Promising to be even darker and more intense than that time you put too much Aluminium foil in the Hydrochloric acid during Chemistry class, Fantasy Flight’s Forbidden Alchemy should be with us in the next few days. An expansion for that Really Good Thing(tm), Mansions of Madness, it adds four new investigators, two new monsters and three new stories for you to play through. There are a number of interesting mechanics being introduced, including the fact that failing the alchemy puzzles causes your character to draw a side effect card that could result in horrible mutations and other grizzly things. There’s also the possibility of travelling through time to both the past and future during the course of one of the stories. Fascinating, Captain.
Sadly, one of the new investigators is Dexter Bloody Drake, so he can sod off – but one of them is a favourite from Arkham Horror, the stern and effective Carolyn Fern, who can hold on-the-spot interventions during the course of a game to stop her fellow investigators from doing involuntary things. Even more tragic than the presence of Dexter Drake is the absence of the delightful Mandy Thompson, who we can only hope will be added in an upcoming expansion.
Soon, my dear. Soon (we hope).
I won’t get to try Forbidden Alchemy until after Christmas, but you can bet there’ll be a full review up once I get my trembling mitts on it.
In other board-gaming news, I’m happy to report that I’ll be having a bit of a board game bonanza with a few friends over the weekend where we’ll be playing a number of titles both new and old. This means that there will be reviews and battle reports to go up. There are a few I’ll be playing for the first time, including Greek Mythological war ‘em-up Cyclades, and I’ll be combining Fantasy Flight and Games Workshop (uNF) for the first time, as I look at Blood Bowl the card game and Death Angel. I’m looking forward to telling you, my cherished reader, all about them.
