Scooby-Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion

is the newest ‘Betrayal style’ game from Avalon Hill, the makers of the award-winning Board Game Betrayal at House on the Hill and the Dungeons & Dragons themed Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate. 

If you’re not already familiar with how these ‘Betrayal style’ games work, here is a quick primer: Each player takes on the role of an investigator.  Each Investigator has a range of attributes which determine how many dice they roll when interacting with the game.  On each of their turns they move (speed score determines how far) and explore a spooky old mansion by uncovering new locations and using tiles to place for these new rooms/passages and build out the floor plan. At some point during the game, an event (called the Haunt) will be triggered where one of the players will turn on the others and begin working to beat them.  The circumstances of the ‘haunt’ are different based on a number of factors and each has its own win/loss conditions for the players and the newly created ‘bad guy.’

This version of the game simplifies many of these actions to make the game suitable for younger players or newer players who need a simpler/streamlined experience for their first forays into the Betrayal type game.

The game is for three to five players each taking on a role of one of the classic Mystery Inc. gang (Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby).  Each investigator has four attributes (Speed, Might, Courage and Brains). The ranking of each determines how many dice they roll during ‘tests’ with higher  scores meaning more dice and greater chance of success and their Speed score is also the number of spaces they can move (with some restrictions).

Each character has a special ability.  Scooby gets to move one extra space beyond his speed rank (which is already high). Shaggy gets to re-roll two dice when spending a scooby snack on a re-roll (for everyone else, they just re-roll one). Velma can’t get lower than a three on a Brains roll, Daphne begins with an extra scooby snack and Fred gets to start with a free item.

There are five Mystery Cards which you choose one of at the beginning of the game. These act as a difficulty modifier with the easiest to play (not necessarily win, but play/understand) being Mystery of the Man-Made Menace. On the back is a matrix that will determine which Haunt you play based on which clue resulted in the Haunt being triggered.

One change for this game is that there are two zones to explore. Inside the mansion and Outside. When you begin the game you set up the Mystery Machine Outside zone tile adjacent to the Inside zone Main entrance tile. Players can choose to move between these zones as their speed (or secret passages) allow.

Each time you find a Clue (determined by uncovering a new tile, either Inside or Outside with the Clue Icon – see pic) you roll a ‘Haunt Roll’ and as soon as you roll five or higher on this roll you start the Haunt.

The dice for the game are d6s which have sides that are blank, sides with one pip showing and sides with two pips showing. So you can’t actually get five or higher until at least the third clue. If you somehow manage to get to nine clues you don’t roll. The ninth clue starts the Haunt regardless. (The longest time for us was triggering the haunt on the 7th clue).

Once the Haunt starts you pick someone to switch from playing their investigator and instead take on the role of ‘bad guy’. This can be random, volunteered for, assigned, or however you wish to do it. For us, Jacob always wanted to be the bad guy so we let him. Normally I’d house rule that whoever rolled the Haunt roll that triggered the Haunt would be it, but it’s up to you.

Normally in a ‘betrayal style’ game the person who’s now the bad guy takes one book and leaves the room to read how they proceed. For this version, the game allows for the entire table to hear/read each side. This makes is accessible to younger/newer players in that the entire table can help them understand what they are supposed to be doing. At Nine, I think Jakey would have been able to figure it out but I don’t think it would have been as clear or what his best strategy would be. Having me help him understand his goals and win condition was certainly a big help.

The players take the Secrets of Survival book and the newly minted bad guy takes the Monster’s Tome and turns to the Haunt number as indicated by the Mystery Card you started the game with. The Monster’s Tome explains what the bad guy is trying to do, what they CAN do, and how to win. The Secrets of Survival book tells the players how to set up the board and what they need to do to win. Initially investigators only have 2 actions they can take. GIVE or TAKE items. In some Haunts they gain new abilities, like being able to attack/stun bad guys or Detect Traps.

In our first game, we triggered Haunt # 17. What a Night for a Knight. In the Secrets of Survival book, it explains what Tokens are needed, how to place them, any new/additional rules, and our win condition (Stun the Black Knight).

The Monster’s Tome book explains how the Black Knight Wins (Get three treasure tokens hidden in the woods).

In addition to Scooby Snacks which help character re-roll, you can also collect item cards by finding tiles with the Item icon ( see pic ). Items include a Net that lets you reduce an enemy’s Might or Speed roll. A Wheelbarrow that lets you move another character along with you on your turn, a Box of Scooby Snacks, a Mysterious Letter, and even a Fishing Pole. If you’re a fan of Scooby Doo! You’ll likely recognize and get a kick out of most of these.

And the last type of icon is for Events. When you uncover a new tile with an Event Icon (see pic) you draw from the Event deck. These include ‘Broken Vending Machine,’ which lets you grab two Scooby Snacks or ‘Hole in the Ground,’ which means you need to make a Might Roll (roll the number of dice equal to your current Might Score). Roll poorly and you might lose Speed or Might. Roll high and you get Scooby Snacks. With the ‘Grumpy Old Man,’ event card you just roll 2 dice. Roll poorly and you’ll lose an item or Scooby Snack but roll well and you can gain an item or raise a trait.

Lastly, one of the other and maybe the biggest changes of this game to other ‘Betrayal style’ games to make it a younger player / newer player friendly is there is no player elimination. When you take damage (which can happen if you’re trying to stun the Black Knight and they roll better than you) you get to choose which trait you lose points from and can divide it up however you want. Once you need to take damage and can’t because all of your traits are now at zero you are stunned. If you start your turn stunned you lose that turn but heal all your traits back to their starting value and continue with the game on your next turn.

Final Thoughts:

I love this game. I love Scooby Doo! I have for a long time and enjoy the Betrayal games so the two together would be an insta-buy for me. The game is rated for age 8+ and I’ve been playing with my boys (currently age nine and ten) and they both really like it. JG loves exploring the mansion and uncovering new tiles. Jacob likes being the bad guy (going to have to keep an eye on that one!).

But they’ve both been asking to play this game with me and as a ‘Gamer Dad,’ I can’t ask for more.

There are some cons to cover before we go.

I wish there were more tiles. There are 26 tiles in total. 13 Inside and 13 outside and I’d love to have twice as many. Give me moar!

There seems to be a high level of luck involved in winning. In three of our games, we hit the Haunt (rolled a five or more on the Haunt roll when finding a new clue) as soon as it was possible (so on the third clue) which means that very little of the mansion/grounds have been explored. So when we set up the tokens for the end game we were all close together. In the first game, the Black Knight won easily because of how close what they needed was to each other and himself. In another game, the players won easily because of how close all the evidence tokens we needed were to our characters when the haunt happened. In every case, we had no more than four turns each (four for the new bad guy and four each for each player) before the game ended. Usually, it was three and it feels like it happens really fast (to me, the boys didn’t seem to care/notice) and it feels like there’s too much luck involved at that point. Maybe future games will change my mind.

And lastly and this is a bit nit picky, we’ve played six games or so and we’re already seeing wear and tear on the character cards from where the clip markers attach to track traits/damage (you can see it on the Fred character card picture posted near the top of the review).

Despite those minor issues I highly recommend this game for anyone who likes/loves Scooby Doo! Likes/loves/interested in the Betrayal game and especially if you have kids in the age 7-10 range that you like to play games with.

Highly Recommended!

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Thanks!

Michael

Here is a live play video of me and my boys playing the game.