Trashdome - Arkham Horror vs Twilight Imperium 3

WELCOME TO TRASHDOME!

This is part of a series of bloody matches to the death. Show support for your favorite game so it will do better in the fight. You can support it by writing why you think its the better game and more importantly by betting on it. End your first post in this thread with the title of the game you're placing a bet on (i.e. voting for) so its clear to me when reading it later. You have until Friday when I tally the bets and declare the winner. The winning game may return for future matches, the loser will be dead. Counting expansions or not is entirely up to you just as playing with them or not is. I will reserve my bet for any tie-breakers.

Although you should be familiar with both games, there is no rule that says you have to have played both of them. The only rule in Trashdome is this;

Two games enter! One game leaves!

Arkham Horror.

The original Chaosium version of AH was one of my favorite games, and the FFG version is exponentially better. It's my favorite solo game, and it's also a great game with several players and still interesting even with 8 players. With the expansions, it has vast replayability, even compared to other games with several expansions.

I have to admit that I've never tried Twilight Imperium. I want to, and it seems like a game that I would enjoy, but the people that I usually game with would never go for it. And I'm just not willing to shell out $90 for the base game and $whatever for the expansion that fixes the base game, when I will probably only be able to play it solo. I do know some local guys who play TI3 on a semi-regular basis, but have been bluntly told that their group is full for now.

Yeeesh... tough call.

Arkham Horror's reprint was one of the games that started getting me back into the boardgaming hobby. Cooperative against a hostile board, very variable gameplay depending on the GOO and characters, memorable moments and usually a lot of fun.

Twilight Imperium is one of those games you have to plan to play due to its length. But it's a very full experience for those several hours. Have to be flexible enough to negotiate and attack and make the best use of your race's abilities.


I'm going to throw my vote to Arkham Horror here.

Asking me which game I like better between Arkham vs. Ti3 is like asking me what daughter I love more. If you asked me do you want to play Ti3 or Arkham Horror, I say Ti3 almost everytime but that's because I don't get to play Ti3 enough. I played Ti3 about 4 times last year vs playing AH a least dozen times last year. However, if was going to be stranded on an island with 3 other people and I could only take one game, I think I'd take Arkham Horror with all the expansions.

My vote goes to Arkham Horror

I'll vote for TWILIGHT IMPERIUM - even though I've only played it once and AH, never. But for some reason as I've gone through reasearching and downloading rule books to read on my commute, AH has never piqued my interest enough to browse. I know I'd probably love it, and I'd gladly jump into a game if I could. However, if it was put up against TI3 right now, I'd definitely play my SECOND game of TI over my first of AH.

We'll see if that ever changes once I get to a game of AH.

When I discovered Arkham Horror last year I was shattered that I had missed out on playing this for the previous couple of years. Here was a board game where you and your fellow dungeoneers ran a character against a terrible and usually hopeless quest, but in (moderately) modern setting of horror and occult. The game flowed brilliantly, tension & excitement & despair played with you, and time seemed to fly .... it was FUN.

I have played TI3 and I enjoyed it being a 4X type of SciFi game with lots of plastic bits, battles, player interaction both military and diplomatic, great theme which you could immerse into, but ..... it felt too drawn out, downtime could be terrible with anyone slightly AP or from a wargame background, it just felt forever sometimes (probably was) getting your plan out. And I was very neutral over the VPs required to win. In the end I think it was a couple of hours too long for what you actually got out of it.

If I get offered a chance to play AH then I will snap it up no matter what else I have planned or how much time I have (I don't get to play it much at all) ... BSG may be the only exception that would head it off.
If I was offered a game of TI3 that was guaranteed to finish in six hours due to fast and fun players, then I would be keen - but would have a look around the room to check what I might miss out on first.

Vote: Arkham Horror

Simple, TI3.

If Arkham Horror were a game where you played the part of an Ancient God building an Earthly empire of shadowy cults and degenerate fishing villages pitted against the similar machinations of competing Gods, it would stand a chance.

As it is, being co-op/multiplayer solitaire, no chance, no matter how many expansions it has. You can't even choose to help the Ancient Ones attain their righful dominion over the Earth, you're stuck playing against the system.

I love both of these games a great deal so this is the toughtest vote I have yet had to make in the trashdome (LNOE vs. ATOE was close for me... but no one else apparently).

The problem (yes, problem) with Arkham is that no matter how great it is it's still a co-op game... no conflict. I have yet to see my buddy Rob say to John "I hate you!" while playing Arkham... it's simply not possible to get that emotionally involved in a cooperative game.

Twilight Imperium can be embarassing, it's like getting drunk and you wake up the next day, call your buddy and say..."Who do I need to apologize to?" Many people claim that games help your social skill... not always with TI3rd edition... it sometimes makes them worse. But we are always surprised at how TI makes us behave. We get so angry and frustrated and may end up claiming that we hate the game, the person who screwed us etc...

As much as I love AH it never even comes close to generating as powerful an emotional response from me as TI3.

Vote:

Twilight Imperium 3rd.

P.S. if you don't agree I will personally blow up your home... uh... PDS.

I feel almost the exact same as JonJacob. ARKHAM is a FANTASTIC game. I've played it solo numerous times, and with the madness and injury cards it's often an intense game and it always always give me a great sense of story.

However TI2 was the game that got me back into gaming some years ago, and TI3 is not only better looking, but ultimately a better game. Because it's about conflict, because it's about blowing things up (esecially with SHATTERED EMPIRES), but especially because it's so damn epic.

My vote (if only by a small margin): TI3

Arkham Horror is for me an utterly unique game for several reasons. The most important of these is that it provides an almost endless variety of player options, even without the expansions, all of which I have found enjoyable. My best personal example of this wide variety: playing Dunwich, one of us got several allies early from events and decided to make it his goal to kill the Dunwich Horror, which would allow him to dig through the item deck for "Join the Winning Team" so he could sacrifice his allies to Tsathoggua and win with the GOO; this was foiled when one of us drew the card (the Dunwich Horror was eventually knocked out cold by a nun with the fisticuffs skill).

I could play AH over and over and over and not get the same game twice; I've also never played another game that really got the same juices flowing. With TI3, it's certainly a great game, but there are many other great games that are about war, history, diplomacy, politics, etc. Few games are about the sort of combination of doom, absurdity, exploration, and adventure that Arkham Horror provides.

VOTE: ARKHAM HORROR

AH is a well-done circle jerk. It has great story in terms of character development, but the flavor text on the "adventure" cards is a dud. The level of interaction may be the best of any co-op game I've played, with the perfect mix of group coordination and individual heroics. Memorable experience #1: Playing a nun riding down the street on a motorcycle mowing down the undead with a Tommy.

I haven't played the latest edition, but TI3 gets the vote from me due to the tiebreaker of having an original setting. Memorable experience #2: GMing a PBW/EM TI2 game over many long months was a totally epic experience (unfortunately, early eliminations made all my PBW/EM games as a player not so memorable)

I've played both and I'd have to go with Arkham Horror--even though I'm a huge sci-fi fan. I'd much rather play Nexus Ops over TI3. Arkham Horror was unique to me -- though I've only played 2 player.

I'll have to go with Arkham Horror.

If I'm going to give over seven hours of my life to play a game, I at least want to have a little bit of fun. Therefore ...

ARKHAM HORROR

I think this is going to be quite the blowout again. I haven't played TI3, though it's been on my list for quite some time but just haven't had the chance to play it.

Arkham Horror is one of my favorites. It's an adventure game in that you have a character, get equipment, move, have encounters, roll for skill checks and fight monsters. But that's not all. There's a puzzle mechanic with the gates and doom track and all that. The executive theme is great and really refreshing. I love the 20s theme (though current modern times would work well, too) and the range of characters: nun, adventurer, private investigator, scientist, professor, wandering bum, etc. It's great. The items range from magical swords and daggers to tommy guns and Colt .45 automatics. chucking a stick of dynamite at a shoggoth is just plain fun.

Vote: Arkham Horror

If I'm going to give over seven hours of my life to play a game, I at least want to have a little bit of fun. Therefore ...

TWILIGHT IMPERIUM