilding, but we’ll see.
Boardgame aside, Howard’s Solomon Kane works are fantastic. I heartily recommend some of the audiobook versions, say The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane. They are more a collection of loosely connected adventures, rather than a long arc, but my word is Howard’s use of language amazing.
FWIW, we played through the entire thing 2 player and never adjusted the difficulty and thought it was pretty manageable throughout, shading on a bit too easy at certain points. I’m still a bit lost as to why people think it’s grindy or too tough. Not that this should dissuade you from playing however you think will best facilitate your enjoyment.
Not too tough, but the loop is pretty boring and tedious imho.
Get to a menhir, go round the menhir in a circle gathering resources and milking events for experience.
Move to next menhir.