Hello. Can you post more photos of Helen? We have not seen her for a while.

Our son-in-law bought Betrayal and played it with his family, then brought it to our house, where we played it with them. Result: he traded it to someone for Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. The terrible rules made the game so slow, with us having to simply agree to what we think the rules should be, frequently, that we all just simply got disgusted with it. We did finish the game, but will never play it again. Guess we are some of the those folks you wouldn't suggest it to on game day. "Different strokes for different folks."

I am really looking forward to playing To Court the King. I think our family will enjoy it. I just need to put together another game order, now that it's available, finally.

Hi Gerald,

Sorry to hear that Betrayal was not to your family's tastes.

Ed and I did a lot of prep work before we played Betrayal with our group, working out some of the vague rules beforehand and familiarizing ourselves with the FAQ. This helped a LOT. There are also now better Haunt booklets you can download that clarify a lot of things. Even then, we had to make calls occasionally on how a certain item or room works and we just tried to be logical and fit it with the theme. I agree this could lead to some arguing.

To me, the game feels more like a role-playing game where the story is more important than clever or elegant gameplay. Luck plays a huge role which annoys the "heavy" gamers in our group. Myself, I enjoy an occasional game like this where I can immerse myself in the theme and not have to think too much.

Hi MIT,

This is the first time Helen has been able to come to our game day in a long time. If you look at the bottom of the blog post, there is a link to our Picture Gallery. There's a few more pictures of Helen there, I think.

Regarding Struggle for Rome, our 4-player game was similar to yours in that the game was very tense and the final scores were amazing: 10-10-10-10, with 5 gold coins determining the victor (my daughter Lindsay).

My biggest concern, however, was that the game took nearly an hour before things began getting interesting, as players are forced to plunder three cities in three separate regions before they can begin conquering them. This means that the number of locations that can produce resources for a player is restricted, resulting in a VERY slow build-up of resources.

With experience, future games may trim some time off our 3-hour experience, but I fear it will still be a 2 1/2 hour game, of which the first hour is rather dull.

Hi Greg,

I didn't find the "wandering" part of the game dull at all. Planning my routes, racing to plunder the cheaper cities first, trying to position my guys for good resource rolls were all interesting decisions for me especially since you are always having to adjust based on what the other players do. Resources are scarce but with the gold gotten from plundering you can move farther or use it in place of a resource. I do agree that it does feel slower than the second half where you are getting more resources rolling in. But, you also have to spend more to get both guys and wagons to conquer.

I think overall the game may be a bit too long but I never found it dull. I've since played it a third time which took about 2 hours again. I'd be happier if the game were 90 minutes.