In playing Mansions of Madness Second Edition, our crew "finished" a scenario that had been eluding us for multiple plays. This time way finally came to a conclusion of sorts that wasn't quite what we had expected. Our GameNight crew played the Escape from Innsmouth scenario for what was probably my 4th or 5th time. We had yet to beat this scenario. Last week, we were determined to finally win. Though the game was "won", it was not quite what we had hoped. Gameplay Overview In brief, Mansions of Madness is a cooperative adventure game for 1-5 players. In the Second Edition, an app is used in conjunction with the game board tiles, cards, tokens, miniatures and other components to assist in play. This type of app integration is particularly well done allowing for players to still feel engaged in playing a tabletop game. The group plays as a team of investigators while the app takes on the role of the game master, explaining which new tiles, tokens and miniatures to place as the adventure moves along. Each scenario has some sort of a mystery to solve and the app does a great job of handling the storytelling and progressing through the adventure. Players are very much still involved in making choices as well as placing and moving figures and tokens on the table. Most adventures require a specific number of objectives to be met within some constraint of time or other plot requirement in order to "win" that scenario. Nikki, Jeff, Jennie, Dave, and I played the Escape from Innsmouth scenario in this particular session. We had all played at least two to four times prior, so the basic requirements and map tile placement was all very familiar. We worked well as a team trying to advance through the adventure and locations as quickly as possible, attempting to find necessary items as well as encountering and battling enemies along the way. Unfortunately, we just didn't seem to be rolling dice all that well. Certain objectives took us a number of times to complete, due to missed skill check rolls. As we continued to play it became more apparent that we just weren't quite making as much progress as we thought was needed. Jeff who was playing as the character Minh Thi Phan had been taking a lot of "horror" damage along the way. We did what we could to try to help him reduce the mental damage. Eventually it was too much. Jeff went beyond his limit of "horror" damage and went "Insane". In Mansions of Madness, when a character goes insane, he/she takes a random insane condition card and privately reads the back. This condition tells the player what the insane condition may require. Sometimes, there is no change, the player continues on as normal and the team wins as normal. Other times, the insane player may be instructed that their rules/conditions for winning are now altered. The condition card might require the player to set fires and after burning enough of the map, they could win the game OR... the insane player may have to do something strange like play without speaking or only using a single action each turn, etc... In our case, Jeff drew the following card: Jeff's insane condition card instructed him of his new win condition for the game. As fate would have it, Jeff was already on the space of one other investigator and had a Bladed Weapon in his possession. When it came around to his turn again he revealed the above card and stated that he had met his win condition. Jeff had won the game! Unfortunately for the rest of us, the adventure was lost. We still didn't beat that particular scenario, however one of us did win. We weren't sure what to think. Jeff was happy for the win. The rest of us were somewhat thankful he put an end to our misery. We just hadn't rolled well nor played as well as we thought we should have. A somewhat bittersweet end to another attempt at this scenario. Final Thoughts
I'm not sure if our group will ever try that scenario again. We may just say that Jeff has won the game and decide to move onto the next. I still had a lot of fun playing this scenario. Each adventure introduces a new mystery to solve with a unique map and story. One downfall is that gameplay can get a bit long. Some of the really big scenarios can take three to five hours or more. Luckily with the app, you can save your progress and game state for a future session. For a link to the BGG page for Mansions of Madness click here. Have you ever encountered this issue before? Have you found within a cooperative game, a situation in which one of the players can win even though the main team loses? I know in Betrayal at House on the Hill it can sort of be like that... however that is by design. In that game one player is intentionally singled out as a betrayer and can win while the rest of the team can lose. What other games have you found that do this? I don't think there's that many. Please leave a comment if you've had similar situations or found other games that can result with a "rogue winner". Continue checking out both this website and the King's GameNight Facebook page for future posts and updates, and... Game on!
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