A Touch of Evil is a co-opish, photographic images and roll & move…

But only the theme is Horror.

‘Tis the dawn of the 19th century; an age of science, superstition, and witchcraft. Howling fills the night as a full moon rises over the small, secluded village of Shadowbrook. Gruesome murders have become a daily occurrence and terror haunts the streets at night. An evil creature has taken up residence here and the countryside is engulfed by a tide of darkness.

But all is not lost…not yet.

A small group of heroic individuals, with the courage and strength to fight, have arrived in town. Some just passing through while others have come with a purpose; but all will be put to the test as they race to save this cursed town from falling into darkness. It will take a cunning mind and strength of spirit to determine who is friend and who is foe… to solve the mysteries and hunt the beast to its lair.

But the secrets of Shadowbrook run deep. Gossip and rumours run rampant and these few Heroes may soon discover that they are outsiders here and this town is already so rotten from within there is little left to save.

Grab a character, randomise a bad guy and crack on.

I picked Katarina the Outlaw. She does fighting n stuff.

Turns

On your turn, you do 3 things.

The first is movement. You roll a D6 and move that many spaces around the board. Roll & Move is pretty old-fashioned but the board is small and the spaces are big if you roll a 1 you draw an event card so you VERY rarely miss a turn.

Enemies randomly spawn and if you move through one they stop your movement and you fight. Of course, if you end your movement on it you fight it anyway.

Combat

Fighting is dice rolling too. You roll X dice depending on which stat you use to fight and you ‘hit’ on a 5 or 6. If you don’t kill the enemy, the player to your right rolls for them using their special stats.

This back and forth continues until someone dies. Luckily, if you die you just skip a turn and sacrifice some stuff.

Actions

Then you do the action of the area you ended your movement in if there is one. Mostly this means resolving an event card and doing something. Some special areas have their own decks.

Other actions involve buying a Lair, which allows you to pick a location to fight the big bad. Each location has a different ability and there are various copies of each location to mix it up.

Town Elders

The other thing you can do is look at a Town Elder.

There are 6 Town Elders, each with a face-down secret card underneath. When you fight the big bad you choose some of these guys to come to help you… But, some of them are corrupt and will work for the other team so you need to know who is going to be on your side before you pick one.

This is cool as they can die during the game or one of your teammates/opponents might pick them first so you need to know about as many as possible.

A Touch of Evil Summary

A Touch of Evil is an odd game really with it being co-op but whoever kills the big bad is the ‘Winner’. It had me giving out equipment I couldn’t use to other players, and then playing cards to buff the bad guy at the end of the game.

Still, it’s good, didn’t take too long considering 3 out of the 4 hadn’t played it and the set-up/tear-down time was better than similar games.

Looking forward to playing A Touch of Evil again.

Jesta ThaRogue