Then I got home and read on BGG and F:AT that everybody and his uncle Charlie was lamenting that the game stank. And I had already opened it up and punched it. D'oh!
So my urge to play it fell, and it sat around until last weekend, when my girlfriend, her brother, and I finally dragged it out for what almost seemed a "pity play."
General Impression
More fun than people said it was. Perhaps this is the result of expecting very little. Frankly, it's not much worse than Zombies!!!. In fact, it's got a very similar dynamic (run around, trip up the other players, roll a ton of dice, highly random, "humor"), yet it has the distinct advantage of having a fixed end.
Components
I agree with most others that the figures are nice, the board is okay, and the cards are decent. I'm not sure why the Event cards use Labelmaker font; it doesn't inspire fear. I guess it's supposed to have a modern feel.
The Victim tokens are a nice thick cardboard, as are the monster player cards.
The green dice with purple spots are too low-contrast, making it hard to read them.
Tone
I thought the vaguely humorous tone of the rulebook (which has too dense a text layout) was kind of lame. I thought the inclusion of adjectives to describe the Victims (Buxom Coed, Leering Janitor, Scheming Magnate, Sneering Bouncer, X-addled Raver, etc.) was hit and miss; together with the cartoony/semi-caricature art style, it was a bit of a turn off. Then the inclusion of the Back-handing Pimp and Strung-out Crack Whore was the final straw -- that detracted a lot for me. YMMV, but I wasn't impressed. The monster art and powers were good, though.
Rules
In brief, you pick one of five monsters: Werewolf, Vampire, Zombie, Mummy, and Poltergeist (That last is stupid. Poltergeists rattle furniture and make noise, they don't eat people! It should have been a Ghost or a Wraith, or even a Vengeful Spirit).
Each monster is dealt three Victims; these are your particular targets -- you can eat any Victim on the board, but "yours" are worth more to you. Each Victim has a value (1-3) in Blood, Bones, Brains, Organs, and Spirit. As you can probably guess, Vampires care about a Victim's Blood value, Mummies care about the Organs value, etc.
Each turn you and your opponents first move the Victims and then stalk them. If you can catch one, you roll dice to try and eat them; if you do, you get "craving points" equal to their value in the area you care about (+2 if they were "yours"). If you fail, they run away again, perhaps right into the arms of your opponents, who then get a free grab at them.
Each monster has a special power that usually relates to moving either yourself or a Victim; they were kind of useless. Each monster also has a weakness (triggered by opponents using Event cards), but they don't seem to hurt too badly.
You can also fight other monsters, although you can really only weaken them a little and possibly waste their turn.
The monster with the most craving points at the end of turn five wins.
Gameplay
I guess the big surprise for me was that the game was actually kind of fun. Yes, play is very random, although not horribly so (I guess this is the "mayhem"). Basically, the Victims take off in all directions, but moving them was fast and easy.
Hunting them down is trickier than it seems it would be. Catching up to them isn't so bad (the board isn't so big, and the subways provide handy shortcuts), but dispatching them is not a sure thing, since the Victims most valuable to your monster are the hardest to kill, and the other players have multiple opportunities to throw mud in your eye.
I thought five turns would be too few, but we had actually killed all the Victims by the end of turn three (2 for me, 2 for my gf, and a lucky 5 for my gf's bro). So the remaining two turns consisted on me and my gf trying to beat down her bro, who was way ahead in both points and cards. It didn't work, but we did bruise him somewhat.
The game went by fast; we were done within 45 minutes or so.
Impressions
Yes, I'd probably play it again, although there are plenty of games I'd rather play instead. Should you pick it up? If you like the theme, don't mind randomness, and can find it cheap, I say go for it.
As a side note, I can't understand other reviews I've read that bothered to set the whole thing up and then bailed on it after a couple of turns; honestly, it's not a disaster, and they were practically finished! There are lots of "screw your buddy" moments that are fun but not fatal, and there is some room for tactics (not much strategy).
Heck, I hate to flog a dead horse (heh), but the first time I played Zombies!!! I thought it would never end, which is not a problem with MM.
Posted Wed Jul 4, 2007 2:49 am
