S.O.G. session. 3-player Nautilus, 5-player Zombies!!!
Chris was gracious enough to host gaming at his home for the first time.
Players were Rob, Chip and myself. Rob and Chip played for the first time.
Rob played aggressively right from the start. He was submerging stations, occupying all the stations within reach, and sending out submarines. He didn't bother with sonar at all, just collecting all the discoveries he could. I focused on submerging stations that I could use. Chip took on a balanced, conservative game.
Rob was worried that he would lose, because he missed some rules. (Turning in treasure chests for Nemos, Using the testing station to peek at discoveries, and one I forgot to explain: moving researchers when making an Atlantis discovery.)
In the end, Rob's aggressiveness paid off. After just under two hours of game play, the last high numbered Atlantis discovery was made.
Rob thought the game dragged a little. Chip thought the game was great. I still enjoy the game, but think the game could use a little speeding up towards the end. Maybe when players know the game, this will happen. Interesting that money didn't run out, but was limited at the end of the game for upgrading discoveries based on our secret goals.
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Players were Sara, Rob, Esa, Chip and myself. Everyone else were new players. We played the Quick Play Rules. We used my setup variant. I wanted to see if it made things quicker.
Playing with my setup variant, and the quick play rules, meant that some tiles were unavailable for the last ten tiles in the stack comtaining the helipad. So I just left them out. My setup variant also led to having more named dead-end tiles than intersections. So, the town closed off before the helipad was placed. I wasn't bothered by this because it meant for a tighter game and that the victory condition was to kill the required number of zombies.
Rob dropped out after the first turn, so this is more fairly a 4-player game. Sara took the lead with amazing movement rolls and cards that helped. It took a while, but I cought up to her. Esa was stuck in a dead-end and no zombies in sight. Players were just trying to make the zombies run away from Sara and myself. I took my turn before Sara, who was close to me in the town, and made the winning kills.
This game did last an hour and ten minutes. So, I'm still a bit off from my goal of a half-hour. I'm going to try tweaking my variant. I was afraid a goal of fifteen zombies for five-players would end too quickly, but, perhaps, it's just the right number. I was also afraid that when the town became completely enclosed, we'd run out of zombies in town. But there was such an uneven distribution of kills, that it wasn't a problem. Plus, Sara played cards that kept repopulating parts of town.
Zombies take over Pleasantville, or is it the Truman Show?
I think it was Esa who asked why the game is called "Zombies" when it was the players causing so much destruction, and it was the zombies running away from the players. It should be called "Humans!"
Final scores:
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