Mantis Falls Review: An Excellent Social Deception Game For 2-3 Players!

[@michaeldarling7169]

We have wanted to try games like Deception:Hong Kong or Detective: City of Angels but we mostly play at 2. This should fit the bill nicely! Thanks to you and the doggos for the great overview!

[@BoardOfItReviews]

No problem! I will say we weren't blown away by Deception (over other social deception games) but that might be personal taste as a lot of the Dice Tower had it in their top 100. Very interested to try City of Angels though!

[@philipsmith8863]

I would definitely pick up Detective: City of Angels! It works great at any player count (including 2) in my experience

[@dannylyons2286]

Hi Tallie, hi Farrell, Thank you for your excellent reviews and for your considerate comments over the past few months. I find you to be reasonable and fair and to give good balanced reviews about different games. You are a good team, And you are careful to put information into context to help make a decision. I will be buying this game as a consequence of your review; it’s nice to find a reviewing team whose opinions fits one’s own. Please can I ask a tangential question? On your wall you have a map of the world which is mainly brown (land) and blue (sea) although some of the land parts have bright colours. I cannot for the life of me work out what these colours represent. Could you enlighten me please?

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Hi! The map is Tallie's scratch map, and the colorful regions are where she has visited. I think each region also has a different color scheme. Should note it's a few years out of date as it's a bit of a hassle to take down and unframe and scratch off. Thank you so much for the lovely comments, it really means a lot to us when we cover a game that is perhaps less well known but we really enjoyed like Mantis Falls and get a response like that. Now we just have to worry about you enjoying it!

[@JohnPywtorak]

Hi thanks guys. Probably the best explanation of the game. I know you’re doing an overview and not a rules teach, but you did offer help. The conserve energy wasn’t explained, kinda skipped over, and is hard to understand how to use. Thanks

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Hi John! Sorry, are you asking if we could explain the conserve energy to you?

[@JohnPywtorak]

@@BoardOfItReviews thanks for asking, maybe just an example of how you’ve used it in play. Thanks

[@BoardOfItReviews]

@@JohnPywtorak Well when you fill up the conserved energy row with cards you can spend them all to move an extra space when you move at the start of your turn, or to heal one wound. We've usually spent them to move that extra step, particularly when trying to get past the broken road or ambushes. You can also use it as a storage space for cards like teamwork which require two copies as you can draw cards at the end of your turn from the conserved energy.

[@Swedgin23]

Interesting. I've never thought a 2 (or 3) player social deduction game would be viable.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Exactly! That's what makes it so surprising that it's such a rich experience. We're big fans of the genre so it's nice we have something to play just the two of us.

[@JohnPywtorak]

Thanks again guys, one more question, what about the mostly empty character cards, not understanding how they come into play.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

So I think there are the most basic character cards which are just a health value and have no special power. There are also completely blank cards of all different types which come with the game that I think you can use to make your own cards.

[@julibierwirth]

The Full Circle module (included in the box) adds different character (the Doctor and the Pugilist) who have different max health (7 and 9 respectively). The Urbanite that you play with in the base game is still a possibility in full circle, but the characters get shuffled and dealt face down so that players don't know what it takes to kill their partner.

[@stephenvankleeck4801]

I bought this game based on the fantastic reviews but I’m not sure if my boys (8,10) will be able to pick it up. Is there any concern some of you who have played might have teaching and playing with young people? Are there any ways to modify the play to make it more suitable (if aspects may not be)?

[@BoardOfItReviews]

It might be a tough one for your boys. It's a social deception game, so at the lowest level it requires them to be believable liars and to fully understand the nuances of the game, otherwise it'll completely fall apart. A big issue would be that if they need to ask for help to understand something or what they should do, it'll be very hard for you to give aid without finding out what they are and ruining the game. It's not too hard to learn for the moment to moment gameplay, but it has a lot of nuances and requires quite a bit of deception/tactical thinking that would make it for me far from the first game I'd try to play with children of that age.

[@stephenvankleeck4801]

@@BoardOfItReviews It definitely isn’t the first board game but it’s the first with this type of nuance. We may run teams - one adult and one kid and see how much they pick up about strategy and tactics. Thanks for the feedback!

[@knolzus]

Thank you. Hope I can get my hand on a spanish version to play it with my future wife (when finally we ´ll manage it to get her from Perú to Germany……

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Here’s hoping you are able to get that copy soon, we’re sure you’re going to love it!

[@daveheasman3680]

My one play of this on BGA was not at all positive, due mostly to the horrible manual - but then even after watching a couple of how to play videos I was still not at all clear. Felt very clunky and disjointed.

[@BoardOfItReviews]

I think when it was on BGA it was only a beta to show how it worked for the Kickstarter if I recall correctly, so I'm not sure if the rulebook was too. I will say in the finished game I found the manual to be quite informative and helpful, but it was put together in a strange way that made game seem much more complicated than it was and we weren't clear till we started playing either. Being a social deception game and considering how it plays in person I think we'd never want to play it online because it would lose everything that makes it tense and fun which seems to match with your experience.

[@jt6581]

This game is not worth the cost or trouble so many better ones out there

[@BoardOfItReviews]

Uh-oh guys the opinion police is here

[@jt6581]

Dont waste the money on this one

[@BoardOfItReviews]

It's far more helpful to say what you didn't like if you want to inform people rather than just slamming it, particularly as it's contrary to what we say in the review.