Game Day

Humans!!! This game had “different” written all over it but it didn’t meet my expectations. Don’t get me wrong, its a fun game but it wasn’t quite as different as I thought it could be. The stereotypical scenario is a zombie outbreak forces all humans (well, atleast the smart ones) to flee the zombie invasion and fend them off. This game wasn’t any different except the humans were inanimate and you played the part of the zombie trying to get the humans – instead of the human trying to fend off the zombie.

My initial expectation of the game before I knew the rules was considerably different. I was expecting the zombies to be in the minority, trying to survive in a world full of ignorant humans out to destroy the zombie specie. I mean, come on, zombies are dead, they can’t help it if they like to eat flesh and are infectious. There have been times were little kids are just as bad. Think, “You brought what disease home from school?!” or “You put what in your mouth? Yuck!”. Yet many of us have children and our specie continues to procreate. At any rate, I digress. Instead of poor zombies trying to survive the onslaught of a human invasion it was just an all-you-can-eat buffet of flighty humans that you had to catch and either eat or infect.

The game was well balanced and it was difficult to eat or infect a human figure. If one of the other zombie players didn’t trip you up then it was worrying about the human escaping.

BA, JK, WO, CC, MR and I all had a good time playing. There were a couple really funny situations and chatter that came up. BA was full of witty zombie monologue. Unfortunately that was almost a week ago and I don’t remember much beyond who was there and enjoying the game.

The end has arrived. I’m running from house to house trying to survive the zombie infestation that is monotonously limping from the graveyard in the center of town. I only have to survive for 10 days before help arrives. If the zombies don’t get me by then I just have to worry about fending off my lunatic neighbors… I mean.. friends.

Back to reality; game day was a bit mixed up. WO couldn’t make it so everyone was supposed to come to my house. Only JK and MR showed.

We played Zombie Town. It was a good game but it gets really hard to play if everyone decides to turn against one player. Normally there is enough balance so no one player can dominate the game unless they happen to be very lucky.

Game day was crazy! Everyone decided tonight was a good night to play. There were too many people to play any one game. We split up into two groups. The games we played were Betrayal at House on the Hill and Risk 2210. I opted to play Betrayal at House on the Hill instead of risk so I’m going to focus on that game.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a board game that is very dynamic. The board (aka the house) is built at random one room at a time by laying down room cards to explore new rooms. There are artifacts to find and haunted events that happen depending on the type of room. Each of the character cards have different starting levels of mental and physical abilities. The abilities come into play when the player needs to perform a die roll to overcome a haunted room or do battle with a monster. Depending on who and were the haunt is triggered the game gets split into two groups. One person becomes the betrayer and receives one secret objective and the remaining players are given a secret objective. Normally the betrayer has to prevent the other players from doing something, finding an artifact, escaping the house, etc.

JK, BE, and I played the first game. It didn’t last too long, JK (with beginners luck on his side) became the betrayer. He turned into an evil rat lord who needed to get to a special room to complete a ritual to kill BE and I. He also had about 6 rat tokens on the board to slow our advance, but it was all for not. The room that he needed to get to just happened to be right next to the room where he was. So he was able to get into the room, complete the ritual and kill us without much of a fight.

More people played the second game because two of the Risk 2210 players left in mid game leaving the games in shambles for CF and MR.

The second game was pretty intense. Within the first or second torn the haunt was revealed and MR become the betrayer. His goal was to protect some demons and get them to kill everyone using a special ring. As a group we managed to kill MR and get his ring. I was the best person to use it because I was the Priest. My mental ability was high but I had been wounded by MR before he was destroyed. By the time I got the ring I was too weak to get into position to do any damage.

JK found a hand gun item and was running around trying to shoot the demons. It didn’t work very well because the demon lord can’t be hurt or stunned by fighting. CA was on an expedition to find items in unexplored parts of the house. JK decided to do the same in another part of the house. That just left BA to reclaim the ring, fight the demons, get out of the basement, and get within a hairs distance of doing damage to the demon lord. He had some incredible die rolls but it ran out right at the end. In the end, evil won again. :(

Betrayal at House on the Hill is great, its a very structured game but allows for some very interesting plots and interactions among the players. The turns are fairly quick and the game moves along easily.

Pictures to follow…..

Getting back to our regular game schedule was like a breath of fresh air. WO did clean the place and everything smelled like disinfectant but that wasn’t what I meant!

Space Crusade was the game this week. It is a vintage game that was never published in the United States. BE found a copy on eBay sent to him all the way from Australia. According to BE Doom the board game draws its roots from the game. 1 Player is the enemy faction and 3 other people are the marines. Each person has a squad with different weapons and abilities. As you move through the cenario on the board aliens and enemy figures are revealed that you either engage in ranged or close combat. Running away IS an option but the board is limited.  Rules are fairly simple and the combat die rolls are low. More than half the defense and attack rolls were misses.

The first game we played was a proving ground to get our feet wet. WO and I controlled the yellow set of marines, CC was red/brown, MR and JK blue. BE was the enemy horde that would spawn on the board. Everyone had some decent action the first game. WO and I had some really good rolls even though our option cards were poorly choosen. The objective everyone faced was to find and destroy the dreadnought. It just so happens that it was hidden in a room by our air lock. We engaged it in close combat with our comander to foul up its ability to shoot ranged weapons only to luck out and simply kill it with close combat! Wahoo. Rank up!

We played another game but things only went down hill. The objective was to find and destroy one of the enemy figs. MR and JK stumbled onto the deadnought on the first move out of the airlock. As things turned out they were able to destory it in close combat with a melta grenda. Yikes, rank one up for them. The dreadnought is the strongest, highest point value unit for the enemy but it just so happens that we lucked out. The mission wasn’t over… yet.

WO and I went into one of the rooms that was within one turn distance from our airlock. Low and behold the enemy commander was there with a group of baddies. We killed the commander to complete the mission but failed at taking out the rest of the units. Fortunately BE was rolling bad too. By the 3rd turn we decided to hightail back to the airlock and finish the mission. We were both tired so a quick game was welcome.

All in all it was a good night and Space Crusade was a decent game. There was plenty of bakery, corn chips, and pop to go around and sooth any wounded space marines.

WO and I couldn’t make games on Friday for various reasons so we didn’t met.

On Saturday MR, Jake, and I got together for a late night run in RoboRally at MR’s house. It was Jakes first time and the first time MR and I played with the correct rules.