House of Poison Review

Video published November 4th, 2023

Text Review

Our Scores

Video Review

Increase favor, while trying to keep poison low.

This is a sponsored post. Prototype featured.

How we played this prototype

We played it 4 times! Twice with 5 players, twice with 6 players.

Need to learn how to play? Or want more reasoning for our points? Our review video’s got you!

Component Pros

Pretty good for a prototype
- Later will have metal trackers, updated art, higher quality boards, etc.
Thick boards, cardboard coins, wooden tokens
Velvet bag for coins has nice plastic liner
Will have 18 instead of 8 character cards in full release

Art Pros

8 character portraits look unique and are fitting to role
- e.g. Pompous Nero has fancy robe and gives favor out
- e.g. Freedman Tiberius is holding a contract while can guess contracts
Contracts & 1st Place randomizer have nice printed wax seal on back

Easy to Start — Pros

Just deal 1 board, character, contract to each player
Double-sided player aids make game easy to teach and play

Gameplay Pros — 2 Track management is engaging

Going up in favor has to be balanced with becoming a big target (can eventually have 3 actions)
Players can reset their tracks for a VP coin if they max out
- More option select for those with the 3 actions from hitting top of favor
  - Prevents players from being continually screwed from being stuck at top of poison (only have 1 action)
Have to keep in mind 7 different contracts that require different favor/poison levels for different players
- Really enticing for experienced board gamers who like to manage info
Need to time contracts fulfillment, because they will drop/swap tracks
- e.g. Political Favor drops your political favor you’ve saved

Gameplay Pros — Lots of Interaction

Guessing other’s contract is little downside, so guessing is encouraged
Try to hide your intentions of contract to not get guessed
Try to guess other’s contracts by how they are changing everyone’s tracks
Some big hitting character abilities for more disruption
- e.g. Nero gives favor to everyone
- e.g. Veia is only way to heal consistently

Gameplay Pros — Decent progression

Guessing gets tighter as more people accomplish contracts
- 5x of each contract, can easily become 1-2x
More faceup contracts in front of players means they have more options to score points
3x actions from top of favor means you can accomplish 3 contracts in 1 turn

Rulebook Cons

Not clarified that guessing someone’s contract doesn’t flip it up if guessed incorrectly
Banner abilities need to be clarified that they are instantly applying
Wording in general is not clear and confusing
Publisher confirmed that will clear up wording

Gameplay Cons — Lucksacking Contracts

Can draw contract off top of deck that is already fulfilled, just have to spend an action
- All contracts have ways of lowering tracks after being completed, but can just use other’s tracks
Could’ve been fixed by preventing you from completing a contract you just drew
Contracts overlapping with each other still means that players can steal contract pre-reqs from each other unintentionally

Gameplay Cons — No way to prevent dragging

Nero/Locusta speed up game, otherwise it is possible for game to go 90 min+
Can get stuck with banquets that require ALL players to have poison
Slightly up to player tendencies, can’t go on forever because hitting 15 in a track gives VP
Play 4-5 players max to prevent game from dragging, easier game state to manage bluffs
Allegedly will have ways to discard contracts in final product

Tentative Score

This whole idea of managing tracks while having to deal with bluffing and guessing secret contracts is a great idea! And so if this sounds interesting to you, and you need a 4-5 player party game easy to learn, AND you like the Ancient Rome theme, this is worth a shot assuming they fix the contract luck sacking.

If that luck sacking, and the game sometimes dragging on were fixed, we would FAVOR this game more, and that could be a 7/10, and just cap the player count to 6. Currently, it’s a surprisingly think-y party game where you deal out the contracts, and as the trackers start going up, people start accusing each other of holding certain contracts, just like how people were accusing each other as Ancient Rome crumbles! Maybe this guy is moving up his favor as a massive bait- screw that guy! As you play more you’ll re-evaluate how effective guessing contracts is even if you know, and how you gotta be careful with the massive increase of tracks through Nero and Locusta.

Speaking of these characters, we couldn’t talk about the asymmetry much because they aren’t that different, I mean having Tiberius in your game will drastically change contract guessing habits, and Agrippa’s ability to copy someone else is really versatile, but these are more of the exception to the rule of others doing some simple track manipulation. Also you can’t get attached to your character because you could be swapping abilities with each other like some type of roman musical chairs.  

There’s also an “advanced” variant included, where you use 2 character cards per player instead of 1… but we only have 8 in this prototype, so we didn’t play this as it is definitely still in the works- remember there’s gonna be 18 character cards total which is gonna be sweet for replayability.

For the audience this is mostly trying to reach: the non-board gamers, House of Poison should be pretty fun to sit around and do the whole bluffing thing, and the board gamers still have the tracks to min-max. But really, this game isn’t meant to be taken too seriously, with random point payouts, and even the hilarious take-that ability to swap coins with someone else! Do note that even though there’s all the tracks playing off each other, and poison being kind of bad, there’s not really intricate combos in this game- its more about the bluffing thing. Like we had a player who was expecting more when he saw the tracks and his poisoning ability and wanted more, but this excels more in laughing about who has what contracts and promising FAVOR to each other- make sure you have the right group!

Last thing on theme: the integration isn’t direct, this could’ve been any theme, I mean this is a party game after all. But my college roommate who is currently studying classics as his doctorate said the implementation of Nero, Agrippina, Tiberius, and more are all connected historically and notorious for poisoning people. So that’s a plus for realism! .

Now for the fun totally non game related part, the narrative art book!

I legitimately sat down and read it- took me 2 sittings, and it is a SUPER entertaining read full of poison and building a house. Like I don’t want to spoil too much, but it certainly feels like you’re transported to the beginning of Ancient Rome’s twilight days. The art is so awesome that this is coffee table placement for sure. Again, my enjoyment of book is not affecting scoring.