A Touch of Evil Boardgame

I had picked up the Flying Frog Production's boardgame A Touch of Evil a few months ago but finally got a chance to play it recently.

A Touch of Evil is essentially a programed RPG with a Gothic Horror theme. It is clearly inspired by the movie Sleepy Hollow and is set in that generic 18th century world that the old Hammer Studio movies seems to relish. The object of the game is to save the town of Shadowbrook from one of four types of monsters: a vampire, a werewolf, a spectral horseman, or an animated scarecrow. The players take the role of one of eight pre-generated characters who are investigating the strange events in the town. The game is played by wandering around the town and its surroundings gathering up Investigation chits. The Investigation chits are used to buy equipment as well as information about the town's six Elders who may help the heroes or end up joining the Villain. Once enough chits are gathered, the characters can buy a card giving them the whereabouts of the Villian's lair where they can fight the final showdown with the Villian. In the meantime, the Villian can send various minions against the characters and begin to take over the town.

Here's a picture of the board. It is an area movement game. Most of the action is driven by various decks of cards that generate events. There is a general Event deck (mostly good events)and a Mystery deck (mostly bad events). The plot really is driven by investigating the four "corner" locations each of which has its own event deck: The Manor, the Abandoned Keep, the Old Woods, and the Windmill. Below is a picture of the suggested layout:

It is a fun, quick moving game with simple mechanics, definitely good for a one night session. It comes with eight unpainted plastic playing pieces, roughly about 28mm, for the heroes. While painting them up, I got the idea about trying to do the whole game as a tabletop miniatures game. It worked out pretty well. Here's what the "board" ended up looking like:

Most of the buildings were decorative pieces I picked up in gift shops on sale rather than gaming items. They are slightly underscale which works fine for a "board game" setting.

Town Center

Here are the critical four corners:

The hero pieces that came with the game.

For the other game pieces, I used figures already in my collection, mostly Old Glory and West Wind with some Brigade,Foundry, and a few other companies thrown in.

The Town Elders:

The Town Militia:

Various other allies the heroes came gain through some of the card draws:

For this game, we used the vampire and minions of bats, wolves, walking dead, and succubi.