Iello IEL51374 Mountains of Madness Board Game, Multicolour

Product Information

Each player gets increasing levels of madness - and if everyone is at level 3 and has to draw another, you lose - and you're not allowed to tell people about your madness.

William Dyer of Miskatonic University recounts the tale of a group of explorers, slowly being driven mad by an unknown force which lay dormant in an ancient city between the slopes. I like the mechanic of these here - giving a bit of variance and control to what could just be a staid, high-RNG mechanic with hand management. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

The die either makes you discard equipment cards from the deck - the only way to get cards back into the deck is rest, which permanently loses you a leadership token - get 2 injury cards, or straight discard leadership tokens. Players have a hand of equipment cards representing different equipment (crates, tools, weapons, and books) ranging in value from 2-6. In this game, we don’t really encounter the pantheon of demonic other world entities, but we do encounter Madness. I hate to prematurely purge a brand new game from our collection but I don't want to hold onto something just for the sake of sunk costs. Depending on player count, each player will be dealt a number of equipment cards and potentially, a starting madness card.

In this game, players take on the role of scientists on a daring expedition to Antarctica where they have discovered an ancient city behind a chain of nearly impassible mountains. If the airplane is on the third Escape tile at the end of a turn, the players have escaped the mountain and must then check to see if they were successful or if they failed. The Leader then places the aeroplane token on any bottom-row tile, subject to discussion if they’re feeling democratic.That said, I liked the description you gave of the game, but I had the same reaction that Wade did, in that the cards would become a known quantity too easily and the game would be just a routine of how to play around it, rather than play with it. While success means gaining relics, the knowledge along with them means that the player gaining the relic may also gain a more debilitating madness or lose certain abilities. As a result of the flexibility and ease of play, I recommend Mountains of Madness more highly than I thought I would. The balance of relic cards minus injury cards determines the players final score, with scores like zero (or less) up to about three representing either failure or a mediocre outcome and scores above four resulting in success of varying degrees – right up to the nearly impossible score of eleven.

Nearly every component has a designated spot on the board, even the sand timer, which will be the source of much drama as you play. While level 1 madness cards can be distracting, the level 2 and 3 cards can be downright disastrous to teamwork. Mountains of Madness is a fully co-operative game for 3–5 where players are members of an expedition trying to survive and escape having together collected more relics than injuries.

Throughout the book are these neat little pictures and pages that look like they were torn from a weathered journal.

Players must cumulatively place cards worth a value that is equal within the range shown – for example, a token might ask that players achieve between seven and nine points of weapon cards. Since the role of leader rotates, the usual issue with one alpha gamer dominating the game is somewhat mitigated since every player gets the opportunity to be in charge. It’s definitely one that I would recommend giving a try, especially if you like Lovecraft’s stories.The game’s insert is a bit wonky, with just barely not enough space to hold all the cards, but there are spaces for everything to fit, which is appreciated. That makes this a much lighter game, both in terms of play and feel, than you might otherwise expect from the title, Miguel Coimbra artwork and theme.