Over the past couple weekends, I’ve had the pleasure of actually playing some board games. Not for playtest. Not for review. But just for fun. And yes, they were fun.
Last week I finally broke out Mall of Horror, the “zombies in a mall” game from Asmodee. It’s a very European design, with minimal dice, lots of voting, and a straight “high score wins” resolution mechanic. It’s also dripping with buckets of theme, so it’s all good. We played with only three players, and it was still fun; I imagine it could only be better with more players. With all the voting and flesh-eating, the game could accurately be described as, “Like ‘Survivor,’ but with zombies.” (I’m voting you off the island and into the jaws of the undead.)
To celebrate the long Memorial Day weekend, I played a couple games of BattleLore from Days of Wonder, using their new “Call to Arms” rules. The new rules add time and effort to the setup, but certainly ensure near-infinite replayability to the scenarios. As usual, my opponent completely crushed me in the first game, but he got unlucky the second game (any time you get goblins on your army, you’re unlucky) and I was able to squeak out a win.
After our epic BattleLore games, it was nice to blow through a Heroscape scenario in 20 minutes or so. Small scenario map, lots of rahged units, and a steadily rising “cloud of poison gas” made for a lot of carnage. Brutal, plastic carnage.
