The Big Book of Madness is a cooperative deckbuilder, but not your average one. You are students of magic at Elemental College. You, foolishly, open The Big Book of Madness and all sorts of evil denizens escape. You will encounter 6 mad creatures and you have 5 turns (shared between all players) to combat them. At your disposal are the four elements of air, earth, water, and fire. These are what make up your personal deck and what you will do to perform your many actions. These elements come in values of 1, 2, or 3. Each of the 8 different characters has a different starting deck of elements as well as special powers.
What will you use these elements for? I'm glad you asked. The main use of the cards is to take down the 3-5 curses that the monsters bring with them. To cancel a curse you will need either 4 of a kind (e.g. 4 fires) or 1 of each 4 kinds (e.g. 1 fire, 1 water, 1 air, and 1 earth), depending on what curses have come out. If you defeat a creature's curses before the 5 rounds are up, you have defeated him and gain a bonus. If you don't cancel all his curses, do not fear, you will suffer a consequence and live to fight another day. The only creature you MUST defeat is the last one. Lose against him, and you lose.
The elements can also be used to cure yourself of madness. As you encounter creatures and suffer curses, your deck becomes filled with madness. These clog up your hand and stop you from using the elements you need. The madness deck will have 20 or more cards in it, depending on how many players there are, and if you burn through the whole deck, you lose. To cure a madness, you can spend two of the same element type or use one of the variety of spells or special abilities that also cure madness.
On the subject of spells, this is another thing you can spend your elements on. Each player starts with the same four basic spells: growth (spend 1-3 earth to draw 1-3 cards), ice (spend 1-3 water to place 1-3 cards in support), combustion (spend 1-3 fire to destroy 1-3 cards), and telepathy (spend 1-3 air to let another player take 1-3 actions). Most of these are self explanatory, except for the support part. Each player has 3 (or more, depending on the character) slots to place cards in support. These cards are available for other players to use on their turn (although they go back into your discard pile after being used). You can also spend your elements to buy new, more powerful spells.
How are you going to be able to do all this with only value 1 elements? You can spend an equal number of elements to buy higher valued element cards (e.g. 2 value 1 water cards can buy you 1 value 2 water card to put into your discard pile). You can also gain new cards from defeating curses (get a value 2 card of your choice when you do so), defeating a creature and receiving it's reward, from spells, and from player powers.
Whew! It's a deckbuilder, but there is a lot more going on then just building your deck!
COMPONENTS
For the most part, I like the art in this game. I don't like gruesome art, and the creatures in this game are still kind of scary and awesome, but cartoony enough so that I don't have any nightmares. There is one unecessarily boob-y villain and some of the girl magicians stand in sort of awkward positions that might be sensual? It didn't both me personally, but I've heard others upset about it on BoardGameGeek. The components all seem solid and well made. The little board looks nice. The box has an insert that holds all of the components and cards very well. Nothing to blow me away, but all in all very nice. 4/5
RULES
There is a lot going on in this game, but it actually isn't too hard to learn or keep everything straight. There is one rule that I always mess up that involves destroyed cards and them being able to come back. But...I think that's more "user error" than a problem with the rules. It will take some time to teach new players, but not as much as you might think. 4/5
GAMEPLAY
This game is a great addition to the deckbuilder genre because it does a lot more than just build your deck and requires a lot more of you than just purchasing new cards. Don't get me wrong, a good simple deckbuilder like Star Realms and Friday are amazing, but it's nice to have a bit more to do. 4/5
REPLAYABILITY
There are eight different characters to choose from, a variety of different monsters to face and curses to cancel, and a host of spells you master. That being said, when it comes right down to it, each game feels pretty much the same. At least it does to me. You need to balance canceling curses, curing madness, learning new spells, and buying new cards every game or you die. You can't really focus too much in one area, so you're strategy becomes very similar each time you play. 3/5
FUN
It doesn't feel quite as fun to cancel curse as it would to fire spells at the monsters. I don't know why that is exactly, because the card mechanic would probably be the same, but I do feel like the game would be more fun if it were a little more combative (what does that say about me?). 7/10
TOTAL SCORE: 22/30
This game doesn't get to my table as much as some of my favourite games, but it still fits a special place on the shelf. There are shoes it fills that few other games can.
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