Blood In the Forest

[ch82]

The main thing I'm waiting to hear about is balance. What kept me from timber peak was the slant towards favoring the survivor players in the reviews I read.

[ATOEtalGeek]

Well I would have to say that BF moves it back toward the Zombies. I think the new Hero cards are on par with the rest of the game and expansions but I think the new Zombie cards tilt heavily toward the Zombies because of the new opportunities for the Zombie player to gain Experience. The new cards include mechanics for supplying the Zombies with Experience beyond just causing wounds. I think the new Upgrade cards lean toward the Zombies because of this. Two of the 6 Zombie upgrades provide an opportunity for removing a Hero upgrade. Two others remain in play and are powerful.

Then you have the Zombie Champions themselves. Many times during the game as a Hero you will reason that you can afford to take a wound here or there to get to point B. So if you have to fight a Zombie on the way you can "afford" it, even with some bad rolling. If a Feral Dead gets ahold of you it could easily kill you in one encounter with some bad rolling on your part. Feral Dead move two spaces at a time instead of one.

We played the Salvage Mission and that has the Zombies winning by killing just two Heroes.

Also, the forest spaces really hinder line of sight - which takes some of the bite out of the ranged attack.

So I would say overall it leans back toward the Zombies.

[ch82]

Thanks for the reply. How do the zombie champions compare to zombies with grave weapons? Is it permissible to give grave weapons to champion zombies?

[ATOEtalGeek]

Technically, I don't believe you could spawn a Grave Weapon Champion because of the requirement of giving up spawning two zombies in order to spawn one Grave Weapon. You can only spawn the Champions one at a time so there is no opportunity to give up two to make one a Grave Weapon.

That said, the Champions are much like Super Grave Weapons in that they have abilities above the normal Zombie, and even above the Grave Weapon Zombie. The Feral Dead moves two spaces and forces the Hero to continue fighting until the Zombie is beaten. The Behemoth moves D3, has 2 fight dice, has three wounds, has a 50/50 chance to ignore each hit and deals two wounds on a 6+. He is crazy!

[ch82]

I'm going to have to go back and read the rules I thought you could put grave weapons on zombies in play as long as they were not within 1 square of a hero or something. Fast zombies + dynamite sounds like fun

[Apocalypse]

Well one question I already have regarding spawning champions is: do you have to give up actual spawns for points or just give up numbers on the dice. For example, when discussing grave weapons (which have a very similar spawn requirement) if you roll a 6 while spawning you could get 2 zombies and 2 grave weapons even if you have only 2 zombies in your pool, making zombie auto spawn extremely dangerous with grave weapons as a ZP is almost guaranteed to spawn a GW every turn. The wording in the Blood in the Forest manual says that the player must give up zombie spawns, suggesting the player would have to have enough zombies in their pool to cover those points taken. Unless I have read one or even both of these rules wrong...

[ATOEtalGeek]

(01-14-2014 03:32 AM)Apocalypse Wrote:  ...The wording in the Blood in the Forest manual says that the player must give up zombie spawns, suggesting the player would have to have enough zombies in their pool to cover those points taken. Unless I have read one or even both of these rules wrong...

Yes, the rulebook does say you have to give up an actual Zombie to earn a spawn point, so "extra" spawn points on the die roll are not able to be converted to spawn points for the Champions. Champions are different than Grave Weapons in that regard.

[alderdust]

(01-13-2014 03:02 AM)ATOEtalGeek Wrote:  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.

Are you sure you played this correctly?
Trip (Play this card on any Hero to force them to Re-roll their Movement Dice roll. )
Ruuuuuun! (Play this card on a Hero during their Move Phase to let them roll one extra Movement Dice and choose which result to keep. )

I am just curious if the window to play other movement cards closed with the Trip card....I am not saying you did it wrong I am unsure of the right answer. Any thoughts anyone?

[ATOEtalGeek]

Hmmm... we didn't really question it. It seemed natural, intuitive, that if Trip essentially extended the Movement Phase, Ruuuuuuun! could be played. The re-roll on Trip, for example, could cause a player to decide to Search as part of the then extended Movement Phase.

[alderdust]

yeah thats true, Im sure in the moment it seems natural I guess in an instance when a hero is outside it would be best to play trip.