If Babe Ruth was chased by zombies (Last Night on Earth)

To celebrate Halloween we played Last Night on Earth, a game that I enjoy well enough but only really gets played this time of year.

Me and Kozure were the zombies, Pablo and Shemp were the humans.

The last few times we've played this it's been on irregular maps, so playing the "Save the Townsfolk" scenario felt a little like a throwback.
Since the hero's objective is to keep searching until they find 4 townsfolk, the actual gameplay boiled down to: run to the other side of the board, where the zombies aren't, and then search. Ok, the zombies are close again, run back to the other side. For whatever reason, I don't recall previous games to be this way.

Anyway, the back and forth running went inform a while, occasionally (ok, frequently) peppered by Johnny blasting a zombie with his endlessly loaded shotgun. As the zombies, we were having a hard time cornering the heroes, so we weren't managing to damage them much. In thelastthird of the game, the hero's had found the villagers and were trying to survive until morning. Three of the heroes had taken refuge in the gun store in the corner, trying to keep the horde of undead at bay. It was quite close in the end, but the heroes prevailed because only one of them fell victim to the zombies.

The highlight of the game, for me, was when Johnny the jock sprinted through a wall of zombies. He attacked one and rolled a 5. Pablo, who was playing John, needed anything except a 5 or a 6. Oddly, he yelled "roll a 2!". The zombies did roll a 2 and Pablo nearly jumped out of his hair in excitement.

Clearly, comparisons between Johnny and Babe Ruth's famous prediction were earned and given...

Hunhh, wha? movin'! ungh... zombies gah. (Last Night on Earth x3, Zombie Fluxx x8)

Luch, Kozure and I gathered for a belated halloween session at WAGS. The flu has been having it's way with many of us of late... I couldn't make it last week, and Shemp was out of action this week. Maybe zombies aren't all we have to fear.

Last Night on Earth
We've played LNoE every halloween for a few years now. It's a notable improvement over the Zombies! games we tolerated before, but it's not our favorite type of game either. Still, it's a nice yearly diversion.

We started with the "Burn 'em out!" scenario. Luch and I were the heroes and Kozure was the zombies. In this scenario, the heroes need to find explosives and then detonate them in three of the zombie spawning pits. As the sexy cowgirl, I ran to the barn and took on some evil dead with the help of a meat cleaver early on. Sadly, I was outmatched and she fell. By the time we managed to destroy our first spawning pit, we were already halfway to the end of our time limit. Luckily, the three last three heroes did manage to find some dynamite and rushed the infested pits and successfully destroyed them with a few rounds remaining.

We then switched to the "Defend the Manor" scenario. I played the Zombies, and rolled 11 starting zombies. They lumbered towards the manor as the heroes ran about looking for a way to defend themselves. As quickly as it started, the scenario was over... the zombies made it en masse to the manor and Kozure and Luch were helpless to prevent it. It was too quick, and therefore unsatisfying. We rebooted and tried again with the exact same setup. In their second attempt, more attention was paid to drawing out the zombies from the manor using their "hunger" against them. It came down to the wire.. on the final turn the zombies momentarily overran the manor (I say momentarily because the heroes then drew them out). Since we thought the zombies needed to end the turn with enough in the manor we ended the game thinking the heroes had won, but in fact the rules state that the zombies win instantly if they EVER get enough zombies in the manor.

Zombie Fluxx

We played several hands of Zombie Fluxx to end the evening (I'm estimating 8, but I don't really know). Things started out slow, because understanding the cards takes a bit of time. As the hands went on, things started getting a lot faster and the experience became much more fun. The humour is decent, too.

You'd think a game this random would eventually allow all players to win. Not so. I was winless for all 8 rounds... Maybe I just suck.

It's O.K. father Joseph, it's the next world that matters (Last Night on Earth: The Zombie game x2, Pandemic)

I have to admit, if you had told me last year that it would take until now to play Last Night on Earth again, I would have been surprised. It's not the type of game that we usually play, but what it's trying to do it does it well. I'm glad Shemp was in the Halloween spirit and chose it this week.

We chose to play the online scenario "We have to go back!". It's an unusual setup that requires all 6 boards, where the heroes need to go into a village to look for two bio-canisters that are required to cure the zombie plague.

Shemp and Luch started as the zombies while Kozure played Father Joseph and Billy and I played Sheriff Anderson and Jake Cartwright.

Things didn't start off well as both Luch and Shemp rolled the maximum number of starting zombies AND they started with an "overrun" token on on of the buildings that potentially had a biocanister (overrun buildings can't be entered). We set about searching the other potential sites. Lucky for us, they were elsewhere and we managed to both find and escape with the two before sundown. I don't exactly recall, but I think we managed to do it without any casualties.

The game went quite quickly, so we played again. This time, Kozure and I played the zombies, Luch was Johnny and Becky and Shemp was Jenny and Sally.

As the zombies, we didn't start with nearly as many zombies as the Luch and Shemp did but we did have one major advantage... when we played the heroes THEY MOVED FASTER THAN THE ZOMBIES DID. It was very bizarre, but Luch and Shemp had the slowest moving heroes I've ever seen. Rolling higher than 1 or 2 was exceptional, it seemed. Oh, and then it rained, so they moved slower still. The zombies didn't shamble once, but they did manage to surround and then chomp on the heroes quite frequently. Becky ran around with an infection of some sort that would make her a zombie if she got hit again, and then Johnny and becky bit the dust and became zombie heroes. There was some fancy maneuvering on the part of team "Go Girl!", with a highly successful dynamite explosion being particularly effective, but ultimately they ran out of time and lost. Shemp was visibly perturbed when Luch's replacement hero Jake Cartwright spent a long time searching for items just as time was running out, but Jake did come out swinging and nearly saved the day (it came down to one roll against my zombie, and I got a 6). The zombies did not go hungry. There was no cure.

We closed the evening with a game of Pandemic. We decided that the black cubes were areas of zombie infestation, and that we were now witnessing on a macro scale the effect of the zombie plague we had just battled in Last Night on Earth (the micro scale).

We played at medium difficulty (5 epidemic cards) despite the fact that Shemp hadn't played before. We worked together pretty well, and things seemed very doable for most of the game. Our biggest problem was that we didn't have the medic, but I was playing the logistics character and discovered that the ability to move other players on my turn was very valuable indeed.

The early scares were zombie infestations, but yellow fever was equally problematic. A few turns in, scarlett fever showed up in spades throughout asia and much of our resources were consumed putting out that fire. We had discovered two of the cures, and had what we needed to cure the last two if the game could just get to me one last time (Luch had cure #3, and I had cure #4). As is often the case in Pandemic, the we ran out of time just before we could wrap it up. A final epidemic in Johannesburg finished us off.

Apparently, zombies should not have been our primary concern.

Hey, Zed (Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game, Witch Trial)

Halloween Special, super special event!

Pumpkin Pie!

Treat sized snax!

Zombies!

Witches!

Last Night on Earth

At the math trade, a few people were playing this game I had never heard of. It was LNoE. It looked pretty cool, but honestly these types of "Ameritrash" games don't usually do much for me. Too long, too many rules, too fiddly, etc, etc.

Still, I keep wanting to like them. I've purchased and/or played a variety of these "thematic" and "fun" games in the hopes of finding one that struck the right balance between the campy fun of horror movies and a game that works AS A GAME. Those I've tried so far have all been dissapointments in one way or another:

Zombies: Too long, endgame doesn't work. Still, moderately fun if played using the quickplay rules on BGG.
Zombies 4: The suck.
Betrayal at House on the Hill: Very ambitious, but lacked in followthrough. I enjoyed the scenarios, but didn't like that they were obviously never playtested. The "betrayal" mechanic is cool in theory, but clumsy in practice. Still, I had some fun with this one despite it's rather significant faults.
Arkham Horror: Way too long and fiddly for me. Not enough actual decisions. The rest of the group likes it, though.

Not an exhaustive list to be sure, but the pattern is there. Lots of attempts, very few good games. Enter Last Night on Earth.

Is it good? Well, it's not perfect. It's certainly not "great", but it is fun and it does work, so it's easily the most successful attempt yet.

LNoE is a game about everyday people stuck in a zombie nightmare. Though 2-6 players can play, the game always involves 4 heroes and a "horde" of 14 zombies. 1-4 players play cooperatively as the good guys, and up to 2 players play cooperatively as the Zeds. There is a modular board, 8 different heroes and a handful of scenarios to keep things interesting. Gameplay can be boiled down to this: Zombies move 1 space, heroes move 1d6 spaces. Both sides draw and play cards which can cause effects, modify combat, etc, etc. There's more to it, but that's the style of play. Turns fly by, which in my opinion is a great success in the game design.

I'll admit that there is nothing particularly clever or inspired about the game, the trick is that what it does try to do it does well. We played two scenarios, one where the heroes need to take out 15 zombies in 15 turns and the other where the heroes need to find keys and a gas tank so they can high-tail it out in the truck at the center of the board before night falls. Both were fun and seemed balanced (though the heroes won both games, they all went down to the wire). The truck scenario was particulary interesting because in the first few rounds, we found the items we needed and I was thinking that the scenario would be a cake-walk. Then I realized what Shemp was doing (he was playing the zombies)... we weren't being attacked because they were all heading to the truck. Getting there, filling the gas tank and taking off would not be easy. A lucky shot with some dynamite (and, as it turns out, a horribly missplayed rule) cleared the way for us with 2 rounds to spare and we got out.

The production quality is also excellent. The miniatures are very nice, the boards and cards are of high quality and the rulebook is very nice. The zombie theme is well captured by good scenarios and a good deck of hero and zombie cards. I enjoyed it, and unlike past horror efforts, I expect this one will stay in my collection.

(as an aside, I didn't mention Mall of Horror even though we've played it a few times. I actually like MoH, and think that it represents a very original and generally successful way to deal with the zombie theme. However, it's not an ameritrash style game, so I left it out)

We finished up with Witch Trial, a good game by CheapAss. ACTUALLY funny, and with rules that work (though very luck heavy). Probably the best of theirs that I've played. It seemed like my role in the game was to fill other lawyer's pockets, as I couldn't seem to win a case at all! Kozure won.