To get into the spirit of Halloween I’ve been wanting a horror-themed board game for a while now, something that would capture that feeling of investigation some and have monsters to face off against. I’m a fan of the Lovecraft mythos but the games I’ve seen and played never really captured that feeling well. And face it, trying to get the essence of a person losing their sanity facing incomprehensible horrors isn’t really something that translates into a game mechanism easily.

Digging around I decided to pick up A Touch of Evil from Flying Frog. It’s a game that can handle up to 8 players with a variety of play modes from a winner take all, working in teams, cooperative, to even a solo game. Overall it’a something that seems to scratch the itch of a horror game for me.

Players are monster hunters in the 18th century, trying to rid a colonial town of a terrible supernatural threat. They can choose 1 of 8 characters each with varying characteristics among cunning, spirit, and combat abilities. Additionally, each has a special ability that allows them to bend the rules some. Checks and combat are a simple matter of rolling a number of dice and counting 5 and 6s as successes.

The players face off against one of four creatures, being either a werewolf, vampire, a locust-summoning scarecrow, or a spectral (headless) horseman. Each monster has unique minions and other game effects that can hamper the heroes. Some are rather interesting like the werewolf that can pass on its curse to other players or the spectral horseman that runs to town attacking all in his way, to more basic abilities that just increase their combat proficiency.

The player’s turn is broken down into 2 steps. They roll a die and move that number of spaces. If there is a monster in a space, they must fight to defeat it (or run away if they survive the initial attack). Afterwards the player has several options from investigating an area to hopefully find a powerful artifact, gather up clues, heal, or attempt to gain equipment within the village proper. All currency in the game is based off of investigation tokens. Players gain them by traveling around the woods outside the town or by beating villain minions. As a nice rule, if a player flubs and rolls a 1 for movement, they gain an events card to offset the low roll.

When players have enough allies and items, they can try and beat the monster in a showdown. They attempt to track the creature down to its lair and begin an epic fight trying to whittle down the creature’s wounds and survive. If they fail they are knocked out, returning to the center of town next turn minus some resources.

After each player has a turn, the monster gets to play a mystery card. This may initiate an event like adding one of its minions to the board, or it will undertake a special attack. Additionally the monster may be able to move the shadow track. This is a countdown of sorts. When it reaches zero everyone loses. Additionally the shadow track dictates the investigation cost to find the creature’s lair. Earlier in the game, it’s more expensive while the cost to investigate the lair decreases as the shadow track approaches 0.

For the most part, that is the game. Players try to move around the board and successfully employ their skills with tests of cunning and spirit, or fighting lesser monsters at certain locations. They slowly accumulate special items, or buy equipment in town, gathering up allies until they feel they are powerful enough to fight the main villain. The tweak to this is the village elders.

The game starts with 6 village elders. Players can enlist up to 2 of them to help in the final battle with the monster. Most are immensely helpful, improving the combat abilities of the hero. More importantly, they can also soak up hits. The player has to be careful though as if the village elder is killed, the shadow track will move down. This isn’t as clear cut a choice selecting the village elders however. Each elder has a randomly assigned secret, some are beneficial or don’t significantly alter their abilities, however about a third of the secrets hides that the elders are actually evil. Pick the wrong one and you can suddenly find the monster has another minion in the fight.

To ensure you aren’t selecting an evil village elder, players can pay investigation to see where their heart lies. This information is useful, as opposing players can call out evil village elders during a showdown, allowing them to join the monster in the final battle. This entire portion of the game really makes it for me. You want to spend the time investigating the town elders to seek out potential allies, or find out which ones are best to turn on other player’s if needed.

The Good – What stands out are the variety of play modes for the game. You can play it as a coop (or solo), working as teams, or everyone out for themselves and this variety adds a lot of replay value to the game. It’s a fun experience gathering up resources to fight the monster. Additionally the shadow track an effective clock on ending the game which helps ramp up the tension. When village elders die, not only are the players potentially losing an ally but the shadow track drops down, ever closer to zero. This helps capture that feeling impending doom for the players and pushes them to act quickly.

The components are top notch. The cards are thick and coated in plastic. The counters are made of nice cardstock. There are several well sculpted plastic figures to represent the hero pawns, even an audio track CD is included in the game. The board has an antique map look to the layout of the village and surrounding areas. The card art is done rather differently using actual photographs of costumed characters. There are more hits than misses with the depicted photos and it portrays the gothic horror theme fair enough.

The Bad – The game is roll and move. Even with the event card bonus rule added for rolls of 1, it can be frustrating at times not getting to the location needed due to poor die rolls. The combat and task resolution is a little simplistic, where you simply want to roll as many dice as possible to get more successes. Games with high number of players when not working as teams can drag sometimes. And while there are plenty of heroes to try out, there are a limited number of villains which may not provide enough variety in how they interact with the rest of the game. Additionally the art overall is alright, yet some might find particular cards lackluster as the photographs can be a little campy.

The Verdict – A Touch of Evil is an enjoyable game. What really stands out are the variety of play styles, from a standard coop to a free-for-all where everyone tries to be the hero and take down the monster themselves. I feel what works best for the game is the competitive team mode. For me it captures that feeling of an old 60s-70s Hammer film in a colonial setting. The potentially twisted village elders, the snooping around particular locations, the slow accumulation of equipment and allies until you can have the final big fight against the creature, it all works well as a horror game and is great fun. If you’re looking for a horror board game that isn’t quite stuck in the Cthulhu-theme rut, this is a great one to pick up.

For 3-10 players, Saboteur is a light card game that is part deception and part strategy. Players are dwarves seeking to mine a path to gold treasure. Unknown among the players is that some of them might actually be saboteurs, seeking to thwart the entire operation and keep the gold for themselves.

The game goes through 3 rounds, with the player having the most gold at the end being declared the winner. At the beginning of each round every player receives a role card indicating if they are a simple dwarven miner or a saboteur. An entrance card is put in play a defined distance from three face down goal cards which are randomly placed. Two of the goal cards lead to a lump of worthless ore, while one card is the gold treasure.

During a player’s turn they have the option of placing a card connecting the current paths, discarding a card, or to play an action card. Afterwards they draw one card. The action cards either hinder another player like breaking a mine cart or smashing a pick, or they repair that specific item. If a player has broken equipment cards in front of them, they can’t play any cards (except action cards to repair any broken cards on them). There are even map cards which allow the player to secretly see which of the 3 end goal cards is actually the treasure.

When a path leads to the treasure, special treasure cards equal to the number of players are drawn from a deck. Starting with the player that reached the treasure, they get their choice of treasure cards which have a varying number of gold nuggets. It’s entirely possible that some players will get more treasure cards than other fellow mining dwarves. If all the cards are exhausted and/or a legal path cannot be made to the treasure, each saboteur gets a set number of gold nuggets as treasure while the miners getting nothing. The role cards are shuffled and new cards are dealt to each player for the next round.

The game becomes a fun game of deception. You try to see which opponent might be throwing a wrench into the miner’s plans. If they feel someone is a saboteur, they can try to lock them out breaking their equipment. As a saboteur, you want to try and be subtle with subverting the path away from the treasure.

Not everything is a cooperative effort for the miners though. The player that reaches the treasure first gets their first choice of gold cards. The cards are an unequal distribution of 1 to 3 gold nuggets. Also if any players are saboteurs, the miner that gets to the treasure first will get an extra gold nugget card. So there is a big incentive to try and get to the treasure first (as you’ll likely get more victory points). This might even mean trying to stop other miners so you are the one successfully establishing a path on your turn.

The Good – This is a fun light game with a fair amount of strategy. The rules are very simple and easy to pick up. The game also plays rather quickly taking only 20-30 minutes. The cards are of sturdy stock and the illustrations are pleasant, colorful, playful depictions of dwarves and their mining equipment.

The Bad – While it’s simplicity has some charm, it can be somewhat of a repetitive game. You can get an very bad streak of drawn cards where it’s practically impossible to remove broken equipment played on you. This can be somewhat frustrating. If you are the lone saboteur (which is possible in a lower player count game) and are figured the likely traitor early in the game, it can be disheartening as everyone else keeps dumping broken equipment cards on you preventing you from doing anything.

The Verdict – Saboteur is an enjoyable light game, also a few things really add to the play experience. The role cards used will have one extra card over the total number of players. It’s entirely possible in a lower player count game to have no saboteurs, yet no one will know this until the end of the round. Also, having 3 rounds with new role cards given out at the beginning of each one means a player might not be stuck in a particular role for the entire game.

One really nice twist is that even though all the miners share the glory when a path reaches the treasure goal, the cards are not distributed equally and have different values. So while you do want to be sure and get to the gold with your fellow miners, you certainly don’t share the rewards evenly. This little twist adds some complexity in determining who the saboteurs are. If a player prevents another from reaching the treasure, are they a traitor or are they just a greedy miner trying to reach the gold first?

With a small box, light rules, and being able to accommodate up to 10 people, Saboteur makes for a fun evening. It’s a great filler game and a wonderful way to cap off a night of heavy board games, or make for an enjoyable hour or so by itself.

[Note: There is a slight variation I like using when there are potentially more than one saboteur (5-10 people). Like the Resistance, I add one extra step after the role cards are given out. Everyone closes their eyes and one person announces that the saboteurs open their eyes and find out who else might be a saboteur for that round. Everyone is then instructed to close their eyes again and open them all at once, with the game starting as normal. It can be difficult for the saboteurs to win a round unless they can somewhat work together. This little extra step allows for the saboteurs to strengthen their position when they bluff to the other miner players.]

From Tasty Minstrel Games, Eminent Domain is a game of galactic expansion where you play fledgling space-faring races striving to expand your empire and become the most influential race in the galaxy. For 2-4 players this strategy game usually runs under 60 minutes. As players colonize planets, research technology, and produce and trade goods, they gain influence. The game ends when the supply of influence tokens runs out, or when two supply decks of action/role cards are exhausted. The player with the most influence at the end of the game wins.

Play is centered on choosing cards representing defined actions. Each player starts off with a deck of cards comprised of each action/role card. As they play the game, they will choose a role taking one from the central supply to add to their deck. So as the game progresses, you are slowly accumulating cards for certain actions (which results in your deck having a focus of specific cards). It’s a slight nod towards deck building, however the choices you have a somewhat limited and not quite the plethora of options in something like Dominion or Thunderstone.

When a player selects a role card, they have the option of taking that action as a leader or following it as a role. The leader option is usually a limited action. The follow role allows them to ‘boost’ or add to the action based on similar cards in their hand. So if a player chose to colonize a planet, they’d pick up a colonize card from the central supply and place it under one of their planets. Then they could add more colonize cards from their hand to that planet, boosting the effect of the role card they selected.

What is particularly enjoyable about role selection is that once a player chooses and resolves a particular card, each player in turn has the option to also take that role action (or they can decline and draw a card from their deck). This is an interesting play mechanic as one of the end game conditions is when two of the central supply decks are exhausted (or one with a 2 player game). So while you and an opponent might be focused on a similar action strategy, if you each keep drawing cards from that supply you are quickly advancing the game to end. You might instead want to hold off and try to follow that role when your opponent selects it, and choose a different role on your turn.

This makes for an interesting choice of either selecting the role you want to play, or possibly branch out in hopes one of your opponents takes a similar role that you can follow on their turn. You’ll find yourself looking at the number of cards they are holding, and the state of the planets in their respective empire. If a player has an uncontrolled planet with a large fleet, they likely will choose a warfare role on their turn. If they have lots of resources produced on their planets, they likely will choose to trade those resources in. Do you opt to follow their role choices, or just pick a similar action on your turn? It makes for some fun play around the table.

Another layer to this is the research technologies. Most are an improvement of the basic actions that players can choose. However some advanced technologies allow for very different strategies. The more advanced technologies not only require more research cards to obtain, but also require controlled planets of a certain type. This means you have to make an investment of several turns to build up towards a higher tier technology, and this can be a rewarding experience when a particular combination of cards plays out, making an efficient influence-gaining engine in your empire.

Another facet of the game is the inter-dependency of different roles. While you may want to focus on settling or attacking planets, you also need to survey planets to add undiscovered ones to your region. If you want to dive deep into research, you have to have certain planet types under control in your empire. You need to focus on a particular role and then be able to switch to another once that foundation is set. As you are adding more and more cards to your deck, you have to determine when is the best time to alter your focus (and possibly think about removing cards that don’t fit your overall strategy). To add another wrinkle in decisions, deciding when to jump onto a role chosen by another player is an engaging aspect of play. All of this accumulates to a fun, interactive player experience.

The Good – You have a fun strategy deck building game that has enough meat for interesting choices and a variety of strategies to try out. The interaction initially looks limited but in play, being able to benefit from another player’s choice leads to a lot of back and forth during turns.

The iconography and design of the cards are well done. The tokens and ships are nice pieces of cardboard and chunky plastic. The central game mat is a pleasantly thick board and not a flimsy paper. While the artwork for some cards might clock in as a bit cartoonish for some it highlights the theme well (having a light touch of humor with some).

The Bad – The game turn revolves around selecting role cards. As the exhaustion of role cards is an end game condition, your engine can take some time to build and only a few turns to utilize once it’s in place before the game ends. I’d also say that card combinations not as deep as other games like Race for the Galaxy. While you have some interesting technologies to incorporate in your deck, the unique ones are somewhat limited. Players might also tend to slip into set strategies depending on the starting homeworlds they draw (which are limited).

Also, direct player interaction is not part of the game. It’s all through a sort of proxy with the selection of role cards. While your opponent can take advantage of roles you select, you can’t really do anything about it. Some looking for a 4X type of game where direct warfare against other players as an option will be disappointed.

Lastly, while the components are good overall I did have some dings in some of the cards and cardboard pieces from the player summaries and starting planets. Nothing huge, but certainly expect to sleeve those cards.

The Verdict – I enjoy Eminent Domain immensely. While it may have what initially seem as flaws with the game, through practice you realize they aren’t really much as a major detraction. The initial feeling is one might find the game repetitive. However you realize much of your overall strategy depends on the first few initial planets you control which actually are quite varied.

Additionally, you really have to be fluid with your plans. If your 3 other opponents are going a heavy warfare route you are just adding to the ending the game faster jumping on the bandwagon (by exhausting the supply of warfare cards). It might be more prudent to shift into another strategic role that’s less focused on by others. At the same time, you really want to be able to jump in on the action of other players’ choices for roles. This all goes on under the backdrop of a deck building game, where you want to also try and keep a tightly refined deck of cards. Dabble into too many different things and you’ll have a hard time getting the right cards you need.

This has sort of become my space empire card game choice as of late, replacing Race for the Galaxy. RftG is a fantastic game and one of my favorites. However the learning curve for RftG is so high, I just can’t seem to justify getting it out to the table as much. Eminent Domain is much easier to teach, yet still has some surprising depth and a little more player interaction than RftG.

Eminent Domain is a good game that combines role selection with deck building elements. It’s got enough player interaction and strategy to make for a fun game. And keeping the game to just about an hour means you can easily get a few games in a single evening. It’s a great buy for an approachable, yet strategic, card game.