Got in a nice game session last night, with a trio of new (to me) games.
Mall of Horror seems similar to Rette Sich Werr Kann (aka The Lifeboat Game), except you are now throwing people to the zombies instead of the sharks. In fact, there are many rules differences, small and large. Interestingly, the smallest change dominates. Forget the special action cards or now how the zombies attack randomly. Two things differentiate this -- each player only has three pieces (instead of six), and the piece with two votes is worth less, not more, if it survives.
These completely change the dynamics, and not for the better. In Rette, people will often team against the bully because a) he outvotes them, b) it's a bigger point swing to kill him. But now the bully is worth less points, so all non-bullies have a stronger incentive to defect. That, and halving the number of pieces means that that one extra death matters even more.
Compared to that changes, random cards and zombie appearances are just chrome. My gut feeling? A noble effort, not up to the (admittedly high) standards of the original, but OK.
A large game of Arkham Horror broke out. Everyone but me had played, so (since it's just a cooperative game), I skipped the rules and let people guide me. It did nothing for me. If you remember that paper on cooperative games, I'm not sure I agree with everything in it, but Arkham Horror violated a few of the lessons that I thought were good advice:
- There wasn't much tension between what one person thought was best, and what others thought. [Admittedly, it was tough for me to judge this, but that's my gut feeling].
- There was no hidden information between players. Each player knew what everyone knew.
More importantly, the system just seemed damn cumbersome. Over a dozen decks of cards (I am not joking), lots of special cases, etc. Full of flavor, but nothing that grabbed my attention.
So I bailed and played Blue Moon, which I've always wanted to try. It's easy to dismiss a game after a single play; it's tougher to give a thumbs up. But I tenatively like it, with the caveat that it's tough to judge the full system playing only a single game. I could see going through phases of just playing the decks, then tinkering with deckbuilding, etc. Warrants a few more plays.
Apart from the new games we also got in some, Ra, Fairy Tale, No Thanks and Shadows Over Camelot. Since it was late and I was the only person who played, we lighted up (used all 8 cards for a 4 person game), which meant that there was no traitor. So a player victory, but one that had some tension.
Overall, a good night.