Hey all, Sam and David here again today.
Hello, and welcome back to another edition of Tabletop Tuesday, the series on our blog where we focus on all things tabletop. This could be a review of a board game, a card game, a dice game, or a tabletop role-playing game. Or it could be a discussion about some aspect of TTRPG gaming or etiquette. Or it could be us talking about accessories to help level up your game night. Whatever it is, it is guaranteed to focus on tabletop gaming.
This is something that both David and I love. We met thanks to a friend’s Dungeons & Dragons game, and our whole relationship has featured numerous tabletop game days and tabletop gaming conventions (we’ve gone to Gen Con every year that we’ve been together). So, it completely makes sense now that we’re doing this blog together, that we have at least one day where we focus on our love of tabletop.
Today we are back with a tabletop game that has a changing board layout, but that also features rolling dice to alter the game, as well as drawing cards that could be useful items….or they could be visions, signs, omens, or clues for what’s to come.
If you’re a fan of B Rated Horror Movies…or even if you aren’t…let’s talk about Betrayal at House on the Hill…
- RE-PLAYABLE NARRATIVE BOARD GAME: Tile by tile, terror by terror, build their own haunted mansion and then try to escape it alive. The game is for 3-6 players and takes about 60 minutes to play
- MODULAR BOARD PIECES: The Betrayal at House on the Hill tabletop game features 50 blood-curdling scenarios. Each trip to the house promises fresh horrors and a new story is created every time you play
- HAUNTED HOUSE TRAITOR GAME: Players must work together to survive the nightmare…but beware! The house turns one player against the others in this cooperative strategy game
- MINIATURES BOARD GAME: This second edition of Betrayal at House on the Hill includes 6 pre-painted plastic explorer figures, 80 cards, 149 tokens, 44 room tiles, 2 haunt books, and more
- IMMERSIVE NARRATIVE: Get ready for an unpredictable and thrilling exploration of the haunted house. Encounter witches, dragons, zombies, and other spooky and bizarre B-movie horror clichés
The creak of footsteps on the stairs, the smell of something foul and dead, the feel of something crawling down your back — this and more can be found in this award-winning and highly acclaimed tabletop game of strategy and horror. Avalon Hill Betrayal at House on the Hill Cooperative Board Game Second Edition includes 50 fiendish scenarios and dozens of danger-filled rooms. You will return to the house again and again — as often as you dare — and never face the same game twice. Gather friends together for a game night of monsters, miniatures, and modular board pieces in this immersive, story-driven hidden traitor game for 3-6 players, ages 12 and up. Avalon Hill and all related trademarks and logos are trademarks of Hasbro, Inc.
Includes 1 rulebook, 2 haunt books (Traitor’s Tome and Secrets of Survival), 44 room tiles, 1 entrance hall/foyer/grand staircase tile, 6 pre-painted plastic explorer figures, 6 two-sided character cards, 30 plastic clips, 8 dice, 1 turn/damage track, 80 cards (event, item, omen), and 149 tokens.
There is a 3rd Edition of this game out as well, and it does feature some upgrades in the art, layout, coloring, and overall design…but we have, and have been playing the 2nd Edition for a number of years now. We also have the Widow’s Walk Expansion, and we have the Dungeons & Dragons Edition, which is called Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate.
So this is a game we enjoy playing, and it has a lot of replay value. There are 50 different haunts in the base game, and the Widow’s Walk expansion adds an additional 50 haunts. In all of the times we have played it…we have never played the same haunt twice, which is pretty fun.
Also, the house’s layout changes each time you play, because the tiles are drawn in a different order, and will place the tiles at different spots within the house.
We absolutely love games that you can play over and over without it really feeling repetitive.
Now I (Sam) am not a huge fan of the horror genre. I can read or watch things that have horror as a sub-genre, but overall, it’s not a genre that is interesting to me. Especially when it comes to TV shows and movies, the music always seems to give away the “scary” moments, and oftentimes any gore or violence seems a bit too much or a bit too exaggerated. I say all these, because I DO enjoy playing this game (probably because there’s no soundtrack going in the background. Plus it’s a bit cheesy and campy most of the time…and you’re playing with friends, which always makes it a good time.
There are a lot of pieces and parts to this game, so it can be easy to misplace or lose pieces if you don’t keep track of things. Our game box is filled with little snack and sandwich baggies containing all the cardboard pieces…but you can actually find people who have made organizing inserts to put in the game box to help keep everything a bit easier to find than how we do it.
Oh, and they have made some serious upgrades to the character cards since Sam bought our edition. Our copy has the sliders to put on the character cards to keep track of attributes, but any little bump or movement can cause the slider to shift, which can sometimes make it difficult to keep track of where your Speed or Sanity or Might or Knowledge is. They actually have these Upgrade Kits, which replace the sliders with spinning dials….which means you actually just fully replace the character cards. The 3rd Edition of the game has a different character card setup as well (and they’ve even changed out the character roster, so it’s all new haunted house explorers).
All in all, this is a fun and ever-changing game. After you understand the basic setup and rules, it’s fine that the rest of it changes with each play-through. It’s actually really fun to sit around the table, slowly exploring this big creepy house, just wondering when things are going to take a dark turn, and wondering when one of your fellow players, your fellow explorers, is going to turn on you or be forced to turn on you….or perhaps you’ll all have to turn on each other. (We had that happen one time…the house suddenly took off into the sky and parachute backpacks appeared in the house, but there was one fewer backpack than there were people in the house…so it was a race to the packs and a fight against your fellow explorers…because somebody was going to die (or somebody was going to get killed).
This is definitely a staple on our gaming shelves, and is a game we enjoy playing again and again. It’s just a lot of run, and a lot of that is because of the replay value.
Well, that is all from us for today. Thank you so much for stopping by, and we’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
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