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. |
I played Becky, the Nurse that couldn't heal herself worth a damn. |
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] |
Castle Ravenloft
Castle Ravenloft, the first game of the night. |
"Hey guys!" (Wraith appearing in a game of Castle Ravenloft) |
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.