Table Top Game Club Week 21, 22, and 23: Zombies, Steampunks, and Aliens (no...not Smash Up...)

Wow...it's been a while folks.  Sorry for the delay once again, but after Spring Break and some pretty heavy work days, I finally have some time to give you a gaming update.  In each week of gaming, my crew engaged in some pretty intense and varied gaming.  Here's the rundown:

Week 21: Zombie 15

Zombie 15 is a fun game, but it's also a tricky game to run.  Zombie 15 is a cooperative game where players take on the role of fifteen year old survivors of a zombie apocalypse.  Unlike many other zombie games (Dead of Winter, Zombicide, Run Fight or Die), Zombie 15 is on a timer, a fifteen minute audio track that come on a CD included with the game.  The audio tracks are also available on Youtube, along with some custom soundtracks made by fans.  The soundtracks for the game are an integral part of the gameplay experience and game mechanics.  The players are working to reach an objective outlined in the scenario guide.  Working quickly, the players each have four actions they can use to move through the game map (constructed from tiles), kill zombies, and search for equipment.  Some scenarios require players to eliminate every zombie on the board or search for specific items like keys to a locked shopping mall.  All of these objectives must be reached in fifteen minutes or the players lose.  Not only used as a timer, the soundtracks feature zombie “growls”.  Whenever a growl is heard, the players flip over a card from a Zombie deck to indicate how many zombies appear on the street. The soundtrack also features tense music and the sounds of sirens and other emergency response noises.

Students really enjoy this game, and due to the quick, tense nature of the game-play, it does not encourage “Alpha-gaming” unlike Pandemic; the players are acting too quickly, and the random zombie arrivals prevent one person from playing quarterback and barking too many orders.  The students encourage and help each other, and it’s great to see a student come to the rescue of another who is being overwhelmed.

 As far as I’m concerned, the game has two drawbacks: facilitating and set-up.  Because of the speedy nature of the game-play, this game needs a fifth person to make sure the rules are followed, zombies are added or removed at the right moment, and players don’t take too many actions on their turn.  The game instructions state that the players should police themselves, but it seems to run much smoother with a referee. The game also takes a while to set up.  For each scenario, a tile map must be built, zombies are added to the map, and often decks of cards and special token have to be adjusted.  That’s not such a big deal when you’re sitting down to a one to two hour game experience, but Zombie 15 takes only fifteen minutes to play the scenario.  The set up and adjustments made after each scenario hurt the momentum of game-play.  Then again, it’s not a marathon; it’s a series of sprints.  Still, I enjoy the game, and my students don’t mind helping with the construction of each new scenario.  

Week 22: Steampunk Rally

Steampunk Rally, no surprise here, is a game with a ton of moving parts, literally and figuratively.  It’s a racing game that can accommodate up to eight players.  The game is focused on a fictitious race through the Swiss Alps among history’s greatest inventors and scientists, including Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, the Wright Brothers, and a host of others.  As a teacher, I’m glad to see a good mix of both male and female historic figures, as well as a mini biography of each person featured in the rulebook. 

Steampunk Rally combines several different elements together: card drafting, dice rolling, resource management, and simultaneous game-play.  The opening phase is a card draft as players select parts of a machine they are building to help them win their race, by generating heat, electricity, or steam.  These elements power the machine.  The next two phases involve managing resources and rolling a dice pool.  Lastly, damage may be applied to each vehicle depending on certain obstacles. 

The game has a few different elements to wrap one’s head around.  It’s not a simple roll and move mechanic like Formula D.  This game involves understanding how each piece works in tandem with the others.  Applying a piece that adds movement based on generating electricity is next to useless if your other pieces all generate steam. The game suggests that for the first couple rounds, every player takes turns applying their dice pool to the machine so everyone gains an understanding of the mechanics. However, as the game progresses, players can start playing simultaneously as they become familiar with the pattern of gameplay.  I strongly suggest that for the last round, players describe their final moves one at a time.  This eliminates a great deal of confusion, as we learned when we played the game.  In our first game, players kept finding new combinations after they scored, so finding an eventual winner was a long process.  The second time we had players finish one at a time, so each understood their options and completed every possible combination.

As a game for a club in school, I like the use of math and logic in determining how to optimize the vehicles, as well as the historic touchstones.  We found our biggest hurdle came from the confusion regarding when dice are played, and when they are vented (a process where used dice are removed).  Dice create effects when they are applied to the machine.  Once applied, the die must be vented the next round, and removed for the part to be used again.  When the machines get big and unwieldy, students would get confused and forget whether they just applied a die, or if it was left over from last round and needed venting.  I think after a few more sessions, the players will have a better grasp on the rhythm of venting, rolling, and movement.   

Week 23: Cosmic Encounter

If you're an experienced game enthusiast, then Cosmic Encounter is on your proverbial radar. For the few of you who are not familiar with the game, Cosmic Encounter is a negotiation game of galactic conquest. The game plays up to five people out of the box, but I picked up two expansions that allow the game to accommodate seven players (more expansions are available and are quite pricey, but the game can be expanded up to eight). The game has some wonderful components. Each player gets five planets representing their home-worlds, and twenty plastic spaceships representing their armada and colonies. The ships are 50's inspired flying saucers that also stack like poker chips. That's a good analogy for how they are played; they're used by each player to represent an invasion force or defence, but since every encounter is a gamble, the poker chip feel is appropriate.

Each player in turn flips a card from a deck called the Destiny deck. This deck directs each player's target for conquest. Once a player has declared they are invading another player's territory, the attacker and defender lay down cards from their hands. The cards played will result in either a one sided victory, or negotiation for shared territory. As a result, due to the possible terms of the negotiations, multiple people can tie for first place. Attackers and defenders can also ask for help from the other players, making for some strategic alliances.

Even though the negotiation vs conquest mechanic is entertaining as is, the real draw of Cosmic Encounter is the massive selection of alien races included in the game. Each player selects an alien race that gives them an interesting power. These powers allow for bending the rules and give the game a massive amount of strategy and replay-ability. The game can easily be scaled down for a beginner gamers, or can be made quite complex for experienced gamers by adding optional decks of cards. We played several games of Cosmic Encounter this week, and I found it quite easy to teach. The core mechanics are simple to grasp, and the cards and alien races are labelled to allow for easily pulling out the more complex elements of the game. My only disappointment was that we had a small turnout this week. Tuesday had four players, and Friday had only three. The small turnout did allow us to have multiple games during our time, but I was hoping to get more kids involved and engaged in the interactive nature of the game. I hope this game hits the table again because it has great potential.

Well folks, sorry for the delay. Next week, we'll press the start button on Boss Monster.

Thanks for reading!