Bloody Games

Without a conscious intent to do so, me and my sig-other have amassed a growing collection of horror-themed board games (sufficient for a marathon Halloween session).

It started with Arkham Horror. We picked it up because it was the first cooperative board game we came upon, which was a nice change of pace from our previous board games which always left one person a winner and one person (usually me!) a sore loser. In Arkham Horror, the players work together to keep a small city from becoming overrun by demons and other scaly, slimy things right out of H.P. Lovecraft novels. Each player controls a different character (which are well-fleshed out, with different equipment & special abilities), but strategy and planning are a big part of the game. There's basically two ways to win: either close a certain number of demon-spawning portals quickly (which is hard because more constantly appear) or defeat a massive Cthulu-like alien god in a final battle. There's a great mix of different characters, monsters, locations, and encounters so each game is quite different than the last. The designers put a great deal of flavour and atmosphere into every detail, and each session I see a dozen great adventure hooks for a Cthulu role-playing game. The main downside is that it is a quite long and complicated game, and I'm not convinced the fun of playing always makes the length and complexity worthwhile. And surprisingly, it's easier to win than I expected for a product set in the Cthulu mythos.

Several months later, we picked up Last Night on Earth which has Zombie B-Movies as its theme. Each player controls either a Hero character (there are several different options, and like Arkham Horror, they each have different abilities) or the Zombies. Each time you play, you can pick from a bunch of different "scenarios." Each scenario has a different victory condition--there's one in which the heroes win simply by killing a certain number of zombies before time runs out, while in another the heroes have to run through town to find gasoline and then make it to their truck to leave town before the zombies overwhelm them. It really helps to keep the game fresh, and also helps to balance things out between players because some scenarios are easier for Zombies and others are easier for Heroes. Functionally, Last Night on Earth plays out like a role-playing game miniatures battle, as the heroes and each of the many zombies move around on a square-grid map of the small town. The only downside is that in our experience the Zombie player has a big advantage (though others online swear it's the Hero player who always wins).

Most recently, we picked up Fury of Dracula. One player controls Drac while the other(s) control a quartet of vampire hunters who are chasing him all over Europe. Like the other games above, the different vampire hunters have different abilities and can get different equipment, but combat is a much smaller part of the game because the Dracula player doesn't need to fight in order to win. Instead, he just needs to survive a certain number of nights (though he can win earlier by killing the hunters or creating new vampires). In effect, Fury of Dracula is a big cat-and-mouse game. Dracula moves in secret, and every time he goes to a new city, he lays that location card face down on the table, creating a a trail of cards. If a hunter moves into that location, that card is turned face up--this allows the hunter to see where Dracula has been and how many moves he's made since then (which leads to some fun strategy and detective work, as the hunters try to get a step ahead of Dracula). We've only played it a few times, but I think it's most fun for the Dracula player--it's very exciting when the hunters have caught your trail and are closing in, but then you manage to slip through their grasp with some sneaky moves.

Each of the three games above are full-fledged board games that are high-quality, expensive, and take a few hours to play. Sometimes, however, it's fun to play a simple game that only takes 20 minutes or so and that's where Guillotine comes in. This is an easy-to-learn card game in which the goal is to gather the most valuable collection of decapitated heads during the French Revolution. Some heads are only worth a point or so (such as a peasant), while other heads are worth as many as five points (like Marie Antoinette). Although the heads proceed in a steady order towards the guillotine where they can be collected, the trick is that each player has several cards that can change the order of the line in order to benefit themself or screw over the other players. It's a fun, fast game and a good way to get people to try something different than the usual, more traditional board games they might play.