This game takes three hours to play IF everyone is really paying attention to the game. If you have a couple of players that like to socialize quite a bit during gameplay, it can take upwards of five or six hours. This isn’t really the game’s fault, but it’s something to be aware of.

Also, “a lot of fiddly bits” doesn’t do the amount of stuff you get in this box justice. It’s insane. There are tokens and markers and cards for everything, and when you throw in the six expansions, three with additional game boards, it really gets out of hand. I don’t have any friends with tables big enough to handle the entire game laid out. It’s huge, and keeping track of all that can be rough.

A good fix for both problems I’ve found, provided you or another player don’t mind not being a player, is to have someone “run” the game like you would an RPG. Hand out the cards, read off the Mythos cards, etc. We were able to get through an eight-player game using all but the latest expansion in around four hours that way.

1. I disagree that this is a “big box” game. The box is actually small when compared to the real big box games of Descent, Battlelore and even the new Age of Conan. While it has a lot of “fiddly bits” and thus has the feel of a big box game, it just isn’t in the same category.

2. This is one of my favorites. I own all the expansions and wish I had more time to play them.

There are a bunch of supplements, which generally add to the difficulty level. Some of them add extra locations in the form of nearby towns with their own boards, others just add cards and a rule or two.