Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Dave Reviews: Party Insanity!

Mountains Of Madness

Yeah man! Let's get the gang together, get a couple cases of Bud, and head down to Antarctica! Woo!


If you're reading board game reviews, chances are you know that Mountains of Madness is a Cthulhu reference. So, what's up with that intro? It's just a funny (arguable) way to lead into a gloomy Lovecraft-style game, something different, right?

Mm.

Here's how the game works: There's a mountain your group needs to climb. At the top is the ancient city that is not only your ultimate goal, but the only way for you to leave. The mountain consists of a pyramid of tiles—two rows of coast tiles, two smaller rows of mountain tiles above that, a few city tiles at the top, and then the "Edge of Madness" from which your plane takes off, if you make it that far. When you move to a tile, you flip it over and play cards which, combined, need to match the target types and value on the tile. Succeed and you get the reward. Fail and suffer the consequences. Partially succeed (each tile has at least two goals) and you'll get both the reward and some consequences.

So far, so Cthulhu. Of course, it's not so simple, and the teamwork aspect is complicated by a few factors. One is that everyone plays their cards face down. Two is that nobody can talk to each other once they start playing cards. Three is that you're working on a thirty second timer to play all the cards (this can be lengthened with leadership tokens, which can create its own hassle). And four is the various forms of madness people suffer during the game.

Madness is a core component. Everyone starts with a basic (level 1) form of madness, and this will nearly always get worse as the game goes along. Depending on the players, some higher level madness will be less problematic than lower level ones, but generally they're more difficult to manage.

Here are a few examples of the madness you might have to play out:

  • Speak with an accent
  • Drum your fingers on the table
  • Describe the value of the cards in your hand via the coinciding month of the year (1 = January, 2 = February, etc)
  • Say "you" anytime you want to say "I"
  • Don't speak unless you're touching someone else's head
This, good readers, is a party game. Cthulhu madness involves flipping out and dashing naked into the snowy wilderness to be nommed upon by curious penguins. This madness, while arguably a different view into how crazy things can get while traveling the Mountains of Madness, is really the kind of thing you would find in a party game when you combine it with the teamwork of the cards.

If you imagine this as a low-key party game, where people are a few beers in and following personal rules (rather than madness cards) and playing cards with different values of cocktails, hard liquor, etc., rather than crates and weapons, it makes complete sense. Mountains of Madness, on the other hand, twists the concept into three or four knots to make it work with the Cthulhu theme.

Cthulhu sells, so from a business perspective the decision makes sense. Slapping "Mountains of Madness" on the box guarantees ten times the sales as compared to Goofy Party Game #326. But it's severely misleading in terms of what kind of game you're going to get, to the point that even when you take this all into account, the visual theme still screws with the fun of the game itself.

TLDR: Meh.

Score: Craaaaaaaaaaazy Eight (out of fifteen)

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