Reflections on death and undeath

Border Board games hosted its monthly gamefest on Saturday, October 16. With All Hallows Eve only a few short weeks away it seemed the perfect time to break out some of our favorite monster themed games. Hitting the table on Saturday were Arkham Horror, two sessions of Last Night on Earth, Ghost Stories, Bang! and a game of chess that, oddly enough, never seemed to get started.

First to hit the table was a rousing game of Arkham Horror. Though the new characters were introduced from the Dunwich expansion, the game was otherwise a standard AH scenario with Azathoth as the primary horror. Josh, Homer, Ken, Beth and I tackled the growing horror with a surprisingly effective group of characters. I chose Mandy Thompson the researcher. I generally prefer characters with fairly balanced stamina and sanity and her re-roll power proved very important throughout the game. Homer picked up Sister Mary , Ken chose the archaeologist Monterey Jack, Beth played newspaperman Darrell Simmons while Josh ruled the world with Ashcan Pete.

Ashcan Pete turned out to be almost godlike in his foraging. His ability to rummage through the trash earned him a slew of useful items as well as a retainer to write a book for "Ole Misk," the title of which is probably something like Living on the Edge of Sanity and Society. Whatever it's name it afforded Pete the only source of income he ever derived in the game. Likewise Monterey Jack was a monster killing machine. In spite of his low sanity, nothing seemed to disturb Jack as he slashed and shot his way through ten monsters over the course of the game.

Speaking of money, Mandy had absolutely no qualms about some shading dealings that netted her a cool $8. After falling a dollar short of buying two potent weapons (the magical Lamp of Alhazred and a rifle) she decided the risk of jail was minor compared to the gains. While the good Sister never seemed to get any money she enjoyed sufficient success that she still managed to travel to distant, terrible planets and emerge intact or largely intact at least.

In many ways this was as atypical a session of AH as I have ever played. The investigators seemed largely able to gather what they needed, some of the Mythos cards actually proved beneficial and the trips through the outer realms went pretty smoothly without the usual "A Monster Appears!" actions being drawn. We also managed to draw a disproportionate number of cultist, zombie and ghoul tiles as well as a fistful of Byakhee, Mi-Go and the odd Elder Thing. The one Cthonian that appeared was destroyed by Mandy's Dread Curse of Azathoth and the twin Hounds of Tindalos were nullified by virtue of closing the last gate right after they appeared.

After saving Arkham and post Great War New England we decided to switch things up a bit. By this time Rob and Angela had arrived and struggled through a game of Ghost Stories. The game lived up to its billing as one tough mutha co-op game. I think they were good and ready for a Wild West shoot out. Though only Beth, Homer and I had played Bang! before, it is a delightfully easy game to teach.

Josh had the misfortune of pissing off Deputy Homer, his seatmate to the right and the Renegade was the first to fall in a hail of bullets. The constant attacks by Indians and the rattle of Gatling guns only seemed to weaken the outlaws. Sheriff Rob was never put in much danger as the game progressed. Deputies Homer and Ken seemed willing to antagonize the outlaws and, admittedly, I probably focused too much attention on Ken. It's hard to forgive a guy who hands you a stick of dynamite.

Outlaw Beth, the only known outlaw as she took the only shot at the sheriff, was gunned down by Indians after enduring repeated attacks from Outlaw Angela. I didn't fare much better finally getting plugged by the lawmen after a game-long blood feud with Ken. In the end Outlaw Angela was outgunned and out manned. Both deputies and the sheriff took pot shots, occasionally wasting bullets on her empty whiskey barrel, but ultimately emerging triumphant.

In the last gaming session of the night we pulled out two copies of Last Night on Earth and had two four-player throw-downs with the Escape in the Truck scenario. Shannon and Ken were the zombies squared off against heroes Rob and Josh at one table while Angela and I ushered forth our legion of undeath against heroes Beth and Homer. At both tables the heroes struggled to gain ground in a pretty unforgiving scenario.

That is the one problem with LNoE. Some of the search scenarios appear to be heavily skewed in the zombies' favor. Certainly there are multiple copies of useful cards buried in the hero deck but the right combo of zombie cards can effectively shut off the heroes from the very items they need. Our zombies overran Sally, who had found the keys, in the gym. Automatically one set of keys was lost to the heroes. It was further compounded when we played a zombie card that then removed the keys from the game!

The same sort of misfortunes were happening at the other table, based on the gloating of the zombies and the sullen expressions worn by the heroes. In the end, despite finding the gasoline, Beth and Homer were unable to get back to the truck before the scenario timer ran out. A search through the hero deck revealed that the keys were so deeply buried that it likely would have required an extra ten to twelve turns of searching to uncover them. Even the helpful "Just What I Needed!" card was at least eight to ten cards down.

I guess it was appropriate that since the forces of good triumphed in Arkham and the Good Guys won the Wild West the zombies would triumph in the end as the night wound down into the witching hour. "All it takes for evil to triumph is for heroes to find lighters but no dynamite."