Elder Sign
by FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES
for 1-8 players
Play time 1 hour
Setup time 10 mins
Teaching time 15 mins
Reason I bought Elder Sign is because of the dice, and because it can play up to 8 people, and because it is portable. The game works, but I've had some bad experiences teaching it. Since 3 months ago till now, we have not craved for this, so I'm not sure it is ever going to come back on the table again. I still play it solo though.
Elder Sign is a HP Lovecraft themed Arkham Horror Lite coop game with dice and lots of luck. There, I've summed up the whole game.
If you have not played Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror before, then I'll need to explain this game a bit. You throw dice to complete tasks which will give you items or Elder Signs!!! Yes, one of the ways to win this game is to collect these Signs and once you hit the amount you need, then game over for the bad guys. The other way is to go head-to-head with the Boss. It is fun to throw dice but there are some drawbacks to Elder Sign that makes it not so fun which I will explain later in this review.
Game Components 5/10
Very beautiful artwork on all the cards. The cards make up your board. You don't get a board here, and I wish they had a board. It would bring so much more attraction to the game. But I believe this game was made to be protable (It comes in a box considerably smaller than most other board games of its kind) so the cards would have to do. But I still think they skimped on this to make it cheaper, which brings the game experience down by a few notches.
The cards are sized well but the words are so small, and in writing that makes them look like scribbles. I can hardly read them. To get into the theme of the game, you will need to read each card, but it is such a hassle because you have to lift each card up to read it that our gaming group just skimped on the theme itself. What a bore. No theme, no good gaming experience for me! The cards are quite thin so just sleeve them up.
Oh they also give you a beautiful clock to fix and play with. Though in the long run, I foresee the clock falling apart after plenty of turning.
You're given 6 green dice, 1 yellow and 1 red one. All are beautifully carved in dice and the only component I can find no fault with in this game.
Finally, you get a whole bunch of tokens (they look like hundreds) the size of lady birds, like really small. So take your kids below 6 years old out of the gaming room before bringing this out. So far I have yet to miss a piece but it is highly likely that a few tokens may go missing after some time.
Game Mechanics 7/10
During setup, an Ancient One is chosen (Boss evil) for your team to fight against. On the Boss card, you will see a number of Elder Signs you have to collect to win and the number of doom tokens you can afford before all hell breaks loose and the Ancient One comes into the world. Every player then gets a character card on which you will have Stamina points and Sanity points, get either of these down to zero and your character either dies or goes insane. Your character card also shows one special ability that each character will have that is important to win the game. Make sure you use it to its full ability.
6 adventure cards will be placed face up and during a turn, an investigator (character) will have to go over to any of these adventure cards and try to complete the task set before him/her by throwing dice equal to the requirement of that adventure. During the game, you may choose to lock a die roll on your investigator or on a friend who is already on that adventure (usually because he/she failed it before this). Or if you have items on hand, you use them, usually either to add the yellow or red die, or lock a die. These things will help you heaps during the game so make sure you stock up on items and keep using them to gain more items. If you fail to complete the tasks, you are punished with the items listed on the card. If you are successful, feel the victory as you get rewarded for your efforts and luck in dice rolling. Some of these adventures have Elder Signs as rewards, which you have to collect before the Ancient One awakens.
If the Ancient One awakens, then muahahahaha "the Dark Lord is aliiveeeee". Just kidding. Once you wake the Boss, everyone goes to battle mode and you will have to roll the combination on the Ancient One card every turn until either the all investigators die or go insane, or you reduce the Boss' doom tokens to zero and defeat him. Well all the best defeating the Ancient One. It is very hard to defeat the Boss. There is also the Boss, Azallalalalathu, who has no dice combination on his card, which means you all lose when he awakens.
Oh I almost forgot to mention the dreaded clock. After every turn, the clock moves 3 hours forward. Whenever it hits 12 (supposedly midnight), a myth card is drawn and effects resolved (usually add doom tokens to the track). This mechanic helps to scale the amount of players so that the game doesn't take too long and at the same time keeps the same difficulty level whether with 1 player or with 8.
Replayability 7/10
10 Ancient Ones to defeat, 12 characters to choose from, various adventures to play through. Yes, this game is made with replayability in mind. However, I'm not sure how I am going to get this to the table again considering all the other better board games that I have.
Game Experience 5/10
I had a really good experience with dice when I was playing King of Tokyo. They say all dice games came from Yahtzee. So I had this urge to find a coop game that was driven by dice. Elder Sign came into my list of games to get.
My experience playing this game with casual gamers is... not so good. Like I mentioned, the cards are really hard to read and there are so many small components to keep track of. Everyone just wanted to find the cards that had Elder Signs as rewards. Soon enough they lost all their items and kept on failing tasks. We still won the game though so the claims that this game is too easy is valid to an extent.
The die rolling is really fun. Completing the tasks makes you want to do a victory dance. The mechanics to lock dice is fantastic too. But for some reason, it still lacks the ooommph that we had with King of Tokyo. Or maybe my friends weren't that into the HP Lovecraft horror theme in the first place. I do not know what was the reason behind it but game time kinda sucked with this game.
I do notably wish to state that playing the game solo is fun and I have played this a few times alone when I just had to free my mind off some work. Maybe I just haven't found the right group to play this with.
A friend just played it with his gaming group last night and they had a hard time beating it. They mentioned that the adventures and monsters locked the yellow, red and green dice at the start of the game. Then they couldn't even roll a peril and a terror at the same time. Funnily, I have never had a hard time beating the game. Must be really bad dice rolls that they experienced. Yes, this game will mostly be based on luck.
Overall 5/10
I'm a bit disappointed that this doesn't get more plays. Solo-ing is the only time I enjoyed this game. Usually when playing with other players, they get bored in between turns and talk about the sky, the moon and everything else. So instead of a coop game, it is a make your site rolls count game.
No point complaining now, just play solo all the way. Or maybe get wifey for a two player game. Yea, that might work...
Pros:
Dice are cool
Beautiful artwork
Cons:
High downtime with 4+ players
Complex
Teaching this is hard
Easy to win
Horror theme
Lots of small components
Played the game? Feel free to comment and let me know how much you enjoyed the game...
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