I'm a reasonable game: Big Trouble in Little China Board Game Review

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This review is much appreciated. I'm frankly amazed that this game delivers on the premise. I love the movie but I had absolutely no faith that a tabletop implementation could capture what makes it so much fun to watch.

Ideally I would try this before buying it, but I'm the only person I know who'd sink $70-ish on a BTiLC game. Damn.

Great review, totally agree. Quality game with some neat twists.

Thanks, both of you.

@Vysetron: I was really kind of surprised, too. I mean, if you watch the film, you can tell that the screenplay kind of sets up as an RPG approach, so it was a wise decision by EE to take that route. But the depth of the immersion into the story is impressive, even when you're still learning the mechanics. We actually screwed up in the first couple plays and forgot a key rule on the fistfuls of dice, which is that if you roll 3 demon heads, even if you succeed at what you're doing, you lose 3 health. It's a nice way to keep people from simply maxing out their dice pool on everything and rolling with abandon, 40K-style. If you're low on health, there's a risk. That's a more interesting restraint than just limiting how many dice can be rolled, for example, because it keeps you in the "this is what happens when you truck with the powers of Chaos" mindset that GW always tried to assign to their Chaos factions and usually failed, spectacularly. No one would use the units or weapons that carried those rules, because it usually meant you faceplanted AND something awful would happen. In BTiLC, you can still succeed, but you might get bit, too.

I stopped reading when you said this was a bad movie.

It's an awful movie. But it's also among the so-bad-it's-good (maybe even great) movies. That brings up an interesting Carpenter classification argument. Big Trouble is clearly a B movie; in contrast to, say, The Thing, which is clearly an A-list horror film. Escape from New York is just this side of B-movie, but it's so good as a post-apoc SF piece that you're tempted to call it an A-list film. Plus, it has a line that inspired a scene in Neuromancer.

I've only played the game twice, both solo, and I largely agree with the review.

Component wise, I think they did an excellent job. The Hell cards are a bit below the rest, but they don't get used that much. The game presentation really conveys the theme well and the minis are pretty well sculpted.

Game play wise, both times I had a really hard time leveling up. It reminded me a lot of IMPERIAL ASSAULT in that you really need to focus on Questing and moving, not so much killing bad guys. Given average draws for the turn track, you only have 6-7 turns IIRC before the first stage ends. Less if any characters die . Not a lot of time. The reason being that you need to level up before getting to the showdown stage inside Lo Pan's lair. If you go in there and your characters aren't buffed up, you'll have a very hard time and probably flail badly.

Others on BGG have reported a much easier time. Either I am missing something, or it could be one of those games with a snowball effect where once you level up enough, you can really start killing stuff much easier. Its a big difference between rolling only 3 dice and 5.

Given that there are six characters and each character has multiple versions via the once per game ability they choose and the quests that come out, I think it has a lot of replayability. That said, I don't see this as having the kind of staying power than some other license games like BSG or WAR OF THE RING have had. Its above average for an IP based game, but I don't think its top tier. If you're a fan of the movie, check it out.

This has been my pleasant surprise of the year so far and by far the most joy i've ever had whilst unboxing a game purchase. It both captures the feel of the film perfectly and is a solid evening of fun with some great mechanics. A hit with my whole group, I just shelled out for expansion and am looking forward to chasing Lo-Pan through time.

Cool. Glad you're getting something out of it. I ended up trading my copy because it was good (and the minis are amazing) but I'm largely averse to co-ops and it struck me that there's just too much setup/bookkeeping to get it off the shelf on a regular basis.