Blood In the Forest

[gavindowning]

My copy of Blood In the Forest arrived this afternoon. I've only had a brief moment to look over it, but I had a few impressions I wished to share:

There are two new heroes: Agent Carter and Sister Ophelia. Agent Carter is cool, with an interesting backstory, but I especially love Sister Ophelia. Her backstory and her abilities are really really badass.

The new scenarios: Escape in the Plane, which is similar to Escape In the Truck, only instead of needing keys, you need a flight plan, which has its own mechanic involving counters marked 1-6 in different buildings. In addition, two heroes are considered pilots, and at least one of them must make it to the plane to successfully escape.

Lost In the Woods, in which the heroes must find a radio transponder (like the flight plans, involving counters 1-6 in different buildings), then get it to the opposite side of the board to the tower relay.

Salvage Mission, in which 16 salvage tokens are on the board, and the heroes have one of three different salvage missions, while the zombies get a pool of feral dead which continually replenishes. The missions might involve getting supplies, finding survivors, or locating a suped up version of a zombie behemoth and killing it.

There are new upgrades and cards, as you'd expect. They all seem pretty fun.

Zombies get two types of champions, each with a special character sheet: Feral zombies, and zombie behemoths. Feral zombies are fast and bloodthirsty, while the behemoth is ALSO fast, tough, durable, and wields a chainsaw. You either get a pool of 3 feral and 1 behemoth, or 6 feral and 2 behemoths, but these pools do not refill; when they're gone, they're gone. For every 3 feral and 1 behemoth in a zombie pool, the heroes get +1 hero card at the start of the game; spawning one costs some of your spawn, and some experience as well.

Everyone in a forest space rolls an extra fight die, which means zombies are more likely to win the fight, but a hero who does win is more likely to wound the zombie. One can see into or out of an adjacent forest space, but not through a forest space.

There are extra tiles that allow for a larger board size. Zombies also get optional spawn pits (in yellow instead of red); you may choose to spawn a zombie there if you want, but you may also double up on zombie on red spawning pits before adding any to the yellow spawn pits. (You can't double up on the yellow pits until all red and yellow pits are spawned on.)

Overall, some nice new features which easily fold into the game, and I don't feel it adds too much to the complexity. I'm looking forward to giving all these elements a shot soon!

[samuraitrev]

Yesss! Sounds good! Thanks for the update, I can't wait to get mine now

[Sarge]

This is great......now I'm checking the inbox to see if mine has been sent

[ch82]

Nice

[ATOEtalGeek]

I got mine yesterday as well and only have a short time to go over everything. I did real the whole rulebook though.
Gavindowning's write-up is spot on. The only thing I could add is that there are some really cool new Upgrade cards for the Heroes and Zombies, and there are some new uses for Experience.

I like the Forest Space mechanics and can't wait to play with them.

[alderdust]

Can't wait to receive mine in the mail.

[Achtung Panzer]

Got my FFP message today to say it's on it's way to the UK!

[ForestRunner]

GIDDY UP!!! Awesome.

Many thanks for the update (and teaser!) GD.

Been a great start to 2014 for me... this has just made everything all the more sweeter.

[rmschneider104]

Sounds like a fun addition.

[ATOEtalGeek]

We played our first game of Blood in the Forest last night and had a lot of fun. We played with just the base deck and added in the BF decks so we could get a good flavor of the cards - so it wouldn't be watered down so to speak.

We had two players playing two Heroes each and one Zombie player. We rolled a 3 on the scenario card which is Distress Call - meaning we have to find two Townsfolk survivors and get them back to the plane with at least two Heroes there to win.

The scenario special rules on the scenario card indicated Feral Dead (infinity) - so no limit on re-spawning them.

We stumbled briefly on whether or not that meant no Behemoths. We reasoned that since the two other scenario cards specifically call out the Behemoth that he would not be included where not specifically called out. The Zombie player grumbled a little feeling that both types of Champions should be included in all BF scenarios. Anyway, we played with no Behemoth, I think, correctly.

With the sun track at 3 the Heroes won on a clever string of card play. The Hero with the second Survivor needed to make it to the plane to win. He rolled enough to get there but was hit with a Trip card, forcing him to re-roll. On his re-roll he did not have enough to get there. Another player played a "Ruuuuuuun!" on him. On his third attempt he was clear and made it to the plane for the win. The plane took off, mowing down Zombies - and barely cleared the Gas Station (which would have been horrific to hit) on take-off as the sun was going down.

It was a good kick-off of Blood in the Forest. We can't wait to take on the Behemoth now.