> - Eldritch Horror

This one's essentially Arkham Horror if it hadn't sacrificed so much of its mechanics to its flavor that it became, more or less, a bad game. Plays much faster and cleaner. Does lose some of the atmosphere in the bargain, but playing Arkham Horror was such a slog that I doubt anyone at the table will want it back after playing this.

> - Betrayal at House on the Hill

The Legacy version of this is excellent. IMO adding those elements effectively completed this game, which never felt like it was living up to its potential, before.

Complete agreement on Eldritch Horror. But the new Arkham Horror is quite good in that regard as well; it's a different game but a fun one.

Pandemic is another game vastly improved by the Legacy mechanics.

Oh snap, didn't know there was a new AH under the same name. Will have to check it out.

Yeah, I mean the old one. It made it to our table a few times on the strength of the fluff, but it seemed like every time everyone was kinda unhappy that we'd played it, by the time it was over. Like we just kept forgetting how not-fun it had been, and remembering how fun we wished it was.

I find that to be true of most games that are simultaneously complex and require one player to mechanically implement a bunch of the rules. The new Arkham Horror fixed that largely by having an app implement the rules.

(D&D and similar require one player to DM, but that player also gets to be subjective and improvisational and do storytelling and pull in player ideas, which is much more fun than being the mechanical interpreter of the rules.)

(I do think the new Arkham Horror still has some issues, notably an excessive opacity of mechanics sometimes that leads to "you just lose out of the blue for unforeseeable reasons". But it's still usually fun.)

Huh? Well, many games with complex rules can be accelerated by having a "master" player who knows the game well. You can't usually trust them in competitive games, but for a coop game like AH that's not an issue. I don't see how this should be a problem for AH, at least for us it never was with the older versions. (Same for EH, which my SO or I usually kept track of the overhead while the others could focus on playing).

I totally missed that a new AH was released in 2018. On BGG it's a 7.7 over 7.0 for the original, AND the expansions are ranked really well (obviously players who buy an expansion already liked the base game, so there is some bias). Fixing the randomness sounds really REALLY good.

Great. Due to this thread, I now have another ~200 Euros on my board game wish list. Thanks! :P

I had noticed FFG's move to include companion apps for their games recently but haven't had the opportunity to try any of the ones that do so yet - they sound pretty convenient to use.

While the rules of Hanabi are simple, the complexity really comes from conventions. These guys take it to the next level: https://hanabi.github.io

I've had a lot of fun with Betrayal. It's got a really great cheesy theme. Huge glaring issue though is that the first half of the game is completely pointless and there are no decisions to make.

Yeah I get you, but I think a bit of random exploring/training/looting before knowing the haunt lends itself to a more dynamic experience when you play.