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BOARD GAME REVIEW
Kill Doctor Lucky (Director’s Cut)

You and others been invited to the mansion of Doctor J. Robert Lucky, who you’ve hated – for your own reasons – for as long as you can remember. This is your chance to kill him! What you hadn’t expected was that all of the other guests want to kill him, too. But he’s not called Lucky without good reason, and it will take some planning and some luck of your own to do away with the doctor.

Cheapass Games was founded in order to provide game players with very affordable games by foregoing common game pieces and colour in their card-based products. Supplied with the Kill Doctor Lucky kit is an 8-piece game board, a deck of 96 cards, and a rule book. In order to keep track of themselves and others, the players must each get an identifiable piece (“pawn”) plus one more Master Pawn to represent Doctor Lucky. (Note: While this review is based on the 2002 Director’s Cut of the game, the newer releases since Titanic Games bought the rights in 2006 are in colour and come complete with pieces.)

To begin the game, the mansion is put together from the 8 game board pieces, which creates an overview of the building, hallways and rooms separated by walls and doors, with rooms named and numbered. Everyone starts in room 0, the Drawing Room, while the good doctor is placed randomly: flipping deck cards over until a room card is flipped, which will be his starting place. The deck is shuffled and six cards are dealt to each player. There are various cards in the deck, explained shortly.

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REVIEW
Betrayal at House On The Hill

Designed by Bruce Glassco and Published by Avalon Hill (Hasbro)/Wizards of the Coast. 3-6 Players, aged 10+.

Like horror? Maybe you enjoy a bit of creepiness, and the anticipation of who or what lies around the next corner in an old mansion? Then the Betrayal At House On The Hill board game is something you should definitely check out.

To start the game – which requires an average-sized dining table – three floor starter tiles are placed on the table, and room tiles are shuffled together and placed face-down. Three categories of cards are put into separate decks: Item, Omen, and Event. 8 customized d6 dice are kept handy, and each of the players gets to choose which explorer character to play. 6 double-sided character cards have sliding plastic markers which allow the players to track the condition of their characters in Speed, Might, Sanity, and Knowledge. While a specific blend of these qualities determines the initial aspects of your character (fast but not too strong, smart but not too fast, etc.), each will likely change as play continues, sometimes drastically. What your character’s attributes are when the endgame begins can spell victory or defeat.

Once the characters have been chosen and the plastic figurine for each has been placed in the front hall of the ground floor starter tile (representing the explorers entering the mansion), the game commences clockwise. Each character can move a number of spaces up to his/her Speed value, the idea being to explore this creepy old mansion room-by-room. The game board is built up differently every game, using a modular system whereby any room tile can be placed next to any other room tile which belongs on the same floor; hence three starter tiles representing ground floor, second floor, and basement, with room tiles usable on one specific floor, two specific floors, or any floor. As a character travels through a door or down a hallway into a new room, a new room tile is drawn from the face-down room tile stack, flipped to reveal the room, and placed where the character is standing. This character has now “explored” this room, must end his/her turn, and the tile (generally) remains a fixed part of the growing game board. What happens from revealing room to room is where the real fun starts.

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