You may be asking why am I comparing two completely different games? Well when I played the two games I got a similar feeling from the two. I’m also doing this because I like to compare two games. I’ve done this once with Citadels vs. San Juan. I was going to compare Mall of Horror with the obvious game to compare it to; Lifeboats or maybe even intrigue but that wouldn’t be quite as fun would it.
Two games in a nut shell
Pirate’s Cove
The object of the game is to be the most famous Pirate of the Caribbean by “navigating shrewdly, fighting recklessly, and plundering mercilessly. You will gain fame by winning fights, burying gold and treasure, and bragging about you exploits and the Tavern.” That’s what the rule book says and it’s pretty close to the truth. I think they should have gone with “infamy points and not fame, infamy seems more piratey”.
You accomplish these goals by secretly choosing each round to sail to one of six islands that is printed on a super seceret pirates wheel of island choosing where 5 of these islands have a treasure card on them that are turned face up on the begging of each of the 12 rounds that comprise the game. The treasure cards can give you fame, gold, treasure, or tavern cards. In addition to this each island gives you something for being on it for example cannon island lets you upgrade your ships cannons, tavern island lets you buy more tavern cards, and treasure island lets you bury your treasure and gold to give you more fame points.
In these navigational phases if two or more players secretly choose to go to the same island then they fight it out for the right to plunder the island. The winner gains fame and the loser must sail to pirate’s cove to repair his ship but he also gets cards to repair his fractured ego I guess.
Mall of Horror
The object of the game is to survive a never ending swarm of zombies that have taken over the local shopping mall. In the game each player is given 3 character tokens (A pinup girl worth 7 points, a tough-guy worth five points, and a gun man worth 3 points) that are going to travel from room to room trying to escape being eaten by zombies. They do this by secretly choosing where they are going to go each round on super seceret room choosing wheels. If they choose a room where the combined strength of the room is greater than the amount of zombies they can fight off then players in the room choose which character will be fed to the hungry horde of doom. They do this by voting on the same wheel that they use to choose rooms. The parking lot gives you items to fight off the zombies and the security room lets you see in advance what room the zombies are going to. The winner of the game is the players with the most points as each of the three characters are worth different points.
The Showdown
I’ll be judging on 5 different categories.
1. Presentation – components, theme, instruction manuals, and overall feel of the game.
2. Game Play – How fun it is to play, how much down time there’s between turns, player interactions, and uniqueness.
3. Investment – The average actual dollar cost of the game compared to what you get, how flexible is the game for small and large groups, how long does the game take to play compared to how long it keeps your interest.
4. Strategy – How deep is the game, after playing it can you adopt new strategies to try and win the game.
5. Overall – Taking in to account everything about the game and not just the things I’ve previously judged on.
Presentation
Pirate’s Cove
Pirate’s Cove is a Days of Wonder game and like all there games is dripping with theme, has great components, and the mechanics of the game mirror the theme very well. You get 5 different colored pirate ships and two black legendary pirate ships that make up your playing pieces. These go onto a wonderfully illustrated board along with a fame marker that marches around the edge of the board where each players score can be marked. The board has 7 islands illustrated on it that you can visit during the game and five of these islands will have 12 treasure cards on them that players can win by plundering the islands. The Tavern Island has the Tavern Cards on it along with treasure cards. The tavern cards can be various cards that can bolster up the defenses of your ship, give you power ups that you can play in a fight, special parrot cards that boost your ships abilities even further, or secret fame points that you’ll revel at the end of the game for that surprise win. Each player also gets a ship mat where they keep the stats of their ship. Everything here is top notch. The rules are clear and well illustrated, you also get a summary card and each Tavern Card is well explained.
The only issues that I have with the presentation of the game are very minor. I would have liked to see different styles of pirate ships ala Knights of the Round Table. For example the green pirate ship could be the Asian pirates and would have a different looking ship and ship matt. I also feel that it lacks a real pirate feel in that you never plunder merchant ships. I know that pirates plundered islands but I’m pretty sure they did most of their thevin’ by praying on defenseless merchant ships. You don’t do any of this. Also you never really take on the legendary pirate because it’s far too dangerous and the risk out weighs the gain especially in the begging of the game.
Mall of Horror
Mall of Horror is also dripping with theme, great components, and mechanics that mirror the games theme. The illustrations are top notch and the attention to detail is amazing. I love how the items that you get look like Polaroid’s and some have a bloody finger print on them. The game is very dark and disturbing even to the point where some reviewers have said they went too far. However you can’t go too far to get your game’s theme across. I would have liked to see it pushed to the limit. Each player gets wooden character markers of different colors and a voting wheel to match the color. The voting wheel lets players choose there room each round and lets them vote for a player or themselves. The board is nicely illustrated with 6 different rooms that you can go to, trying to out maneuver the zombies. You get a security badge for the player voted head of security and a box that hide the dice which show where the brain hunters are going to end up each round.
My main beef with the presentation is that the characters are all basically the same thing with different names and costumes. Like you took the same person and dressed the person up to look differently; ranging from a MIB/FBI getup to a redneck back to a sporty/jock theme. On top of that the character illustrations don’t match the box art, cards, board, and every thing else and feel very out of place. It’s sad because everything else is so very good. Some theories are that they had to do something cartoony to make the game less gloomy but your constantly voting on who is going to be sent off to be eaten alive, sticking in some cartoony character markers take away from that.
The Winner : Mall of Horror
This isn’t by a land slide, I was going to give it a tie but I think that MoH just pushes the envelope and PC has been done before. MoH does a great job taking you into a very dark world where the plight of the characters just builds and builds. Great job done here.
Game Play
Pirates Cove
So when all these components come together does it a great game make? Yes, and here’s why: Each player chooses to customize their ship at the begging of the game. I tend to favor sails as it lets me fire my cannons first while my brother tends to favor numbers so he goes for cannons and crew, and one of my friends tends to favor a balanced ship.
You then get to see the six treasures for the first round knowing that the legendary pirate is on tavern island. Here is where the game gets very interesting: You always have a few factors to think about when you are sailing to an island. You always want to get a treasure worth plundering but you also need to go to some islands to plus up your ship and then on top of that you have to think about where the other players are planning on going. You don’t want to go where a stronger player is going but sometimes you have no choice. I’ve played the game being the strongest boat a float and I would try to go where the other players were going to blow them away to Davy Jones’ locker and generally make it hard for them to win. So you take in all these factors then secretly decide where to go.
The last game I played I desperately needed cannons which was at a 2 or the default location. This meant that I could only fire 2 cannons even though I had 4 crew almost 5. The problem was that the best treasure kept showing up on cannon island and if I set sail for cannon island many other players would probably go there too and I would be blown to smithereens because they would just target my cannons and 2 hits later I’d be sailing back to pirates cove to lick my wounds. But I really needed cannons so I risked it over and over again but kept getting shot down. Normally this would make me want to pack a game up and never play it again but the game was still fun and I enjoyed losing hard-core.
Mall of Horror
The main and obvious difference between the two games is that Mall of Horror is a negotiation game and Pirate’s Cove isn’t. Everything in Mall of Horror revolves around voting. You vote for everything. Players randomly place their 3 characters to start the game rolling 2 D6 and choosing which one they want to use for their placement. Then players in the security room vote for who gets to be the head of security for the round. Only the players with characters will vote unless there’s a tie and then all vote. In my experiences playing the game one player will almost always have a gunman (he’s vote counts as 2) or they have 2 characters in the security room. Most players in my group want to be in the security room to start because there’s a big advantage to seeing where the zombies are going and you have a potential to start losing the game after the first round.
The players in the parking lot then vote to see who gets the items and then the head of security moves one of his tokens then each other player uses his wheel to choose where they are going. Now here is where the game gets interesting: You know that players will move going around clockwise from the head of security. This is important because every room has a maximum capacity. So if the head of security makes a b-line for the clothing store, it only can hold one more person, and you will move second it’s normally not a good idea to choose the clothing store because if it gets filled up you are banished to the parking lot. This is important because when the zombies come to any location other than the parking lot they can be held off if their numbers are less then the total “power” of the room they surround. For example if there’s 2 zombies out side the clothing store and just one pin-up she’s a goner but if you throw in a tough guy with her (he counts as 2 people when it comes to holding off zombies) you have a power of 3 and both characters will live another day. The parking lot however won’t help you and someone will die for each zombie placed there. You continue doing this until all the characters are in the same room, or if there are four or less characters left alive.
The game does get shaken up a bit because you can get items in the parking lot that will help you fight off zombies, hide, or runaway. The cards do a variety of things that greatly help a player.
- Weapons, such as a chainsaw or grenade, will kill one or two zombies at a location.
- Threat cards give a player an extra vote.
- Security Cameras will allow a player to look at the dice rolled, just like the Security Chief.
- Hardware adds one person to a room for when comparing the people's number to the zombies'.
- Sprint allows a player to move to a room of their choice during the movement phase.
- Hidden allows a player to not be thrown out in a zombie vote, but they can't vote either.
A quick aside
Before I get to who I think the winner for game play is I feel like I need to explain why I think these games are similar.
1. Both game boards are comprised of six locations that a player must secretly choose to go to each round using a voting wheel.
2. One of the locations will give a player special cards that will help them fight off zombies/pirates/zombie pirates.
3. You’re choice very much depends on the game state and each players current state in the game.
4. The winner of the game isn’t normally the person that got the stuff but the person who ran into the fewest confrontations.
5. There’s normally at least one location that players will not choose to go to because there’s too many zombies or there’s a legendary pirate there.
6. Even if there is many zombies or a legendary pirate a player may have the right cards to be able to take on the zombie/pirate.
7. Even if you play your very best the dice might just have it in for you.
That said lets talk about the game play winner and why.
The Winner: Pirate’s Cove
The funny thing is I went into this showdown sure that I would choose Mall of Horror as the game play winner. I like MoH a lot and I’ve had some very fun times. I like negotiation games and at the same time I hate them. I like them because I like talking my way out of things and searching for a way I can manipulate the situation better to suite me. I hate them when people don’t want to align their alliance with me and side up with a sworn enemy. So if you like negotiation games you’ll like MoH if you don’t you probably won’t like it too much. However you may be surprised.
Pirates Cove wins here because it’s a lot of fun and if you don’t like one aspect of the game like the secret choosing of where you’re going you’ll probably like different aspect like collecting tavern cards or battling it out on the high seas.
Investment
Pirate’s Cove
Pirates Cove runs about 40-50 dollars and can be played with 3-5 players. I’ve never played with anything other than 4 but I’m sure that 4 is its sweet spot. I might be wrong. You do get a lot of cards and a lot of stuff for your buck. It plays in 90 mins give or take a little. As games wrap up they start to drag a little as one player is clearly in the lead and there may not be much you can do to catch up.
Mall of Horror
It’s going to cost you about 35 – 40 bones and can play with 3-6 players. I’ve played it with all the combinations and find 5 is the best but all combinations work well as with 3 players each player gets a little girl in addition to their other characters. It plays in about 60+ min and the game doesn’t drag in fact the pressure builds and builds. I love the fact that even if you die in the game and get eliminated you still vote in ties and you get to exact some revenge because you get to place a zombie any where you want on the zombie round! That’ll show them for voting you off the island.
Winner: Mall of Horror
I think it’s a clear winner here because it really meets the criteria well. Plays quick, accommodates many and few, doesn’t cost too much, and it definitely doesn’t drag as there is no real down time because everyone is pretty much taking their turn at the same time.
Strategy
Pirate’s Cove
I can see there’s a lot of different things you can try to do here to come out the victor. You can plus your ship up in different ways. You can try to avoid conflict, you can try to instigate conflict, you can try to win through treasure cheats, gold, or just straight VP. There is much depth in a simple game with a fairly simple format. There is some luck involved in the sea battles. You could roll terribly but strategy is knowing there’s luck and correctly playing the odds. I hate when people see dice in a game and immediately think that it’s going to revolve around luck and they have to make a burnt offering to the luck god if they’re going to have any chance on winning.
Mall of Horror
Your mouth is your greatest ally in this game. Knowing how to negotiate will make all the difference here. However, you don’t have to be a used car salesman to win this game as there are other things you can do to win. You can try to get item s from the parking lot and give them to the right player. You can work hard to become the head of security and then you can do things as head of security to throw off the other players. There’s a lot more to this game than what meets the eye.
Winner: Pirate’s Cove
PC is the type of game that I’ll want to play several times differently trying to find out what works best. Should I place more importance on my sails so I can always shoot first of runaway if needed? Should I try and get more cannons and crew so I’ll always fire five cannons and have the numbers on my side. Is it better to go with the treasure with 2 fame points or 3 treasure chests? I think there’s many small things in the game that can make all the difference.
Overall Winner: Mall of Horror
After thinking a great deal about the two games and after writing this review I’m kind of surprised I choose Mall of Horror. I sing praises of both games but if someone was to ask me which I thought they should buy I would tell them Mall of Horror because it just has a uniqueness. Mall of Horror is dark and forboading, it gives you a good feeling of pending doom and the feeling that you’re in a mall overrun with brain-munchers. And while I understand the irony that I’m directly comparing it to another game there isn’t really a good comparison. Not with standing I really should first ask the fellow, do you like negotiation game? If he says no, a big no, then I’ll say get Pirates Cove.
Hell get them both as they both rock.
Posted Wed Sep 19,2007 11:59 pm
