Insanity or Death

Since the resident board gamer is in town, I’m getting exposed to all sorts of new games. This last one was Witch of Salem. Like anything good in the Cthulhu mythos, your choices are die terribly or go insane. Winning is not generally an option. That’s what makes it fun, right?

The Run Down

As our resident game master said, there are many ways to lose, but only one way to win. You win by exposing all of the Old God shadows before the victory counter at the edge of the board reaches the corner and by closing all of the portals before that same counter gets to the end of its walk as you hold off the sixth shadow.

At the beginning of each full circuit, an event and two monster cards are drawn. When you draw a monster, if there’s a space for it it goes on the board. There are two of each regular monsters in the deck. If you pull a monster that’s already on the board, the effect on the bottom of the card gets activated. Some force every player to loose two sanity, some eat a vast amount of items, and others slide the victory counter up closer to your doom. Sometimes, you can fend off the slide by sacrificing items.

I hope you didn't need this item to kill that monster.

The turns go like this:

1. You play a location card and travel there.
2. You get to trade with players at the location.
3. You get attacked if there’s a monster at the location and then destroy the monster if you have the appropriate items.
4. You get to use an item.
5. You get to pick up an item and pay for it.

The game seats up to four. Each character receives a stack of cards with all of the seven locations on them plus the Secret Passage which allows you to go fight the sixth Old God. You’ve also got a sanity counter (which starts as six and steadily goes to zero as you run into the terrible things the portals are spitting out).

The character card has spots for three items and an artifact. There are four different types of items in the game. Glasses allow you to peak at the portals which reside face down at the locations. The Necronomicon allows you to expose the Old Gods one at a time. The dagger allows you to slaughter one of the monsters if the Witch of Salem (who the game is named for) is on the same location. The potions allow you to regain some of your sanity back, which is always a good thing.

The whole thing seems to take about an hour and a half.

My Experience

This game was completely brutal to us. Out of the six times we played, we only won once. The funny thing is, our death was never a slow decline into the deep. With a final flourish and a neat stab, we’re all dead and the Old Gods have slipped into this reality. That never makes for a good day, I assure you.

The first few games we played with one of the most frustrating rules I’ve run across: you cannot communicate with your fellow plays on which portal tiles are actually portals. You can’t return a location card you’ve already used to your hand until you’ve traveled to the University. This created an interesting play style that seemed contrary to the cooperative nature of the game.

The board has some great detail.

If you had glasses or an artifact to start the dance was easier. Otherwise, you had to find glasses, look at a portal, find the appropriate artifact, and then seal the portal. This required at least one trip back to the University. We decided early on that the best way around this was to allow communication. But, there was one trick. You could trade information only with people at the same location you were at (much like trading items).

The Witch of Salem, by virtue of the event cards we pulled, managed to be useless more often than not. In theory, he (yes, he) allows you to avoid damage from monsters, slaughter monsters with a single dagger, and to regain sanity points via potion at twice the going rate.

The only time we won we aggressively picked up items, attacked monsters, and revealed Gods. The portals were almost secondary. Every turn was planned out meticulously, and no monsters came out that truly decided to give us what for.

All in all, the game is more than willing to give you a delicious beating. When we beat it, we were shocked, and I wasn’t entirely sure we’d won. I look forward to finding other strategies to winning.