The Warlocks' Last Night On Earth!

Well, not really, but this weekend we got some gaming in with the thanks to Brian bringing over Flying Frog Productions "Last Night On Earth".

LNOE is a zombie apocalypse board game that takes place in a small town. One player controls the zombies and up to four other players control the heroes. Now there's quite a list of heroes to choose from which fit perfectly in the small town environment; the sheriff, the sheriff's son (a track star), the high-school outcast, the priest, the farmer's daughter, the drifter, etc. A perfect cast for this cinematic zombie game.

The rules were pretty easy to pick up as you search building to find weapons or other aids while fighting off an unrelenting hoard of zombies. D6's resolve combat and drawn cards aid players and zombies alike.

Now these are slow moving zombies (the Romero kind) but it's not as easy as it sounds to fight them off, there's always a chance that you can run out of ammunition, loose your weapon or any other number of spine tingling events determined by dice rolls or drawn cards.

The game is fast paced and quite balanced for either side to gain the advantage (which shifts frequently during play) or win the objective. There are a number of scenarios to play out as well. The game has a B-movie quality to it which add to the fun

As opposed to WOTC's Castle Ravensloft which sported clunky rules, Last Night On Earth was quick to jump in and get playing.

A great game for friends or gamily who want to spend an hour or two chasing down or running from zombies!

The Warlock Visits Castle Ravenloft!

Over the holiday some of us in our gaming group got together and played WOTC's Castle Ravenloft. It's a dungeon crawl adventure board-game based on the D&D 4th ed. rule-set.

First of all I have to say that it's a very well packaged game. Tons of plastic minis, nice dungeon pieces that fit together quite well. Once the game gets moving it has a good pace to it.

The players choose from your standard cache of adventurers; rogue, cleric, wizard, fighter (dragon-kind) to explore this Castle Ravenloft which changes with every play. Each of the character roles has a number of 'powers' and daily powers that can be used throughout the session which you use during this combat heavy game. The party survives best if they use their powers together, something which seems to be the core of 4th ed. adventuring.

The dungeon tiles are quite nicely done and fit together well - like a puzzle! There are also a number of different quests so the game can be a new excitement for quite some time. Over all it reminds me of a more complicated version of the original Dungeon! game from TSR.

I think this board game translates very nicely with the 4ed. base concept of all these crazy powers. To me, 4e seemed very combat heavy with not much room for adventuring or role-playing. Castle Ravenloft fits this concept like a glove! In fact, it's a better fit for 4th edition rules than fitting 4th edition into the role-playing game genre. Something for WOTC to think about. Of course you can only advance up to a second level character; not much there for the Hasbro bean counters to look forward to.

The only other thing that I would mention is that the rules for this game seemed to be poorly written. All of us are veteran gamers and we still had trouble interpreting what the rules were tying to get at. Maybe it was that giant ham sandwich we all ate before we started to play but I don't think so. We had to tweak things to get the game moving and we still weren't sure if we played it totally correctly.

Overall it was a fun time and we all looked forward to giving it another go. If you're looking for an afternoon of relaxed dungeon crawling adventure, Castle Ravenloft would fit the bill. Of course, with the $50 + price tag it's a bit of an investment but I guess that's better than having to buy all the 4e crap that WOTC markets to it's client-base. I hate that manipulative crap! Remember the good ol' days where you can dish out just a few bucks for a game? Progress I guess.

Oh, and keep the party together.

More fantasy board-game goodness...