First play through... initial impressions

[commandopaul]

Well.. had a couple of friends want to play a game, so I brought over LNOE w/ the first Hero Pack... GH hadn't shown up yet, and I left all the other packs at home... so there it was.

It was just the three of us at their place (so no mood-setting deco this first time), and we only played one scenario. (Had previously played Betrayal at House on the Hill, so didn't want to be board gamed out). He elected to randomly see who was the zombie player, randomly choose heroes and scenario... I ended up with the Sheriff Anderson and Victor (not a bad combo, especially since the Police Station ended up on the board). The other player was Sally and Jake, and we ended up with Defending the Manor House.

After an extensive perusal of the rules (first play through for all...) we began. (Yes, prolly shoulda played the basic game, but eh... whatcha gonna do?).

We played the CD for some music and mood setting... and after one playthrough of it had had enough... we decided to get some standard Halloween music next time.

Through luck Sally and Victor (and of course the Sheriff) had revolvers pretty much immediately, which helped. We decided to pick off the zombies as they spawned and inch our way to the manor house. Jake and Sally ended up being the first ones there; The Sheriff defended one entrance from the outside, and Victor remained in the station, shooting through walls at the zombies from the closest spawn point to assist the sheriff and keep searching as necessary (although not being able to trade ended up really sucking for Victor... or rather every one else).

Jake ended up with a shotgun, ran to the house to help Sally as it began to be overwhelmed. Sally was able to pick off a couple of zombies and then retreat further into the house later. Jake blasted two zombies after they came through the door, but then ran out of ammo. After telling Sally, "Don't worry, I'll be right back" ... he ran to the police station to get another gun... leaving Sally by herself with a revolver to defend against the incoming hordes.

(We all found it interesting that the three men had all run away to the "safety" of the police station, leaving the lone high school girl in the manor ... with only a revolver against almost all the zombies)

Sally, while proving remarkably resilient and with decent rolls of the revolver, was finding it difficult to defend the house alone and eventually cornered. Sheriff was able to get a shotgun and race to the wall opposite Sally from outside. He blasted into the space, hoping to take out the three zombies there to allow Sally some relief. Unfortunately he missed against all of them and Sally was soon taken and feasted upon next turn.

Victor actually was a great shot, taking out at least seven or eight zombies, all at range, missing only one shot the entire game, but was misused (by me) at defending a lone spawn point instead of the central house. I thought it wise to be able to search for weapons to keep the stock up - we eventually got rid of the "I don't trust 'em" ... in hindsight, Jake would've had that role with his search ability.

Sadly, after Sally was taken down, the zombies flooded the house and the game was finished. Zombies - 1; Heroes - 0.

Initial impressions - Hella fun game, interesting albeit difficult scenario for the heroes. CD will not be reused again except for select tracks, which were decent. Two of us really liked the game. The zombie player was less amused, bemoaning the lack of strategy/cooperation and wants to either be only a hero or have an additional zombie player (both of course, available options in the future).

Can't wait to include all the expansions and GH when it shows up... along with setting the game room up as a boarded up room...

-Paul

[Esturk]

Yeah, Defend the Manor House isn't the best starter scenario for the first game ever since it relies heavily on hero players working together properly... which is tough when no one's played the game before.

GH will add in Zombie Apocalypse which, in my opinion, is heavy strategy on both sides, Zombies trying to destroy buildings and Heroes trying to stop that. I'm sure your zombie player will warm up to some of the other scenarios...

A sure way to piss off any Zombie player, however, is to play Die, Zombies, Die! which is the least strategic scenario that is mostly just meant to teach people the mechanics... I've seen the zombies win before but for our group it's 3:1 against at best. We like to mix that one up by requiring heroes roll to search (using the numbers printed on buildings) if they roll the numbers they pick up a card, if they don't they wasted their move/search for that turn. It gives the zombie player that little bit of an edge to even things out for it.

Usually, though, we simply leave DZD out of the scenarios when we randomly pick.

[jhwedmd]

Most of the newbies I play with have wanted to play 2 runs of Die! Zombies, Die! If for nothing else than just getting the hang of the flow of the game. After that, we don't even leave that one as a possibility.

A good zombie guy can be fantastic. We played a game of 'Save the Townsfolk' the other night and our Zombie guy beat the living crap out of us.

Hope you guys have fun sticking with it!

jwhedmd