Board Game Night

Board Games – This week I was able to get a few people together to play some board games. It was a nice break from more intense tabletop games to play a bunch of different games. I think I'm going to instill a once per month board game night as part of our rotating schedule.

First up we played the English Version of Mysterium. I guess this game had a huge line at GenCon and sold out. The reviews of the other language versions that I watch to learn the game were slightly different than the rules in the English Version. I'm pretty sure we wound up playing a weird mix of the rules but it didn't matter because the game was really fun. The three of us each took a turn being the ghost and did manage to finish each time (miraculously). More players would make it more interesting and I think this might be a game our wives might enjoy.

The game is pretty straightforward. One player is a ghost who can't talk and needs to feed the psychics dreams to help solve it's murder. The dreams are drawn from a random pile and you need to rationalize what parts in the dream card will give the psychic the right clues to pick the person assigned to them.

As the ghost you have a screen with pockets to put the cards you assign to each player. This looks a bit like a dungeon master screen and helps to keep things hidden and organized. There's a clock that keeps track of the turns as the psychics only have seven turns to solve the mystery.

Next up we got out the Ghostbusters board game. I was really excited to try this out ever since the Kickstarter delivered. It took a little time to set up the board and sort through the pieces but after getting it set up the game played quickly. 

We played the first sheet in the Slimer Campaign, the goal was to close the three open gates. If one of the closed gates came up on the ghost turn the Ghostbusters drop a carried ghost.

The game play is very similar to Zombicide, the Ghostbusters each get two actions and one maneuver (free action like getting in or out of the car or transferring a ghost) after all four Ghostbusters go you roll a dice for the ghosts to act. Most often that means another one pops out of a gate, but when the chaos symbol comes up the ghosts move in a random direction. If they run into each other they get bigger or if they hit a ghostbuster they slime them. (Being slimed takes away an action).

We had the extra ghostbuster be the driver and started busting ghosts, quickly forgetting to goal was to just close the gates. The mission played fast we were done in under an hour and saved our progress for the next session. It looks like the best way to play is to play through the campaign to the boss keeping your experience as you move on. 

I really like this game and look forward to playing more. The rules are simple and easy to teach so I can see getting this out more often.

To wrap up the night we played about six games of King of Tokyo. This game continues to be a hit which has me keeping an eye on the expansions and King of New York. I'm leery though as part of the charm of this game is the simplicity.