Long-Runtime Board Game Night Trial Run

Introduction

Last night was a trial run for "Long Runtime Board Game Night", which was an attempt to let some longer-explanation games out on the table. The games of the evening were (in order) Castle Ravenloft, Dungeon Roll, and Last Night on Earth. It seemed to be a good evening overall, as all of us got the chance to learn at least one new game by the end of the night. This will briefly mention each of the games of the night, in reverse order to how they were played.

Last Night on Earth

Becky and Father Joseph hanging out while Jake fights off a zombie.

The new one was for me was Last Night on Earth (the last game of the evening). I'd seen it on TableTop a while back, and was pretty neutral to the game, but figured the 90 minute playtime was worth a shot (it was around 11pm at this point - the game still took us over 2 hours to play though).

I played Becky, the Nurse that couldn't heal herself worth a damn.

This was a 6-player game and I played the hero Becky (the Nurse, who awkwardly can heal other heroes but not herself). Other hero players were Johnny (Highschool Quarterback), Jake Cartwright (The Drifter), and Father Joseph (Man of the Cloth).

Generally, when I watched TableTop I was pretty meh about this game, and that opinion persisted when playing it in real life; while I liked the strong theme of this game, the gameplay never really did it for me. Oddly, the game felt really imbalanced, with a heavy skew toward the zombies initially, but a heavy skew toward the heroes later on. When playing, we did note a combo of Nurse Becky with Father Jospeh allowing for Zombie/opponent card cancellations every turn that was pretty neat. Personally I thought "Johnny Highschool"'s gameplay was more entertaining though (his ability to win ties against zombies, in addition to his character's ability to role really well overall).

After playing the game, I have a better opinion of the game than I did on TableTop, but it's still not as much a game I'd jump at the chance to play. Thinking of it as a derivative of Risk I think the card/weapon elements of the game gave it a better fell than the original Risk game, but it's still pretty random. If you like theme in your games I definitely think this is a great game to introduce to non-gamers, because the characters and theme really carry this game. There's a definite lopsided feel to the game, but it seems to balance somewhat as gameplay continues. But it is a fun game for people that like that B-movie ambiances, and I would recommend it if you like that in your games.

Dungeon Roll

This was a game I picked up thanks initially to the eleventh-hour contribution of Tim Baldwin, a Kickstarter backer that bought a bunch of Dungeon Roll last-minute in order to reach its last stretch goal. I wasn't a backer of the original Kickstarter, but learning Tim's story I got one of his copies via email/PayPal communication. Although the intention of the evening was for a few longer games, I packed a couple short and simple games as well as a backup (other games that weren't played that evening included Ultimate Werewolf: Inquisition, The Little Prince and Bohnanza).

Kickstarter box for Dungeon Roll [instagram]

We played this as a 3-player game, going through the rule details more as we progressed (if you're curious about the game, here's a good video of the rules/gameplay). Although it's discussed as being a 1-4 player game, I've noticed its more interactive in the 1-2 player range, although for learning/social purposes it can support higher numbers ok. I've found this to be a good quick game if there's about 15-30 minutes of down time and you're ok with the game's randomness.

Castle Ravenloft

Castle Ravenloft, the first game of the night.

I've played this game several times now, and if you have nostalgia for the days of HeroQuest I'd recommend this game highly. This is a game brought to you by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) as a set of board games to mirror D&D campaigns (to try and appeal to the non-RPGing camp, and I think it does a really good job). In addition to this game, WotC made board games called the Wrath of Ashardalon, and the Legend of Drizzt, which all have similar mechanics.

"Hey guys!" (Wraith appearing in a game of Castle Ravenloft)

This is a cooperative game, similar to board games like Pandemic but can be a bit more involved. Whereas HeroQuest has one person as the Dungeon Master, this game allows for everyone to play game, so random elements instead lead to game progression. If you like the D&D world, WotC represents it well in this game; while it's not my favorite cooperative game ever, it's pretty high up there, and one I always enjoy playing.

As a notable side comment, you may want to consider coloring the hero miniatures or replacing them in time, as it can get difficult to identify them by their poses alone. It's not a huge issue, but a notable one (part of me still wishes for different color figures like in Ghost Stories)

Conclusion

My hope behind this game night was that people could get introduced to some of the more complex and involved games, with an acknowledgement that digesting the rules may take a bit. In some respects I think that succeeded, because Castle Ravenloft and Last Night on Earth does take a bit of time to get introduced to (as a group we're still screwing up on the rules of Ravenloft, though at this point we're mostly right). In other ways though maybe we should've gone with the game a majority of us didn't understand first, because when 1am rolls around, the less you have to think the better.

Although I would've liked to play one of the longer games out there (Last Night on Earth had the longest playtime as listed on boardgamegeek.com at 90 minutes), I'm certainly not disappointed to have played the games that came out instead. At the end of the day, what I enjoy most about board games is less what's played, and instead the social and entertainment aspects associated with the games.