The Podcast News

[theconcerned]

I know this podcast has been out for a bit, and I posted this over on BGG, but for those who haven't listened yet:

I listened to the podcast which SovTech posted over here: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/436136 (good find, by the way) and thought I'd make a few notes on some of what they talked about. I know that this isn't all new info, but I do believe that some of it is new (and sounds very fun!) So, here we go:

Coming out this Fall: the "Survival of the Fittest expansions" (as they call it).

Survival of the Fittest is a "rules set" which has three decks: Grave Weapons for the zombies, Unique Items (a "super items deck") and Survival Tactics (a "super events deck"). It also has cards that expand the normal hero and zombie deck.

The Unique Items deck is full of one-of-a-kind items like an antique revolver, plus character-based items like Johnny's Jacket, Father Joseph's Bible, and Sally's Pendant, each of which give you one of the aspects of their character. For example, if you get Father Joseph's Bible, you get the chance to cancel zombie cards if you take a wound. If you give Father Joseph's Bible to Father Joseph, he no longer needs to roll: he can instantly cancel a card if he takes a wound.

The Survival Tactics deck is a super events deck. There's one card called "use the sewers" which lets you place sewer tokens on the board, which creates a tunnel between those spots. However, the zombies can also use the sewers. Also, rules for barricades. There's one called duct tape, which lets you combine any two items. For example, normally the fence post is a two-handed weapon, meaning you can only use that weapon. With duct tape, you could tape a chainsaw to the fence post, allowing you to chainsaw zombies from one square away. However, the two weapons are now linked, so if the chainsaw runs out of gas, you lose both.

The Grave Weapons deck lets you outfit your zombies with weapons. When you're about to spawn zombies (like, if you rolled to spawn four), for every two zombies that you DON'T spawn, you can draw a card from the Grave Weapons deck and give a weapon to one of your zombies. Weapons include a sickle, rusty axe, pitchfork. Others modify the body of the zombie, like bloated body, or "bloaters" which is a giant, heaving zombie which on the roll of 3+ can ignore a wound form a gun. Another is "explosive," a zombie holding a lit explosive, and when he does he explodes, effecting the spaces around him. You also roll every turn (1 in 6 chance) of exploding. As a hero, Scott once pushed back an explosive zombie (and a bunch of others) with the fire extinguisher, then shot the explosive zombie, blowing him up and taking out the other zombies. Others include "wrapped in barbed wire," "machete." The game comes with markers that look just like the Zombie Hero markers in LNOE to mark the special zombies.

However, there is a special miniatures pack coming out, which has a miniature for every character in the Grave Weapons deck. They made the set separate because they couldn't afford to combine it into one set, because miniatures are very expensive to make. They also wanted to give people the choice of whether or not they wanted them, because you don't "need" them to play the game, but they're a cool alternative to using the markers. The Grave Weapons set comes with seven separate sculpts, each in brown and green. It also comes with an exclusive zombie (not in Survival of the Fittest), "Crawling Torso." It comes with the sculpt and the cards to add to the Zombie Weapons deck. [Side note: I don't know if that means that the miniatures pack comes with seven sculpts PLUS the exclusive, or seven total.] Crawling Torso can move at twice the speed of a regular zombie, without his legs holding him back. You must roll a 4, 5 or 6 to get out of a space with him in it because he trips you up, biting at your ankles.

The third expansion, Hero Pack One, comes with new heroes, cards, and a scenario.

There are no new boards. There are also "things in the works" for the future.

Also, we have our first peek of the Martians from Invasion from Outer Space: The Martian Game . . .