Woffboot XIII: The Other Games

In between matches at the 'Boot, there was plenty of time to catch up, chill out, eat barbecue and PLAY MOAR GAMES. Here's some short reviews!

Aliens vs Predator

This is a board game from Prodos, now in its second edition. Nice board bits, clipping together like Space Hulk to make a suitably USCM-style spaceship.

With either two or three players, it's fast, fairly easy to pick up despite a poorly-organised rulebook and fun. It's an I-go-You-go system, so you're usually not far from a turn (unless you're the Predators, who come in very small packs, against the huge throngs of Aliens). There are tactics cards to boost your plays and dice to tell you who wins.

Despite there being a lot going on, like asymmetric win conditions and play styles, it was quick and fun to play. Good models, although we were using the original fiddly resin ones rather than the better, newer plastic one piece ones. We enjoyed this!

7 weird red glowing symbols on a wrist computer out of 10. 

Escape from Atlantis

The classic! This was a late night drunken game, played mostly out of a sense of nostalgia. Kas bought a copy still in the original box for a previous 'Boot, and we never got round to it until now.

Very simply, you have to get more of your Atlantean Tribesmeeple off the sinking island than the other players, using boats or dolphins. Avoid sea monsters, be a dick to your friends using sharks and please try not to uncover a deadly whirlpool.

There's some strategy and a variable amount of cooperation involved, and it's a great family game that's really aimed at younger players. We all tried to eat as many of each others' people as possible because we're old and cynical, but you can equally help each other to escape if you're a hippy-ass communist type. Perhaps a little simplistic for your average wargamer these days? But fine if it's late and you're drunk.

3 boat-crushing octopi out of 5

Legendary Encounters - Aliens

General Bubonicus (guest general passing through) brought this up. It's a deck-building game that purports to let you play through the events of any of the official movie franchise. Somewhat akin to sci-fi Patience, it relies on you upgrading your deck to a state where it can cope with the avalanche of deadly alien cards rampaging through your mouse-mat ventilation system.

We got a very bad draw in our card version of Alien, plus we didn't really know what we were doing. In mere minutes, we were all dead and slightly unimpressed by the steep learning curve. Second time out, in Aliens, we did a lot better. Surprisingly, it did do a pretty good impression of the film - my mercenary died heroically setting up the turrets to protect everyone else, Bubonicus got chest-bursted unexpectedly and the others staggered through to a deadly and climactic encounter with the Queen, which Kas somehow just managed to defeat with a turn to spare. Not bad!

The game is so reliant on luck, though, that it felt like a crapshoot as to whether a particular run would be fun or winnable. Other variants of the game exist (Predator or Avengers, for example) and you can even mix them together to see if Thor could escape the Nostromo. I'm not saying I'd rush to do this, but it's an interesting idea. We went and watched the director's cut of Aliens afterwards, and I'd say that was more fun.

60% untainted human DNA, 40% horrific Xenomorph acid

Hare and Tortoise

Maths, the board game!

Man, I can't even begin to get my head round this. It's a race game with no dice. NO DICE! Insanity.

To move forward, you pay carrots, and the further you move, the more carrots you need on a logarithmic scale. So moving one square costs one carrot, moving forty costs 820. Moving backwards to a tortoise square gains you carrots, eating one of the three lettuces you start with gains you carrots, drawing random hare cards on a hare square gains or loses you carrots, sitting on a carrot square gains or loses you carrots. You can't win if you have any lettuces left, and you can only win if you have ten or fewer carrots as you cross the finishing line.

Confused? I was, but playing it was actually simpler and more fun than it seemed. It's a balancing act of getting enough carrots to get to the end, but not so many that you get stuck there, trying to eat them all so you can cross the line. Do you race ahead and risk running out, or hang back and risk someone else winning while you compile a huge stockpile of carrots?

Not for the faint of head, perhaps, but you feel pretty smart when you cross the line.

475 Carrots out of 1038 plus two lettuces and a calculator

Blackstone Fortress

Not content with a lot of 40K, we squeezed a trip to the Blackstone into the 'Boot too. Playing on Kas's copy (shamefully unassembled and unpainted! The Horror!), we managed to just about complete one of the game's Strongholds or boss levels.

It's a good game, really, keeping fairly balanced somehow despite two of our four explorers being experienced and kitted out. After a very strong start, we got clobbered by unexpected reinforcements, and by the end, only my Kroot Bounty Hunter was still standing, wresting a victory from the jaws of defeat inside the lair of some slavering ghouls.

Always fun playing a coop game, and this is one of the better ones I'd say. The AI system is a bit cumbersome, but makes up for it by being effective. A session lasts about two hours and doesn't outstay its welcome, and the components are top-notch.

4 Blackthumbs Up out of 5

Trapped

From the far 80s comes this futuristic hexagonal board game. You each have three pieces. On your turn, you get two moves, and you use them to either move a piece or build a wall. If you can trap all of your opponent's pieces so they cannot move before the same happens to you, you win.

There are probably winning strategies here, but the one that seemed to work best for us was going first! All the same, an interesting and simple game that was an easy brain workout as you drank wine and ate crisps.

4 sides of a potentially hexagonal 6

Chess

I'd never heard of this, to be honest. A medieval wargame with perfect balance, I-go-you-go mechanics and WYSIWYG miniatures, all for an incredibly modest starter box fee? Seems too good to be true.

And so it was. The rules are unforgiving to a newcomer, especially without any dice or deck mechanics to help even out the skill curve. The board is pretty plain - I'd appreciate a few more nods to the original era's design, although the plain black and white checks are certainly simple and easy to parse. All of your pieces have a role to play, from the brutal sliding Rook attack to the meat shield advance of your Troops (here called Pawns).

Whilst I enjoyed the mechanical skill element of the game (you physically wield the pieces to 'take' or knock another piece off the board) I didn't feel it really evoked the spirit of glorious siege warfare, c. 1400. It's just too much of an abstraction to immerse you fully. Perhaps this could be addressed in a future expansion?

g1f3 out of b8c6