Welcome to our Mansions of Madness (Second Edition) Review! If you want details on how this game plays then check out our Game Overview. If you want to know what we think of this game keep reading below.

The Game – Mansions of Madness (Second Edition)

This is the game that really started all of the board gaming for us at Detective Hawk Games. We first ventured into the Arkham Horror Files with Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and while we enjoyed that we really felt more at home with Mansions. It is the type of games we really love with lots of story driven action.

In Mansions of Madness, as in all the Arkham Horror Files games from Fantasy Flight Games, you take on the role of a paranormal investigator in the Lovecraft’s gothic horror world. Each investigator has their own set of strengths and weaknesses and through the selection of a balanced team, you and a group of players can beat the game! Or try to anyway…

The App

Before we get into reviewing the game, we should also note that much like The Lord of the Rings – Journeys in Middle-earth, this game uses an App. In fact, Journeys was based on this game. We understand that there is a lot of debate and passionate opinions about Apps in board games. Whatever side of that fence you sit on, we think this App really improves this game and we ask you to continue reading before you make up your mind.

If anyone has heard of Mansions of Madness (First Edition), one player had to take on the role of “The Keeper” and sit down for approximately 40 minutes to setup a game, making sure all the clues were hidden correctly and if they made one mistake, like they forget to hide the key to unlock the final door, the whole game would fall apart. Can you imagine this happening when you had been playing for an hour? Not fun! And I don’t want to be the Keeper.

In the Second Edition it is the App who is in effect “the keeper” and it is responsible for keeping track of everything you need. It tells you what gets placed into rooms when you open them and what happens when you interact with specific items. It also tracks hits on the enemies so you know when you have defeated them. It does not keep track of your investigators or enemies on the board – that is why this is still a board game. The app will send enemies after the investigators, but in a general way, “Move 2 spaces towards the nearest investigator” for example. This makes it into a unique hybrid of board game and App. It also makes the game fully cooperative, all players against the game rather than against the keeper.

Modular Board System

Mansions of Madness uses a modular board, tiles that are the rooms of the mansion, streets and surrounding areas. These rooms are beautifully designed, right down to the floral bedspread on the creaky single bed. Each element in the board artwork is there for a reason and will be incorporated into the game story. For example, if a room shows papers strewn across the floor, the app may tell you place a clue token there. Interacting with the clue you will learn information from the papers all over the floor. We really like this aspect of the game.

One of the fun things about the game is that you don’t see the entire mansion when you begin. You start in one place and just like in real life, you have to have to move around and open doors to see more. Once you open a door, you click on the explore token in the app and it reveals the next room – including any search or interact tokens. This is a really cool feature, as you never know how the mansion is going to lay out, and it is something that couldn’t really be achieved without the app.

The game comes with 4 scenarios in the box, you can purchase more scenarios as downloadable content (DLCs) and 5 expansion boxes are available. When replaying scenarios the app will actually layout the mansion differently. Rooms and clues will be in different locations, sometimes different rooms will appear and if you add in the expansions, the new tiles and enemies will be incorporated into the previous scenarios. The overall goal of each scenario doesn’t change, but everything you have to do to play it does! This provides great replayability.

The Miniatures

In this game each Investigator and enemies is represented by a fully sculpted miniature. We’ve been painting these miniatures here at Detective Hawk Games. The ones in this core set are not the most high quality, detailed miniatures but they definitely add a sense of fun to the game.

We like the movement system employed in this game, spaces are marked on the tiles and the number of spaces is how you measure where your character can move. Miniature games often required a lot of measuring and angle checking and we are glad that is not how Mansions of Madness plays.

Game Setup

Compared to Mansions of Madness (First Edition) setup here is a breeze. You only need to choose a scenario and investigators to play, enter this into the app, if will list your starting items (cards) which you divide up between the investigators as you see fit and you are on your way. Besides this setup, you just need to put all the tokens into their own piles and to stack all the item, condition, damage and horror cards into their own decks. Then you are ready to solve the mysteries of Lovecraftian world!

Game Play

The game play is varied and keeps you on your toes. We love the mix of fighting and investigation you do in this game. Each individual scenario has its own objective and by moving through the board you reveal new rooms, new alleyways, and even storefronts… not all scenarios take place inside a mansion. By moving through the board, you will reveal clue tokens that you can click on in the app to receive more of the narrative about what you found.

This is a truly story driven game. The narrative is key, driving your group of investigators forward in your mission. You will also meet other non-player characters (NPC) that you can politely chat to or interrogate, depending on how you handle them, they can help you or even become your enemy. We like choosing a question from the list in the app and seeing how they will respond (in a dialog box). We would love it if these dialog boxes were also voiced by an actor to make things even more immersive.

Game play has two phases in each round – the Investigator Phase and the Mythos Phase. We particularly like the collaboration between the players in the Investigator phase. You each have your own moves for your investigator character but you can make group decisions about what to do and when to play each investigator. One thing we are not a huge fans of is the dice mechanic. You roll a number of 8 sided dice when you are being tested by the game, the number of dice is determined by your investigator statistics and the type of test. The randomness of the dice roll means that win or lose is determined by chance alone, as a player you feel like you have very little control. In all fairness, yes chance is part of the game… but sometimes chance is a cruel cruel mistress when it comes to the dice. So much so that we invented some “house rules” that give us an extra chance to pass a test, just to try and give us a fighting shot… We like getting to the end of a story rather than getting eaten half way through.

We also like the integration of app based puzzles in the game. For instance, if you need to pick a lock, you will actually see a sliding panel puzzle appear in the app and you have to get the key bar in the lock position to unlock the door. This is really fun, because it is a test of skill to solve the puzzle not just the chance of “you rolled two successes, so you unlocked the door”.

In the second phase of a round, the Mythos phase, is when the enemies appear and move. Often they are directed to move by the app towards a specific investigator. We like this “moving towards” action because it means the enemies always move relative to the investigators which keeps this firmly as a board game and not an app game. Also in this phase, the game will make things harder by randomly causing some type of affliction to a character or to the entire group. Often these afflictions aren’t specific to the scenario and they seem to get recycled a lot. We’ve seen the same affliction pop up in multiple scenarios and they don’t seem to link to the story. For instance out of nowhere, you might get a message that “Agnes falls to the ground shrieking in pain as the monsters invade her mind” but there are no monsters in play yet. It would help the immersion in the story if these were linked to the story theme.

Mansions of Madness is not a campaign game, unlike several of the other games in the Arkham Horror Files. It is designed so you can easily play one scenario and then jump to a new and different scenario. The 2-3 hours average playtime per scenario may seem steep, but once you get going, the story really takes over and the time will fly. This game is perfect from groups of friends that want to get together for a game night. The stand alone scenarios in Mansions are great if you don’t want the commitment of a campaign. There is even a scenario in the core box that can run 4-6 hours, a perfect scenario for a gaming weekend or rainy weekend. In some respects it is like a great big interactive book that you are taking part in.

Overall Impressions

Got to be honest, we love this game. This was our first major board game purchase. I remember telling SheHawk that I just bought a board game for $100 and her eyes popped. In reality it is not just one game you are buying, its many different games in one. The scenarios especially with the expansions will keep you playing for a long while.

We really love the stories that can be created from the use of the app and the modular board system. It’s really impressive to see how replaying a scenario feels like you are playing a brand new game.

The only real complaint we have with this game is the dice system (and the complaining got louder after seeing what we think is a better system in Lord of the Rings Journeys in Middle-earth). The dice makes succeeding at a test feel completely random. With the skill deck in Journeys, you have the perception of control as you manipulate your skill deck to give you more chance of successes. There is nothing you can do to influence the dice roll, sure you can spend clues if a magnifying glass shows up, but if all dice are blank you have no chance.

The other challenge with this game is that is has a ton of rules. Some of which the app will enforce, but many you have to know or know to look up the “Rules Reference”. That combined with the helpful “How to Play” guide definitely help you understand the game. But there are a lot of rules to learn or look up.

We Love

• The scenario stories are really engaging with all the twists and turns. It makes 2-3 hours of gameplay really fly by.
• The artwork of the board is really amazing. It is very detailed and fun to look at. You can imagine being there in the room.
• What you get for the price – This game comes with a ton of stuff, cards, tokens, miniatures and enough board pieces to layout each scenario in many different ways.

Could be Better

• The dice – this is the only thing we really complain about in this game. The lack of control over passing the tests in the game – it is all down to the luck of the dice roll.
• Sometimes the Mythos events feel a bit too random and don’t match the scenario.
• Finally the rules… there are just a lot!