S.O.G. session. 4-player Zombies!!!, 5-player Goldland.
Chris was gracious enough to host gaming at his home once again.
Players were Sarah, Chip, Andrew and myself. Andrew played for the first time. We played the Quick Play Rules. We used my setup variant.
I'm still fiddling with my setup variant. I was afraid to commit to dumping as many tiles as I stated in the draft with the Zombie Corps(e) expansion (down to 30, then 2 more for each player) and ended up removing five tiles from the main set, and three from the expansion. This was a mistake, because the game did drag out longer than it should have. Also, I think the game could've worked with less than the zombie goal of [25 - (2 * number_of_players)]. I think [23 - (2 * number_of_players)] will work better as the required number of zombies to win.
In this game, I started out badly, rolling low for movement and ending up with zombies too far away when Andrew placed the tile I drew with his "I Think It's Over Here" card. I played my revenge on him by playing my "You Lookin' at Me?!?" card on his shotgun card which makes him choose a different target for the card. He inevitably chose me, because the other players would have a bigger advantage. (I would merely be catching up with the shotgun to my advantage.)
Sarah went off on her own. That, of course, means that she ended up in the wrong part of town when the helipad showed up. I was boxed in a dead-end myself. As it turns out, the army front gate game out a little before that, and soon after that, the army helipad. This did not effect the game at all because they were essentially equidistant from a T-intersection that everyone needed to reach.
It was between Chip and Andrew, as they raced to the helipad. In blind desperation, Chip cleared a path through the zombies, stopping one space short of the center of the helipad. This just gave Andrew a clear path to get there himself. Sarah played the "Your Shoe's Untied" card which halved Andrew's final movement roll. He rolled a one, which is all he needed. But, he had three life, which, with the quick-play variant rule, let him move three instead of the die roll. Andrew, anticipating some clever play of cards, walked right into victory without any resistance from the other players after a little under two hours of play. His was a two-pronged victory because his reached the center of the helipad, and killed the 17 zombies in the process which he needed for the alternate victory.
Because I want to reduce playing time to about 30 minutes, this just makes me think I should really be as aggressive in pruning tiles out of play, and to slightly reduce the number of zombies needed to win. Also, there should have been more action with the cards, so I'm thinking of changing the hand limit to be the same as the number of players. Andrew thought the game would be better if any number of cards could be played during a round.
Zombies!!!: Click here to buy your own copy at FunAgain.com.
Zombie Corps(e) expansion: Click here to buy your own copy at FunAgain.com.
Players were Rob, Chris, Mark, Andrew and myself. I'm the only one who played before.
The game of Eupherat & Tigris at the other table ended as our game of Zombies!!! ended. So we consolidated the gamers who stayed late and played a game of my newly-opened Goldland.
We took 20 minutes to go over the rules, then began the game.
We encountered a lot of adventures early on, except that we generally didn't have the supplies we needed to complete the adventures, let alone pick up the treasures along the way.
Eventually, the temple area was explored, and Andrew stepped in. Chris had to reach the temple through an ordeal. No one else had the resources to get there through the remaining adventures. Rob aggressively set up camp at the different adventures and tried to pick up treasures. Mark was despondent over the lack of chance of winning against Andrew who was ahead all around. I was able to take over more adventures of one type from Andrew and reduced his score which gave Mark momentary hope.
After a little over an hour, the game ended when the reserve gold from the temple was recovered by Andrew and Chris.
Mark thought the game may have a better strategic element if exploration tiles could be placed adjacent to any tile. Perhaps we'll try that as a variant in the future.
Click here to buy your own copy at FunAgain.com.
