Affliction: Salem 1692 Review

Charlie

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Posted by Charlie on Nov 7, 2017

Critical Hits: Unique theme and gameplay that captures it well

Critical Misses: Not terribly exciting or innovative

Apparently I'm not the only person who wants to be Daniel Day Lewis staving off the lunacy of Winona Rider. The staggering amount of Salem witch trial games being pumped out over the past few years is mind-boggling. What's disconcerting is that 99% of them are social deduction entries and 99% of them are not worth the cardboard they're printed on. There's a dearth of quality in this thematic field, and Affliction is here to offer a torch and lead us in the right direction.

The highest praise I can heap upon this small box is that it's indubitably smart. The first intelligent decision designer Dan Hundycz made was to avoid the swollen Secret Hitler/Resistance/One Night Ultimate Werewolf market, and to instead throw us a bone with a worker placement game. Well, kind of.

This doesn't quite feel like Agricola or Lords of Waterdeep. Players are limited to two pilgrim shaped meeples they deploy to limited spots on the board. It feels tight but not overly restrictive as your second and third options remain useful if a player blocks plan A. There's a solid amount of depth in the system due to several vectors of gaining victory points, but it never devolves into brain-burning agony or five minute long debates over whether you should feed your horses or your children.

Well, she turned me into a newt!

What you will be doing over the 45 minute contest is building your personal social circle and then using your clout to imprison others. It's a very sinister theme of spreading corruption and building a fevered mob to non-nonchalantly incarcerate innocents. The fact that there are no witches present hammers home the bleak nature of the business and is unsettling from a humanist perspective.

Adding weight to the disturbing theme is the engine-building aspect of your villager tableau. As you acquire new members of your circle, their special abilities will intersect and form combos that feel very satisfying. These effects trigger when an action is selected on the board and can lead to powerful turns of tossing accusation markers on several citizens - which enable and ease arrest – as well as spreading fear to weaken your opponents. The ability to recruit and imprison members of another player's circle at an increased cost is phenomenal and adds teeth and interaction to the design.

One of the most interesting aspects of the villager system is asymmetric goals of capturing and acquiring members of specific families. We have all of the historic players such as the Putnams and Proctors. Some participants will receive bonus victory points for arresting or recruiting these different families which provides for a natural tension in competition. Further nuance is achieved through randomly dealt grievance cards that provide for a private white and blacklist of individuals you need to pay special attention to. Again, goals but up against each other in aggressive ways so Julie may want to arrest Sarah Porter while you want integrate her into your circle.

It is not on a boat we'll meet again Abigail, but in hell.

The design boasts a small amount of quirkiness in segregating citizens into three groups. The majority are neutral, but some of the most powerful characters in the game belong to either a "Village" or "Town" faction. Competitors identify as one of these groups based upon a randomly dealt player-mat. You are not allowed to recruit the opposite type which can cause some consternation. The difficulty is that the mix is 2:1 in favor of the townspeople providing for a wobbly but intentional distribution. Participants of team-village will have fewer recruitment options which limits the pliability of their tableau engine. This does feel balanced and provides another area of conflict, but it also feels unnecessarily restrictive primarily for historical reasons. With the circle engine building being such a satisfying and integral part of the game it's a slight disappointment when it feels shunted.

Piling on that minor criticism is the fact that nothing here is going to grab you by the mullet and get your loins going. It's a design that is satisfying and provides for some intellectual stimulation with a strong grip on its thematic touchstones, but it can be a game that's not quite sexy or unusual.

The historicity and expertly woven theme are extremely close to making up for those shortcomings. The deeply embedded narrative of mob justice is relevant in these wild contemporary times and it resonates through the mechanisms - an accomplishment most designers would sell their soul for. The way it steers you toward abominable behavior and makes a statement on the flaws of society is conceptually brilliant.

Affliction is a fine game that stands atop its exquisite framing of history while expressing its themes in a masterful way. Its chief sin is that it's a flax smock when I could use a little more leather jacket. If you don't constantly need your mind to be blown when hitting the table then that criticism is admittedly trivial and a little Daniel Day Lewis worker placement is well worth your time.