New Games!

[logisticslad]

Last night visited my friends L&S in NJ and I played Zombies!!!, a game in which you build a town by laying out card tiles and fight zombies that are trying to eat everyone's brains. The goal is to either kill 25 zombies or to reach the Helipad and flee the zombie-infested town. There are cards that can be used to supply weapons or to impede your opponents. It was pretty fun, although we all agreed that rolling one die for movement was very slow, so we are considering the house rule of rolling two dice for next time.

Went to their game store in NJ looking for the new Order of the Stick graphic novel Start of Darkness, but they were sold out :-( Not to worry, I am sure that I will find it somewhere soon. I did buy some new games, though. I bought Carcassonne, which I've heard good things about on the order of "if you like Settlers of Catan, you'll like this, too" and its Princess and Dragon expansion for a fantasy flavor. I bought the new Munchkin 5 expansion De-Ranged (the new cards are hilarious!). And I bought a set of Treehouse, the quick logic game that dennisdduquette and sympullminedead taught me when they last visited. This haul should satisfy my geeky gamer cravings for awhile!

Comments

[nutmegger.livejournal.com]

Carcassonne is a very good game, but I would have recommended almost any expansion but the Princess and Dragon one. The Princess and Dragon expansion is essentially a totally different game dynamic and really reduces (in my opinion) the qualities that make the original such a good playing game. My suggestion to you is to learn and play the vanilla before trying the add-on, because otherwise you might be wondering why everyone thinks this is such a good game.

[logisticslad.livejournal.com]

Tried the basic game last night. I thought it was pretty good, but my gaming buddy got very frustrated with continually picking pieces that he couldn't use. I still don't quite understand the gameplay balance between placing followers and farmers. I played my farmers late in the game and they ended up only supplying one city each. I was way ahead and then my opponent's early played farmer ended up supplying 7 cities and pulled him to victory. Thanks for the heads up on the Princess and Dragon expansion. I read the rules and it looks like they make the gameplay even less predictable with this variation. Which expansions do you enjoy most?

[nutmegger.livejournal.com]

The best one for keeping the game dynamics but adding additional strategy is called "Inns and Cathedrals". That's the one to get. Opinions differ on whether the "River" is an improvement or not, but my friend, Carl, hates it and he otherwise loves the game. Once you've gotten familiar with those, I'd move to Traders and Builders, but even that one starts creating a very different game dynamic. Sort of like the difference between the original Cosmic Encounter and the one using Lucre. (if that means anything to you)

[logisticslad.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I'm an old hand at Cosmic Encounters and I was not a fan of the Lucre rules. Thanks for the tips!

[nutmegger.livejournal.com]

Actually played a game this weekend you would probably enjoy called "Gardens of Alhambra". It's another "tile-type" game, but is fairly mathematical, with the added bonus that at the end of the game you have a board that is pretty to look at. (It involves players placing tiles with combinations of lemon, orange, palm and lavender trees around buildings, and yes, lavender is not a tree, but they needed four colors.) Final tile game to recommend is Ta-Yu, which I highly recommend to anyone who asks. Both are 45 minute games.

[fyrebloom.livejournal.com]

We just got Zombies a few months back... good game. Enjoy!

[logisticslad.livejournal.com]

Cool! We'll have to play it sometime. Does it seem to play slowly to you, or do you think that we just had a bad time of it for our first game?

[fyrebloom.livejournal.com]

It does play slow. I'm sure there is some way to house rule things to make it go faster. I think if you could get the helopad out faster it would make things more interesting. There is an interesting varient of the game where you cross Zombies with Steve Jackson games' Frag. It plays like a first person shooter zombie game. Lots of fun :).

[nutmegger.livejournal.com]

On a completely unrelated comment... Psi Phi? I had not noticed that SWIL voted a name change for itself.