This is quite possibly the greatest board game ever. Really, it’s a work of genius. A genuinely cooperative game. The players must work together to defeat…the board. Your opponent is the selection of randomly drawn Mythos cards at the end of each turn. Over and over again, you watch as all of your cooperative efforts seem to be working, then the Mythos has its turn, foiling all your efforts.

I love this game because the balance is perfect. You are not likely to win this game without teamwork and skillful play. When you do win, it feels like a genuine accomplishment.

There are a lot of elements here that could draw in a lot of different people, even ones who don’t think they like board games. The strategy aspects are nicely done. The best part, though, is the story the game tells while you play. You aren’t just rolling dice and moving pieces. A plot with twists and turns is being revealed. It almost leaves you with the feeling the game knows exactly what it’s doing as your investigators get chased by monsters and sucked into portals to other realms.

The game has the following cons:
-It takes hours to play. Maybe 20 minutes to set up and generally about 4 hours to play, but as many as 8.
-There are a lot of pieces. If small children or clumsy people get hold of this, they may well make it unplayable after losing important tokens and cards.
-You need a BIG table to play. By the time the board and tokens are all laid out on my long dining room table, I sometimes have to get out TV trays for players to put their stuff on.
-As others have said, it takes a while to learn. You’ll probably want to set the game up in advance and sit with the manual and play a practice run through.
-Somewhat expensive. Especially if you obsessively collect all the expansions, this could turn into $100+ boardgame.