Fallout Board Game

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Iguana on a Stick, Nuka Cola, Radscorpions...

War.  War never changes.

The Fallout board game from FFG, not zombie gaming, but a fairly obvious post-apocalypse game.  Fallout has a pretty well known alternate history world with a post-apocalyptic series of adventures set some 200 years after a massive nuclear war has destroyed civilization. Fantasy Flight Games has published a board game based on the various iterations of the game.

Just out of the box, open rules

In typical FFG fashion, the components are top-notch.  The cards are well finished, the card stock components are nice and heavy and everything has a finish that feels like it will stand up to plenty of playing.  The miniatures that come in the game to represent the players are well detailed and represent several iconic characters from the video games.

Initial Setup

The game board is made up of randomly placed hexagons to create the 'wasteland' which allows for some variation from game to game.  Each game has different factions vying for control of the wasteland, slowly gaining influence as the players each try to increase their own influence by helping or hindering the factions.

Solo game underway with a vault dweller character

oh yeah, enemies will come after you!

On the surface, it works much like the video game and does capture that feel, at least early in the game.  Running around the wastes killing bloatflies, raiders and mutants, gathering loot and caps, trading and interacting at the settlements  and exploring ruins all give a nice immersive feel.

The railroad wins...

The end game is not as climatic, with one of the factions reaching a milestone on a tracking chart of influence, or one player having finished enough quests to achieve a required level of influence.  It doesn't trigger some sort of final quest, the game just ends.  Probably the only part of the game I feel actually fails.

It can be played by 1-4 players, so if you have a hankering for a board game and Fallout, this is a good game for you.  I enjoyed it, I am curious to see how it compares to the Fallout Miniatures game that is coming out.

I've got a Ticket to Ride...

Okay, this is embarrassing.  It's been a month of life just conspiring against me.  I apologize for the lack of updates, but between an illness, holiday, work trip and new game I just plain didn't have any time left for zombie gaming.

Not my work, but a cool zombie apocalypse train!

On a gaming note, my sister introduced me to the board game Ticket to Ride.  I know it's been around for years, but I hadn't tried it.  Trains just are not a huge draw for me.  I played Empire Builder way back in the day and couldn't get into it.  Ticket to Ride is a much more social or beer and pretzels game, and it has been a go-to for the wife and I for the past month or so.

Ticket to Ride USA board

The game is basically collecting cards to turn in sets and 'build' rail lines.  You can focus on making the longest sets possible or building specific routes and connecting cities to fulfill various 'tickets' to score points for routes.  I am pretty impressed with the game mechanics, it allows for different strategies as well as ways to score and win from seemingly poor starts.

Example game play

No zombies, but there is some sort of expansion with a large monster (Godzilla) and space alien.  Not sure what that is about, but the game has solid mechanics and I could see it adapted to many milieus.  Who knows, maybe there will be a Walking Dead version...  (hmm, they did have rail lines to Terminus...)

Map expansion maybe?

It is a fun strategy board game, and there are plenty of expansions and options to keep it fresh.  We have the basic game, set in the USA as well as the Ticket to Ride:Europe set.  It gives us a geography lesson when we play as well!

I have waited to post again until I felt I could commit to a few posts and get back into regular posting.  Once I get back to the apocalypse, we will see what happened to Dawn after the gang attack!

Fallout! and Zombie 15'

Things have been a bit slow here, work has conspired to keep me from completing any sort of gaming related goodness, and the holiday weekend (Memorial Day here in the US) threw a family monkey-wrench into my plans...

The Fallout series of games is one of my personal favorites, and Bethesda announced Fallout 4 today.  I have to say it looks pretty.  I am a bit concerned by the rocket powered pirate galleon, but Fallout has always had some oddball stuff, so I won't worry until I see it in action.  Hopefully they have done a decent job on the story, which was a bit dubious in New Vegas, IMHO.  It will be interesting to see Boston after the apocalypse, I expect it to be wicked cool.

Dawn checks a damaged car

About the only thing I managed to complete was a ruined car, a VW Bug.  I found it for cheap, as it was already broken, missing the doors.  It wasn't very hard to make look much worse.  I am very happy with the damaged windows, I think they look like they have 'spiderwebbed' like safety glass is supposed to when broken. 

A box.  There is a game inside.

In more zombie related news, I did get a copy of Zombie 15' and have unboxed it.  It is an interesting concept, with the game played in real time.  Each mission has a time limit, and the game comes with a CD with three different timed tracks (with zombie groans signaling an increase in the 'horde') at different time intervals.

Zombie 15' Heroes

Heroes next to a WF survivor, a LNOE zombie and a Reaper Horace Jackson

The minis for the zombies look okay, and I think will scale well for 28mm.  The survivors/heroes are lacking a bit in detail, and are on the small side.  They are supposed to be kids or teens, but I don't know if even a good paint job will make them fit in well for miniature gaming.  I'm hoping to get a chance to play it in the next couple of weeks.  I will post a game report once I get a chance to play it.  I wish it had an option for solo play.

One behemoth, 33 of each of the others...

Next to the LNOE zombie and Jackson again.

I have a ton of projects underway, hopefully I'll get something done and get a game in as well.

Oh, and this craziness:  Kung Fury!

Oh No... Zombies!

Happy Mother's Day

This weekend being Mother's Day, we spent some time as a family this weekend, and I didn't get to as much of my projects, or campaign, as I would have normally.  We did, however get an afternoon of boardgames played (Mom is a game collector, and loves boardgames) one of which was the board game Oh No...  Zombies!

The box says it all.

The game is from Archie McPhee, and is meant to be a relatively simple game.  It is listed as for ages 12+, and comes with 14 plastic figures.  My son received the game for Christmas, but we haven't had a chance to play it until now.  There were four of us playing, which worked out well, it could handle up to 4 players.

The players each control a survivor, they have holed up in a cabin.  They need to get batteries for the CB radio in the cabin to call for help.  If it's the zombie apocalypse, I'm not sure who they are calling for help...

All the components

Anyway, there are four corner locations that have batteries, and a shotgun each.  Combat with the zombies is particularly deadly, you draw a card from a provided deck.  From the mix of the cards, there are only a couple of chances to kill a zombie, about a 50/50 chance to be able to run away and the rest of the results are, well, predictable.  There are some weapons (Torch, Shovel, Cricket Bat) scattered around the board that allow players to escape the zombies.

Game survivors with some 28mm survivors...

All the figures on the board.

As humans are turned into zombies, they continue to play, as a zombie, and chase down the remaining humans.  The other, NPC zombies, move according to a die roll (one color activates) and are moved by one of the players.  It gives a bit of backstabbing and some strategy of working together and against each other from turn to turn.

The game played fair enough, although two of us were turned into zombies (yes, I was the second to go!) in the first couple of turns.  The game gets much more difficult as the other players turn into zombies, and work to eliminate the living.  It did take a while to eliminate the last living player, but we managed to corner her and a bad draw in combat ended the game.  Sorry, no in-game pictures, I didn't have the camera handy...

Overall, this was an okay game, although I would only recommend it for kids or for a quick diversion.  The figures are too large to be useful for most gaming scales, although if you used the normal toy soldier scale, they would work for that.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Mother's Day!

Someone has to prepare!