Shadow Hunters: Who Am I?

This week I want to talk about Shadow Hunters. Shadow Hunters is a board game designed by Yasutaka Ikeda that was first published in japan in 2005 and then later released in North America in 2008. The game itself has an anime/manga style that gives the game a really cool look.

The game takes place in a small town. Players are secretly given roles each belonging to one of three factions: Shadows, which are supernatural creatures pulled from pop culture like werewolves, vampires, ghosts and the like; Hunters, which are humans attempting to take out all the Shadows; and Neutrals, which are as the name describes. Neutral characters, whom are caught up in the mix, each have their own individual win conditions.

Each player does not know the identity or faction of any other player at the table, and has to use cards, process of elimination, and guesswork to figure out who is on their team and who's working against them. The game ends when one or more players have fulfilled their win conditions, which can be as simple as killing off all the members of the enemy faction for the hunters and shadows, or in the case of the neutrals they vary and are usually more complicated. For example some neutrals simply need to survive while others actually want to die first or collect a certain number of items. At the point a player or players have fulfilled their objectives the game ends and the winners are declared, whether they are part of the same faction or even alive they can still claim victory.

Each character, along with a win condition, has a special power on their card—with the exception of one character in particular—they are all linked to that win condition and are pretty powerful on their own. The game also utilizes three decks of cards: a black deck of graveyard cards filled with mostly offensive items and there are cards that are good for shadows; a white deck of church cards with primarily defensive cards and items useful for the hunters; and lastly the green deck of hermit cards which you read then hand to another player face down, he then reads the card and if it applies to him, he does what it says. Each deck has pros and cons and players should be careful when drawing cards from the opposing factions deck...you might not like what's in there.

The game itself is very simple, you draw and play cards on your turn. Depending on where you are on the map, you can hit anyone around you that you consider an enemy. The really interesting and intricate part of the gameplay is figuring who is your ally and who is trying to kill you, which makes the green cards integral and valuable but you can never be 100% certain because you might be giving cards to the unknown.

The unknown is one of the most interesting and tricky characters of the bunch. He is the only person who is allowed to lie about the results of a green card, allowing him to choose who knows his true identity as one of the shadows. This is one of the most useful powers, allowing him to turn teammates against each other or hide from hunters. The best part is character selection is random so he may or may not even be in the game forcing people to second guess there green cards occasionally.

Shadow Hunters is a great party game, it plays up to eight and the games can take as little as fifteen minutes to as long as an hour to finish. There is little to no setup time either, so it's very pick up and play and addictive as hell. Your players will definitely want to play more than one game to try out the various characters and the expansion adds a ton more playable characters and a couple balancing items to change up the game. If you like board games I could not recommend this game more highly, it's a worthy addition to anyone's shelf.

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Ruining Friendships Since 2001

This week’s game is another of the board genre and this one’s far from boring. If you’ve ever wanted to play a game that is both fun and hair wrenchingly frustrating, you’ve come to the right place cause I brought Munchkins! Munchkins is a table top card game made by Steve Jackson Games and is the one of the most fun and infuriating game’s I have ever played. It’s a mix of shaky alliance, backstabbers, lies and treachery — friendships have been formed and destroyed by things as simple as a die roll or a card that just really fucks you over.

The rules of the game are simple: you play an adventurer and run around a dungeon busting-in doors and the first person to level ten wins, it’s just that simple. Every turn, you flip a card off the top of the door deck and check the room. Each room can contain anything from booby traps, monsters and curses to free treasure or bonus modifiers. The majority of the time though you’ll run into a monster which you have to fight using the games combat system, which is relatively simple. You tally the combined score of your bonuses and level, if that score is higher than the monsters level, you kill it, and then collect the number of treasure cards marked on the monster card from the treasure deck and gain one to two levels depending on the level of the monster.

The treasure deck is chock-full of goodies including weapons and armor — which you can use to boost your level modifier — and other fun little things to make the game interesting. The game itself is steeped in tons of Dungeons and Dragons' lore along with other table top RPG references and the fact that it doesn’t take itself seriously is one of the reasons the game is so fun. The game also uses race and class abilities based on card’s you may draw from the door deck. Each race and class has pros and cons as well as some monsters being stronger or weaker against specific ones.

The reason I consider this game to be so frustrating is because the moment you hit level nine, you obtain this giant target right on your back. Every time you try to fight something to obtain that game winning level, every single card you could possibly imagine to stop you comes flying out of the woodwork, so victory becomes a game of luck and just being the baddest, strongest man on the table. The major problem with this is that occasionally everyone will do everything in their power to stop one person from winning, then the next guy up just wins purely because no one has any cards left to stop him — so the game actually has a bit of strategy in this regard.

One of the best part’s about Munchkins is the sheer number of expansions. I’d list them all here but the website does a much better job of that. Not only are there a ton of expansions there are also tons of other games all themed after other franchises including two of my favorites: Munchkin Impossible, which has tons of James Bond and other spy action movie references and my personal favorites, Munchkin Cthulhu, with all the lovecraftian lore you can shake an insanity inducing tentacle at.

Another amazing part is that every single Munchkins game is compatible with every other one, meaning if you had game and expansion you could shuffle all the doors and all the treasures together into the nerdiest, clusterfuck of card gaming ever witnessed by man. And if that wasn't enough, they even made an expansion for that specific purpose! Calling it Munchkin blender, it mixes some really over powered cards together but it actually balances out the game pretty well.

All in all, the Munchkins series is a ton of fun; Its simple design and format make it super easy to play and teaching people is ridiculously easy. If you’re looking for a good party game, ice breaker or just a good night with some friends, I couldn’t think of a better game.

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Naughty Novices

This week’s board game is one of my favourites, and it's called Nuns on the Run. Nuns is a competitive game for 2 to 8 players but I find it's more fun if you play with at least 5 players; the game feels better and it’s more fun for the abbess and prioress player(s). The game takes place in a convent and the players are either novices or the head nuns and each has their own objectives and goals. The game setup is pretty simple: lay out the board, deal a secret wish card to each novice and a blessing card to each player.

The goal of a novice is to sneak around the convent and try to collect their secret wish. First they must find the necessary key, which is somewhere in the convent. Its location, along with your secret wish, is marked on the secret wish card. The first novice to collect both and return to her room wins. The abbess and prioress are patrolling the halls looking for any novices out after dark—if they catch enough novices equal to the number of players in the games, it's all over and the nuns win.

One of the interesting and fun aspects of the game is that it’s primarily stealth based and uses a pen and paper log system to keep track of the players' movements. The game works like this, the novices have 4 options of movement: running, walking, sneaking and standing still, each having a pro and con which is illustrated on the cards. Each turn you choose which card you want to use and play it face down, then you mark on your log what card you used and what coordinates you ended your turn on and then when everyone is ready you all flip the cards and roll a die. The die roll is to figure out how much noise your shuffling around in the dark has made; more noise means your easier to find but being sneaky and quiet means you’ve made less headway towards your goal. If you make too much noise the nuns might hear you, allowing them to veer of their path and find you.

The prioress and abbess each move along predetermined paths chosen by the player(s) from the guard path deck. The nuns see everything in front of them in a 180 degree arc, so when they patrol their predetermined paths, they can only deviate if they hear or see a novice. Any novices in their line of sight get revealed and are forced to place their player token on the board allowing the nuns to see their movements, making them easier to catch.

Once a nun catches a novice, the novice must return to her room. If she was holding her secret item, it’s confiscated and she has to run to the room and collect another one before she can win the game. She also has to keep her player token on the board until the nuns lose sight of her, at that time she can choose to remove her piece from the board or leave it and continue on her way but as soon as she does, she’s vulnerable to being caught again. It’s not always a good idea to pop out of sight and run as soon as you can.

The last mechanic are the blessing cards, these are one-time use only and give each player a slight edge—they can be used to trick a guard or to escape from one—but the guards can also use them to their advantage.

The game’s stealth mechanics are really what makes the game as fun and challenging as it is; using line of sight and the different hiding places across the map keep the game interesting and it's fast, so you’ll usually be able to knock a few rounds out in an evening pretty quickly.

I recently thought up some drinking game rules for Nuns which can also incorporate any designated drivers you may have. The rules are simply: if one of the guards sees you, take a drink; if you have to place a scritch or a vanish token, take a drink; and if a guard catches you, take a shot, but if you place any of these tokens and a guard can't see and/or catch you, they have to drink as well. If you win the game, all other players have to finish their beverage of choice. As for the driver variant, have your drivers or all around sober living friends play the role of the nuns and remove their drinking rules.

I don’t think I can recommend this game more highly. Most of the games I play are difficult for most people to pick up initially and daunting but this game is really the opposite, it's quick/easy to learn and it's tons of fun overall. It’s definitely worth picking up even if you’re not a big fan of board games.

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Paging Dr. Lucky

I figured this week I'd talk about another board game and that game is Kill Doctor Lucky. You play as Doctor Lucky's relatives and "friends" and your main goal is to kill Dr Lucky...I mean it's in the name. Think of the game like a reverse clue; instead of figuring out who the murderer was, your goal is to be the first to kill him and not be seen by any of the other house guests.

The doctor, being a doddering old man, spends most of his time pacing the halls of his home. He follows a predetermined path while you and your other murderous cohorts can move around freely. Everyone must try to cut him off in a back room or a secluded hallway, out of the eye sight of the other players, to attempt their heinous act.

Movement, whether it be for doctor Lucky or yourself, uses two different types of cards: movement cards, which allow you to move X amount of spaces or you may also move doctor Lucky; and room cards, which move you directly to the room on the card. You can play any number of cards you want per turn but you can only draw one card per turn and only if you had not played a card previously that turn. It's not always advantageous to drop your hand early on in the game but only when you're sure you can lock up the kill.

I picked up Kill Doctor Lucky while I was working at a board game shop on a whim and it turned out to be a ton of fun. It's a little slow going when you start out and you'll find the first few rounds to be a bit sluggish but once everyone gets a hang of the game, the pace picks up and the games become a lot faster. The wins can come out of nowhere sometimes, which makes the game a lot more strategy based. The game is also a great party game—it supports up to seven players and has three different ways to play, with tons of potential for house ruling and making up your own variations on the game itself.

I'd personally recommend this game to anyone; it's not a board game that's only for the die-hard gamers, its pretty family friendly and fun overall. If you can get your hands on a copy, I'd highly recommend picking it up.

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Got Any Wood?

A lot of the time in any sort of competitive event, people often will say, “It's only a game” and “You should just be having fun”, but that's when I tell them that winning is part of the fun. In a lot of games, sitting in first place is actually pretty detrimental to your cause. Unless you're running a race, partaking in some sort of team sport, or a one-on-one, all sitting in first does is give everyone else a target to mess around with. The best wins are the come-from-behind ones; but if you play it right, it only looks like you were behind the whole time.



My original thought for this came from The Settlers of Catan, but in all honesty it works for a lot of games. A few friends and I play this board game from time to time and it's always tons of fun. Catan is a pretty simple game: Everyone starts off with 2 settlements, and you must collect resources and expand your territory. Numerous objects gives a player points—such as building settlements and cities, having the largest army, even building the longest road— and the first player to reach 10 points is the winner.

The board is this sort of hexagonal mass of randomness every game. At the start, you mix up the region tiles and then just start placing them, which is cool because each game you play is different yet always the same. Each region is 1 of 5 types: Forest, Mountain, River bank, Plain, or Field. These are all linked to the resource cards: Wood, Iron, Brick, Sheep, and Wheat respectively. Each region has a number associated with it, and when a player rolls that number with the dice everyone collects that resource.



Now the easiest, and least stressful way, to win this game is by always sitting in second, and trying to get all the other players to target the leader while you sit there like a jerk. The main way you mess with people in Catan is by denying them resources and the way you do this is two-fold: You can refuse to trade with them and/or use the thief to block their regions.

The thief is this little piece on the board that blocks the production of resources for the region he is sitting on. Whenever someone rolls a 7, they are able to move the thief around to wherever they see fit. Everyone tries to cut deals when this happens, and for the most part, whoever has this little guy glued to their area for most of the game is not in a good position to win. Easily the worst part about this game though is having the ability to just hand someone else the game. Usually it happens when you don't want to see this one guy win, and you trade all your cards to another player in hopes that they can build up enough points in one turn to usurp the leader. It's a bush league move and I hate when it happens, but if you aren't a part of it, I will admit it's pretty funny.

Catan is as much about strategy as it is about luck. You can have the best places for your settlements and still lose if you aren't rolling the right numbers to collect resources. Luck is probably the best and worst part about any board game—you just can't control it but then again, you have to be good to be lucky.

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Zombocalypse

My Organ Trail blog got me thinking about other zombie games worth talking about and there was one game that popped into my head and it's not even a video game. Zombies!!! was one of the first board games I ever bought that wasn't made by Parker Brothers and was the jumping point for my foray into board gaming.

I bought the game on a whim; I love zombies and anything zombie related was amazing to me. The game isn't overly complicated and once the players get a feel for the game the pace picks up and it becomes a ton of fun. The game is for two to six players but I find its best with four. The game is pretty quick with anything more than that and ends up slowing down when you only have two people. The way to win is simple: be the first to reach the center of the helipad tile or rack up 25 zombie kills.

The "board" consists of tile cards: at the beginning of each turn the player selects a card from the stack and plays it on any legal space he wants and then adds the zombies, hearts, and bullet counters the tile specifies, if any. Each player is dealt three event cards which have varying effects and can be played either during your turn or occasionally on your opponents turn: you can mess with them, position yourself better or just to spawn an ass load of zombies.

One of the big draws to the game is the ridiculous amount of expansions it has—ten to be exact—and they're all based on a different zombie movie theme, whether it's a military base, zombie dogs, murderous clowns or just a good old fashioned mall, they all add a new level to the game and all work in tandem with one another. One of my favourite parts of the game is all the different tropes and zombie movie moments and weapons thrown into the game. Through the event cards it really gives the game that zombie movie feel and zombie fans in general will easily pick up on the references and subtle nods.

Since playing this game, I've purchased and played tons of board games, I even worked at a board game store at one point. I have to say this is definitely one of my most recommended games to board gamers and fans of the zombie genre in general. It really has a solid apocalypse survival feel and would be perfect for any zombie lover out there. The game also has tons of room for any house rules you can come up with. I'd personally recommend bumping up the kill count for the win condition because occasionally, with a lucky streak, you can get 25 kills pretty quick and easy.

The game was also ported to the XBLA and the various app stores. I've heard that they're pretty faithful to the board game but I've never picked them up myself. It also contains a single player mode where the player must fight his way to the helipad and survive all on his lonesome. All in all, if you're looking for a good game with tons of replay value and options, this is the game for you. 

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TBT - Evil Incarnate

You know how people say that if you want to ruin a friendship, then go play Monopoly? Well those people have never tried Top Shop...Monopoly's evil cousin. When I used to work at a Microplay like 8 years ago, we of course sold used games. One day my co-worker found this game, and I felt compelled to try it. I have absolutely no clue why mind you since all our lives would have been better off if this game never came into existence. It's not a bad game, but it is pure evil.

M-M-M-Mustache

It plays much the same way as Monopoly, but instead of buying land and erecting some form of lodging, you open up stores in a mall and force people to buy your wares. If the game only played out like this, then it would essentially just be a massive clone. Instead the developers introduced a point system to the game, which is where the source of all evil in this world emanates from.

Landing on a store after you roll the dice forces the player to buy something from said store (if there is any stock left). If you're lucky you'll accumulate 1 point; If you have a horse shoe nestled in your rectum, then you may get 2 points. These points can be used for any number of things from opening up a store (at random) for free to collecting X number of dollars from the bank (the Go! tile equivalent from Monopoly) where X is dependent on how many points you spend. That is all fine a dandy but unfortunately, you can also be a huge douche bag with your points: you can close people's stores at random; you can steal money, you can change someone's direction so that they start moving away from the bank and one of my personal favourites; you can do a random money exchange, which that one guy in last always does; etc.

All the stores come with their very own custodian

This game only ever comes up in conversation once every few years (yes I still own it, I have yet to burn it to ashes), mainly because you sort of forget how harmful it is to play. Someone will be like "Hey, remember Top Shop? We should totally play that this weekend". If we're smart, we say no, but if we all feel especially self loathing that week, we may agree.

My fondest memory from playing Top Shop isn't even of playing it; it was shortly after ending a game. It was probably around 2 a.m. and I had said, "So who wants to play again?", which garnered no replies. After a few moments of pure silence, I said, "I don't hear any nos". Suffice to say, we did not play Top Shop again for another few years.

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