I've been lax in keeping the blog current so I'm making up for it today with a graphic recounting of the annual Border Board Games horror fest. It's been our tradition to break out our monster themed games in October because, well, monster games are cool. We were pleased to have some travelers from away as well as a few new faces at the Derby Line Village Hall this month.
Thanks to Evil Brad and Lia for coming along as well as a big thanks to Lee, Monique, Josh and Alton for coming by. Alton has been a regular for the past few months but, due to my sloth, hadn't been mentioned yet. The regular gang of Beth, Rob, Mike, Dennis, Homer, Neil and myself made for three tables of mayhem.
The longest game of the evening pitted Beth, Monique, Rob, Josh and Neil against The Dark Goat of the Wood itself - Shub-Nigurrath. The gang battled bravely fending off repeated monster surges, travelling to the outer worlds and eventually sealing off the evil from Arkham. having watched a few how-to videos on Arkham Horror prior to Saturday night enabled the gang to formulate a plan to help dig out the tools and knowledge the group needed to accomplish their task.
Lee, Lia and Alton tackled Betrayal at House on the Hill in the first installment of the game played. Not sure how that went but it appeared that they enjoyed themselves thoroughly.
Meanwhile, Homer, Dennis , Mike and I tried to take on Evil Brad and his legions of undead in Last Night on Earth. By some bizarre twist, this game turned out to be the worst Bible camp experience any of our characters had ever experienced. With Father McFeely (or whatever his name was) leading the group of teens in Sally, Jenny and Billy, it was some old dude and a bunch of hormonal kids against ravenous hordes. The outcome was pretty much a foregone conclusion as Brad unleashed endless waves of zombies while the teens picked through the wreckage of the high school in an attempt to dig up anything useful.
What they managed to find was a chainsaw in the garage, a pair of flares guns and not much else. father McFeely's flare gun lit up a zombie while Sally decided to use hers to send a signal for help. Unfortunately, the only help that arrived smelled bad, looked worse and only wanted to eat us all. No one is really sure what Billy did except to turn into a zombie and cost us the game.
In a strange twist, the transition from LNoE to Tammany Hall came as a great surprise to all of us. But politics is a horror show of its own I suppose. In the end, despite having trailed the pack for most of the game, Dennis pulled out the win based on the strength of his Irish votes. Dennis winning control of New York is probably what triggered the zombie apocalypse that followed.
From Tammany Hall, Brad and I took the hearse of defeat over to join Lia and Lee for a game of Zombicide. Our task was seemingly simple - gather some supplies, jack a car and get the heck out of Dodge. Amy, Ned, Phil and Wanda had to break into the old store, gather up water, canned goods and rice, find a car and then drive off into the post-apocalyptic sunset. easy-peasy you say. Well, it kind of was thanks to a couple of sawed off shotguns, an early Molotov cocktail, my second chainsaw of the night and some timely sniping. In the biggest surprise of the night, Evil Brad (or Brad the Beatific) declared that no one would get left behind. Constable Phil was stuck on the other side of the building by the Pimp Mobile and wouldn't be able to make it to the squad car for the quick getaway. Rather than abandon a fellow survivor, the gun toting maniacs decided to shoot Phil a path back across the Mega Mart. In the end, hot-foot Wanda raced the car around the corner and to safety, all four survivors and the goods intact.
Meanwhile, round two of Betrayal was breaking out as Beth, Monique, Josh, Rob and Neil braved that creaking old mansion on top of the hill. The haunt (Neil) turned out to be a pretty potent poltergeist. As the heroes rushed around, somewhat ineffectually, trying to find and light candles to perform an exorcism, Neil floated around choking them out one by one. In the end the poltergeist found the peace he sought, even if it was occasionally disturbed by the drip-drip-dripping of his victims' blood.
And that was how we spent our Almost-Halloween. How about you?
Showing posts with label Arkham Horror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arkham Horror. Show all posts
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Put a little "AaaahhhHHH" in your life
October 20 marked the return of Border Board games' annual monster game fest. We were pleased to have Carlo and Kristin drive up from barre for the event. Also in attendance, beside Beth and myself, were regulars Mike O., Andrew, Dennis, St. Jay Mike and Karl.
We quickly split up into two groups as Beth, Carlo, Kristin, Mike O. and Andrew started up with Betrayal at House on the Hill. They played two scenarios with the first being the Ghost Bride and the second where Beth became a vampire. The Ghost bride failed to bring her beloved groom to the altar while the vampire succumbed to the strength of daylight as the heroes emerged victorious in both cases.
Meanwhile Karl, Dennis, St. Jay Mike and I tried our hand at A Touch of Evil, all for the first time. To anyone familiar with Arkham Horror and Last Night on Earth, the play of aToE appears to combine some of the best portions of both games. It is not scenario driven but, rather, dictated by the nature of the villain which gives the game a less structured feel. That is good if you want a game that has the potential for replayability. The heroes travel around the board visiting spooky colonial-era locations while seeking to gain information about the town elders, gather loot and weapons and try to figure out where the baddy lives.
Through a few missteps, mistakes which reminded me of my own lapses in running the Elder God in AH, we still managed to gleefully bumble our way through the game. It was definitely a game where learning through play might prove more effective than trying to digest the entire manual in one go. Dennis the hobo (he called himself a drifter but we saw through it easily enough), managed to track down the Headless Horseman and defeat him with good old fashioned musketry. My school marm was closing in on the Horseman's lair in the bog but the drifter snatched away the chance.
In the next round of gaming table one played a game of Zombicide while table two cracked open Betrayal. In Zombicide the heroes barely eked out the win despite a huge, ravenous horde of monsters rapidly closing in on them. In Betrayal St. Jay Mike turned into a giant, hideous spider only to fall before the mighty little girl with the really big spear. In Mike's defence it was sheer luck that the character who would have been easiest to fight, having sustained major damage prior to becoming the host for the spider eggs, was unassailable owing to those eggs. Using the mystic elevator to gain access to the basement was also a bit of a cheat for the good guys but, hey, no one likes spiders anyway, right?
The next Border Board Games event will take place on November 17th at 6 p.m. in the Derby Line Village Hall.
We quickly split up into two groups as Beth, Carlo, Kristin, Mike O. and Andrew started up with Betrayal at House on the Hill. They played two scenarios with the first being the Ghost Bride and the second where Beth became a vampire. The Ghost bride failed to bring her beloved groom to the altar while the vampire succumbed to the strength of daylight as the heroes emerged victorious in both cases.
Meanwhile Karl, Dennis, St. Jay Mike and I tried our hand at A Touch of Evil, all for the first time. To anyone familiar with Arkham Horror and Last Night on Earth, the play of aToE appears to combine some of the best portions of both games. It is not scenario driven but, rather, dictated by the nature of the villain which gives the game a less structured feel. That is good if you want a game that has the potential for replayability. The heroes travel around the board visiting spooky colonial-era locations while seeking to gain information about the town elders, gather loot and weapons and try to figure out where the baddy lives.
Through a few missteps, mistakes which reminded me of my own lapses in running the Elder God in AH, we still managed to gleefully bumble our way through the game. It was definitely a game where learning through play might prove more effective than trying to digest the entire manual in one go. Dennis the hobo (he called himself a drifter but we saw through it easily enough), managed to track down the Headless Horseman and defeat him with good old fashioned musketry. My school marm was closing in on the Horseman's lair in the bog but the drifter snatched away the chance.
In the next round of gaming table one played a game of Zombicide while table two cracked open Betrayal. In Zombicide the heroes barely eked out the win despite a huge, ravenous horde of monsters rapidly closing in on them. In Betrayal St. Jay Mike turned into a giant, hideous spider only to fall before the mighty little girl with the really big spear. In Mike's defence it was sheer luck that the character who would have been easiest to fight, having sustained major damage prior to becoming the host for the spider eggs, was unassailable owing to those eggs. Using the mystic elevator to gain access to the basement was also a bit of a cheat for the good guys but, hey, no one likes spiders anyway, right?
The next Border Board Games event will take place on November 17th at 6 p.m. in the Derby Line Village Hall.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Epic dice fail and other things that go bump in the night
Border Board Games' Monstrous Hallowe'en Monster Game Extravaganza took place on Saturday, October 15. This month's crowd included visitors Bob and Christine (?), Carlo and Kristin, Rob, Beth and I and newcomer and hopeful returnee Mike.
Earlier in the day gaming at the Lair saw Carlo lose not one but TWO games of King of Tokyo as Beth pulled victory out of thin air. In each case Beth waited until the last throw of the dice to send his beloved Krakken back into the watery Abyss while her Donkey Kong reigned supreme. Added with Carlo's failure to murder "wretches" in Letters from Whitechapel before being apprehended by Beth and Kristin, his gaming got off to a slow start.
Having moved to the village hall at the appointed time, we set up for what would be many of our's first exposure to the newest Lovecraftian themed game Elder Sign. The game follows the model of the Fantasy Flight series featuring familiar heroes from Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness. Unlike the other two titles, Elder Sign is a much quicker game to both set up and play.
In many ways this is a great introduction to the worlds of Lovecraft and horror gaming. It's relatively light and, as a co-op game, engages all players in the successes, or failures, of their peers. In our first journey into the realms of terror and madness our adversary was Nyarlathotep, who was sometimes confused with the goatee-wearing evil version of Beth, Ynahteb.
It is hard to say if we were just lucky with our dice or lucky with our adventure locations, but we seemed to breeze through Nyarly with amazing speed. Indeed, not a single investigator went screaming into hell that I can recall. not so on our second attempt. The second time round Shub Niggurath was our adversary and, despite having more doom tokens prior to awakening, our luck fell apart early on.
While in our first game we seemed to succeed on our first try probably 80 percent of the time, it often took three tries to resolve a single adventure with Shubby. This slowed down our collective rate of equipment gathering (basically, item cards and spells provided bonus dice or "hold" spots to help accomplish tasks) and accelerated our loss of sanity and stamina.
Mike endured a particularly gruesome sequence of deaths staggering around battered and bleeding from one disaster to the next. It goes to show that volunteering to take the sanity hit to start the game doesn't always make you a hero - sometimes you just become a victim. In the first game Mike's character Jenny Barnes (the purple chick) could do no wrong. In round two, no matter what he had, he could do no right.
In time, after many agonizing attempts and failures, Shubby awoke and promptly devoured Mike for the last time. As we had accomplished so few tasks and his battle condition required sacrificing trophies, our ranks were quickly thinned until only four of the seven remained. Beth's magician Dexter Drake and then Kate Winthrop did a little damage before he disappeared and Kristin's character the Fuller brush vendor Bob Jenkins, who bravely tried to stop the worst of the bleeding among the company, also spiralled into the Abyss.
It came down to Ashcan Pete (Bob) and Harvey Walters (me) facing a wounded but still ferocious elder thing. Bob rolled well but, ultimately, his lack of trophies saw him devoured moments after Kate threw herself into the maws of evil. Harvey Walters, the professor from Miskatonic University, stood alone as the guardian at the door. Weirdly enough, he had gathered plenty of trophies and, despite not having many bonus dice to rely on, rolled well. His power to convert terror (tentacles) into scrolls (knowledge) proved crucial as he banished the elder thing with only a single trophy remaining.
The final game of the night was a round of Last Night on Earth which pitted Mike, Rob, Beth and Bob against Carlo the zombie master. Just as Carlo's dice went quiet earlier in the day, so too did his zombie dice once he had rolled for his starting zombie horde. Perhaps his plan to sacrifice half their number to make them invulnerable in the first round wasn't the best choice after all. With the objected being "Burn 'em Out", the heroes had to gather explosives and destroy three of the four zombie spawning pits.
The characters were Jake the Drifter (Bob), Father McFeely (Beth), Sheriff Mr. Anderson (Rob) and Johnny Popular (Mike). In what can only be termed an incredible string of luck, the humans would quickly find a trove of explosives in the school. While the gasoline wouldn't seem such a stretch, the twin packs of dynamite struck people as a little odd. The humans enjoyed a lot of success fighting off the zombie attackers. With pistols, baseball bats, fire extinguishers and fire axes, they blew through the seething mobs, quickly destroying half of Carlo's spawning pits. Father McFeely eliminated a Taken Over marker that protected one of the spawning pits and promptly ran out to deal with it.
The lone high point for the zombie master came when Jake stood defiantly outside the Plant as Father Grabass went into the light less building. His dynamite having already been used, Jake went down howling as the zombies overcame him. Though he would emerge as a zombie hero, the Father's task was already done as Sally emerged inexplicably from the barn just in time to see the final spawning pit blow.
While the zombie action was resolving itself, Christine and Kristin had a rematch of King of Tokyo. The results of that contest were not immediately known at press time.
Earlier in the day gaming at the Lair saw Carlo lose not one but TWO games of King of Tokyo as Beth pulled victory out of thin air. In each case Beth waited until the last throw of the dice to send his beloved Krakken back into the watery Abyss while her Donkey Kong reigned supreme. Added with Carlo's failure to murder "wretches" in Letters from Whitechapel before being apprehended by Beth and Kristin, his gaming got off to a slow start.
Having moved to the village hall at the appointed time, we set up for what would be many of our's first exposure to the newest Lovecraftian themed game Elder Sign. The game follows the model of the Fantasy Flight series featuring familiar heroes from Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness. Unlike the other two titles, Elder Sign is a much quicker game to both set up and play.
In many ways this is a great introduction to the worlds of Lovecraft and horror gaming. It's relatively light and, as a co-op game, engages all players in the successes, or failures, of their peers. In our first journey into the realms of terror and madness our adversary was Nyarlathotep, who was sometimes confused with the goatee-wearing evil version of Beth, Ynahteb.
It is hard to say if we were just lucky with our dice or lucky with our adventure locations, but we seemed to breeze through Nyarly with amazing speed. Indeed, not a single investigator went screaming into hell that I can recall. not so on our second attempt. The second time round Shub Niggurath was our adversary and, despite having more doom tokens prior to awakening, our luck fell apart early on.
While in our first game we seemed to succeed on our first try probably 80 percent of the time, it often took three tries to resolve a single adventure with Shubby. This slowed down our collective rate of equipment gathering (basically, item cards and spells provided bonus dice or "hold" spots to help accomplish tasks) and accelerated our loss of sanity and stamina.
Mike endured a particularly gruesome sequence of deaths staggering around battered and bleeding from one disaster to the next. It goes to show that volunteering to take the sanity hit to start the game doesn't always make you a hero - sometimes you just become a victim. In the first game Mike's character Jenny Barnes (the purple chick) could do no wrong. In round two, no matter what he had, he could do no right.
In time, after many agonizing attempts and failures, Shubby awoke and promptly devoured Mike for the last time. As we had accomplished so few tasks and his battle condition required sacrificing trophies, our ranks were quickly thinned until only four of the seven remained. Beth's magician Dexter Drake and then Kate Winthrop did a little damage before he disappeared and Kristin's character the Fuller brush vendor Bob Jenkins, who bravely tried to stop the worst of the bleeding among the company, also spiralled into the Abyss.
It came down to Ashcan Pete (Bob) and Harvey Walters (me) facing a wounded but still ferocious elder thing. Bob rolled well but, ultimately, his lack of trophies saw him devoured moments after Kate threw herself into the maws of evil. Harvey Walters, the professor from Miskatonic University, stood alone as the guardian at the door. Weirdly enough, he had gathered plenty of trophies and, despite not having many bonus dice to rely on, rolled well. His power to convert terror (tentacles) into scrolls (knowledge) proved crucial as he banished the elder thing with only a single trophy remaining.
The final game of the night was a round of Last Night on Earth which pitted Mike, Rob, Beth and Bob against Carlo the zombie master. Just as Carlo's dice went quiet earlier in the day, so too did his zombie dice once he had rolled for his starting zombie horde. Perhaps his plan to sacrifice half their number to make them invulnerable in the first round wasn't the best choice after all. With the objected being "Burn 'em Out", the heroes had to gather explosives and destroy three of the four zombie spawning pits.
The characters were Jake the Drifter (Bob), Father McFeely (Beth), Sheriff Mr. Anderson (Rob) and Johnny Popular (Mike). In what can only be termed an incredible string of luck, the humans would quickly find a trove of explosives in the school. While the gasoline wouldn't seem such a stretch, the twin packs of dynamite struck people as a little odd. The humans enjoyed a lot of success fighting off the zombie attackers. With pistols, baseball bats, fire extinguishers and fire axes, they blew through the seething mobs, quickly destroying half of Carlo's spawning pits. Father McFeely eliminated a Taken Over marker that protected one of the spawning pits and promptly ran out to deal with it.
The lone high point for the zombie master came when Jake stood defiantly outside the Plant as Father Grabass went into the light less building. His dynamite having already been used, Jake went down howling as the zombies overcame him. Though he would emerge as a zombie hero, the Father's task was already done as Sally emerged inexplicably from the barn just in time to see the final spawning pit blow.
While the zombie action was resolving itself, Christine and Kristin had a rematch of King of Tokyo. The results of that contest were not immediately known at press time.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
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."
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."
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