Horror on the Orient Express: Discussion

0:09 Some viewers may find the following video disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.

0:14 Hey everyone, welcome back to Board Games Online and today I'm doing a discussion on Horror on the Orient Express. This is the one of the newest games in the Call of Cthulhu universe, I guess, and it was one that I was highly anticipating mainly for the fact that it was a Cthulhu game that was set in a that had a setting unlike a lot of these other Cthulhu games. Um, typically whenever you have this Lovecraftian style game, you're going to have the same types of people. The only game that came out that wasn't really in that setting was Cthulhu: Death May Die where it had a bunch of different characters that were not the ones we had seen in Elder Tour and Arkham Horror and Arkham Horror: The Card Game and so on and so forth. And this game was set entirely on a train and had this actual um, physical train that you are manipulating and you're trying to figure out who the cultists are that brought you on this train before a lot of things time out.

1:24 Or before a lot of things happen that can just cause you to lose. Uh, and what's interesting is when this game showed up, it was in two separate boxes and I was thinking, holy [ __ ] I did not know this game was going to be this big. Hell, I didn't even know the core game was going to be as massive as this box and then the boxes you're kind of seeing over on the side are mainly cosmetic upgrades, but this big one right right here is a campaign. I mean, this game was on crowdfunding for a decent amount of time, and I just missed it completely that this was a campaign. Now, this is good This uh video is going to be over not anything campaign related. I uh possibly in the future I'll do the campaign stuff as a series on the channel. Maybe solo, maybe with someone else. We shall see. But, um what do I think of Horror on the Orient Express? I think it's very good. I think there is a lot of stuff. Now, I'm not uh I'm not like over the moon with it.

2:29 I don't think it's the best Cthulhu game out there, but I do think that it is a breath of fresh air. There is a lot of stuff that this game does extremely well, and then a few things that the game does that I think is a little bit uh clunky. So, the let's go ahead and talk about the things that I find as kind of a um kind of a barrier to maybe not a barrier to entry, but it's a barrier of sorts that caused the enjoyment of the game to not be as high. And this could be for the fact that I the way I appreciate board games nowadays. So, even I mean even the negatives are going to have kind of a double-edged sword where it that I'll have a negative, but I'll have a positive to the negative if that makes sense. The biggest issue that I have with this game is while the table presence is cool, it is actually kind of a hindrance in playing the game. And that is a huge probably deterrent factor for a lot of people. And the reason I say that is because of the way that the game looks.

3:38 Everything about this game is designed on this three terrain, which again is neat. But, for information you need to know, you basically have to sit on the same side. The way that they even explain it in the rule book before you even get to set up, it says, "Hey, we recommend you play with a theater style." Which is where everyone sits on the same side of the table. I don't know who has a setup that can accommodate that for more than two people. I don't see how this game it plays up to four. I don't know how you fit four people. Maybe two people on the end and then two people on one side, but the two people on the end still can't read a lot. Um you literally cannot play this game with two people on one side and two people on the other like every other board game imaginable. Um because everything is on one side. All the all the landscape tiles, all the information is on that side. What the who what the passengers are, where they are, where the suspects are, where you are. Uh everything is on one side of the board.

4:49 And you can't even a you can't even remove the backdrops uh because the game has this element of open and closed curtains. And that's a huge important factor of the game. A lot of characters' abilities require you to be in a room with an open or a closed curtain. The way the vampire works when he's running around depends on if a window is open or closed on who he attacks and how he what he does to them. The monsters don't really matter. They just they're just next to a card. They don't care. Well, actually some monsters do care if they uh if the curtains are open. So, you can't even remove the backdrop and just pretend they are in a enclosed uh wall. So, everything about the design of the game is centered around you being on one side of the table.

5:39 And like I said, I don't know how you play this game with four people and do that. And even if you could, even if for some reason or some way you were able to fit four people on one side comfortably, the other elements of the game don't allow you to do that. This is a player board for one person. And what's nice about the game, this is something that's pretty cool, is everything is self-contained here. All your characters' abilities, all of their sanity and their health, and even their actions are all on one board. This is very nice. Uh when you are getting items, characters do not carry their own items. It is a pool of, "Hey, we all have access to this item." Um so you could just put the items in a separate area off to the side so everyone just knows that they're there.

6:27 However, you would have to fit four of these on one side, and there's so much extra extra boards on I'm just freaking out. I thought a bug was on me. Um I've had a bug crawl on me before and it's like, no, I'm having a panic attack. Um there are so many extra boards that take up the this entire table. And because you have to sit on one side, I don't know where you put all that [ __ ] to where everyone has their player in front of them, on top of the fact that everyone has a reachable information. And unfortunately, so you have a ritual board that has components, you have the monster cards, you have a whole deck of of story cards of what their desires are, of story cards, of items you can interact with, of what people are carrying. You have the event board, which is huge information to know, and then you have the occult board, where all the spells are contained.

7:30 All of that could be somewhat managed. You know, you could have it maybe behind the board, so it's still I mean, you can see it all, but the one thing about it that bugs the hell out of me is the crucial part of this game is the suspects. There are six suspects and there's nowhere to put them. Every time I've played this game, I've kind of put them on the far end and you're interacting with them all the time when you're doing talk actions and desire actions, you know, quest with they each have their own quest that they're trying to do. Flipping their tokens when you're gaining a favor. Um you're constantly because again, you can't have someone sitting on the other side and help manage. So, you're someone on the other end of the table is having to reach over or get up and move to interact with them. And I have a 4 by 6 table.

8:27 I think they make bigger ones, but this is your standard big gaming table. Most people I know don't have a table this size. So, it is such a hindrance of playing the game. Um and I don't know why they did that. Like this game literally should be for just one or two people. I I I would love to know people's fix around that. Um and then I mean, that's actually mainly the biggest negative that I have about this game because unfortunately, it affects so many other things. You're kind of sitting at a game at a table cluttered. You're just feel claustrophobic about where stuff is that you just have to make do.

9:17 The other things I have kind of some complaints about are uh component wise. I got the I mean, this is a first world problem in the in the industry. I got the acrylic tokens. Oh, man. And they were misprinted, but so far that should be rectified. Uh but the other thing that kind kind is the expansion characters. Uh their little portrait doesn't fit in the in the boards. So, that's that's kind of annoying. Again, not a big deal. You can just lay it on there and you have to flip them anyway, but the core game characters do. Maybe it's just my copy, but that's just kind of annoying. Um now, in terms of actual game game mechanisms that I have negatives about, uh I actually surprisingly don't.

10:06 Everything else just works out extremely extremely well. Um actually, there is one. I just remembered. So, this game uh a huge positive towards it is it feels like a game of old. This doesn't This feels as if it came out it could have came out around the Eldritch Horror, Arkham Horror second edition uh era and it fit right in. This has Now, that's to actually praise it. It's not a uh negative on it at all. It It just feels cuz while I was playing this, I was just getting vibes of Eldritch Horror and that's one of my favorite uh Lovecraft style games. And this game, you know, seeps atmosphere and theme. And even from from the get-go with This is why I love games like this is from the get-go, your first actions, you can already start kind of role-playing or interacting with the the the situation at hand.

11:11 If you're a um uh just the story kind of writes itself. A great example is in our very first game, I was playing as a character who had a dog and we found that one of the characters actually has a parrot. It's like, "Okay, cool. I'm going to talk to the the girl with the pet, because I also have a pet." And you kind of just make quick snips of what this character might be saying cuz you can actually talk to the passengers about the suspects to gather information about them. Um my the last game we just played, I picked the psychologist to play, who is a in one of the expansions is an actual playable character. And my random general skill that I got is psychology. And oh man, that's fantastic. The how appropriate for this character.

12:00 Uh they do a lot of really cool stuff with the way that the characters um can be built a little bit. So you have some variety with the way the characters are. But the the way that the scenery is coming out, the way that the passengers are are being interacted with, same with the suspects, it all just oozes theme. Much like Arkham Horror second edition, Eldritch Horror, and Arkham Horror: The Card Game, I'll even Call of Cthulhu. All of these, not Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu: Death May Die. All of these games have this just dripping of of atmosphere, and I absolutely love Every time I've played this game, I have put on a a YouTube video of just train sound effects. So you just have that ambiance behind you, and this game allows for that.

12:53 But when we're coming to the overall gameplay loop, which is still very good, your entire goal is to figure out who is a cultist and who is not. And the way that the items get randomly generated, it's kind of a deduction style game, not a hard one, I wouldn't say. You don't have to jump through loops to make shitty connections like some deduction style games. Um you have three options of a cultist. Either A, they have the blood red fez, which a guarantee cuz you have the same types of items that are going to be shuffled around. You have your their features, their desires, and their ticket where they're going. And but all of them are shuffled and they're dispersed randomly between six different uh passengers level uh first class and second class passengers.

13:47 Um so, you have the blood red fez, which I don't know if this is actually a Lovecraft story. If it is, I have to read it. Cuz I'm not familiar with this. So, uh I don't know what the fez has to do with anything. But, so, that is if someone has it, they are the cultist. They're thematically the the head cultist that pulled this locomotive into the Dreamlands. Then, you have two other possibilities. Uh if someone's going to Constantinople and they want an artifact, but they don't have an elder sign, so that determine that means they're a cultist. Or, if they have four green uh uh features, I guess. Not features, but four green tokens on their sheet, that means that they are going to be a cultist.

14:38 So, your game, depending on how it comes out, can have between one and six cultists. And so, you the entire goal of the game is to figure out who that is. That's how you win. You have to get the train all the way from one end of the round track, really, to the end to your to your destination. And then, if you say who's a cultist and you're correct, then you uh then you win. You lose in five other ways. One person goes insane, loses all their sanity. You make it to the end, but you are incorrect on who a cultist is. Uh your essence pool runs out. Someone loses all their health. And What's the Oh, uh seven passengers die. Cuz so and what what's interesting is all of those conditions are if something runs out. Oh, no, and monsters.

15:32 Uh, if you don't have monsters to place. Um, so what's fascinating is this is not one of those games where those lose conditions are they they're all extremely manageable. You have a ton of them to keep track of, which is kind of nice, but uh, or but like I said, they're manageable. But the what I found kind of interesting about the lose conditions is it's not So, a good example is if you have seven dead passengers, you lose. There are seven coffins in the game and if you place your seventh one, you lose. This is not one of those games where, okay, if something if the pool runs out and you have to place another one, then you lose. It is you are out, you lose.

16:18 And I found that kind of fascinating. Um, because if you have seven coffins, physical coffins, which is pretty cool because they have a hole on the bottom, so there's these coffins they actually place over the dice that are the passengers to show that they're dead. And they just take up that spot. But you uh, why have seven coffins? If you have six dead passengers and someone else dies, you know you've lost. Having seven coffins would allude to the fact that, oh, we have seven dead passengers. If one one more person dies, we lose. But nope, multiple times in the rule book they tell you, hey, note, if all the coffins run out, you die. If the essence pool runs out, you you lose. Uh, so I like the fact again that there's all these different ways that you can lose, but they've done a really good job of balancing all of those. It doesn't This game doesn't actually feel overwhelming in in the sense that oh, this is a cooperative game. It's brutally difficult.

17:21 Let's uh it we're we're always guaranteed to lose. That is not the case. It it doesn't it's not easy by any means, but the game gives you really powerful abilities and really powerful spells and a lot of ways to kind of mitigate the event bag and stuff like that. So, it's this kind of tug-in uh you know, tug-of-war element of okay, we're about to lose and we've rallied back. Oh, we're about to lose and we rally back. Uh which is very interesting to say because the designers of this game uh Adam Kopinski and uh the other guy Adam Kopinski is the guy who designed Frostpunk. So, he must have learned from Frostpunk cuz Frostpunk is so deplorably difficult. It is not it's a game that I think is really great, but it's hard to want to play cuz you just know you're going to lose.

18:14 Um there's it never feels like there's a chance you're going to win. So, he must have learned on how to pull things back even though I think Frostpunk has a balance thing you can print or some way to modify the scenario so they're not as difficult. So, all of that is to say that the gameplay loop has this unfortunate element of if you figure out who the cultists are, then that's your only win condition. It has nothing but then you still have to make it to the end. And in the games I've played of this, you are maybe halfway to uh maybe 3/4 of the way to the end and you figured out who the cultists are. So, then it just becomes uh well, I guess we'll just play not to lose.

19:05 So, you're just managing essence. You're managing monsters. You're So, the whole fun part, at least in my experience, of the game and don't get me wrong, all the other managing monsters and doing all that is still fun, but a big crux of one of your actions is talking to people. And you talk to people to figure out information on the suspects. If And there's what's another positive about the game is when you're talking to passengers, that's not the only way you can gain information. There's tons of other ways you can figure out what these clues are besides having to rely on an action that lets you do it. So, if you don't if you figure out who the cultists are, then you A, lose out on the core objective of trying to figure out who the cultists are, which again is a fun deduction puzzle.

19:51 And then B, you don't really have much else to do except I guess not have passengers die or just kind of start doing you know, tower defense a little bit. And what you're really hoping is that you're drawing the train movement tokens from the event bag to move the train faster because the local it only moves one at the end of your turn. And the only way to move it faster is by drawing those event tokens, but those don't stay in the bag. So, it can get to a point where where you're you're ready for the game to be over, but then you just kind of have to wait it out. And that is unfortunate. Unfortunately, I don't think that there's a a better way about it because this dial here on the locomotive is technically the train speed, but it doesn't affect how fast the train round the train tracker moves.

20:44 It affects is essentially your push action. That's all it does. Well, when you go to the locomotive, you do get to when you activate it, you can activate the locomotive twice and it lets you put a locomotive token in the event bag. So, thematically, yes, you will eventually draw more of those move the the train faster, but there it's not consistent. And when you're doing a push action, it does push the the monsters further back, which then potentially knock them off and they're killed. So, it is thematic, but it is kind of weird that the number on the locomotive isn't how fast the round track moves. And I wonder I bet you they tried that, but I think if you manage that and now the train tracker is moving two or three spaces at the end of every person's turn, you just do not have enough time to figure out what the what the cultists are doing. Or the way the landscape tiles come out will just ramp too quickly. So, it it it is weird and I don't think that there's a easy fix, except for the fact that as players we would decide when that happens. It's not something that naturally ticks up.

21:57 So, I guess they could have left it as, "Okay, we think we have a good handle on the situation. Let's try and bump the round the train tracker so it moves faster." I don't know. I don't know. I think it it again, it doesn't happen often and the games I've played of this, the the lull time hasn't hasn't appeared that much, but it is a possibility if things go your way and you find out, "Okay, boom, that person's a cultist, that person's a cultist." And that's it. The way it maths out because they give you these Well, it's all the way over there. They give you a deduction sheet. If you can check it out and think, "Okay, there's no possible way that the other four passengers or suspects can be cultists. We only have two." Then the rest kind of turns into a let's kill monsters to move around, which is still fun. But, I do like this part a lot more and that is your only way to win the game.

22:51 So, that'd be my only other slightly negative. It's it's not a huge one, but it is a possibility. So, you might just kind of have an extra 30 minutes when you've done the the win objective. Um other than that, I I really have nothing but praise for this game. I think that they they have managed the monsters extremely well. They aren't constant The way that the event track works is based off of this event bag that I'll have to grab. I'll actually grab both of the bags because I think they did this extremely well. It's super innovative. Uh so, at the end of your turn, you will be drawing a chip from from the event bag.

23:36 And these will have pips on them that will go on the event board. And whenever three of the four spaces are covered with a chip, then you resolve the event board. And what's cool about that is not every chip is negative. You have some red ones in here that are typically uh that are okay. Well, actually, the red You would think the red are only negatives. Uh sometimes they're not. You do have a character who's lucky, and all the red means is you quit you quit drawing. You have green ones in there that some that are actually bad, but you trigger their effect, and then you draw again. That's how you can draw the train token where it moves a space every single time. Um if you have all four in the bag, you could draw all four of those, and the train has moved four spaces.

24:23 Uh but, what's really cool is if you draw a chip from this bag, and it goes on the two spot, well, if there's already a chip there, well, then it just stacks on top. So, you only would resolve the event tracker when three of the four things are covered because the fourth one that isn't covered is how the monsters activate. And I really like this system. I like the fact that A, if they are stacking, that means you don't resolve the event track, which is good, but that means that you have less future turns where the event board is not going to resolve because you're always going to have a chip there. If it's a full clean event board, then you have at least three full turns before it potentially might go off. And there are chips on there that have an X through them, meaning you don't do the effect.

25:12 And the events are always going to be the same. It's either going to be you resolve landscape, you uh resolve the ritual, and you resolve the way the passengers are reacting and the and the vampire. So, those are the only four event tokens that are going on the event board. And then the other three are just different resolutions of which monster activates, whether it's all greens then red or all greens then a blue then spawn red or all reds then a green and spawn blue. You know, you you get it. So, I like the fact that the event board is not something that's going to be bad every single time. But this bag eventually One, it's it's seeded at the beginning of the game to not be terrible, but then whenever you have to draw from the bag, you add all these extra chips. So, it just gets really watered down and the game starts to ramp up.

26:09 And they have all these extra chips off to the side that are based off of your character's adjective and other effects that might have to throw within. So, the event section of the game I really enjoy. Um And then the way the monsters work, you can see exactly what they're going to do. The game kind of has a lot of good information on the more you are upgrading the occult board where you get occult tokens, that's how you can actually mitigate the um the event. So, if you draw one and you look at it and you're like, "Okay, this is our third one that's going on there and it will trigger the event at the end of my turn. Do we want to spend an occult token to redraw?" And you can just keep redrawing until you get something that might not be as bad, but you can look at it and think, "Okay, this is going to activate every landscape tile."

27:00 Uh you know, actually, none of them and you only activate landscape tiles if they have essence on them. So, you can look and think, "Oh, actually, none of them we've managed essence pretty well. So, this isn't even going to do anything. And the monsters that are going to activate is all is all the reds. There's only one red, and you can see what the red monster does. So, you can think, "Oh, well, actually, there's no passengers in there. So, all it's going to do is move two. Yeah, that's not that bad." Uh and there's only there's only one green. Yeah, okay, it'll it'll do something, but I think we can manage that. And then it'll spawn blue. Oh, none of the monster portals that are active have blue. So, never mind. So, you can you can get into that situation and then go through, "Oh, the rituals. We have the X on the ritual. The ritual's not happening." And then let's just see how the passengers react. It it does a really good job of having having this pacing of kind of nothing, nothing, nothing. Oh, potentially, it could be disastrous, but you have kind of let it get to that point. So, you have a lot of player agency on the event section, which I really enjoy.

28:05 Again, the people might not like this because the way the green tokens can come out uh could just kind of snowball, where you might not want the um the train to move as fast as it is. Or you might draw the horrendous ritual token that means that every spell that you've done is going to permanently remove essence from the the pool because that's just your grip on reality blurring. It It does a lot of really cool things. So, I like the I like the event the event bag. I I hope to see this in more games. And then, like I mentioned, your big talk action is an is a push your luck element. And this is really cool, too, because who you can talk to is based on your character. And I'll get to the characters in a sec. But they do a really cool thing of again giving you some control. If I'm doing my holistic insight, it lets me draw three.

29:06 And you know, you talk to a particular person. And let's say it's these I don't know why I put them down there. It's these three. Well, this is a negative one. I don't really want that. So your talk action allows you to kind of have some head start on what you're doing. And it's like, okay, well, we can I could use an item and then we you know, I do want to find out where someone's going. And then it becomes a push your luck element of drawing one token at a at a time until you decide to stop. But you can only gain information when you have a pair of something. So this pair of twos meaning I can learn any clue about a second-class uh passenger. But if I were to ever draw a third one, then it fails. But you can just you can keep going. And you could get insanely lucky and learn about a desire, about a feature, about where someone's going, get an item, and learn about a second uh second-class uh passenger. Um but if [clears throat] you ever were to draw a third one, it's still not even that bad because in this bag there are green tokens that give you stuff. A cult token and this one lets you um gain a favor with someone.

30:20 Uh so if you fail, all the green tokens you drew don't go off cuz you failed. And sometimes your your talk action might have a failure condition. But you still get to learn something about about someone based off the one you failed. So let's say it was a level two or a section uh second-class citizen. Not citizen. Uh passenger. If this if I drew the third one here, that would be the one that I failed on, and that means, "Okay, I still learned something. It's not an all or nothing thing, which I think would make this game very frustrating." Uh cuz it is push your luck. It's purely luck based. So, you only get to learn one thing. If I actually got twos on desire, and twos on features, and twos on location, I I wouldn't get to do those. I would just get to learn one thing. But, if you succeed, then you get to learn everything. That person you're talking to was chatty as hell, or you you gleaned into their soul and just learned everything about it, so you could Oh, man, I got to learn the location of the second-class passenger, and someone else's desire, and someone else's location, and someone else's feature.

31:34 So, but and while that can be extremely powerful, you really you only typically have one talk action before you have to rest. So, I like the push your push your luck aspect a lot. And believe me, this has burned burned us before. It's also been extremely beneficial. As far as I'm aware, unless someone else has an ability, there's no mitigation to this. So, it's it's literally if you push your luck too far, then then that's it. Then you lose. So, I really like that aspect. Um and then it goes to the characters. The characters are incredibly diverse. This is a very cool system of the way that the characters work.

32:28 Because everyone starts with these five unique actions. Typically, everyone's going to have a way to handle the monsters, and handle the passengers, and handle the suspects, And and talk. But, they all do that in in different ways. They will all have different talk values and who they can talk to, and a success or failure aspect. Um they're going to have different ways they can handle the essence, or they can they can deal with monsters, or push them. It while the the core actions sound like they might be similar, uh no two characters really feel feel the same. And what's cool is on your turn, the way you do your actions is you will just move an action tracker over to a main action, and then do your basic actions.

33:16 And again, all the basic actions are the same, except every character has their own unique ba- basic actions. And that's where the stamina comes in. You're managing all your stamina. Um so, eventually you'll get to a point, and you can decide to do this at any time, where you want to rest. And resting is kind of a burner turn, unless you have basic actions you still want to do cuz a rest is a main action. But, when you rest, that's how you gain your stamina back. But, also for each check mark that you've unveiled, so how long you've gone without resting, you can now level up. Which is very very cool, cuz every character has a stack of tokens. Their level one actions can all be upgraded to level two, but only if you've used them. Every character has three uh special skills that you can just learn. And then, you can gain uh occult tokens, which again allow you to get access to spells.

34:11 And that's such a cool element of balancing your stamina and your action cubes, because you can't just sit in one one cart and spam and talk to someone the whole game and learn everything there is about them. You have to It's like, all right, I'm doing my my talk action, then I I'll do the whole rigmarole of that. Unless I If I want to talk to someone else, I need to rest. Now, thematically that makes no sense unless I mean, you could probably try and spin it in such a thematic way, but ultimately, yeah, why can't I just talk to another person? But, mechanically, it it would be kind of just boring to sit there and just keep doing the talk action over and over. But, I mean, the first game of this I ever played, my character had a persuasion general skill, and there's a decent stack of these that every person gets one.

35:02 And it actually let him do a talk one. So, my character did have two ways to talk to someone. Um yeah, so it the character design I really enjoy. And they did a cool thing with one of the expansions, the um Investigators Unveiled. So, the core game had, I think, six characters you could play, and six characters that were suspects. Now, what they did with the the characters Investigators Unveiled is they've reversed them. So, now that the six original suspect characters can now be playable, and all the playable characters can now be suspects. So, you have 12 total uh interchangeable characters, and every single suspect has a unique favor you can get from them that could be huge.

35:49 Uh and and honestly, you kind of want to use them. Even if you know they're a suspect, it's like, "Hey, I'm going to side with you so you can help me kill this uh monster or something." And I like that. I like that that If there was any expansion that I'd say is almost a must, it would probably be that one just to give you some variety on the different characters you can play. Um so, I really like the way the characters work. Again, I don't like the fact that the character expansions don't fit in the [ __ ] boards. That shit's annoying. And also, what's really cool is every character at the start of the game gets a unique adjective or trait about them, and it's a one-time start of game setup. Uh this one is vigorous. His max health and stamina is maxed out. And he has quality rest instead of a regular rest. I had another game where someone was lucky, and all it did was put a lucky token in this, and all that did was if you drew it, nothing happened.

36:44 Um So, they're not huge, but they're still pretty beneficial. That means if you have max health, I'm going to be popping items off all the time. Um the one we got was unstable with the uh the medium, and that meant that she started cracked, which is what I call it's like you're cracked. Uh but it's unstable, which means that you get to do the more powerful effect of the spells, but you still have your full stamina, not stamina, sanity bar. Which she had great ways to remove essence based off how many spells were out. And the spells are I love the way that they did spells in this game. Because in Lovecraft, which has always been a huge thing of mine that I've enjoyed, is casting magic exists, but at a cost. There's always some toll on your body that casting magic does.

37:37 And it's usually always sanity related, and it's the exact same thing here, where you can And you can gain sanity and stuff throughout this game, so it's you spend sanity on the spells, and at a certain point, if you draw a certain chip from the event bag, every sanity that you have used on spells permanently removes essence from the pool. Uh which is he which is huge, cuz you can't get those back. So, I like the fact that they're very powerful, but use them sparingly, and I just think that that's an awesome element. Um Yeah, so ultimately, I really like the way that this game is designed. Oh, hell, I didn't even talk about the the story elements of this game.

38:24 I I think they're really neat as well. I kind of wish that there was more to them. Uh but there's a good variety. So, every there's like three different types of decks. There's essentially the story deck. Uh but you have items that people can have. So, if we flip this over, oh hey, it's Matryoshka dolls. The the the gunslinger has those. And uh he also has a talking parrot. And he has the Sphinx nose. So, you can actually go up to these suspects and talk to them about that. And you can only talk to them once. And you find that item. And I think each item might have three cards uh available to it. And you just shuffle those up, pick one at random, and then read it.

39:13 And it just gives you thematic story snippets that you would tell that typically would give you a benefit. And another thing they did that was really good with this game is the items, for example, that you can the features you can ask them about don't have a negative to them. It'll either be neutral or it'll be positive. So, I like that they don't spring something like oh hey, the the talking parrot it actually attacks you and steals half your health. Some [ __ ] like that that Frostpunk would do. Um so, I like that. And then the other element is the desires. Now, each suspect will only ever have one desire. They'll have multiple desires, but they'll only ever have one quest that they'll ever do. And you actually get to start the game with a few of them already out. But what's cool about those is some will say this suspect wants to be in a room with uh five passengers.

40:11 This one wants to be in a room with an insane passenger. Whatever it might be. And if you if you meet that, you can actually fulfill that quest. Hey, you're in the room with five passengers. And this could be positive or negative. Typically, it's going to be positive if you do your due diligence because those quests will be good or bad depending on if that suspect is a cultist. So, if you do your due diligence and find out that for a fact this person is not a cultist or a um you know, if he's not a cultist, then great. Do his quest because it's going to be good for you. But, you can also risk it. You can fulfill their quest cuz what you do is you flip over every single uh token that's on their sheet.

40:57 And then you resolve, oh [ __ ] he ended up being a cultist. And then you read the bad part, which will typically be a ritual escalation, which is going to be bad for you. But, if you're if you've deduced enough and you're thinking, okay, yeah, we don't know two of his items, but we'd have to get really unlucky for both of those items to be green out of all the ones we don't know. I say we risk it and you do it and you flip them over and it's he's not a cultist, then you actually got a lot more information out of that. So, and there's also multiples of those for each uh desire. Hey, this this person wants to be in a spot with a dead a dead body. There's I think three of those as well. There's threes for every single card. So, I I think the story elements are a very nice addition. Did they need to be in here? Probably not, but they are very nice. Again, our very first game we got the blood red fez will always have something. It'll be a uh and that one actually has more uh council, I think the council of fez.

42:00 Uh those actually have more than three. So, you'll shuffle those, each player will get one, and you'll pick uh cuz schematically you come together to talk about what to do about the head cult guy. Head cult guy. And you pick one and it has a positive or negative condition for you to try and meet. The very first one was we had to be in a situation where we could the next time we drew the the Fez token uh we had to be in a room with them. I think it was just them. And they happened at the the suspect happened to be in a room with no other passengers and then the very next turn the person who was in the room with them drew the token and it let you basically catch them in the act and toss them off the the train. And that was huge because it effectively stalled the ritual. It said, "Okay, from now on every time that you interact with the ritual token, you do not add more ritual markers." Which made the rich ritual not really do anything the whole game.

43:04 And that was just one example of what you could do in this game. So, I really do like the story elements. I hope I'm I don't know if this is getting any expansions. Again, and I hate just kind of saying that because the game just [ __ ] came out. But I I do really like the story elements that are thrown in. So, yeah. This is all again just based off the stand up the standard core game. And they have new the if I could talk about any types of variety, the monsters are all the same, but they do have a new monstrosities expansion that give you three more. So, you can you have six total options, but you always have to have a red, green, and blue. But you have two options for me. So, you can kind of get some variety with the monsters. Um I personally don't mind that because the monsters A don't they're not really always in your face, but they are still a problem.

43:56 And uh it is kind of nice to know what they do. So, it you know, maybe some people might want five, 10 options of each monster. Ultimately, I I think they're more of just almost an accessory piece. The vampire, there is a different version of the vampire and there's a female version of the of the vampire you can modify, so there's some variety there. Honestly, the vampire again is kind of a he's he he's a nuisance, but he's not constantly just grabbing people and, you know, killing them left and right. Every negative about this game that waits [clears throat] for you to lose is very tame, but since there's so many that it it feels that the game is just not on easy mode. And if it is, there's a way to make the game harder.

44:43 Uh so, all of that is just core game stuff and then the rest would be the the the campaign expansion, which I I know is scenario-based. I know nothing else about it except that it's this it's a box the size of this. So, if we're talking about variety, I know there's a [ __ ] ton of stuff in there that's all based off the scenarios. Yeah, I mean, funny enough, the negatives that I had for the game are still true. I still really don't like the board layout, but I could see that being a huge problem for a lot of people. I don't see myself playing this really ever at at more than two, which some people might wish to play this at three or four. You can, it just isn't really going to be comfortable, I don't think. I don't I mean, maybe if you turn this sideways and you put it over here and so people it's like two people two people and the the board is there and then you have all the extra stuff, maybe that would work.

45:43 Uh so, you use this like 3/4 of your table for all the cult uh suspects and cards and other boards and then you have that over on the side, but you're you're messing with this a lot. This is not just a set piece. You know, at the funny enough, the other designer uh Michał Gołęb that last name, um he's I think he's the designer of Destinies. Uh surprisingly, yeah, you don't have to manage you have to actually touch the physical stuff, unlike in Destinies. I think the only other thing that I wish that they kind of did, and some people might appreciate that they don't, but I appreciate and really like apps in board games. Again, funny enough, the Destinies guy, there's no app. I do kind of wish that the cultists, not cultists, the suspects were app-driven.

46:34 I think that that would A, it it would you don't have this [ __ ] where it's off to the side, you could just have their favor tokens out on the board, but if you had an app that you just had an iPad on, it would A, generate all this random stuff so you don't have to physically shuffle those and set them, and you could just have them on a on an iPad. This would be a perfect companion app to then, okay, we did our talk thing on this, let's go let's learn about T.J. And you find T.J. on the app, and it's okay, let's learn his destination, and you click it it would be the simplest app companion app. Click that, flip it, and it tells you what it is. Literally, it would just remove, not even I don't even find this as a physical problem, it's just that because of the way you have to play the game, it becomes a nuisance on trying to see what the favor tokens are. And yeah, I'm actually surprised that this wasn't here, or this wasn't designed as an app, cuz everything else would be perfectly fine.

47:32 Um so yeah, I think that this is a very awesome breath of fresh air. I think it's incredibly thematic, atmospheric. Uh the variety of the game in terms of setup is huge, just because of the different characters you can have. The landscape tiles I think are awesome on how they can sandbag and snowball on you, uh the faster your train is going, um and you have to manage essence, but you can kind of turn them on and off if you if you manage your essence well. Uh, that's a really cool aspect. And table presence, it does look cool. So, yeah, I I do really really like this game. And yeah, on a scale of 1 to 10, I think I'm going to give Horror on the Orient Express an eight. I think it is a very good, uh, Lovecraft-style game, completely different from anything else. I think the setting of it, I thought being at just on a train might be kind of boring because it's just a train.

48:34 But, maybe it's the aut- autism in me that I just I enjoy the the setting quite a bit. In fact, funny enough, one of the best Arkham Horror Living Card Game chapters was on the train that was getting sucked into a portal. So, it's just a it's just a cool setting. And they do a lot of really cool, innovative, unique stuff here. And it's it's a very balanced cooperative game that is just unfortunately hindered by the way you have to play it, which is on one side of the table. Unless maybe I haven't tried it, maybe you can have it sideways off to the side and everything else is managed and it might not be out of the way that much. I don't know, but that's it, everyone. That's my thoughts on Horror on the Orient Express.

49:20 Let me know what you think of the game in the comments below. Also, let me know if you would like to see a uh, series. I'd probably do it solo, um, a solo series on the campaign stuff. Uh, even if no one tells me that, I'll probably do it anyway. So, let me know what you think of this game, comments below, and like, comment, share, and subscribe, and have a wonderful whatever time of day it is for you.