Horror on the Orient Express: Board Game - Review
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Transcript
Hey folks, welcome back to the dungeon dive. Daniel here. I hope you're doing well and if you're not, I hope you are soon. Okay, so things might sound and look a little different today and that's because I am recording the episode 4 horror on the Orient Express from Chaosium out in my kitchen on my big kitchen table on my bigger kitchen table. So this room is much bigger and you know not as much uh soundproofing. So it might be a little echoey and it might look a little different. The lighting might look a little different, but uh the reason I am recording this episode in a different room is because the thought of packing this game up, moving it to a different room, and then setting it up again is an absolute nightmare. Uh this game has over 50 steps involved in the setup. It is absolutely uh massive and it probably wouldn't even fit on my small table in a way that would be fun to play. And so this game definitely needs a large table. It [snorts] needs a lot of time to set up. And honestly, I had a pretty negative first impression of this game just based on all of the stuff and the complexity of setting it up and the size of everything. I didn't go into my first game feeling very positive. However, uh the game completely won me over once I
got over that. But it's not going to be a game that I'm going to want to set up and play very often unless I can leave it set up for a few days for a few games. This is definitely not a game that I would ever want to set up and put away just for one game. Uh that would be a real hassle. But uh this game is it's pretty great. Um, it's really fun and once you get through the pretty massive rule book, I think the rule book is something like almost 50 pages, uh, the game actually flows pretty well. It's not an overly complicated game, but it is a game with a ton of moving pieces and a ton of kind of intera um, interlocking pieces and cascading things that are constantly kind of on the move.
But everything makes a thematic sense. This is also a game that I wouldn't have a fun time teaching people because of how much stuff there is. I could see a lot of people their eyes just completely uh glazing over as you are explaining absolutely everything because there are so many boards on the table, so many cards, so many chits, so many things. But um hopefully in this video I can give you a good idea of what this game is all about, a little bit of how it's played. This is not going to be a a teach video and I will probably make some mistakes in some of the things I say as far as how it's played, but you should have a pretty good understanding of this game and hopefully a good understanding of why I enjoy it so much.
So I am a few turns into this game. So, let's take a a little look at the state of the game and let's talk in general about, you know, kind of what this game is. So, of course, Horror on the Orient Express is based off of the very popular and famous uh adventure module for Call of Cthulhu, and this is kind of like the board game version of that. Now, I have zero experience with the original campaign setting or module. I know really nothing about it except for the general idea. And here is the general idea. So you are playing as investigators in this, you know, this Call of Cthulhu world. And you are on a train, the Orient Express. And on this train, there are passengers and there are suspects. And the passengers in this game are uh represented by D6 dice. And they have different faces on the dice that represent the mood of the passengers.
And uh the mood goes from being uh injured to being shocked to I think that's insane to uh normal or calm, happy, and angry. And depending on the mood of the passengers, certain things will trigger and you will be able to do certain things to certain passengers when they are at a certain mood level and it's kind of like a hierarchy of moods on the train. In addition to passengers, we also have these minis with the square color bases and these are suspects and the minis are potential cultists. So on this train you have you know you've boarded the train and along the journey something has happened and the train has been teleported away into these kind of love craftian dreamlands and the cultists on the train are trying to perform a ritual to you know bring in a great old one or something or or complete this ritual to bring about the destruction of the world. And in this game, it is up to the players, the investigators, to determine which of the six suspects are the cultists. And depending on the setup, depending on the randomization of the setup, there will be between one and six cultists. And you never know which of the passengers are the cultists. And the passengers have
these clues and you have to talk or the suspects have all of these clues and you have to talk to them and you have to talk to the passengers to uncover these clues. And then you have to put together a little kind of combination of clues, different colors, different things that they might have or not have in order to determine which of the suspects are the cultists. And the only way to win the game, there's one way to win the game, is your train has to make it to the very end of the line without something bad happening, without losing the game. And at the end of the line, you have to properly identify which of the sus suspects is a cultist. So, while there is only one way to win the game, there are five different ways to lose the game. Uh there are no coffins left in the pool. As the passengers die, you will put a little coffin covering over their uh D6 to show that they are dead.
And there are seven coffins. So if seven passengers ever die, you lose the game. If there are no essence tokens left in the pool, and so we have these essence tokens here, and those get put on these portals. And if any of these portals ever have essence on them, then at certain points in the game, other bad things will trigger. So if you ever run out of essence in your pool, that is another way to lose. There are no more monsters left in their pools. And so there are three different colors of monsters. Uh let me grab an example of each. Here we have blue, red, and green. And so these are the three monsters. I believe there are about five of each. And if you ever have to place one of those out and you can't, that is another way to lose the game. If at least one of your investigators loses their last sanity, and those are these blue tokens here. We'll take a closer look at the examiner at the uh not the examiners, the patent examiners, the investigators in a minute. If they if one investigator ever loses all of their sanity, you lose the game. And if at least one investigator loses all of their health, that is another way to lose the game.
Okay, so the state of the game board right now for me, I am a few turns into this game. So we have uh in this rear car here, we have four passengers, a suspect, and one of my investigators. And we have a blue monster. Here we have three passengers, a suspect, and a green monster. two passengers, two suspects, and a green monster. Here we have the hanging uh vampire because yes, there is also a vampire on board who is preying on the passengers and the vampire wants to kill them and it hangs out on the side of the train here and it can move from from car to car. So, we have my other investigator. We have another suspect and four passengers. Here we have only one passenger and that is a damaged passenger, a wounded passenger.
Here we have two passengers, a suspect and then in the engine here we have one uh one passenger. Now another thing that you want to keep track of in this game is the windows of these train cars. They can be opened and closed and that will dictate how powerful the vampire is when they attack. They are more powerful in a dark car and so if the curtains are drawn the vampire has more power. If they are open they have less power. So that is the vampire board and the vampire is preying on the uh passengers. So let's take a look here [snorts] at my investigators that I am playing as. So we have uh Emily Etien here and she is an eccentric sophisticated jazz musician. I love this character. And these are little traits. And the traits you can assign to your investigators at the beginning of the game. And that will give them something special that they can do usually at the beginning of the game. So, uh, Emily Etien, she was eccentric, so she started the game with a relic item. And the relic item that she started with was this deathless ointment. And this is an artifact that I used in order to make the vampire a little weaker for a little while.
Okay, so each of the investigators also has a number of skills and you start with five level one skills that is unique to that investigator. So each investigator, there are six in the base game and I only have the base game and the stretch goals. I didn't get any of the add-ons or the campaign add-on or anything. I can't even imagine wanting to play this as a campaign. But uh each of the investigators will have five starting skills and they will be able to spend their action points on a skill in order to use that on their turn. Now, one of my favorite things about this game and one of the things that I think makes this game really special is that every action in this game has a cost, has a consequence. And you really need to think about how you are spending these various resources and when you spend them and how you refresh them because you can't do anything in this game without paying some kind of cost.
And so to use one of your actions, you have to spend an action cube and you will slot that in and then you will be able to take that action. Now these actions uh can also be upgraded when you get a chance to level up. So after you after you've spent a lot of actions, after you've spent some stamina doing your basic actions, so all of the basic actions cost stamina, then you can take a rest action as a main action. And at that point along your track here at the bottom, you can see that we have these special cubes. When they are revealed, when you rest, you can spend those as experience points in order to level up your character. And when you level up your character, you get to open up your character tuck box here and you can either add a new skill or you can upgrade one of your level one skills to the next level. It's a really cool system. I love it. And the all of the investigators have different abilities and different skills. They feel very different. And so I recently took arrest action. And so I was able to upgrade Emily Etien. I upgraded her call and response skill, so it makes it more powerful. I love that all of her abilities are kind of uh situated kind of calling out like jazz and music. I think that's super cool. And then I also added this new ability here called experimental jazz. And uh this lets her,
you know, she's playing some experimental music. I was just, you know, uh, laughing to myself thinking that, you know, maybe she's doing a cover of Sunny Sherox's Black Woman or something on this train and it's actually kind of maybe causing some of the passengers to get headaches and stuff cuz I don't know if you guys have ever heard Black Woman by Sunonny Sherlock, but if you haven't, uh, check it out. You're either going to love it or you're going to hate it. But, uh, this ability here lets her choose a passenger and then I can roll their dieice. So, it's kind of like I'm playing this experimental music and there's a random ability. There's a random chance that either that passenger is really going to like it or they're really going to hate it. Uh, she has an ability called out of tune or she can play a lullaby or have a jam session.
So, just really really cool. I love that. And then my other character here is uh Bucky Burton and he is the Lucky Gunslinger. And Lucky allowed me to add a token to the event token bag that will kind of give me a free turn or will kind of prevent something bad uh from happening on a turn. And I was able to upgrade him a little bit during a rest action. And so I upgraded his ability trailblazing to its level two power. And then I also added a new skill called into the sunset. So that's kind of an overview of the investigators. Again, each one has a box that you keep their skills in. You can upgrade them. You have to spend your action points to do your main actions. You have to spend your stamina to do your basic actions.
And then you also have sanity here. And sanity is mainly used to cast spells because at certain points in the game, you will be able to remove these uh cult tokens. I can't remember exactly what they're called, but they are these kind of uh these Eldrich tokens, and you can remove those from the grimoire. And when you clear a space of all of the tokens, then you can add a spell to your grimoire. And then any character on their turn as a basic action can spend a point of stamina to cast that spell. So there's a small deck of spells over there. And your grimoire is a is a communal grimmoire. any character can use the or any investigator can cast the spells from that. Speaking of communal items, everything in this game, all of the items, all of those cult tokens, all of the spells, everything is communal.
So, you don't assign things to a single investigator. Anybody who is playing as an investigator can use these items. And I think that is pretty cool. And so one of the main things you are trying to do is you are trying to uh investigate the suspects, uncover their clues to figure out who is a cultist and then stop them by the time or when the train reaches the end of the track. We also have this event board here. And this event board is how the game fights back because at the end of each one of the investigators turns, and this is kind of the way that the game scales with uh down to, you know, by the number of players because at the end of each one of the players turns, they're going to draw a token from the event bag that will [snorts] trigger certain things. And if you ever cover up three of these spaces, then you go into a kind of event trigger phase where all of the bad things that have been piling up on the event board happen. You will spawn monsters, you will move monsters, the vampire might attack, certain things might happen, and you might also have to draw a card from the passenger deck. And this represents the various uh passengers kind of reacting to all of the insanity that is going on on the train. And so you would flip that over and there this would be a crowd panic. And so depending on the mood of certain passengers, they might
act certain ways. They might uh become angry, they might become shocked, they might become insane, and then they might randomly move around the train. And a large part of this game is to kind of corral the passengers. You know, you're almost like the passengers babysitters on this train. You want to make sure that they stay calm, that they become happy. If they go insane, bad things happen. the cultist as their power starts to grow, they can kind of uh they can kind of siphon off the uh the energy from insane passengers to make their uh ritual more powerful. And speaking of rituals, there are a number of different rituals that you can play during the game. So, this is kind of your setup for your scenario. And so, right now, I am playing the black magic ritual. And so I think there are five of these in the base game. And each one of these will just add a little bit of a different setup and something that happens during this event phase is will be uh different depending on the ritual that you have chosen to play as. So this is kind of like choosing to play as you know whatever uh great old one you might fight against in Arkham Horror or Eldrich Horror. And so having five different scenarios adds for a lot of replayability.
uh you know each of the suspects when you set up their clues that's all randomized so you never know who the cultist is and additionally we have these location tokens on our board and you will set those up according to this legend here. So we have 1 2 3 4 5 six different setups for the uh path that the train is taking. the various locations of the dreamland that the train is passing through. You have a starting area and so we have I think it's five different starting cities and this will also kind of change the flow of the game and you can either pick one or randomize it. So in this game here I started in Zagreb there and so I am moving through and then I moved through the hills of sorrow. I had deja vu. I am now in the twisted wasteland. And when the train reaches the next location, you just flip over this tile to see what you will discover on that next leg of the journey. And there are stacks of these location tiles in different sizes. And depending on the route that you have chosen, each of the journeys through the dreamlands will be different. And so that's another way that this game adds a ton of variety. This game has so much variety. Uh you could probably play this game 20, 50 times and never see the same kind of combination of things. There are also a number of different items that
you can use. And again, all of these items have a cost. You never get something for free in this game. Everything has a consequence. Everything has a cost. There is real choice in this game. A lot of times a common complaint that people have about the kinds of games that we typically love on the dungeon dive is the lack of player agency, the lack of player choice. A lot of the games that I love, you know, you roll a dieice, you move to a space, you draw a card, you do what it says, rinse and repeat, and you don't have a lot of choice. And that doesn't bother me. That I think it is a legitimate criticism about the games I love, but it doesn't bother me. That criticism is not a negative to me. I enjoy that. This game is the exact opposite. And I also enjoy it because every single thing you do has a cost. Every choice has a consequence.
And to do well at the game, the key to the game kind of the game's heart, its beating heart is that choice is that consequence is that trading of a valuable resource for something to do now. And hopefully that doesn't come back to bite you in the butt later. But the items, we have different grimoars, different toms, and different artifacts. And they will usually cost either health or sanity in order to use those. Another thing that you're having to do while you are babysitting the passengers, making sure they don't get too angry, making sure they don't get too insane, and also while you are investigating the suspects, is having to deal with the monsters. And I think this is really cool. The monsters are like they aren't inside the train car. They are chasing the train through the dreamlands. The the train is like a beacon to them kind of like a a lamp would be to a moth and they are drawn to the outside of the train and they are chasing and they go car by car and they're trying to make their way up to the engine. And if the monsters ever move up to the engine, then you have to draw one of these monster cards and something really, really bad happens. And another thing that is pretty cool about this game is that it really does feel Lovecraftian. A lot of times in these games, I talk about how, you know, the Arkham Files
games to me don't really feel Lovecraftian. They feel more like Brian Lumley. Now, I happen to like Brian Lumley more than I like Lovecraft. I like his take on the mythos more. And so, for me, that's a good thing. You know, in Arkham Horror, in Eldidge horror, you are fighting against these monsters with like swords and shotguns, and you are doing all kinds of crazy things. There really isn't any combat in this game. The way you deal with the monsters is a little more, I don't want to say realistic, but you are kind of pushing them away. You are keeping them from the train. You are pushing them out of the train's route. You are maybe leaving them behind. You can stun the monsters and then they kind of get left behind and they go to this portal here where they are behind the train and they are chasing the train but eventually they will catch back up. Uh the train also has various speeds. Right now, my speed is at one, but you can bump you can go up to the engine and you can bump the speed up to two or maybe bump it up to three. And as the train starts going faster, your ability to push the monsters further away to the back become stronger. But there's also a little danger that you might as the train speeds up, you will have to add again choice and consequence. you know, you want to deal with monsters, you want the train to go faster so you can outrun the monsters. Well, then you have to add two or for each speed up, you add these uh
train tokens to the event bag. And when you draw one of these during the event portion of your turn, the train will actually move additional spaces. So, you will have fewer chances to investigate the suspects. And speaking of investigating the suspects, and I think this is the coolest part of the game, and I love this mechanism so much. So, let's take a look at that. So, let's say it was um Emily Etien's turn, and she wanted to investigate a suspect. And so, she would use her avoid note ability. And this allows her to talk to certain passengers. She can talk to calm and happy passengers. Now, let's just see where she is on the board. So, she right now is in the dining car. And the dining car has an ability where I can gain a favor from one of the suspects. Favor is another thing. Each of the suspects has a favor. And then you can use their favor and then uh once you've used it, you flip it over and you can't use it again until you're able to gain a favor again from that same suspect. So, uh here is uh Emily. She is in the dining car. She is with a suspect and she is also with two uh content uh passengers and two happy passengers.
So I can very easily use my avoid note. So I would take one of my yellow cubes, my action cubes, and for my main action on this turn, I will talk to one of these passengers in order to gain some information about any of the suspects. And so this says talk for. So we have our discussion bag. This bag dictates this bag controls the conversations that you are having with the various passengers trying to uncover the clues about the suspects. I love this. So the first thing you do is my ability is talk four. So I'm going to draw four tokens out of this bag here. So one, two, three, and four. So let's take a look at what we got. So we have these uh horizontal tokens here. These are the kind of the subjects of the conversation. These are what we are looking for. And you want to try to get doubles. There are three of each of these in a set. If you ever get two matching, then the conversation is a success and you can reveal a corresponding clue that corresponds to your successful uh discussion. We also have these vertical. And these verticals, they these vertical tokens, they come in two flavors, green and red.
Red, these will trigger if you ever bust, if you ever fail at a conversation. And you fail at a conversation by drawing a third matching token. And so there is a pressure luck element. And I love pressure luck in games. Okay. So, so far we have this conversation about a ticket that we can ask. and the ticket is their destination. One of the clues about who might be a cultist is if they have a ticket to Constantinople and they have one of these chalicees and they don't have an elder sign, then they are cultist. If any of the passengers has this single blood red fez, they are a cultist. If any of the passengers have four of these mystic tokens, and those are the greenback tokens, they are a cultist. And so that's how you determine who a cultist is by uh using this little legend here and comparing it to the clues that you have unveiled. So we have a bad token. So that will trigger if we bust. Okay. So here we have a desire.
Each of the various passengers or the suspects will also have different desires and those desires. We have a legend here. We have all of these desires. We have all of these features and these tickets here. So, you need to keep track of what you have unveiled during these conversations. Now, what's interesting about the desires is the first time you reveal a suspect's desire, you also draw a corresponding quest depending on the desire that they have. So, let's say one of them desires uh you know, insanity. And so, we have one, two, three different insanity quests. When you reveal that desire for the first time on a suspect, you randomly draw one of these. And then this becomes a quest. And so this suspect desires to be in a train car with an insane passenger.
If that happens and you choose to solve that quest, you turn it over. Now, I don't want to show you this because I don't want to spoil it for myself and I don't want to spoil it for you. But if you know that the suspect is a cultist, you do not want them to fulfill their quest because that will have something to do with the ritual and something really bad will happen. And so you don't want to fulfill the quests of the passengers until you know if they are a cultist or not a cultist, hot dog or not a hot dog. I love that so much. It's so cool. It really does create some interesting stories about the passengers and the suspects on the train and you having to try to kind of manipulate them, manipulate their emotions and keep them in check. And while you are investigating now, sometimes you might know that a suspect is a cultist. And if they are a cultist, then you can do the upper thing on their quest where you can deal with them. And by deal with them, uh, often times that means that you are know kicking them off the train or subduing them. And if that happens, then you get to draw one of the random number one story cards about how you dealt with that cultist. Now as an action uh this is still focusing on the uh the suspects here. Each suspect will have a number of features. Those are things that they are carrying. Those are things that they
care about. You know, special items that they have. And you can also ask them questions about the various items that they have. And then you can draw a corresponding uh story card here. And that will allow you to have a little story, learn about the items. It will allow you to learn about the suspects and like why they're carrying that items and those items. And sometimes those uh inquiries into their special items will also lead to more story cards. And so there are a whole bunch of ways to trigger all of this cool stuff. Uh the blood red fee. This will obviously point whoever has this is definitely a cultist. So, there will always be at least one cultist because one of the suspects will always have this blood red fee token. And sometimes there might be one. Sometimes all of the suspects will be cultist. You never know. But if you uncover this blood red fee, then that starts this whole other part of the game where you have this fez council. And uh this will add all kinds of different wrinkles to your game as you are uh traveling along this this demented uh train line here.
But uh let's go back to talking. And so our final uh token that we drew for an initial draw of four is [snorts] another ticket. Okay. So we have a pair of tickets. So as of right now, this conversation would be a success because we have found a pair. We didn't bust with three. We do have one that we can still look for a pair and we only have a bad thing. So, at this point in this part of the turn, when we are talking, when we are investigating, we are questioning the passengers, we are questioning the suspects, we could choose to return any of these to the bag if we wanted to. Uh, let's go ahead and return uh this bad token. We've already succeeded, but we can still bust. If we draw that third ticket, we bust. But now, we can press on. We can continue talking. We can continue questioning. We could lead, you know, down a line of questioning like Columbombo. Oh, well, one more thing. I was wondering about your desire here. So, at this point, we can continue to draw tokens one at a time from the bag, hoping to get more matches, hoping to get maybe some green good tokens and avoiding getting that bust. What's interesting though is some of the uh investigators, they aren't as good at questioning. They're a little gruff, such as my boy here, uh, Bucky Barton, you know, the, uh, lucky retired gunslinger. He's not a smooth talker like uh, like Emily is. And so, when he continues to have a conversation, he has
to draw two tokens at a time. That makes it a little easier for him to stumble, to maybe offend the person he is questioning. But, uh, let's continue. Because when you take this talk action, you really do want to press your luck. You want to continue talking. Having only one success is kind of a wasted action. You want to have at least two successes. So, let's continue to talk. So, you know, I find out, oh yeah, you know, where are you going? So, they are going to tell me some information about uh their ticket. Uh maybe I want to hopefully learn more about what do they desire because their desires could lead me to determining whether or not they are a cultist. My next token is a green. Okay, so this is a green vertical token. Green tokens trigger if you have a successful conversation. So, if I stopped now, I could reveal one ticket and I would get to flip one of these over. So, one of these suspects would owe me a favor. But let's continue to talk. Like, okay, thank you. Yeah. Hey, would you like a drink? Yes. Okay. And our next token here is a feature. And so this if I match with another blue feature token, I can unveil one of these clues on any suspect.
Uh, I really want to get another feature or another desire. Hopefully I don't draw that third ticket or I would bust. And okay, so this is a first uh first class passenger. I can question a first class passenger. We have first uh first class passengers and secondass passengers. There are three of each. Okay, so yeah, I'm learning something about a first class passenger. Maybe I Yeah, they're acting suspicious. They had this weird uh thing that they kept, you know, uh they were like rubbing it in their pocket, some kind of like magical item. I don't know what it was. They were acting very suspicious. And okay, so now we have a red token. So, if we fail at this conversation, if we bust, we're going to take sanity damage.
Uh let's keep going. We're pressing on. We're asking more questions. And here we go. We have a feature. Okay, so we have two successes now. So this is a successful conversation. And so I want to stop there. I don't want to press my luck right now. There would be two chances of me busting because if I drew the third ticket or the third eyeball, I would bust. So let's take all of these that we're not going to use. And let's put those back in the bag. Uh let's solve let's resolve this first. So a passenger can owe me a favor. There's this one passenger here who I really like using their ability over here. And so, uh, this is a friend Fletcher. She allows me to discard essence from these pools. And so, as you discard essence from the pools, you add them or from the portals, you add them back to your pool, which is good because you never want to run out of these in your pool. And it also will prevent those. If you ever remove all of the essence from a portal, it will prevent those from triggering during that event phase. So, her power is really good. So, I want to flip that back over. Okay. So, we used that green token, added it back to the bag, and now we can reveal a ticket and we can reveal a feature from one of the passengers.
Okay. So, I know that this guy here, he is going to Constantinople. So, he might be a cultist. Let's go ahead and reveal one of his features. And let's see what we have here. Okay, so he has the handless pocket watch. Okay, so that is not a clue that points to him being a cultist. However, it is a clue that we can ask about. So, we can ask him about this item by taking an additional action. And those are those cards that I showed you. So, if we chose that as an additional action, then we would draw one of these random pocket watch cards in order to have a little story about that guy and why he is carrying that pocket watch. Maybe we can learn more about another suspect. Okay, so those were the feature tokens. So, I will put those back into the bag. And now we can reveal a ticket of another passenger. So, both of these passengers over here, they both have elder signs. And I am wondering if one of them is heading to Constantinople. So let's go ahead and reveal this ticket here. And yes, so uh Pedro Polymer is actually going to Constantinople. And so if we look at this here, okay, so he is going to Constantinople, but he has an elder sign. So he can't be the herald. He can't be this. However, one of these might be the Fez. So, we still don't exactly know whether or not he is a cultist or not, but it's looking like, you know, uh maybe he is, maybe he
isn't, but we do know that he is going to Constantinople. And so, that was the last of the conversation. And then after we have taken that action, and that would be our main action here, avoid node, then we could take two basic actions by spending stamina. At the end of our turn, after we have taken all of our actions, that's when we come to the event bag. And then we draw one of the tokens from the event bag. Let's see what we draw here. We have drawn ah yes, this is Bucky Barton's lucky token. So, this is just a free draw. Nothing gets added to the event board. Nothing bad happens. This just buys us a little bit of time. So, we can add that to the uh discard pile on the event deck. and that way we don't have to deal with it. And finally, at the end of your turn, you will move the train one space. So on the event board, we have these different pipped tokens from one, two, three, and four. Anytime there are three chips in this column here, we trigger all of the chips. We trigger the space shown on the event board. These will move monsters. These will spawn monsters. These will make monsters activate. Each of the chips will have different things that they do.
Some of the chips will uh allow the vampire to activate. Some of the chips will correspond to your grimoire and learning those magical spells. Some of these red chips with the hand. There's also a green chip with the hand. Those will trigger things that happen on the ritual that the cultists are trying to uh do. Some of these are xed out. And so this is kind of good. It'll trigger the event board still, but this particular part of the event board will not trigger. So we won't have to draw a passenger cart. Sometimes you will draw these uh train tokens and that will make the train move an additional spot. Sometimes you will draw these portal tokens and these if there are essence on some of the various location tiles, then those will trigger. And that's kind of basically it. That's kind of basically the game. You are talking to passengers, finding out clues, revealing clues, marking clues off on your tracker, and then looking at your little legend here, trying to determine which of the suspects is a is a cultist. And then make sure you make it to the end of the line without an investigator dying, without an investigator going insane, without too many passengers dying. and without their without the train being overrun by monsters. If you can make it all the way to the end of the line and then you know enough information about the suspects and you reveal that you
know for sure who's a cultist and who isn't, then that is the end of the game. So yeah, there is a a lot. I think I went over everything at least a little bit about this game. I think the rule book is very very good. I would say the rule book is one of the better rule books. I think it explains the game very well. It explains a pretty in-depth game very well. The setup is a nightmare. I think it's like 56 steps just to set it up. It takes a long time. It took me 48 minutes to set the game up. My first uh my first game. Putting it away is kind of a nightmare, too, just because there is so much. But the rule book is good, and it also comes with quite a few really good player raids that can help guide you through the game. and gave you most of the information I know or most of the information you need. Not that I know, but most of the information you need is on these uh player aids here.
And I will say that uh the game is very thematic and all of the rules make a thematic sense. And I think one of my favorite things about horror on the Orian Express is that end goal. You aren't trying to fight, you know, at the end of this game, you aren't trying to fight Cthulhu. You're not trying to fight Narotep. Uh there's no big boss confrontation and I greatly appreciate that because as much as I love the Arkham Files games and I do I love them dearly. You guys know that I love Arkham Horror second edition, third edition. I like Eldridge horror. I like Elder Sign. I like uh the first edition of Arkham Horror. But the thing about and even like the non-Arkham Files games like Cthulhu Death May Die, my least favorite part of all of those games is that final confrontation with the great old one just because it's it's never really exciting and it never really feels like you are engaging really engaging in this epic confrontation, this epic confrontation. Well, horror on the Orian Express doesn't have an epic confrontation at the end of the game.
you are just worried about the human cultists and the suspects and trying to stop them from performing their ritual. And I really do like that. I think it keeps the momentum going all the way through the last turn of this game. So, uh yeah, I hope hopefully I gave you some good overview, some good information about this game. There is so much to this game. There are so many moving parts, so many tokens. Uh when you get it, just be prepared. You will have to put together all of those cardboard train cars. You will have to punch out of stuff. Punch out a lot of stuff. You have to organize a lot of stuff. And it takes a really long time. It probably took me like two and a half hours just to get to the point where I could even start to learn the game. And that did leave me with a little bit of a negative kind of first impression. I felt overwhelmed. I wasn't sure if it was going to be worth the effort, but I think it is worth the effort, but really only if I can get the game out and leave it set up for a few days so I can play a few games in a row. I can't imagine ever wanting to set this game up just for one game because I think getting it out, setting it up, and then putting it all back away would probably be just as long as playing the game. I should also mention that it does play very well solo. All you have to do is play two characters. And because there aren't really phases, everything is kind of
siloed off between one turn and the next. You don't have to keep track of things in between turns really. It makes it a very very simple or very very easy to play solo game. And it's a really fast playing solo game. So yes, I do recommend horror on the Orient Express. I think it's pretty fantastic. And uh yeah, so let me know if you played it. Let me know what you think. And if you got that huge I mean the game comes in a huge box already, but there's also a huge campaign box. I can't even imagine playing with it with this with in a campaign setting just because there's already so much going on and adding a whole additional layers on top of this to turn this game into a campaign. I don't know that feels like a nightmare to me. But you guys know my opinions on campaign games. One and done, zero to hero. Yes, I'm all about that. And I really do like horror on the Orient Express. So, we will talk to you later. Bye-bye.