Daniel (@dungeondive) reviews Horror on the Orient Express from Chaosium, the board game built on the famous Call of Cthulhu campaign, and records it in his kitchen because the game has 56 setup steps, took 48 minutes to lay out, and is not changing rooms. First impressions were poor: two and a half hours of punching, sorting and assembling cardboard train cars before he could even start learning the rules. Then it won him over.
The pitch: investigators aboard a train shunted into the Dreamlands, six suspects of whom anywhere from one to all six are cultists, and passengers represented by mood dice running from calm to insane. There is one way to win, reaching the end of the line and correctly naming the cultists, and five ways to lose. Monsters chase the train from outside rather than boarding it, a vampire prowls the carriages and grows stronger where the curtains are drawn, and there is no combat and no final boss against a Great Old One, which he calls the game’s best decision.
His favourite mechanism is the conversation bag: draw tokens to question passengers, match pairs to reveal clues, bust on a third match, and press your luck like Columbo. Every action costs stamina, action cubes or sanity, and he credits the game with the real player agency his beloved roll-and-move games lack. Rulebook excellent, fast and easy solo with two investigators, recommended, but only if it can stay set up for a few days.
Daniel says the absence of a climactic showdown keeps the momentum going to the very last turn. Do Lovecraftian games work better without the big fight at the end, or do you miss it?