A Touch of Evil Board Game review

I’m going to warn you this is my boys’ favorite board game.  This is also one of the more complicated games I’ll share on this blog, but if you’re willing to put the time into learning the game it’s a lot of fun.

Touch of Evil board game

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The premise of the Touch of Evil Game

Touch of Evil start of game

In A Touch Of Evil you and the other players are in a town rather like Sleepy Hollow and there’s been an attack, and you are trying to stop the monster and his minions before he destroys your town.

Touch of Evil game is a cooperative competitive game.  You can play the game both ways.  In the cooperative version, the villain becomes more difficult depending on how many people are playing.  In the competitive version, you can hurt your fellow players because you want the glory of defeating the villain.  It is also possible to play a cooperative competitive game, where you are on teams.  The members of the team work together, but the opposing teams may harm each other.

How to play Touch of Evil

To start the game you pick a villain to fight.  The base game comes with 5 villains, and each villain has their own flavor of ickiness.  Some summon lots of nasty minions, others are particularly good against certain heroes, it all depends on what you’re playing.  We tend to do a random draw after taking out any we’ve played recently.

Touch of Evil character classes

Next each player is going to choose their character, to make it easier we just pass everyone 3 characters and let them pick from among those 3.  Different characters have different strengths and weaknesses, and some will do better against certain villains.  This works well for my family because everyone has different playing styles and things they enjoy working with.

Touch of Evil works on a turn cycle.  There is a first player, and everyone takes their turn then the first player acts as the bad guy, and then the first player moves to the next person and the round starts all over again.

Touch of Evil decks

On your turn you roll the dice for your movement and then decide where you want to go.  Named places have a deck you draw from, you could get items to improve your character OR be attacked by something and gain investigation (money).  Your ultimate goal is to make your character powerful enough to fight the big villain.

After everyone has had their turn the bad guy goes, you roll a die and draw a card to see what he does.  Sometimes it’s just clues being scattered on the board, other times it’s minions attacking the town, or the villain attacking.

Touch of Evil event cards
This is one of the event cards you can draw. It is awesome!

Once you think your character has enough gear you head off to fight the villain at his lair.  At this point, it’s just a giant slugfest.  You hit the villain with all your tools and he hits you back.

Expanding your Touch of Evil Fun

Touch of Evil character cards

Touch of Evil comes with a basic version (what we usually play) and the advanced version (which is amazingly hard).  We are good enough we should switch to the advanced version, but some of the advanced rules are scary hard.

Touch of Evil board game review

There are also several different expansions you can buy to the game.  We have two expansions so far (thanks to Father’s Day and celebrations like that).

  • Something Wicked Expansion– this adds in a new board to play on and more locations for fights and to find stuff.  This board is a little harder than the original board.
  • The Coast Expansion– We do not have this board yet, but from friends I’ve heard this board is a hair harder, and has some fun villains to add in.
  • A Touch of Evil : Hero Pack 1– We have this one, and you get 4 new heroes to choose from and a new villain.  The villain is harder than the ones from the original game but not overwhelmingly so.
  • A Touch of Evil: Hero Pack 2– We do not have this one yet, so I can’t comment on the people, but there’s a pretty good chance we will get it eventually.
Touch of Evil cooperative role play games

More Spooky learning fun

Touch of Evil always reminds me of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which reminds me of Halloween, so here are some great spooky lessons (admittedly for much younger ages than this game is for)


Comments

4 responses to “A Touch of Evil Board Game review”

  1. It looks intriguing. My daughter once wanted to make a Percy Jackson-based board game, and the game mechanics that we discussed sound somewhat similar to this game 🙂

    1. Oh that would be very cool. I’ve got a couple of Harry Potter-ish games, but they’re just variations on known games.

  2. “Touch of Evil” aye? I’m picturing trying to explain that title to my mother 🙂 Sounds interesting, though.

    1. Yeah we invited some Christian friends over and told them we were going to play that game and they just laughed and laughed, and then had a great time playing with us, but the name does get a few double-takes.

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