Report - Zombie Risk

So Zombie Risk works pretty darn good as outlined.  We played a 4 player game using those rules and it was noticeably more fun fighting the zombies and attacking each other via proxy than simply fighting each other directly.  There were suitable amounts of hatred for other players, but it was a little less personal. There were many more moments of cooperation and rooting for other players than you would get in a typical game. It was fun to use familiar game mechanics in a new way to quell the growing zombie hordes.

The infection on a 1 mechanic was really good and a lot of fights took a sudden turn for the worse when a player's units converted to zombie units mid fight.  It was also good that the infection cards only dropped two units into countries as this limited the attack dice at first and made these skirmishes more tolerable, but made it all the more dramatic when it happened that fallen armies were infected.  The game started out a bit slow and at first the zombies seemed to be a bit weak and it was a concern that players wouldn't be able to get their cards each turn for lack of targets.  However as the zombies gained new units after each player turn, and also the 'infection' cards caused outbreaks and conversions of player countries, it soon became apparent that these zombies were getting to be a real problem.  Slowly the zombie faction spread and soon there were heroic fights just to knock the zombies down a country or two to prevent them from getting that one extra reinforcement next turn.  By the time that players are turning in card sets for higher numbers of units, the zombies had very large hordes in place to counter.  There was a real sense of survival horror and fighting against growing hordes that came with these mechanics.

There was a lot of option for strategic manoeuvring and for player diplomacy, and since everyone had vested interest in the zombie faction it was a much more interactive game than I remember regular risk being.  I am sure that a strategic co-operation in the early game would make it pretty easy to wipe out the zombie faction, but the player self interest in controlling territory seems to be a decent counter to that.  It is good that the zombies only receive one attack per turn and then the two infection cards as it prevents them from being used too aggressively against a single opponent or for a signal purpose.

The players suggested that it would only be fair to have some sort of 'cure' mechanic where zombie forces that rolled 1 on a loss would turn into humans again.  I am not sure this is a good idea but it was a popular request all through the game.  I suggested that perhaps if the zombies lost on a 1 against a roll of 6 the zombie could be cured - making it a more rare occurrence.  I would consider this as a house rule of the house rules I guess.

Some clarifications/qualifications to the rules:

1. Setup should be done by dealing out all the country cards (minus the wild cards) and putting units on the countries you receive - at least for the zombie faction if not for all players.  I assumed this since it's always how we played, but it's not in the official rules I had.  Once all territories have a unit, then the remaining units are placed as reinforcements in player order.  Players should take turns to place a number of reinforcements equal to the number of players and then place a zombie unit until they are all deployed.

2. Zombies get reinforcements for the number of countries they control but do not get cards or continent bonuses.

Zombie Risk

Can such a precision machine be tuned?

Its funny how some ideas are so simple but you never think of them until you hear that simple phrase or concatenation of terms that sparks the self evident.  I was pretty much done with Risk years and years ago.  I kept a copy in hand for nostalgia, and then later on, to play with the kids.  I didn't think I'd want to play it again though.  Risk: Legacy looked interesting but it didn't look 70$ worth of interesting.

A couple days ago I saw the term Zombie Risk in a google search on house rules for Zombies!!! and immediately I realized what that there was potential for shenanigans here.  Without even reading any details I could think of ways to revive that Risk board and maybe fix some of the problems with the game, make it fun again.  It is not an accident that this synergy has occurred, Zombies!!! and Risk have much in common being games that are very popular and fun while being pretty flawed.  The universe loves them despite themselves.

I've looked up some different rules going under the label of Zombie Risk and I think my favorite are the ones that have a semi-cooperative feel to them.  These variants use one faction as the zombies and have the other factions not allowed to attack each other directly but use the zombie faction as the beating stick.

I'm going to try a few different ideas and play test this with my family.  My goal is to shorten the game,  make it more fun to mess with the other players without getting too personal about things, and to prevent turtling up and the Australia effect as much as possible.

Basic rules: 

• Set up the game as normal* but with one faction being the zombies.  I'd use good old zombie Black but what ever floats your boat.
• Every turn players play their turn and then take a zombie turn.  Players may only attack zombie controlled countries in their regular turn but are free to go after anyone as the zombies.
• In the Zombie turn you add armies for countries controlled as normal** and then make one attack on someone, and then flip two cards - placing two zombie units in each of those countries and then resolving those combats as well. 
• In combat, players who loose a combat roll with 1s convert their lost unit(s) to zombie units which immediately rise up to continue the fight.
• You win by being last player standing or the player with the most points (countries and continent bonuses) if the zombies are wiped out.

I'm going to try this basic set of rules and see how it works out.  Then adjust to suit.


update:

*Setup should be done by dealing out all the country cards (minus the wild cards) and putting units on the countries you receive - at least for the zombie faction if not for all players.  I assumed this since it's always how we played, but it's not in the official rules I had.  Once all territories have a unit, then the remaining units are placed as reinforcements in player order.  Players should take turns to place a number of reinforcements equal to the number of players and then place a zombie unit until they are all deployed.

** Zombies get reinforcements for the number of countries they control but do not get cards or continent bonuses.

Broken Heart Kraken

So sad.

So you might notice something from the picture here, mainly that my Kraken has no heart counter. He was born this way apparently and that's how the game came from the store.  No I don't have a receipt to take it back to the store because I bought the game way back in the fall and didn't even open it until after Game Summit.  I did send an email to Iello about getting a replacement heart dial or something but they haven't replied.  Not even an automated reply which in this day and age is dumb for any company.  Love the game, not impressed with the customer service.  I wasn't even asking for a free replacement (although - hey why the hell should I have to pay to get all the pieces in a game I bought), but I didn't even get a form letter directing me to download an order form for replacements.  Boo.

Right now I'm using a d20 for the Kraken heart but I sure would like to get this resolved.  I suppose I'll send them another email.  If that doesn't work I'm going to have to start sending packages of calamari to Richard Garfield or something.

Also isn't that illustration a little odd - I mean look at the guys lower torso - those are some pretty spindly tentacles there.  No wonder this guy is spends all that time on his upper-body work...

Le Havre

I got to play this at Hammercon and I enjoyed it so I ordered a copy of it (from this great on-line game store in Canada German Boardgame Company which is another post itself really) and I got a chance to play it a couple times over the holidays.  I'm not going to go into the mechanics or the theme since you can read about it, but it's a resource manipulation game where you build up wealth by converting raw materials into goods and money and investing in infrastructure.

First thing - Cards and Cardboard.  This game comes with a lot of cards and a lot of cardboard.  There are lots and lots of tokens for the resources.  Cardboard chits represent cows and clay and fish and iron and wood - it's all about the goods.  I played twice with containers for those chits and one time using the spaces on the board and I believe that you need to have some strategy for managing the cardboard or it gets out of hand.  Little square bowls seem to work best - especially if you can put them on the board in the spaces provided.  There are cards for buildings and ships that need to be laid out and also the turn sequence is done using cards.  Have enough space at the table for players to organize all their building cards and resources too.

Next thing - Time.  It's a good three hours if you play the short game (the one where you start with more goods and play fewer rounds).  If you play the full game you start with less goods and really feel you are building up from scratch, but it's not a lot different in the end, just longer.  It's just like Titan in that respect.  You can start with more tokens and some of the early combos done for you already and it won't really change the game, but it will seem like you've cheated.  I say don't be afraid of the short game, especially if you're playing with less hardcore gamers or those with less patience.

How does it play?  I really like it, it has a lot of fiddly bits which I enjoy and there is a whole strategy in blocking other people from using buildings that can be interesting.  It isn't directly confrontational but there is a feeling of resource pressure from the other players which I don't get out of Puerto Rico.  I enjoy the hard decisions and the game moves quickly for a turn based.  Set up is an ordeal however with many cards to arrange and tokens to pass out, so a good storage strategy is essential if you don't want to add that time to the start of the game.

I like it and it fits into the same niche as the Mayfair crayon train games or Puerto Rico.  Its a good grown-up family game.  I haven't played with less than 4 players (played 4 and 5) but apparently it plays well with 1-5.  I don't see myself playing it single player since I'd just play a video game instead of wrangling all those chits around - but if the power was out and the zombie barricades were all in place it might be fun.  I'd try it with 2-3 however and it probably works much better than the train games or Puerto Rico with smaller numbers of players.  There is also a stand alone 2 player game called Le Havre: The Inland Port which looks interesting because it does away with all the goods tokens in favour of a resource dial or something.

Le Havre is a good game.

Hammercon IV

Hammercon IV is come and gone and I'm still a bit hungover from all the running about and driving.  It was a fun weekend although my Civilization game didn't pan out - no one signed up and aside from a few folks commenting on how much they preferred Advanced Civilization* no one seemed to recognize the title.

Sad panda.  It would have been so nice to play a full game of Civ...

However things improved after that and I got a chance to play Le Havre, Galactic Emperor went off great with a full 6 players (no way that's a 90 minute game we went the full 4 hours), and the next day was fun as well with some 1856 and Space Empires!

Le Havre is a great game, I'd seen it before, but this was the first chance I've had to play it and it was pretty fun.  It's a resource management game where you collect raw materials like fish, clay and iron and process them into better goods or build civic buildings like foundries and smoke-houses for people to use and you make money to win the game. I got a bit caught up in scheming and at one point had to liquidate my assets to feed people and wound up doing pretty poorly overall but it was still fun.  I'll be picking that one up.

Galactic Empires was the other game I had come to run and it was a full game with 6 players.  I had a good time, in fact I enjoyed the game more this time than I have before.  The players got the rules pretty quickly, it was a fun bunch that could take a bad roll or a good one equally well - and things wound up pretty close in the end with one fellow taking the win by one point.  There wasn't a huge amount of fleet fighting (although there were some good fights), but there was a lot of fun to be had in the diplomatic 'combat' involving influence placement - one aspect of this game that is very well executed I think.

1856 was a really fun game - it's one of the 18xx games which are train games but interested in the workings of rail companies and stock as much as laying tracks.  It played a bit like Empire Builder meets Acquire and that was a pretty fascinating mix to me.  1856 is set in Southern Ontario and so playing in Hamilton was pretty neat since I bet walked past some of the railways laid by the in-game companies on the way to the convention.  I'd totally pick this up as well although it might be hard to find a group to play it with.

Finally we played Space Empires.  I have a history with Space Empires since I played a lot of the game as a video game some 10-12 years ago.  I bought a copy of Space Empires 3 and played the crap out of it with friends via email and in hot-seat play.  It was a really good game and I think SE3 was the pinnacle of the series even if people might say SE4 was better (it wasn't).  When I heard last year that this was coming out as a board game I was both interested and wary.  This could have been such a bad boardgame, in fact I was kinda expecting it to be a bad one.  Fortunately it is rather a good board game.  In Space Empires you are building your empire up by exploring, finding resources, establishing new colonies and by beating up the other player empires.  You can also research technologies and improve your ships and weapons.  It's not that this is a unique concept, these things can be found in Twilight Imperium and Galactic Emperor and many other board games, but Space Empires is a solid entrant in the ranks and has an exploration area quite a bit larger than those other games and a nice clean presentation that makes it fun and playable in a reasonable time.  Space Empires focuses on simple resource fuelled exploration, research and combat mechanics and the rules were very intuitive.  There were also a number of advanced options you could throw in like worm holes and mines and drone-fighters as well as some different game scenarios to play out -  like a solo game consisting of defending yourself against automated death machines.  We didn't get to play for very long and there were no crazy battles but I got enough of a taste of it to get a good impression of the game.  I'm still processing things but I believe I've crossed over from a Space Empires denier to a Space Empires apologist.

Overall all impression of Hammercon:    I did briefly meet one of the guys from the Accidental Survivors and give him a copy of Beacon.   I also got to game a lot with a dude from Kitchener who was a super nice guy and a great game instructor (he brought and ran us through most of the games I played there; Le Havre, 1856 and Space Empires).  I also got a copy of Beacon in to the hands of three dudes who were tossing words around about 3rd ed vs redbox vs some other god knows what things - that was kind of fun - hopefully they didn't chuck it in the trash on the way out. I think that if the problems with game registration hadn't occurred and I had gotten my Civ game posted in time for pre-registration it might have been a better weekend.  However it did turn out to be a pretty good weekend after-all and I got to play three new games with some cool folks.

Now I'm going to start thinking about things to do for the Ottawa Game Summit in February...



*And pro-fucking-tip here: if you are at a game convention and someone is looking for people to play their game, the worst thing you can do is hang around and mention to everyone who will listen how much you prefer a slightly different version of the game through your slightly up turned lip.  That's a ticket for getting busted in the face - seriously.

Going to Hammercon

Wow, after all that posting stuff about Mecha I've been pretty quite on this blog.  However no regrets and I'm sure that I'll have a bunch to post after I get back from HammerCon IV this weekend (cue some faint fan-fair - wooo wooo).  I've signed up to run a game of Civilization and a game of Galactic Emperor this year and I sincerely hope that I get a good turnout since some crazy administrative problems prevented my games from getting  posted for two weeks and thus missed pre-registration.

And it's Avalon Hill Civilization - not them new ones.  Old school - that game still rocks even if there are issues with length - I can still say that I've enjoyed every game.  I would have liked to run Twilight Imperium 3 again because it was a good time and I really enjoyed finally getting to take it for a spin, however I did say last year that if it went well I should run Civ next time since it's out of print and a lot of people have never got to check it out.  So here we are next year and I'm hoping to get a full on 7 player game going.  It's going to run from 11am - 7:30 pm which should be enough time but might scare off some players.  If it goes well maybe next year I can run Machiavelli...

Galactic Emperor is because I am not going to be playing TI3 this time.  It cover the same ground but is a little lighter fare.  I enjoyed it but I'm going to have to cram on the rules again just to be sure I can run it smoothly.  It's supposed to be a 90 minute game but I an see it taking 3 hours.  I'm going to supplement the 4 hour timeslot with some Zombies!!! or something.

So looking forward to some fun in The Hammer.

iTitan

Ah you monster slug-a-thon you

Titan on the iPad!?!  Well that's a kick in the ass then.  Crap I was excited when Valley Games acquired the rights to reprint Titan and I then was a little disappointed with the reprint (it was the same problem as with the Fantasy Flight second edition of Game of Thrones, the game board colour scheme was too busy and it impeded game-play.)  Now I am excited again because they did a tablet app which is awesome, but I'm again disappointed because it's only available on the iPad and I sold mine.  It's really the only regret I have about selling the damn thing.


Still if you have an iPad check out Titan on it because it's a great game and it benefits from computer assistance.  It says 2-6 players local or AI which probably means no internet play yet - hopefully they get that in there because that would probably be the best format.  The colossus online play java version of Titan is great and really speeds up play so I imagine a tablet app would also.  I can see a day when we have giant tablets for boardgames and it makes me mist up.  Bring back my Starfleet Battles but on 50' multitouch+ camera enhanced surfaces!!!  Any way Titan is a lot of fun. And in this case with (computer assistance) the fancy colour scheme might actually work.

I still think it's a bit busy - classic Titan had such clean lines and colour coding...

Nexus Ops

I finally got to play Nexus Ops.  This game has a story for me because of how I got it.

Quite a few years ago (like 2006 or something) I was visiting my Mother in North Bay and I popped into the local game store to check out what boardgames they had.  Catan was really hitting it's stride, Fantasy Flight was ramping things up, Hasbro was mining the Avalon Hill catalogue and trying to push a small number of gamer games and Mayfair was rolling out train games and some other stuff, but this was before you saw too too much on the shelves except old stock, Warhammer, and Magic cards.  It was also before I had much in the way of disposable income so I was pretty picky about what I would buy.  I did however go in with the intention of buying something.  I didn't buy Nexus Ops, I picked up Kids of Catan because my kids were tiny and this looked like something we could play.  Wow that was a mistake - Kids of Catan sucked donkey balls.  As for Nexus Ops, I picked up the box and looked it over and thought about buying it, but I didn't.  I found out later that it was actually quite well reviewed and I kicked myself for not grabbing it.  I really wanted a quick light fighting game to pull out and it seemed like a perfect fit.  Problem was that it was out of print now and I couldn't find it anywhere.

Cut away to last year - and I found myself back in that store and looking at that same copy of Nexus Ops.  I think the guy game me 10% off because it was so dusty.  I snatched that puppy up and skipped out of the store.  I read the rules and it sounded cool and I put it on one of the lower shelves and waited for a chance to pull it out.  It's funny because a couple times I have found a copy of a game that was out of print only to find that it was being reprinted - I spent many years looking for SPI DragonQuest, and the minute I found a copy TSR bought it and reprinted it.  Conversely I was ecstatic when Avalon Hill reprinted Machiavelli and the week after I got the reprint, I found a copy of the original at Value Village (it was in excellent shape and $3!).

Well last weekend I finally got to play Nexus Ops and I I have to say I enjoyed it.

You start with 4 corporations (represented as player boards and pieces in different colours) and a modular hex based game board which you build randomly each game.  You also place hidden resource marker on each tile. Each player gets a starting area with some mines on it and some cash (rubium) to buy units.  The mines you control give you more rubium at the end of your turn, but only if you have units working them.  The grunts are cheap (2-3 rubuim) and come in three types, humans, fungoids and crystaloids (or something).  They aren't great at fighting, however they get bonuses in their home terrains, and are the only units that can work mines.  There are also bigger more expensive units like rock striders that can move further over rocks, lava leapers who can jump out of lava pools, and 12 point rubium dragons that have a ranged breath attack and hit on a 2+.  You move out and explore and get more mines.  Combat is interesting because you each type of creature on both sides attack in order (strongest to weakest) and they only attacks once - so your dragons attack and you remove casualties, then the lizards and so on, until you get to the humans.  Humans only hit on a 6 (six sided dice) and it's tempting to take them off as casualties in the early rounds and save your big guys, but then you'd get less rolls later on in the combat round.  There are also energize(?) cards you can play to give combat bonuses or extra combat rounds or otherwise mess with things.  Certainly it's based on random dice rolls but there is some strategy to be had here in addition to the luck.  Also because you only run through the combat sequence once, combats are more persistent and if you didn't wipe out the enemy forces this turn,  players can retreat or reinforce their positions on their turns.

You play to get 12 victory points and you get a point for every combat victory.  You also get victory points for completing secret missions, and so you might enter combat just to kill a couple humans or to win a combat in a lava pit.  This works great and the game doesn't drag on and there are secret motivations in play  aside from simple 'resource holding' to make things interesting.  You might have all the mines to power a vast war machine but if someone tricks you into loosing a rubium dragon so that they can get a 3 victory point secret objective - they can take the game.  Turtling up around your mines is not a wining strategy.

There's also a bug monolith in the centre of the board and whoever holds it gets two energize cards on their turn - which is a nice perk so it's one big king of the hill going on there.

So Nexus Ops is a great game, light but fun, and it has a good story for me too.  I'm glad to see it's being reprinted by Fantasy Flight (although I don't know if they are keeping the dayglo black light-ready colour scheme) and also curious to see if they produce a two player expansion for it.  I think it might remain a good game with more a couple players (although it might drag a bit it seems to be light enough to overcome that problem).