Mansions of Madness: Shattered Bonds

Henry: The other night, Lily and I played Mansions of Madness 2E. This is a solid board game that we play a bit like role-playing game. We've played it a few times, and come to the realization that the game works best when we are each playing two investigators. We got into this game because of playing Arkham Horror the Card Game, and are more used to that level of complexity and decisions you make on your turn. With Arkham Horror investigators getting 3 actions and a full deck of cards to play with, while Mansions of Madness investigators get only 2 actions and limited items, it was an easy bridge to cross.

The dramatic readings at the beginnings of these scenarios are always nice.

Lily: We don't seem to be getting as much into the role of the characters when we play Arkham Horror, and that might be more based upon the role-playing choices inherent in choosing what items and allies are on your side than playing two-handed, but who is to say.

Moby decided to join us for game night tonight.

Henry: We're playing through the scenarios in the order they appear in the app. That is another thing - this is an app-based game. The app requirement is heavy enough that I believe you could (theoretically) play this just using the app.

Lily: But then you would lose out on the nice miniatures. We also play this as a bit of a campaign, keeping the same set of investigators, with the rule that if an investigator "loses" a scenario, they are out of the team.

Henry: We played the "Shattered Bonds" adventure this time. Spoilers for that adventure ahead.

Red lanterns are Explore tokens - act on them to get more tiles placed on the board. Yellow question marks are Search tokens - something interesting is there.

Lily: I took control of Father Mateo the priest and Lily Chen the martial artist (Ms. Chen if you're nasty). Henry took Charlie Kane the politician and William Yorick the gravedigger.

Henry: I love those two in Arkham Horror, and they're fun here as well.

The board spread out quickly as we explored, and either it or the freshly baked cookies attracted the attention of a chaotic outer god.

Henry: This mission is about the Bechman family, having come home from a vacation, and they're suddenly the prey for a monster. You go throughout the house, speaking to the family and trying to babysit them while a shadow creature randomly pops up and murders everyone. You need to get to the bottom of what's behind the creature and banish it. It reminded me of the Cursed Tiki Brady Bunch episode a bit.

Lily: I have no idea what the Cursed Tiki Brady Bunch episode is. Father Mateo immediately sets the tone for what the rest of his life will be like by failing to open a drawer with his first turn.

Henry: We are told pretty early on that sound attracts the monster. Of course, a little girl is playing the piano in the other room, so we go and speak to the haunted child only to be attacked by a zombie. At least when a non-shadow monster appears, the family has the sense to flee the room.

Henry: Father Mateo managed to take down the zombie with a kamehameha, while Charlie went and caught some folks stealing silverware in the kitchen. He smooth-talked them and they told us the shadow monster is only after the Bechmans. At this point, we realize this house is huge, clear out more table space, and make like Fred Jones. Let's split up, gang.

Henry: Charlie manages to find crushed pieces of a cursed idol in the nanny's room. Yorick decides to ignore the nanny and root around in the cellar for items, finding an occult manuscript that Mrs. Bechman asked us for. There was also weirdly a dumbwaiter that went up to the attic - handy.

Lily: Mateo got his holy ass full of holes and needed to pop some painkillers. This man did not leave the first room he entered and was hit by every mythos event for like three turns in a row. Meanwhile, Ms. Chen found the Bechmans upstairs, rooting around for guns. Also, I was very offended by the idea of people smashing ancient statues to make jewelry. They deserve this curse through sure idiocy!

Henry: Around this time, a hunting horror of course spawned in the attic, on top of the Bechmans. Using the dumbwaiter, we managed to take it out, but Charlie got claustrophobia as a horror card. Guess he has to cry every time he squeezes into the dumbwaiter now.

Lily: Meanwhile, on the other side of the house, Mateo injects horse tranquilizers and passes out. Sweet, sweet healing. Ms. Chen has to deal with more creatures in the attic.

Mateo could not catch a break. When you take damage or horror equal to your health or sanity, respectively, you become "wounded" or "insane." Do it again and you're dead. At least all of his were facedown - facedown ones go away when you get wounded or go insane. Faceup ones stick around to bother you.

Henry: At this time, we realize the statue pieces are an in-game puzzle. The app has sliding puzzles, wordle-style code puzzles, and more. I love puzzles. You only get a certain number of moves each action though. I waste my turns doing puzzles for a bit.

Lily: To get the pieces for the puzzle, we had to do little missions for the Bechman family. Yorick got a piece from Mrs. Bechman for giving her the manuscript, Mr. Bechman would have given us one if we could find his gun but all we could find was booze and dynamite. The little girl would give us her necklace bit if we could get it from her imaginary friend. Her imaginary friend was, of course, a horrible ghost child.

The full map got quite large. Yorick ended up just on piano duty to distract the monster.

Henry: Charlie also sweet-talked a necklace piece from the nanny. But yeah, Ms. Chen was able to handle the ghost and we had the pieces we needed. Once we solved the puzzle, the biggest monster in the box, the star spawn, was... spawned.

Lily: By this time, we were already pretty beat up, and Yorick kept trying to kill himself for some reason, but we managed to put together a plan of action that would let us use the dynamite and keep everyone alive!

Yorick, we knew you well.

Henry: Yeah... See, Yorick had gone insane by this point. Different insanities have different rules. They can alter your win condition. Yorick's new win condition was "die, but have the investigators still win." Problem is... in Mansions of Madness, if one investigator dies, the players only have one turn left to save it. I wanted Yorick to blow himself up with the dynamite, but the Star Spawn had so much health we couldn't take it out that way. So sadly, Yorick survived... meaning I couldn't play with him again, since he still lost!

We all had to work together to take out the Star Spawn. Even Charlie got a dive kick in.

Henry: Overall, we had a nice time. This was a fairly combat-heavy scenario and was punishing in terms of damage and horror. The layout made moving very important but it wasn't as onerous to get from one side of the map to another as some of the other scenarios we've played is. 

Lily: I enjoyed the mystery for this one quite a bit. The victory of solving the puzzles and the mystery here was quite strong.