There is no gameplay restriction on what information they can share or how much they can coordinate. Mechanically, it’s no different than having one player control all four characters.
However, I think Fantasy Flight figures there’s some sort of meaningful gameplay in the idea that the players have to discuss their plans in front of Dracula, but their secrecy is a minor concern next to Dracula’s secrecy. As Wendelius puts it:
That’s pretty much all there is to it, but the price you pay is drawing out the playtime considerably. Maybe even double? For what it’s worth, when I played with a friend, me grousing out loud about his location must have been plenty satisfying. Anyway, my overall point is that it works just fine as a two-player game, and what’s more, the running time isn’t nearly the issue it is when you’ve pressed four people into service for a co-op boondoggle and some of them might be less invested than others.
Seems to me it would take the same amount of composure whether you’re sitting across from one person or four people!
But, yeah, four people bumbling around is going to be more amusing. I find the game is in Dracula’s favor plenty without discord among the vampire hunters. Our five player game didn’t go over very well, partly because it felt so lopsided in Dracula’s favor.
I wonder how The Hunt For The Ring compares … Hidden movement game to catch Frodo and the ring. It look great in the videos, but when I learned it could take 2-3 hours, I was out. I would play a good hidden movement game for 1 hour max.
Fury of Dracula is one of my favorite games. Unfortunately, it bounced hard off my regular gaming group so I only get to play it at TotalCon each year.
I’m pretty sure when they made the 3rd Edition, streamlining is exactly what they did. (Same with Twilight Imperium 3rd (?) edition, which was their own game originally.) They just streamline it down to the point that they think their audience is looking for–commensurate with Arkham Horror, basically. I’m with you: I’m not their target audience in this regard.
There’s at least one Youtube reviewer who specifically calls out this particular review of Darkest Night for being…weird.
The rules are presented in a very straightforward manner in the second edition. In fact, we played co-op last weekend, and the biggest hangup we kept finding was that we were trying to overcomplicate rules that are inherently fairly simple and easy to grok. Most repeated phrase: “We’re over-thinking this again, aren’t we?” After about the 2nd or 3rd time, we stopped, and the rules all clicked together like a watchwork.
The second edition rules are very well done and incorporate all the expansions into one. The compendium is a terrific backstory resource that applies some how and why to the game mechanics.
This is a game with a bunch of simple mechanics that fit together nicely and just need the player to set aside an expectation of complication to get.
Fair enough, but if I have to play the cops, I get to shout “What’s all this, then?” in a bad British accent roughly every 17.5 seconds during both player’s turns.
Interestingly enough 1 out of 5 games of the second edition of Fury had the INDIVIDUALLY CONTROLLED Hunters win handly…Dracula was always struggling. That 1 Dracula win was entirely DICE driven. (Because the 2nd edition uses dice, the 3rd edition is diceless) Not to say there isn’t merit in a 2 player game, but controlling 4 hunters might seems exhausting.
Actually, that’s a great point. I’m used to controlling multiple characters because I’ve had experience with all sorts of multi-character solitaire* games like Pandemic, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Spirit Island, and so forth. But that might be too much workload for some folks. That said, if I recall correctly, the characters in Dracula’s Fury weren’t too complicated. A couple of stats, some gear, and a special ability, right?
But, yeah, the managability that comes with added brain bandwidth is why lots of folks prefer play these things co-operatively, isn’t it?
This is certainly an element of Fury of Dracula. My biggest problem playing the vampire hunters in a two-player game was keeping track of where I thought Dracula was in addition to dealing with four characters.
Any suggestions for good co-op or many vs one games that don’t have the multi-character solitaire problem?
I’m thinking of games with a limitation on communication (e.g. Tragedy Looper) or under tight time pressure (e.g. Space Alert), rather than games with hidden teams (e.g. Battlestar Galactica).
Arkham and Eldritch Horror mitigate this by at least being optimal with two characters. Most of the 1VM games I’ve played generally like there to be 4 or so PCs to the one GM.
Since 1996 Funagain Games has been providing board gaming fun to our customers across the United States and the entire globe. We love what we do and we’re happy that we got to be part of such an exciting hobby. Unfortunately, we’ve had to make a very tough and difficult decision. Funagain Games will be ceasing our online retailer operations in the coming months. Starting immediately, most of our stock is offered at, or close to, or even below, wholesale prices and will not be replenished as it sells out.
Thanks for the heads-up. I just struggled against their site for an hour before realizing I probably really didn’t need any of it, anyway.
The last two Battleground: Fantasy Warfare packs I don’t have? I haven’t actually played that in years.
Oh, all the Runewars: The Miniatures Game stuff for two full armies! Too expensive, usually, but this makes it… still a few hundred bucks, and then I’d have to convince a friend to play.
Mansions of Madness 2e, Spirit Island, Mysterium already gone.
I just can’t think of a lot I’ve been jonesing over for a while- I used to buy all the games for my group. But now I’m poorer and I’ve trained myself not to look too much, besides my wealthy tech industry friends have more than picked up the slack- they have shelves of games we haven’t even played yet.
Funagain closing is sad, though. They were one of the first big online boardgame retailers, way back in the '90s, and their close proximity to Seattle, direct links to the nascent BGG for research and big selection of euro games meant I ordered from them all the time back then.
Then other shops opened, boardsandbits, cardhaus were both local so I could pay cheap prices and then just drive over and pick them up (then they both closed/moved away, heh). Then my game night moved to actually being at a local shop, and I was making good money, so I always bought from there if they had it. When I did buy online, Funagain prices just weren’t worth it. Ah well. The world moves on.
Well the good news is they are keeping the local stores. Right now, it’s just their online stores. The problem was, for an online store, their sales just weren’t that good. i’d get their ads all the time but pretty much 100% of the time I could find it for a better deal somewhere else, and not just Amazon.
Yeah, that’s what I meant about struggling against their site. Constant page errors, cart emptied numerous times, etc. Searches timing out. I realized I didn’t want to be one of the vultures for stuff I didn’t really need, anyway.
Played Tiny Epic Galaxies for the first time tonight and was impressed. I’ve played Tiny Epic Western (weird IMO), Tiny Epic Quest (pretty good IMO), and Tiny Epic Kingdoms (good, IMO). Galaxies is the best IMO, nice tight elegant design, fairly straightforward to understand and the “follow” mechanic is really cool. I might have to pick it up.
Oddly, I finished the game thinking I would like the game a touch better if it were not so tiny. Avalon Hill Sized Epic Galaxies would be better IMO.
