City of Chaos Review - An Old Classic With a New Edition on the Way | Retro Board Game Review

Always Board Never Boring is very lucky to have awesome subscribers who send him nice things. The super talented Spooktergeist recently sent in a copy of City of Chaos, a very odd board game with fun mechanisms that create a new narrative every time you play. In this video, ABNB reviews the game because... you know... this is a review.
A huge thanks to Spooktergeist for sending City of Chaos to the channel. This video wouldn't have been possible without him. You can check out his work here:
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#cityofchaos #rpg #boardgames
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[@Spooktergeist]

I am glad you enjoyed it! and seeing those minis painted up is wonderful. as a comics artist this game has so much i love. the stories, the illustration, even the little quirks i am fond of. it makes me happy to see this game getting love

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Those miniatures are so original I just had to paint them straight away. Thanks again for sending the game. As a writer in another lifetime anything that creates stories interests me, and I can see how you as a comic artist would be similarly drawn to this bizarre creation. Looking at your art, some of it does feel like it would fit quite nicely in the City of Chaos game!

[@christopherhunt1957]

I had this game in my possession for years. I'd bought it with a friend and at some point we lost touch. Some time later we got back into contact and saw each other on several occasions. I felt compelled to give the game to him because I'd had it for so long and we'd split the cost of it. Unfortunately, we ended up losing touch again. I miss them both...my friend and City of Chaos.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Sorry to heat that.

[@molpanc1]

Thank you for the review, glad you liked it.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

It’s a really fun and very odd game.

[@molpanc1]

​@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoringThat's exactly what we were aiming for.

[@AliciaSmith-leece]

I'm very glad to still have my copy of this. I've been waiting and waiting for the new one to come out...

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Some of the new art looks lovely, and the cards really do need updated fonts. Whether I buy the new edition will depend on any changes they make, but it will be good to see the game widely available again.

[@eatingweevils]

The game designers are from my home town . Some of the City of Chaos locations are based on places in my town

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Is that Keighley?

[@eatingweevils]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Yes Keighley. There was a exhibition of City of Chaos artwork last year I had a interesting chat with designers about game

[@rodento3220]

Wonderful paint job! I love it! I will be looking for this!

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Thank you. They are such fun miniatures I just had to paint them straight away.

[@1000jjwalker]

i love the obtuse dice. like figuring out what the symbols mean is such a fun thing.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Rolling the cube of chaos to get one of three different results after choosing from one of three interactions is great fun.

[@blackraptor311]

I feel like this is light-heartedly inspired by Clive Bakker's Night Breed. It's like you take the idea of Night breed and make it more kid friendly.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Love Nightbreed. I secretly watched it when I was far too young, and it creeped me out. Could never get far on the computer game, though!

[@Andrew-ys9vb]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Me too! Plus the Hellraiser movies I still have on my shelf today. There's a Nightbreed TV show in the works.. Hope its good

[@HivisoftheScale]

Haha! I think the Pugilist is my favorite, I love his toothy grin!
This reminds me a bit of Ian Page's Greystar Books, a sort of spin-off of the Joe Dever Lone Wolf series. In that game you have to face off against the Master of Chaos, an eternally changing creature, never the same from one moment to the next.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

The pugilist is cool, but I love the somatologist's big, fat head. I don't believe I ever read any of the Grey Star books.

[@HivisoftheScale]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Grey Star was pretty cool. It takes place in the far far south of Magnamund where you play as a young wizard named Greystar. The art was done by Paul Bonner and would often have a neat surrealistic quality to itm

[@alexany4619]

You mention in the video that City of Chaos was released a long time ago before Cursed City - but what's about Mordheim?

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

As I recall I made a joke in this video about City of Chaos "ripping off" Cursed City because they both have a "choose your own adventure" component where you are presented with events, make a choice, and then your choice dictates which paragraph you read to find out what happens next. This was a joke because City of Chaos came out in 1996, and Cursed City came out in 2021. Mordheim, which was the City of the Damned, came out in 1999.

[@johnmiddleton4291]

This game always reminded me of West Ends Tales of the Arabian Nights, especially in quest mode. There are an awful lot of similarities. The paragraph book and the encounter matrix referencing the book and skills/characters is straight from Arabian Knights.
You'd probably really like that game too. You want the 1985 edition.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

It seems very similar. I remember Tales of the Arabian Nights was suddenly hot news when Shut Up and Sit Down did a very positive review of it. They caused the game to sell out at the time. I've never played it myself, though.

[@johnmiddleton4291]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I think they did the 2009 version, which I don't like as much as the original, but that's to be expected.
I seem to remember Wizkids was doing a new game about Arthurian legends using a similar system.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I expect you are right and they did the 2009 edition, that would probably have been around when they did that review. I hadn't heard of the Wizkids game. I will have to look into that.

[@Merlynn132]

Sounds like a cross between a "choose your own adventure book",a board game,and some "rock,paper,scissors" for combat. Which,you know,isn't a bad idea. Though I would like a more traditional combat system like Heroquest or D&D. If you're going with random,might as well just leave it to the dice. How good the game is depends on the story and you said there's good stories there so I'll take your word for it.
You know,this whole "combining things into one game" thing prompts an interesting question. If you were making a game,what elements from other games,or entire games,would you put in it?

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Rock, paper, scissors works really well for DungeonQuest, which is obviously my favourite game. The cardplay here doesn't work quite as well because you are picking from six cards, and maybe throwing in a spell or weapon and some armour, and often playing against a random card in response. In DungeonQuest when you fight you can get quite into the bluffing. Each round there are only three possible attack choices, and you are going to win, lose, or draw, while here the combat is more granular and it's difficult to make any kind of prediction on what your opponent is going to do next.
I really like dice rolling and dice mitigation. Many years ago I knocked together a skirmish rules set that involved rolling pools of dice and then allocating the numbers to your character and his minions to perform actions. The dice determined the available actions, but also often determined the strength of the action. Claustrophobia then came out and had a similar sort of system (but more streamlined), and then Warhammer Quest came along doing something very similar as well. So, I guess I would end up with something using dice pools, dice allocation, and dice mitigation.

[@johnmiddleton4291]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring I always use the dice roll solo rules in DungeonQuest. The card combat never did it for me.