Jan/Feb Boardgames: High Frontier and Zombicide

Despite the relative silence on the blog, I have been managing to get in some nerdery related activities. Intrigued by the writeups present on Martin at Fire Broadside! blog, I decided to jump in and try the game High Frontier. Martin does an excellent job reviewing, as well as describing a play-through, so I'm not going to try and repeat his great work. I would add some of my own thoughts after the first game.

High frontier takes place in our own solar system in a not too far advanced future. The real appeal to this game for me is that it's been written by a real rocket scientist (or at least a hardcore physicist). The bad quarter of the rulebook is filled with brief writeups on the technology present in the game, and it really makes you realize just how smart and clever some of the people are out there. Also, advanced math is hard.

Anyway, the point of the game is to get to various sites in the solar system and set up factories to take advantage of the 4 types of comet/mineral resources out there (such as nickel or carbonaceous). Low/Now gravity processes should allow for some amazing technologies to be realized. The Victory points are scored by the number of sites you create, but also by the relative number of each factory type. A monopoly on a given factory is worth far more than if multiple players have built one. 

The real trick is that, like real life, it's dead slow to move a massive spaceship and you need reaction mass. The space ships end up being attempts at optimizing thrust, water tanks (for reaction mass), the type of robonaut/factory you need to survey an area, and planning on what site you could actually get to. My friend Robert (a big space buff, and a physics major) and I spent some brain sweat playing our first game. As the perfidous chinese threat, he was able to claim jump and stop supporting his astronauts in space when the mission was 'done'. I never really had a chance, also his dice rolls were way better than mine. It's definitely a game that will not make much sense for first time or three (I'm suspecting the second time will start revealing more depths to certain cards and strategies).



Given a recent long weekend, Bryan managed to host another game of zombicide (previous game writeup here). There was an all time high of players (6) and we had some experienced salts at the table. We successfully finished the game without too much challenge. I think a combo of good card luck, and diligence in the midgame at moving towards our objectives helped immensely. There is a tendency to be a bit slow and kill zombies in the 'yellow' phase (of experience). This phase you are way better than most of the zombies showing up, you've usually found your equipment, and it's a bit of a breeze. It's actually the time when you are busy losing the game. The zombie numbers ramp up quickly, you gain xp fast, and suddenly you enter orange and then red. If you aren't close to finishing the map, you are probably toast.

Speaking with Bryan a few days after, he offered that having lots of players is a huge help, as you can spread the experience from killing zombies more thinly. Certainly it is already a tactic to try and ensure that all the players enter the next experience level on the same turn. As soon as one person gets to a new level, the zombie spawns get tougher.

 In our game we went south/down first and cleared the first building to the left. We managed to open both buildings in the bottom during the first experience level (blue). Buildings get populated completely as soon as they are opened.


 We managed to pop the door on all three of the buildings during the second, yellow level, while we all moved to a good location in the streets. Given our early luck equipping ourselves with extra ammo and various shotguns, we were able to clear out the masses of zombies quite quickly.

 It was actually the black 'X' objective markers that ended up sending us over to the next experience level into orange. By this point we only had 1 X to grab, and all the food water and rice cards we needed had been located. We were moving quickly to keep ahead of a mass of zombies, while clearing out the last group from the top left house.

 By this point the game is basically ours. Even with a terrible spawn in the top most spawn location, we had enough people and weapons in the local area to clear it.

 The dash down the alley and for freedom was trivial. The game was fairly fun, especially for the newer folks, but I think the few of us who had played numerous times were a bit surprised with how easy it had gone.

It's quite tough to say if card luck was the largest contributor, or if number of people made the difference.

Dungeon Plungin: Dwarven Forge airing

Bryan received his kickstarter rewards for Dwarven forge recently. He managed to get a lick of paint on a large chunk of the pieces and has been hunting for a fun dungeon crawl game. It needs to be relatively simple so that he could play it with his kids and he also wants to be able to play an adventurer (i.e. players vs system). We ended having an extra evening of nerdery due to the long weekend, so we tried a system called Dungeon Plungin.

 Our first play through was a bit hit and miss as Brian had wanted to introduce some extra features, but eventually we decided to just try for the basic rule set. We did get a decent sense of the current version of the rules (although there is a more advanced version undergoing playtest).

Here we see our adventurers, a fairly random group. A sleepy dwarf, a drinking crossbow dwarf (sounds like a safe companion), and well dressed halfling, and a scantily clad half orc with a big axe. 

Play started in the entrance room/stair case at the bottom of the picture. You roll on flow charts to generate what lies beyond each door (a room, a hallway, a turn). You also need to check the door for traps, attempt to deactivate, attempt to open. Once the door is opened you dice up what the room contains (nothing, chests, monsters or a combo of the above). The many dice throws seemed a bit repetitive and slow at times, but I expect as you get more familiar with the rules and results it would go faster.

The tables are also devised around each adventure, so you can flavour the likelihood and types of traps, which monsters occur, what type of chest loot you get, etc.



In our particular adventure, we were seeking a healing pool to try and heal a wounded warrior who had impressed everyone with his exploits. He will expire if we don't find the pool soon (although there is no actual time limit really).

It was also amusing, as a roleplayer, to consider what we did with the fellow. Just dump him at the entrance and tell him to wait for us? Guard our backs mister nearly dead, we'll be back for you soon. Hope there's no monsters coming and going from the dungeon.

As the rooms are generated with monsters, you dice off the location of the monster. The basic rules call for 6x6 rooms (all of them), we varied things a bit for fun. Also I kept forgetting to take pictures each time a room was set up with monster. Too busy hackin' and slashin'. The extra bits in the room where placed by us to make things look more interesting. Most of the rooms seemed to have monsters in them, but this was mostly our weird luck.

To the right you can see the first "corner" has been generated.






A room is generated with chests. Similar to doors you need (well....technically should) check them for traps, then try and deactivate as needed and then open.

We couldn't figure out if you could just endlessly try and open the chests if you failed. The chart suggested maybe you could, but we thought that would be pretty dumb. Only one chest opened to our attempts, it contained an antidote. It also had a poisoned needle trap. Bit amusing really, a net gain of nothing as the trap hit the poor searcher.

Detecting traps, and opening doors are based on wits and dex. You score represents the number of dice you through, looking for a 5+ as a success. In the latest play test version certain tests need a certain number of successes to actually work.



Hmmmm, 3 chests. I think maybe the other one had a healing potion which was consumed almost immediately. Despite the monsters seeming to be pretty much chaff to slow us down, they would wound occasionally. Also the traps on doors were successful from time to time.

Like the regular tests, you roll a number of dice as your attack value (with bonus dice from weapons). The number of successes are soaked by a roll of defense value (with bonus dice from armour). The difference of the successes on attack vs defense is the amount of life you lose. Reminded me a lot of heroquest actually.

The dungeon grows.......

To the left are entrance +4 rooms, 2 corners, and 1 hall.

You are looking for the 'great door' which hides the objective and a horrible monster. The great door can't be opened without a special key, which is found randomly in a chest (so you can get it before the door).

There are a certain number of rooms/hallways/corners that can be explored, and then you start getting a bonus on certain rolls for each additional one explored. This bonus increases the likelyhood of generating the great door. Once the great door is found, you will automatically find the key in the next chest.

Our problem was we weren't encountering many chests.

A tough fight in the throne room. We found that sometimes space constraints meant that one character was facing one monster for multiple rounds. Not only was it boring, it was also pretty safe, heros are much better than monsters. It's the swamp attack that is most dangerous, as you can't place your toughest hero at the front to soak damage.





The second room with chests. Once again healing potions that were consumed quickly.












Monsters act according to 'laws'. Goblins for instance will only attack a hero who is in base to base with another monster. Orcs charge in towards the closest. The final boss frenzied and attempted to attack a new hero each round. While fairly cool, some of the laws seemed open to abuse unless amended slightly. As written it would appear goblins won't charge you at all if unengaged, and you are guaranteed a ranged shot against them [which will trigger one of their attacks] which can often kill. You could therefore one shot a lot of goblins with zero risk.

Many of our doors choices were guided by how to fit the board on the table. Having not read the rules myself I may be incorrect but during the 'building phase' (basically exploring/generating the next room/hall/corner) you don't move one at a time counting off spaces. You just pick up figs, move them to the door and arrange them and start dicing.

 This was a pretty cool feature actually. It took us a bit of time to experience the 'wing darts' which are a wall of darts that attack the entire party in a given room/hall/corner. Late game we had 2 members at 1 life, so they would wait a whole room back. This meant that for most of the fight it was 2 vs the monsters in the room.





 A rumble in the alchemy lab....

 The door on the left actually ended up being the 'great door'. Cleverly due to placement, it made sense that another door which would lead into the same room was also a great door. We went off to hunt for some chests to find the key.

 As can be seen, the dungeon has expanded quite a bit. We are now working our way down the lower left hand part of the table. The grand door room will be placed on the top right.

 A crypt!. Only 2 orcs against 2 adventurers....easy pickin's. Note the other 2 adventurers way back up the hall? This is during the phase of the game where they were down to 1 life. Drunky crossbow dwarf was getting flack from his friends for avoiding close combat and only shooting stuff. It didn't matter that he was way better at shooting, only that he wasn't soaking up his share of hits.

How could he be better at shooting? There is a trait called 'weapon master' that allows you to be successful on a roll of 4+ (rather then 5+) with a given weapon. Great skill on the attack. There are numerous skills.....but we didn't get to use them. First game is for basics.

 After clearing out the crypt, we headed up and to the right (The crypt room is a bit funny as there are 3 doors on the same wall. Technically illegal by the rules.......but the rules assume all 6x6 rooms).

 At long last we encounter a chest room and score the key and some healing potion, and some gold. A measly 2 gp. This is about 1/3 of what a single goblin gives. Totally lame.

Incidentally, monsters also give xp. After every 120xp accumulates, you divvy it up to the group. Once you get a certain amount of xp, you can burn it to level up, or you can buy a skill with it. Leveling gives you build points which can boost attributes (you spend what the new attribute will be i.e. it costs 2 to go to 2). The newer rules seem to change skills costs to build points, which in my mind makes more sense as it could be abuseably over the long term to have it be cheaper to buy skills than level.

The adventurers bust into the final room. It's all laid out what will be in there based on the scenario, although actual placement is random. A massive troll is our final enemy. The final enemy doesn't have life points/wounds. Instead once you land a hit of X wounds, you roll on a table (1d6+X). You need a 7+ to kill the beast. A 6 will give you a permanent +1 on the kill roll, while a 1-5 are ignored. We got the rule wrong for a few rounds so the fight seemed really tough for a bit. 

 The chaff orc and goblins were cleared first. Given that we still had one adventurer with 1 life, and the troll would cycle through adventurers to attack, there was a good chance we might lose a player.

 We started to play with the pushback rules which should have been used the whole time. A successful hit (regardless of whether the defense successes outnumber or not) pushes a model back a square.

It was sorta annoying, because you have 2 actions a turn, which means if you stand still you can attack twice (as far as we, the cursory rule readers, know). I think the pushback rule probably helps break up static battle lines and makes it less formulaic for the adventurers to manage combats. But we'd have to play longer with them to know. Certainly clearing out the larger maze was not a problem once we all leveled up once. It might be more of a function of a 'low level' adventure though.

Drunky manages to spit the troll as I recall (although I played drunky). The ranged combat rules definitely need some changes. You can only fire on the straight, and we didn't think there was a problem firing through allies. We may, of course, have missed some rules though.

Overall I'd give Dungeon Plungin a "play it again sam". Although with revisions. Given that there are updated (although being play tested) rules, I'd probably try those. Bryan is keen on bringing in some sort of critical hit chart. We thought that carrying wound penalties might be a fun addition as well. Since these are totally negative additions for the players, it might suggest this game is a bit easy for us. Might be well balanced for younger players though.

Dungeon Plungin can be found HERE, along with printouts of boards and monsters if you lack the necessary gear to play.

Zombicide - Small Town

Due to the long weekend, a few of the nerds had some extra game time, so we managed to get together for a board game night. Happily this marks the 5th (of a target of 6) 'boardgame' sessions I've had this year. Boardgames doesn't include roleplaying games or wargaming, and despite Battletech being close, I've decided that falls as a wargame as well.

Anyway, Zombicide is a cooperative players vs programmed enemy game. There are tile maps that can be organized many different ways for a wide range of scenarios. Zombie spawn points are marked, and they generate at the end of every round of player turns. In addition, when buildings are opened, each room is checked for zombie spawning as well. Spawns are generated by pulling a card, and there are 4 possible levels of threat/difficulty of zombies.

The levels are determined by the most experienced character on the table. Experience is generated by objectives, as well as killing zombies. It is preferable to try and spread the experience across all the players to avoid having the zombies get tougher before all the players are. As players level up they gain extra abilities such as an extra action, an extra die roll in combat, or some special skills.

You start with some fairly ghetto equipment and need to gear up by searching buildings. Occasionally your search can turn up a zombie. When the zombie turn occurs, it happens as zombies attack, zombies move, zombies spawn. To prevent it from being too deterministic, there are a few spawn cards that cause zombies of a certain class to have an extra action. This can often cause fatalities as the zombies surge against the best laid player plans. Another threat is that when you run out of zombie markers of a given type (walkers, runners, boomers, and spikey monster (forgot the name)), all the zombies get another go. This tends to happen in the end game where the zombies are spawning far FAR faster than you can take them down.

Our game had 4 players on a small map in a scenario called, coincidentally, small town. This is an example where a simple appearing, small map, can actually be far more challenging than a larger one. There was very little capacity to lure zombies in certain directions and dance around them. We also ended up getting shafted when a spikey abomination spawned in the first building we opened. These bastards can only be destroyed by a molotov cocktail.....which isn't in the card deck for this small map. Our entire plan and path was derailed, and we never really fully recovered.

Players start in the top right. The spawn points are the red markers on the cardinal directions. It can be expected that zombies are going to fill the street and, in particular, the intersection. Our plan is to cut south, mover though the building to the bottom right, cross the street to the bottom left single room building, then head to the norther buildings. 

 A few turns later, we can see the abomination has been lured out of the building, so our stealthy guy (orange) has managed to break into the other door and grabbed the objective.
Ned (me), is searching up the small building, while Wanda (roller skater waitress) and Nick (bruce willis knockoff) are holding the street.

 We get pinned in the street, it's a bit touch and go trying to thin out the herd fast enough to give us a chance to break away. Each turn we just get enough killed to avoid getting hurt, but then are covered again by zombies.

This treading water is actually problematic as we are all heading to level up in experience.

 We manage to shift to the center of the map as we make a bit of head way. Our stealthy guy breaks away, with the plan that he should open the buildings before we level to the top level (orange) and have an unstoppable mass of zombies inside each building.

 3 players are still totally pinned in the intersection, as the stealthy guy is cleaning out the first building. We are 2 turns from completing the game, and it doesn't look too bad for us. ....










And then we flub our rolls. Wanda needed to roll two 3+'s on 4 dice.....and didn't manage a single one. I believe there was 3 zero's rolled in fact. Pretty impressive stuff. This was after the player decided that abandoning Nick and Ned to their fate was the only way for Wanda to survive. If she had gotten her kills, she would have gotten the slipper advance which lets her move through zombie squares without the normal massive action penalty. Instead the 3 of us are ripped into zombie snacks.
Meanwhile Grace managed to stealthfully (and slipperly) grab the last objective marker.

WIN! (with 3/4 casualties)

Zombicide is a pretty fun and accessible game. It's also surprisingly challenging. We cheat a bit as we choose who goes first. In the absolute correct version of play, it should be a regular rotation around the table. This, in our minds, would make it far more challenging to eek out a win.

Mansions of Madness: TPK

A couple of the nerds managed to get together for a boardgames evening last Friday. We choose mansions of madness as we'd played it a few times and had a good time. Our choice was once again vindicated as we had a hoot despite the TPK (total party kill).



Game overview
Mansions of madness operates similar to a few games out there (including descent) where one player is the opponent/antagonist/DM/whatever who attempts to kill off the other players who are working cooperatively.

Each turn the DM earns up points to pay for spawning monsters, causing horrible things to occur, creating poor environments for the Investigators (dark rooms, locked doors, etc). This typically scales up by matching the number of points per turn to the number of players, so that neither side gets steam rolled with too few/too many players.

As a 'call of Cthulhu' inspired game, it includes the mandatory 'sanity' value as well as health. Playing in a Cthulhu game is really a case of prolonging the inevitable rather than being a hero. Often the end destination for characters (literary as well as game) is in the mad house, shortly before death. Typically the horrors of contact with sanity blasting monsters and situations (and dark knowledge) causes a slip of sanity to the point where the characters get pretty buggy. Mansions of madness models this well by allowing the DM to inflict specific mental 'traumas' upon an investigator once their sanity goes too low. This can include kleptomania (stealing from other players), fear of the dark (unable to enter certain areas with taking additional sanity damage), fear of being alone (can't get too far from other players), paranoia (can't get too close to other players) and can include cards that cause the investigator to attack other players or even kill themselves.

A similar mechanic exists for physical effects, but somehow doesn't seem to come up as often in the games we've played.

Mansions of madness has a system that easily prevents endless game play, as there is a timer mechanic that causes cards to flip up that advance the plot (and often create terrible problems for the players). I suspect this is an updated mechanic lifted from Arkham Horror (another board game set in the Cthulhu-verse).


Latest game:
Our latest game had the investigators checking out a new university building (built on the ruins of an old tower) which suffered from strange heating/cooling and electrical problems. The DM managed to delay us enough in the early game that, despite clearing most of the map and loading up on gear, when we finally found the final clue the timer was running down. Careful counting of squares meant that we had no margin for error and had to run straight out of the building with no delay.....past the Mi Go that had been revealed with the final card.

Unfortunately the mental traumas loaded up on my doctor character meant that he would run out of sanity in the first turn of fleeing. The DM managed to play a card causing the Doctor to panic, and find the only true way of escape.......death. Given that he was only armed with a bone saw, we figured this would be a truly horrible suicide scene worthy of such tasteful films as hostel.

Despite hitting the auto loss conditions, we continued to play it out to see if the others could escape. It was not meant to be. One turn behind schedule they emerged from the building.........to be confronted by a horde of Mi Go which, no doubt, decanted their brains from their body for further study.


Stories to Remember
Mansions ends up with wonderful to remember events like this each time we play. The first time we managed to take a maniac down with the final die roll of the game before the timer ran out. For some reason that is hazy to me now (we may have actually lost but played out the roll anyway) the wandering bum with the axe ended up killing another investigator in the same round as the maniac. We decided that the follow through had chopped through both of them. Epic stuff really.

Our win loss is standing at 1:2 with the single win characterized by the players running roughshod over the monsters. My professor hobbled around the board (I think with a broken leg) nuking giant worms and cultists with a horrible dark magic spell, the shrivelling. This gave enough cover for the other characters to finish following up the clues. Perhaps there is something to be said for fighting fire with fire.