Betrayal at House on the Hill is My Favorite Thing

Release Date: 2004

Publisher: Avalon Hill

                  Wizards of the Coast

# of Players: 3-6

Ever wanted to face off against Frankenstein's monster? How about battle Dracula? Betraying your friends sound like just another Sunday afternoon? This game has all that and more. You start off the game by choosing your character. There are six character pieces that come with the game, and therefore there are six character cards. Each character card has two sides. On each side is a separate character. Depending on which stats you like better, you can choose either character. The four stats that each character has are might, speed, sanity, and knowledge. Each of those stats are used for making specific rolls of the dice. The dice in this game are specialized. They are normal six sided dice, but the sides consist of two ones, two twos, and two blank sides. Next to start the game you must make sure that you shuffle all the decks of cards. There are events, items, and omens. Then go through the room stack and find the entrance hall/foyer/grand staircase, upper landing, and basement landing. Those rooms are already placed in the house.

A room tile with an omen marking

Place all characters in the entrance hall and you are ready to start the game. The player's character who has the next birthday is the first to go (the birthday can be found on the character cards). They are aloud to move as many rooms as their speed. As soon as they come to an unexplored room with a yellow mark on them, they must draw the corresponding card and resolve it and immediately end their turn. If the card, they are suppose to draw is an omen card they must make a haunt roll after they draw the card and do what the card says. With a haunt roll, you roll six dice and you must equal the same number or greater than how many omen cards have already been drawn. For example, if you draw the fifth omen, then you must roll a five or higher or else the haunt will start.

The great thing about this game is that the house you are exploring will never be the same twice. When you go to explore a new room, you draw the top room from the room stack. These rooms say on their back side whether they are a ground floor, second floor, or basement room. Some rooms, such as the pentagram chamber, can only be found on one floor, while others, like the game room, can be found on all three floors. There are also rooms that can only be found on two of the three floors. You enter a new room by walking through a side of a tile with a yellow outline. These signify doors from each room. You then draw a new room and decide which way you want it to face. You are able to block doors by putting a wall with no door against a wall with a door.

All six character pieces

Earlier I mentioned failing the haunt roll. If that happens, then the haunt begins. In that case you open up the traitors tome, one of the three books that comes with game, and loop up the specific room that was found and the specific omen. The book then tells you who the traitor will be. The traitor can range anywhere from no traitor at all, to the haunt revealer, to a specific character, or any other stat. After the traitor is decided then the traitor takes the Traitor's Tome to another room and reads the specific haunt. The other players, now referred to as the heroes, reads the same haunt in the Secrets of Survival handbook. There are fifty different haunts that can happen. The haunts can range anywhere from the heroes having to destroy a certain monster to the traitor having to find a certain item. Each haunt plays so differently that there is plenty of replay value in the game. Even if you end up playing the same haunt again, due to the setup of the house, the results can be very different.

I would say that Betrayal at House on the Hill is one of my all time favorite board games. I love the diversity in each of the haunts and that you do not have a predetermined game board. The board is created as the game goes on. Some haunts seem to favor either the traitor or the heroes, but sometimes this is determined by how many players there are. You can play with anywhere from 3-6 people, but I think that four is the perfect number.

Author's Note: This was all based off of the 2nd edition version of the game since the first edition is no longer in print. There was a huge error made in the first edition where you could find the "Underground Lake" on the second floor.