There is a custom scenario app that people generate content for. Some of them are very good.
I like Arkham 2nd, and I certainly don’t agree with the wider consensus that Eldritch obsoletes it, but it’s interesting to me that you find it more thematic when Eldritch’s big innovations are having clue encounters and specific goals based on the Great Old One you’re battling, and thematically perilous spells whose side effects you never know. Oh, and of course special actions every adventurer gets unique to them. I think I probably like Eldritch’s overall gameplay less, but those thematic distinctions are a big value add for me. I can’t think of anything that Arkham brings to the table in that respect that Eldritch ditched, but maybe I’m just forgetting something?
Agree on the EH theming, so it wins out of AH2 in that department for me.
For mechanics, I find EH has a lot less frustrations and more strategic choices. Movement isn’t blocked by monsters. You’re not stuck in the Asylum or Hospital for half the game. Fighting monsters isn’t all or nothing. You’re more open to buying stuff to tailor your approach. Deciding what you’re doing with your 2 actions in a turn feel way more weighty than an AH2 turn. All possessions are condensed into a single deck (at least until the expansions fucked that up).
AH2 feels like you’re just headbutting against monsters/gates to collect trophies and spam the science building for clues to seal. Then it’s just a matter of RNG if you pull it off. OR you just say screw seals and let the doom track tank as you gear up to cheese the ancient one battle (which is why so many FFG forum posters claim it’s too easy when they super cheese it with solo Joe Diamond final battles).
I will be happy to never see the skill sliders again.
The two games have way more in common than not. The board visuals* and card flavor text are really the biggest differences. You move to spots dealing with monsters or gates, you do a location encounter. Mechanic differences are all in how you move or gear up.
- Again, huge letdown with the AH3 board. 2nd ed manages to look dark, creepy, and engaging all at once. 3rd edition is the Doom 3 of board games where they try to do horror but go so overboard with darkness that you can’t see enough to care.
We’ve played about five games of Mystic Wood now, so I thought it was time to up the ante!
My 4yo daugher is playing the Prophetess - kicking ass and taking names. If that girl needs to roll a 6, you can bet your ass she will.
Pretty happy to find my 2e box had The Expansion and The Adventure mixed in as well!
This is more fun than Mystic Wood so far, as the adventure card flavour text and graphics really add to the experience for the kids.
Yay Talisman. I love those character sheets from The Adventure, they clean it up so much. I started a game with my boys years back and they were probably similar in age to yours. If I remember right my youngest got a sword and was so happy. Then he got Toaded and had to leave his gear and along comes his older brother and takes the sword. That was game over ;-) Now days we could continue after such an outrage and it would just add fuel to the rivalry rather than a meltdown.
When they got older we found the Relic retheme to be a lot more fun than the original. I have most if not all of the Talisman 2E expansions and side boards but it only took my buddies and me a few nightmare games to quickly put Talisman to the bottom of the pile. I don’t know that we ever actually finished, it was usually everyone just giving up and declaring a victor. It’s too bad a lot of the theme was really fun, adding in the Timescape characters was really cool but it never could overcome the damn dice. Unlike your daughter I could never roll what I needed and that’s practically all it’s about.
I came back home for a couple of days and decided to pull out Eldritch Horror after the earlier discussion about it. I’d forgotten a few parts of how to play though browsing the rulebooks was a good deal faster than the actual unpacking of boxes. It’s EH, it’s huge, there’s a lot. I decided to dip my toes back into playing a more basic game, so just using Azathoth, no sideboards and a very basic prelude. Also stacked the mythos deck so stage 1 is easy cards, stage 2 is normal and stage 3 is the tentacles. Also 4 investigators because I found the game works better with 4 as opposed to 2. The map is just too large for 2 in my opinion.
By the first round, I’d lost my first investigator. She took a deal condition, and the reckoning triggered it. Immediate loss of all sanity. Not a good start. Over the following 4 rounds, the salesman character introduced in an expansion has ended up being an absolute hero. He has a bunch of talents, picking up a host of items thanks to his high influence, impacted in part by a silver tongue talent, and ended up being blessed for good measure. I feel like I’ve got the map under control. Doom hasn’t progressed, I’m on my way to completing the first mystery and the eldritch token that triggers an increase of doom on the green omen area is gone. Not too many gates, I’m shutting them down before the omen track proceeds. Certainly a memorable game with a few little twists and turns it has provided me so far.
Yeah, I’m glad I didn’t bother with AH. There’s just so much content with EH I don’t think I could tire of it. Also, I did a thing where I pulled all the investigator’s starting asset items (not uniques) into their own deck. That has helped make one deck a little more manageable.
Hey guys, quick recommendation time for me: My daughter [8] is getting into boardgames, and I’m thinking this is an opportunity for me to get something I would enjoy that moves away from the more abstract tile and card type thing my wife likes, and more into the tactical games I used to play with friends. Is there a good introductory tactical game that has nice minis and is preferably more whimsical / goofy / cutesy than traditional battlefields? She has learnt chess and likes it well enough, but I can sense she’d glom onto something with a more fun theme and a more descriptive field of play. Coop would be fine too, and in some ways, better. Because while we do have games like Codenames, Patchwork, Azul, Carcassonne, Ticket to ride, Sushi Go, Jaipur, etc, these don’t scratch my itch for placing and manoeuvering pieces for effect. But I know anything with evil looking space marines or tanks will get frowns from all involved. Interestingly my wife loved King of Tokyo despite the adversarial theme, so if ponies were tactically coralling and eating little ambulatory mushrooms, everyone would love it. So, anything of this ilk?
I’ve never tried it, but first game I thought of would be Mice and Mystics. Even if that serves as a possible launching pad into finding similar games maybe. I won’t recommend it because I never tried it, but it is cute, whimsical, tactical, co-operative and includes minis. Maybe Castle Panic would be a second possibility, no minis though. It’s more of a co-operative tower defence style game. I haven’t spent enough time with Castle Panic to recommend or not. It’s very light. Again, won’t recommend, but another option to help guide you.
Santorini is tactical and pretty delightful, in my opinion.
Sure shot. I played this with my daughter, too. Who doesn’t want to level up little rodents. Also has a nice story attached to it, tactical battles, loot, dice and so on.
< sarcasm >Spartacus: Blood and Sand < / sarcasm >
I assume Root is going to be too complex for an 8-year old, but the theme should work. It might be OK complexity-wise as long as she steers clear of the birds.
Mice and Mystics is a good choice. It’s a pretty standard co-op dungeon crawler, but has really cute minis and a kid-friendly theme. I played through the main campaign and first expansion with my kids.
If you’re looking for something less dungeon crawly, Root is a competitive asymmetric tactical game that is both strategically deep and relatively easy-to-learn, with a cute woodland forest animal theme. Bunny Kingdom is a slightly more abstract card-drafting/area-control-ish game. Problem with both of these is they’re best with more than 2 players. (Root really doesn’t work well with 2 at all, tbh.)
Root For an 8 year old? Are you and @Matt_W trying to put them off gaming? :)
Thinking about games with cool minis on a map…
I would consider the Unmatched Series if you want some head to head battles. The characters in the various packs are varied and the rules fairly simple. But it might be too confrontational for an 8 year old? See the various characters here: Unmatched games on BGG
Similarly, the recently very successful CoraQuest Kickstarter might appeal. It’s still open for late pledges, as far as I know. Imagine a family friendly dungeon crawler which also allows your child to add characters to the game and apparently (based on previews, I haven’t played myself) is still fun for the adults to enjoy too:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cabbagedan/coraquest
If you don’t mind programming games, enjoy a zany story and awesome production values, I would consider Mechs vs Minions:
It looks awesome and you will have your mechs trying to hold off hordes of minions in a totally non grimdark way.
SmallWorld is also always a good intro to minis on a map. They recently released a v1.5 of sorts based in World of Warcraft’s world of Azeroth that seems to have been well received. Approchable and would teach a child to think about that kind of strategy in fairly simple terms.
If anything else comes to mind, I’ll add it to the list.
If she’s into Marvel stuff at all, take a look at Marvel United. It’s a $35 light coop that plays in 30-45 minutes. It’s got cool minis, colorful locations, great card art and encourages making a plan together to take out the bad guys.
The biggest downside is that it was a Kickstarter game, so while you can get the core game from Amazon you’ll have to go to the secondary market for all of the expansions, which are mostly really cool.
There’s a second Kickstarter running now that adds the X-Men and offers all of the original content, but that likely won’t ship until around March 2022.
Also, just finished my game of EH I was talking about and got smashed. Cockiness at thinking I’d win and the game was under control became “crap!” followed by “bullshit” followed by “I’m fucked.” I started setting up a graveyard for all the fallen investigators, having lost 4 total by the end of the doom tracker hitting zero. Turns out a that doom does slip away quickly when the wrong mythos cards come out. Oh well, heap of fun all the same.
When I started back in the hobby and brought my daughters in we got Tokaido. It has familiar mechanisms, requires a decent amount of thinking and strategy and looks gorgeous.
Take a look at Kronomaster Arena. Cute minis, plays like Final Fantasy tactics lite. Eases you in with easy to learn rules and is fun for kids and adults if you’re interested let me know.
Also there is a kids version of Scythe, My Little Scythe which is very cute and still fun.
More abstract but cool and fun is Level99s Bullet
Tetris game with anime girls not overly (or really at all) sexualized.
And that pricetag jumps sharply when you start adding in that stuff, even at their KS pricing. Current gameplay all-in (not counting the base box from stores) is over $500. Not that you need to go all-in by any means.
There’s an iOS version too, I play it on my phone all the time.