Mansions of Madness: Rising Tide

Henry: It was time for another Mansions of Madness this weekend. This time: Rising Tide. 

Lily: An Innsmouth adventure! I like the setting for board and card games. We play Call of Cthulhu, too, and the setting of Innsmouth would annoy me in an RPG or video game, but it's good for board games. The hatred of outsiders is less frustrating in a board game than an RPG.

Henry: Yorick is no longer with us, so Charlie Kane will be accompanied by Silas Marsh the sailor. Ms. Chen and Father Mateo return.

Silas will be the bruiser for this duo.

The Void Cat and the Cookie Cat joined us tonight.

Moby also helps us pay our cat tax.

Henry: The objective here is to find two cultists amongst a list of six suspects: local drunk Zadok Allen, private detective Victor Blake, aspiring author Bobby Foster, hotel manager Othera Gilman, sweet bookseller Joyce Little, and wealthy socialite Sylvia Marsh. This scenario takes place over multiple nights. The first night is about exploring near the hotel. The second, third, and fourth nights let you explore town. On the final night, you need to nail down either a suspect or the site of the ritual.

Run around and meet all six suspects on the first night. We got stonewalled by Ms. Marsh, but Mr. Foster let a few things slip...

Lily: I really like how this game can use the same tiles to make distinct locations. Over the exploring nights, you get to go to the docks, downtown, and the residential district, and tiles are reused to good effect between these districts.

Henry: We hit up the residential district first. There, we were able to steal an item Bobby Foster was trying to get, find a drunk Zadok Allen in the warehouse, badger Detective Blake (he doesn't like outsiders), and have a nice chat with Joyce at her bookstore.

Lily: I got really frustrated we couldn't open every door. The Gold, Silver, and Brass Keys are found in different locations, and the Gold, Silver, and Brass Locks are in different places than those! I couldn't find the silver key before we found the silver lock, so I never got to find out what was behind that door!

A stray dog gave Silas a Gold Key... but the Silver Key was needed to sneak into the back of Detective Blake's office. Darn it.

Henry: The residential district was next for us. There, the Gold Key let us into Ms. Marsh's locked room, where there was... nothing suspicious. Detective Blake was following us, and when we visited Ms. Gilman at her house, she noticed our interest in a suspicious armoir and politely told us we should explore elsewhere. In Ms. Marsh's home, we found torn up notes revealing that Bobby Foster is actually a long-lost relative of the Marsh family. Seems he told the Marshes about the relation, but they weren't interested in maintaining a relationship with him.

Lily: We found out so much about Bobby Foster, but he ended up not being important at all! Weird choice. It might have been about the order we went in though or something like that.

The docks were up next. We found the Silver Key here, but couldn't go back to where the silver lock was...

Henry: Our final district was the docks. There, we met a wistful Zadok, a somewhat frantic Bobby, and a sad Joyce Little. Joyce had no secrets in her book storage, even after we distracted her outside. Charlie found a key in some slimy guts in the warehouse. At this point, we realized that we had no obvious clues about who to suspect... We kept finding random items, though, so we were stocked up on weapons. 

Lily: The characters had a lot of consistency. Joyce Little was always found in a library - whether it was her rare collections, the fountain, or her bookstore.

Henry: When the time came for the final night, we felt pretty sure it wasn't Zadok, Bobby, or Joyce. Zadok had been too straight up about his worry for Joyce and Ms. Gilman. We knew too much about Bobby for there to be any lurking secrets. And Joyce, well... we liked Joyce. Eventually, we narrowed it down to our guesses being Ms. Gilman and Detective Blake, because we just hadn't been able to find out much about them. Also, Zadok mentioned Ms. Gilman was distant from him, and Ms. Gilman mentioned she enjoyed being close to Detective Blake. Turns out we were right - you only have to guess one cultist, so we guessed Detective Blake, but we could have guessed both.

A room full of cultists is no match for a teleporting politician, a paranoid priest, a master martial artist, and a sailor with a tommy gun.

Henry: By the time we hit the end, we were so stocked up on guns, spells, and items that we blew threw the enemies, no sweat. And it was a good thing too - we'd taken so much unavoidable horror from the passage of time, enduring the mythos phase much longer would have been awful for us.

Four powerful cultists died in a single round.

Henry: Also, the final solution ended up being three puzzles, so Henry walked away happy. Even if two of the puzzles were the same puzzle.

Lily: I really liked this scenario. We solved the mystery! I just wish I got more straightforward hints rather than having to process of elimination it.

Henry: Agreed. There was probably some obvious clues we missed because of the order we ended up going in. 

Lily: This game felt insanely long. A larger group could have taken 6 hours for this scenario, which is a bit much. 

Henry: Yeah, I enjoy this type of mystery, but ooph. Glad we started early.

Lily: I heard this one has good replay-ability, but I think you would need to be pretty dedicated if you were going to replay this one given its length.