Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Betrayal at House on the Hill vs A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition), the Slant community recommends Betrayal at House on the Hill for most people. In the question“What are the best board games?” Betrayal at House on the Hill is ranked 6th while A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose Betrayal at House on the Hill is:
Each of the 50 scenarios are unique and have a gripping story that helps pull you into the game. Whether it's demons, monsters, or rituals that need to be completed, each gameplay session will be filled with new stories and new objectives. Thanks to this, each session memorable in its own way as you won't ever be doing the same thing twice.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Well written storylines lead to very memorable gameplay experiences
Each of the 50 scenarios are unique and have a gripping story that helps pull you into the game. Whether it's demons, monsters, or rituals that need to be completed, each gameplay session will be filled with new stories and new objectives. Thanks to this, each session memorable in its own way as you won't ever be doing the same thing twice.
Pro Exciting tone shift mid-game
In the beginning, players all work together to explore and search the haunted house, but once the betrayers are revealed in the later sections, the game turns you against one another. This complete shift in tone from co-op exploration to frantic survival is often the most exciting part as everyone's goals suddenly change and your friends are trying to kill you.
Pro Near endless replayability
The "Traitor's Tome" rulebook contains a base of 50 "haunt" scenarios to play through, but you can easily create your own or find more online if you'd like to play more unique or varied games. Even when playing the base game, the sheer amount of variety in nightmarish things (monsters, aliens, ghosts, weird portals) the game throws at you is incredible.
Pro Great for getting your friends into gaming
Overall, this is a great game to help get your friends into board games, even if they are bit reluctant. Each game session usually only lasts about 60 minutes, but manages to pack as much fun in as possible. The suspense of exploration combined with the excitement of the big reveal is an addicting mechanic that works well with many groups. Thanks to this short length and incredible way of drawing people in, this makes it a great game to pick up and play with friends on the spur of the moment.
Pro Not a huge time investment
You can play a whole game from start to finish in about an hour.
Pro Builds anticipation and suspense
Perhaps one person, or even multiple people are forced to switch to Betrayers in the middle of the game. You never know who is going to be affected, what the revealed horror will be, or when it will happen. Additionally, the Betrayers and Investigators often have objectives which are kept secret from one another, so you never know what your opponent's win condition is until it happens. All of this keeps everyone guessing what's going to happen next and how things will play out.
Pro Great expansion that adds to gameplay
The Window's Walk expansion not only adds 50 new haunts, but adds new rooms, cards and opens up the roof for exploration. Overall, it's an excellent addition that expands on the base game and gives you plenty of new content to enjoy.
Pro Excellent game design
Like Risk, but with more planned strategy in stead of luck by throwing dice. Tactics are planned out ahead of time (instead of turn by turn in Risk) and then they are laid out turn by turn depending on placement.
Pro Nerve-racking
The game is extremely intense. Shouldn't be played on an empty stomach!
Pro Good replayability
Every time it is different, more or less players matters a lot in the gameplay which effects how the game plays each time.
Cons
Con The mechanics aren't the best
The mechanics for things like movement and fighting occasionally break down or don't make sense in certain Haunts.
For movement, there are two cases where the mechanics break down. In most cases, it's very obvious where you're supposed to go and it ends up being a simplistic point A to point B course. This takes all the fun or guesswork out of plotting the optimal path. On the other hand, sometimes reaching your goal is impossible because of layouts which makes fulfilling an objective difficult or downright impossible. In both cases, movement feels unexciting.
When fighting, some abilities are rather complex, so time is taken out of the game to explain the mechanics to everyone. This ruins immersion for everyone and it can feel like there is more explaining than actual action.
Con Some Haunts are very unbalanced
Due to how the house is gradually discovered in the first phase of the game, it is possible for either the Betrayer or the Investigators to not have access to the tiles they need to win the game at the start of the second phase. Sometimes the Betrayers will be at a disadvantage, and sometimes the Investigators. It's an issue that effects both sides about the same.
Con Players may feel disadvantaged at times
There is a huge variety in the horrors revealed, and some work better than others after a large portion of the house has been discovered. Others work best in small, enclosed quarters. For example, a creature suddenly crawling through the walls works best in the small quarters, whereas it wouldn't be so much of a threat in a larger open area. Due to things like this, the scenario can sometimes often feel unfair for one side or the other - either the Betrayer or the Investigators will have a huge disadvantage.
Con Not appropriate for children
Some of the more complicated scenarios can be quite confusing, and the game is relatively slow paced, so it may not be fun for kids. As it's a horror game, some of the themes (monsters, cannibalism, demonic rituals) are not appropriate for young children.
Con Game relies very heavily on the players buying into the theme
This is a game that does best only if the players really buy into the theme of exploring the haunted house. Since cards are read aloud and acted out a bit (creepy voices highly encouraged), events and haunts in particular benefit from this extra bit of immersion. If this seems like a Pro to you, then great, Betrayal is your kind of game, but if not, then it can get stale quickly and its flaws are made even more apparent.
Con Takes a long time to learn and play
The gameplay is very deep and interesting, but it involves a lot of mechanics and rules. You only have a certain amount of action tokens, and you can't always use the more powerful actions (you need to be a certain rank on the track), and there's a bunch of other things you need to think about constantly. There are tons of little mechanics you need to learn first before you can actually enjoy the game (and that will probably take a playthrough or 2, which is about 5 hours...especially if you're reading the rulebook).
Con Flares can be fustrating
As one of your action tokens, you can use a flare, which interrupts another action token of an opposing player. While useful, they do nothing besides slow down the game (for example, if the Lannisters keep flaring the Greyjoy's ships then they're stuck where they are and the Greyjoys can't do anything about it, essentially rendering them useless).
