The games we play, with a focus on board and role-playing games (but not excluding video games and other leisurely pursuits)
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
2.26.2003
Played a little more Monopoly: the Card game last night while watching the Pistons/Kings game. Donald whupped our butts.
By the way, I have several copies of the Buffy Board Game I wrote about yesterday, so if you'd like to obtain one, I'll sell it to you for retail price + shipping (if necessary). Lemme know -- since the game's out of print, you'll have a tough time obtaining it otherwise.
4:37 PM
2.25.2003
Last Sunday, the usual suspects got together to try out Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Board Game. Like the Monopoly card game, BTVS is able to keep the flavor of the the show while also presenting a pretty deep gaming experience.
The game is set up with a "good versus evil" premise -- one player plays as the forces of darkness (vampires, demons, etc.) while all the rest play as Buffy and the various other "good" cast members. Characters move around the board (a representation of Sunnydale) collecting weapons, artifacts, and "help" cards, all the while looking towards the goal of the game -- which essentially boils down to killing the enemies. Dice rolls determine a character's success in magic or battle; each character's stats are based on who they are in the show (so Buffy has mucho life and fighting skill, Willow magic skill, and Xander no skills in any) although these can be augmented by artifacts and the like.
There's a deceptively large amount of strategy to the game. Vampires take damage if caught on the streets of town when sunrise comes about -- at the end of our game, we had to plan how to "trap" the Master (vampire) between us so that we all could get our licks in. It is possible to trap a vampire in a position where they cannot move when sunrise happens -- which is an instant kill.
Since most of the Good players are underpowered, it would be foolish to just go after evil minions or the Big Bad at the start of the game -- they're just too weak. Cooperation is essential to the game.
Problems I noticed with the game are minor -- the "sunrise" condition comes about very rarely and often only for one player's turn; some of the spell/item/help cards are a bit ambiguous as to how they work. My initial feeling was that overall, Evil has a huge advantage -- evil can summon minions, and even if those minions are killed, eventually the Evil card deck must be reshuffled, allowing them to be summoned again; also, there seems to be a pitiful few ways of healing good chracters. It took a suicidal attack by my character (Xander) and a good dollop of luck to finally kill the Master to end the game.
The game has plenty of replay value. It comes with four "games" based on the first four seasons of the TV show; for each game there are slightly different victory conditions. "Kill or Sire Buffy" is almost always the Evil victory condition, and "Kill the Big Bad" is usually the condition for Good, altho "Stop the Mayor's Ascention" and "Stop Angelus" are in there as well. While there's only four seasons worth of games, there are mods for later seasons available online by fans of the game.
All things considered, most games based on a television license usually stink. Here's one that broke the mold. 4 of 5 stars.
3:48 PM
2.5.2003
Alrighty, let's get this party started. Last night my gaming crew, in lieu of our normal campaign, busted out a couple of games to pass the evening:
Zombies! is a tile-laying game that has the players trying to escape from a zombie-ridden city. On each turn, a player lays down a city tile which helps define the layout of the city, then moves his character, fights zombies if necessary, and then moves a number of zombies around the map. Event cards allow for special actions and weapons; if a player is killed, they respawn at the center of town to start the escape yet again. When the last tile is laid, the player with the least zombie kills gets to place the helipad tile -- and then the race is on. By this time there's usually a horde of zombies on the map, and we've found that it's not the first person to get near the helipad, but those who have planned with Event cards and such, who cheat death and win.
Allen, Donald and I played a game last night -- I was the only one of us with prior game experience. A previous game with six people simply would not come to an end, but with only three we were able to finish in two hours. My friends caught on quickly and a good time was had by all. I suspect this game will be played again, given we have enough time to play before everyone falls asleep. I was lucky enough to win even though Donald, with the shrewd use of a couple of powerful event cards, made a strong run at the helipad.
Looking at the game with a critical eye does reveal drawbacks. Many of the event cards are ambiguous as to when they can be played, and the rules and cards can often contradict each other. There is a mechanism in place to resolve a map where a helipad can't be played, but that victory condition (25 zombie kills) might take hours upon hours to achieve (since, if you die, you lose half your kills). The game does require a large table or area to lay the town tiles down in. You need to start this game early, because it certainly could eat up most of the evening (and night, and early morning) to play.
What makes the game special is not just the great theme, but the fact that you end up with about a hundred plastic grey zombies, as opposed to generic markers or chits. We give Zombies 3.5 (out of 5) stars.
Monopoly: the Card Game is an interesting rummy variant that manages, quite ably, to retain the flavor of the original Monopoly board game. Players hold hands of ten cards looking to complete the traditional color/property monopolies -- such as Park Place and Boardwalk. Other cards, such as tokens, Mr. Monopoly, Go, Chances, Houses, and Hotels act as wild cards or score modifiers. The first player to put together a monopoly with no extra properties in his hand can "lay down" the hand to score big -- other players can still get points by items in hand, but usually at a much lesser rate.
I had never played any version of rummy before playing this game, but I was surprised how easy this was to pick up on. It would have been easy enough for the Monopoly theme to be lost, but you still felt you were playing a version of Monopoly as opposed to just a "rummy variant". The game comes with the colorful monopoly money we're all familiar with, but it was much easier to keep score on a notepad. Although M:tCG is meant as a 4-player game, there are rules for 2-6 players. The 3-player version worked out fine, but I can't really say if the 2 or 6 player variants would keep the game playable.
Overall, Monopoly: the Card Game scores 4 of 5 stars.
5:05 PM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
