Mansions of Madness: Second Edition First Impressions

~ H. P. Lovecraft

Eight brave investigators stand ready to confront four scenarios of fear and mystery, collecting weapons, tools, and information, solving complex puzzles, and fighting monsters, insanity, and death. Open the door and step inside these hair-raising Mansions of Madness: Second Edition. It will take more than just survival to conquer the evils terrorising this town.

I played Mansions of Madness: First Edition a year ago and thought it was very good. But I’m not a fan of 1 vs many games and that was the downside for me… Especially in this where it felt like the 1 could just thrash the many should they wish.

But this one is app-driven, a compulsory app which is available on iOS, Android and I think… PC/Mac? So it means no ‘Keeper’, it’s fully co-op.

App

The app starts off helping a GREAT deal… Anyone who has set up, or watched someone set up Mansions of Madness: First Edition knows how long it takes… Sorting things, shuffling decks containing certain cards, building the mansion etc…

It’s a pain…

This lets you pick your chosen Investigators and the starting tile of the Mansion. It also shows a range of equipment to distribute across all the players and you start. You also start with a nice voiceover for the intro. The app does a good job of sound effects and music during the game, even if those on tables around you might not like it 🙂 (It can be turned off)

Anyway… The app also shows where on the room tiles some tokens are placed that the players need to interact with.

Mansions of Madness: Second Edition Game Play

Turns are easy, players go in any order and you have 2 actions… You can move 2 spaces, Attack, Push, Carry or Investigate… There may be more but Move/Attack/Investigate are the main 3 you take.

When you investigate you press the matching token on the screen and the app will describe what happens. If you go through a door it will ask you to place another tile with tokens on it and briefly explain what you see and hear there too.

Mostly, when you investigate, you need to roll die based on one of your stats and try and get a number of successes. Die rolls are quite similar to X-Wing or Attack Wing where you roll D8s and hits are hits but if you roll a Magnifying Glass token you can spend a Clue token to convert it to a hit.

Damage

While we’re on it, Physical Damage and Mental Damage (Horror) are in that same system too. You get face-down cards for normal damage and face-up cards with an effect on them if you take damage from something a little stronger. I’m glad it’s like this as I’ve always liked this system in the miniatures game.

Combat

Combat is done by selecting a weapon you have (or going in unarmed) and using that weapon type to attack. The type of weapon you have affects what will happen in combat and the app will describe the actions taken by the investigator and monster before letting you know what test you need to make to deal this damage. The app also tracks damage for each monster and when it’s defeated it removes itself from the app.

After all the Investigators have taken their turn you have the Mythos phase. Here Monsters attack and who they attack is determined by the app and will say (the Investigator with…) “Least Healthy” or “Lowest Strength” etc

They attack for X damage and you get a chance to use Strength or Speed or Something (depending on the attack) to block some of this damage.

Goal

The goal of this is to survive while exploring the mansion. You gather evidence and follow clues to do things… I’m being vague as I’m not sure what will be spoilers or not so I’m saying nothing so no one has a reason to shout at me 🙂

But the key factors are, if one player dies twice the players lose, you have puzzles to solve on the app, you can get some seriously hindering effects placed on you, there is a turn timer running which triggers events and at certain points, other events trigger which makes things happen in the game.

Second Edition Summary

Mansions of Madness is a really well-put-together game. I initially thought that the app did too much and all it didn’t do was track where people are on the board which kinda made the board pointless.

But, there are all the triggered events, puzzle management, item location, monster damage etc that were managed by decks of cards and tokens controlled by someone playing the Keeper in the first edition. Also, if you interact with a location in the game and don’t roll enough successes to complete whatever you were doing, another player can come along and finish off the task by adding successes to yours.

I didn’t have anything to do with the setup when I played so I didn’t really realise how much went into it until I heard it explained by somebody.

said I didn’t want to spoil anything but it looks like each scenario has a few variations… Items you need are in different places etc so it’s not identical. You can play through it multiple times the same way you can play Eldritch Horror and it’s more re-playable than games like T.I.M.E Stories and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective for sure.

I finished my look at the first edition by saying it was a fun game and that hasn’t changed, but I do think it’s improved with the addition of the app and removal of the Keeper…

NOW GET THE RESIDENT EVIL LICENSE! 🙂

Mansions of Madness (First Edition) First Impressions October 2015

Wonder a Mansion solving puzzles.

Arkham Horror Resident Evil on a much smaller scale.

This is a one vs many game with the one controlling the mansion and its various bits and monsters and the rest trying to solve a ‘thing’. A mystery, with puzzles…

Although I compared it to Arkham Horror at first, it’s more like a Resident Evil…

Everyone gets a character with stats and starting equipment etc. In this game, you have 2 different sets of stats to choose from per character which is nice.

The board is pretty impressive even though it’s just a top-down view of a Mansion. It looks nice and has plenty of detail.

Don’t ask me about setting up, I let the ‘Dungeon Master’ handle that while I did something else. Most of the stuff is hidden information anyway so it’s not like I could help too much.

Game Play

On your turn, you have action points which you use to move, open doors, search etc

A few of the cards in the stacks in rooms have a story which will lead you to somewhere to investigate. But it’s not straightforward, it doesn’t say “Go to the Second bedroom” in bold text, you have to figure it out a little. But it’s not at the Consulting Detective level of deduction either so don’t worry 🙂

Some areas will give you items you need to use in other areas of the house, again, like Resident Evil.

Other areas will give you a puzzle to solve. They mostly involve you rotating or moving tiles to link things up or complete an image. At least the ones I did were like that, there may be others.

Also, like Resident Evil, there is a number of baddies running around trying to kill you. These are nice minis with a great base that shows the Investigators important information on top while hiding hidden information under the base. This way you don’t know how much a monster will scare you until you’re in the same room as it.

Combat is done via dice in an unusual way. You flip over cards from a deck until you find one that matches the type of attack you used. This adds some flavour to the attack, it’s pretty cool 🙂

You either solve it and win, or die/fail to prevent something and the Mastermind type person wins.

First Edition Summary

This is pretty good. The story cards add quite a bit and the mix of puzzles vs combat vs exploration has a nice balance.

Also, it looks impressive, especially for the boss of our level… He’s big…

A fun game!

Jesta ThaRogue