Hey everybody,
Something interesting happened at the weekend. I played a game of A Touch of Evil, which heretofore had been considered one of my all-time favourite board games, but I found myself almost completely unengaged. It’s interesting, because I’ve noticed a sort of pattern to this lately, where each time I play it, I’m finding it not as good as I remember it.
Set in colonial America, pushing that Sleepy Hollow feel to the limits, I always used to think of the game as one of the best immersive experiences you can have, principally because of the fact that the rules are pretty straightforward, meaning you don’t get bogged down in the rulebook. It’s Ameritrash at its finest, a dice-chucker in the same vein as Arkham Horror, where you’re moving around a board and making skill tests when encountering board spaces or enemies. A 5 or a 6 will always be successful on these tests, unless you have something that tells you otherwise. At its core, that’s it. The object of the game is to find out what is terrorising the town of Smallbrook, one of several classic horror villains such as vampire, spectral horseman, and so on. It’s almost like the rules are kept purposefully light so that the theme can shine forth, and in years gone by, I think this was one of its best points.
I’ve noticed a certain reluctance to play the game in recent months, though – I mean, I had gone years without playing it, until finally getting some games in at the tail end of 2022. I put it on my 10×10 gaming challenge thing because I thought it would be great to get some more games in, but as time has gone on, it really hasn’t inspired me and I think it’s currently the least-played game on that list. The last few times I have played it, I’d noticed a somewhat uninspired feeling coming out, but then at the weekend, I thought I had gotten over that, and was really looking forward to playing the game again. I decided to go for a big experience with my favourite villain, the Unspeakable Horror, and expanded the game with Something Wicked and Hero Pack One.
I was definitely in the mood to play the game, but the first mystery card I drew was The Hour is Late, which puts a 20-turn timer on the game (at most), which I don’t always like. The game round is actually quite quick, I’ve noticed, so a timer mechanism isn’t always needed. True, if you’re dawdling incessantly, then it can be a bit drawn-out, if still nothing has happened and you’re two hours in, but as I said before, it’s the sort of game that I like to experience and immerse myself in, so I don’t usually mind a longer game.
The combination of mystery cards drawn in the first few rounds meant that the game was ultimately over in about 20 minutes, and I had to move quickly towards the end game, or “showdown” with the villain. However, being on this timer really meant that I had lost most of my enthusiasm for the game, and so when the time came for it, while I was able to deal about 6 wounds to the villain, both of my heroes were knocked out, and I just didn’t care.
It’s very sad, really, to have a game experience where the end result is one where “I just didn’t care”. I’m a bit sad that it’s come after a game of A Touch of Evil, as well, because I have so many good memories of playing with this one! I have thought that maybe it’s time to retire it to the loft, and make some room on the shelf for other games, but I might try for one more before the end of the year. There were two print-and-play villains released with a Christmas theme, Krampus and the Nutcracker, so I think I might give it a try with just the base game and one of those, to see if I can’t recapture the magic. It is possible that I had too much going on with the expansion, of course.
spalanz.com