So is it just me or is it heavily sided towards humans?
LNoE seems to favor zombies, and I only say that with an addendum; a strong zombie player should be able to 60% of the time win against a strong set of humans.
From my first two plays through and looking through the card piles it seems IFOS totally favors the humans. I'd say almost 65%.
I'll play test a lot more, get in the groove and base my final opinion, but yeah seems to favor humans.
???
We have it the other way around... only played 3 times all of them won by martians...
I'm not yet ready to call out such a favoring. I'm more on SovTech's side of things right now, though.
We've only played the game twice. The Martians won the first game and the Humans won the second game. I think we lost the first game because of some really bad game play on the part of the human players. We knew we'd messed up the minute we did it, but in IFOS "sometimes you get Jo-Jo and sometimes Jo-Jo gets you." We only played the basic game. Too soon to discern any bias. One of our players did mention he thought the Martians were under-powered, but that was after the Martians lost the second game. He was fine with it after they won the first game. Hmmmmm......
I suppose so, out of three games, it still seems favored to humans. You can draw a tech card for the turn, waste your point to draw a non-crap card and get another tech card.
I'm not saying I'm bitter on losing on either side, I play the game win or lose. Yet with a moderately decent human team/cards seems to win out on a decent alien draw.
At the moment, I'd have to agree with SovTech. Martians are tough SOBs, and our games of LNOE are just about 50/50 at this point.
We did a triple threat game a few nights ago and Martians walked away with it. Martains killed 2 Heroes and 7 Zombies. Heroes killed 4 Zombies and 8 Martians. And Zombies killed 1 Martian....
oooooo, that triple threat game sounds like fun. I've got to try that.
So far I think LNOE is pretty evenly balanced. Our games are always very close/right down to the wire and the results are 50/50. No bias that we can discern.
Same with IFOS. Our games are 50/50. One of our players feels the Martians are weak, but I don't think so when you factor in the Martian champions and Martian tech.
What was most important to us was, both games were FUN. We laughed out loud and had a good time. Hey, it's beer and pretzels 50's style sci-fi/horror. gimme a break. In fact, gimme a beer and let's play again!
Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun playing. I love the flavor of both games. I've bought ever LNOE for that exact reason. The game play. I just feel IFOS doesn't have it balanced. I played another game last night where I was the humans against a martian player, it was closer than the previous as less tech was drawn. Tech is a benefit, yet it seems to hinder more often then not. It'd be nice if you didn't have to draw it like Champions
(10-23-2010 01:34 PM)Orguss Wrote: [ -> ]Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun playing. I love the flavor of both games. I've bought ever LNOE for that exact reason. The game play. I just feel IFOS doesn't have it balanced. I played another game last night where I was the humans against a martian player, it was closer than the previous as less tech was drawn. Tech is a benefit, yet it seems to hinder more often then not. It'd be nice if you didn't have to draw it like Champions
After many plays I believe that LNOE is balanced somewhat in favor of the Zombies to begin with, but that should even out over time as Hero players gain more experience. I think the difference is that the Hero side requires more effort and coordination and the Heroes can't really afford any/many mistakes. I'm wondering if IFOS might be the same but from the Martian side. In which case, the more a person plays as the Martians, the better they'll get in terms of knowing the best choices to make with their command points and such.
In any case, I look forward to playing this sometime soon...
So, on... 6? 7? games worth of stats, I stand corrected. Just like zombies... it depends on scenario and characters drawn. I still say humans have an edge as some of those power tokens are ridiculous, like Cassidy. She'll never drop that crazy gun.