Review - London After Midnight (2015) - Gen-X Games

The Blurb

Each player take a secret faction card, that will say if he is at the side of the "Heroes" or at the side of "Monsters". During the game, a player can either play a card from his hand or draw a new card. Each card will give you "black" points (if you are a Monster) or "white" points (if you are a Hero). Also, each card represents a character with a special skill that you can use in your favor. Dracula can control the forces of darkness. Van Helsing can destroy the undead. Frankenstein's monster can run havoc. Arsene Lupin can steal a card from another player. Jekyll and Hyde discard each other...

The game ends when the last card is drawn. Then, each player reveals his faction and count his points. There can be only one winner!

The Gist

Build your hero or monster teams and try to take out your opponent's teams.  Okay, maybe not Dracula. I mean, look at him, he looks like he could put you in a trance not to eliminate him.

The Play

We decided to play a best-of-three!

It's very difficult to give a running commentary because of the quick play and cancelling, so I will give a general overview with the scoring of each round. There is a lot of card manipulation, either on your played cards, or to get rid of your opponent's cards. Each round, we changed our strategy based on if we were heroes or villains.  We were tied 1-1, and there is a card "The Creature" that can wipe out all but four cards on the board if they are in play, and I played it what turned out to be far too early.  Tyler built his team back up and thumped me in the last game.


Dad  6 (Monster)  - Tyler (Hero) 5
Dad  2 (Hero)        - Tyler (Monster) 3
Dad -1 (Hero)        - Tyler (Monster) 6

The Bits

Dad

"The Mr. Hyde card is worth two points at the end of the game (as shown in the upper right corner) and he has the ability to discard Dr, Jekyll. Thematically this card is amazing because it works in the transformation as an ability."






  

Ty

"The Creature card is my favorite. I like having the ability to wipe out all of the other cards. It's a great card to play against dad when i think he is the heroes."

 

 

 

 

The Good, the Bad and the Rating

Dad

I bought this game for the artwork. The art is amazing in this game. The reason it will stay in my collection is because it's a very unique combination of a slight hidden role, bluffing, and take that. Is that player really monsters, or is he playing monster cards hoping that I play cards to eliminate them? Small box, lots of play.
3.5/5

Tyler:

"This game plays very fast and is fun to play. It reminds me a lot of Love Letter, but I like this more!"
4/5