[Board game] Betrayal at house on the hill

[alhoon]

Well... that game is fast and easy to learn. IMO it lacks the atmosphere of Arkham horror and it's less polished and balanced but every round is fast and you have a good time. In a couple of hours you propably play 2-3 games of it, pack it and then do something else.

What it's all about:
3-6 explorers (players) explore an abandoned haunted house that is revealed tile by tile as they explore rooms. Strange things momentarily appear and attack, floorboards give away and you fall, More or less like a somewhat less deadly house of lament.
Then at some point the Haunt starts which is the real trouble. Something happens and one of the explorers finds something that shouldn't have been found and turns against the others, he's the traitor. Usually that something that turned the traitor against his fellows is something big and nasty.
Now the Haunt thing(s) and the traitor try to do their thing whether it is to give a special little girl to a mummy or complete a nasty ritual etc and the heroes try to do what the scenario demands them to do to win.

I think the game strikes a good balance between "simple", "Fast", "enjoyable".

The main detractors I found in this game are:
- that it comes with 50 scenarios only. After you play through those, you've finished the game more or less. Truth be told though, you could play a scenario again, it's not that they have no replayability.
- Your char can die. That means that you get to bring pizza while the others play. Thankfully, the chars don't die very easily and the game is short. Still it could potentionally happen for you to stay out of the game for 30-40 mins and watch.
- The game isn't too balanced. It's for 3-6 players but some scenarios are next to impossible to win with just 3 players. The evil things stats or items etc don't change whether there are 3 players or 6. A few scenarios exist that players turn monsters (*Cough* afflicted *cough* werewolves *Cough*), so IMO they may be easier with 3 players. Still, my recommendation is to play it with at least 4 players.
- Luck is the deciding factor usually as in most such games. However, in this game it's slightly more important than usual. Which items you get, which room you stumble in and what happens to you is totally random. There are no "good" or "bad" areas where you could expect good or bad things to happen more often.

PS. For those that want 20 nice new scenarios:
Here you can find some nice new ones.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

I've played this game a few times with my two brothers and found it to be a lot of fun. Betrayal is a great game, but before playing you absolutely must visit the website and get the errata. Due to a misprint, the underground lake is an Upper Floor Tile not a basement tile. Also, some of the Haunts are missing from the Haunt book.

The game allows players limited options for characters, but they can still be a lot of fun. My personal favorite character was the one we knew as "Professor Knuckles", the brainy intellectual who so often ended up with the deadliest weapons.

Like Alhoon said, the adversarial system can be a problem when you're playing in small groups. To this day, I maintain a perfect TPK record for the times that I was the Betrayer at the House on the Hill.

Now everyone take a swim in the lake. My lake-monster isn't going to feed itself.

[alhoon]

I got into the game less than a week ago, I received it as gift for my Birthday. It's the 2nd edition, so it has all the haunts and the lake is a basement tile.
So far, I've been traitor twice and I've killed everyone just once.

[steveflam]

I have tried it three times! Loved it every time. I would be curious to know how Ron finds the game seeing as he is the resident board gaming master IMO

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I would be curious to know how Ron finds the game seeing as he is the resident board gaming master IMO

Thanks. In brief, I love it, warts and all.


I wholeheartely recommend the newer 2nd edition (black/green box) over the 1st (red box). It incorporates all or most of the changes from the various errata files, and put important stuff from the rulebook right on the tiles so you don't forget (like being able to use the chapel/larder/gym/library only once per game per player). I sold off my 1st edition one and bought the 2nd. I'm not sure if this still is the case or not, but early printings of the 2nd edition had a big problem with warping tiles. WotC replaced mine for free, and the replacements have been fine. Though I do miss the lake in the upstairs, I always thought it was a happy accident, not a mistake.

IMO it lacks the atmosphere of Arkham horror

I actually feel quite the opposite. Despite AH's massive production quality, I felt the board looked more like a flowchart than the town of Arkham, and that the tiny amounts of text on the event cards (and small number of different cards) compared poorly with BaHotH's large and flavorful event and item decks. (while BaHotH's tile-based board is dripping with flavor and atmosphere in every "room"). I guess it might be a matter of which you see first and get used to? I dunno, but BaHoth's flavor and atmosphere are its strongest points, IMHO.

and it's less polished and balanced but every round is fast and you have a good time.

Now this is quite true. BaHotH's problems are mainly in the balance area. You have to go into the game knowing that you might just get randomly screwed, but you'll have a blast anyway. But then, walking into a haunted house, you should be prepared to be randomly screwed.

that it comes with 50 scenarios only. After you play through those, you've finished the game more or less. Truth be told though, you could play a scenario again, it's not that they have no replayability.

This hasn't been an issue for me, though I agree the game has been crying out for an official expansion for 8 years now (C'mon WotC, please?!!?). We simply don't play it enough to feel like we're "done". We've occasionally hit this same haunt again, but seen it as a challenge to do better than last time (especially if we were on the losing side last time). Also, each haunt can play out completely differently based on the game state when the haunt begins. Some haunts become much easier or much more difficult for one side or the other, based on which rooms have been explored, or how many rooms. Again, the balance issue, but it does add to the replay value.

- Your char can die. That means that you get to bring pizza while the others play. Thankfully, the chars don't die very easily and the game is short. Still it could potentionally happen for you to stay out of the game for 30-40 mins and watch.

Note that you can't die until the haunt begins! (It's in the rulebook somewhere, but easily missed.) Since the Haunt rarely lasts long, especially if people start dying, dead players are usually out for 15-20 minutes, tops.

The evil things stats or items etc don't change whether there are 3 players or 6

True, but usually the required things the good guys need to do to win scale with number of players. Fighting the bad guys is usually not the way for the good guys to win.

[alhoon]

I agree with most but:

The evil things stats or items etc don't change whether there are 3 players or 6

True, but usually the required things the good guys need to do to win scale with number of players.

Not really from those scenarios I've seen.
You have to find X room, pass a couple of Y+ checks, find Z item or kill the bad guy. 5 Heroes have a much better chance of finding those than 2 Heroes.

As for expansion? 20 more event cards, 10 more item cards, 16 tiles (4/8/4) and 4 new omen cards along with say 30 new scenarios for those omen cards and tiles should be enough.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Not really from those scenarios I've seen.
You have to find X room, pass a couple of Y+ checks, find Z item or kill the bad guy. 5 Heroes have a much better chance of finding those than 2 Heroes.

It's the "couple" of checks that usually (or at least, often) scales. They say stuff like "set aside a number of "sanity check" tokens equal to the number of players, etc. Now, I've only played with the 2nd edition set once, and I know they changed some of the haunts, so maybe there's less of that, but the one I did play had us make a knowledge check per player next to the enemy and then a knowledge check per player again in different rooms and then throw the resulting potion at the enemy to win.

The unbalancing thing I find more than the player number is late haunt vs. early haunt. If you have to find 5 rooms and they are all still in the tile deck, it's a lot harder than if they are all already on the table. Also the wrong player being stuck in the basement when the haunt is triggered and having to find the stairs, rope, or elevator can make a huge difference in how beatable the haunt is.

[alhoon]

The unbalancing thing I find more than the player number is late haunt vs. early haunt. If you have to find 5 rooms and they are all still in the tile deck, it's a lot harder than if they are all already on the table. Also the wrong player being stuck in the basement when the haunt is triggered and having to find the stairs, rope, or elevator can make a huge difference in how beatable the haunt is.

True, true...

I think if we end up in a case like that, I would suggest that we give the same scenario a re-play. If we're not too deep in the haunt to have revealed things to the traitor etc, it's totally managable.

So far the suggested rules I found to play a specific scenario are simple and easy:
- set aside the omen card that triggers the selected haunt and memorize the rooms that trigger it.
- Don't make haunt rolls. When any of the rooms required in the selected haunt turn up, the haunt immediately begins.

I would also add the following:
- If one of the required omen rooms turns up too early, resuffle it and draw another room.
- The traitor should be the same as it was the other time (since he knows the scenario). If that requires him to be in the same room as the fateful omen, change places with the player that triggered the haunt.
- Be civil. That you know who the traitor would be in advance, doesn't mean you should be bad to him, not offering help in the "if explorer is in X room, you add another dice" events.