Pros

• Price Point
• Print and Play
• Using a Deck of Cards
• Another Roll and Write
• Solo

Cons

• Another Roll and Write
• Looks Like a Lot Going On
• 4 Player Max

The Page

I’ve backed a lot of Print and Play roll and write games. And while this is not only a print and play, this page is clearly done by someone who is more than just that. The layout of the page is nice, and the graphic design works well.

And, because Fliptown is just a roll and write game with no minis, you get to the game play immediately. That means that I can scroll only a little on the page. I really appreciate that.

And there is more thought than that to the page. But it’s more thoughts to the game. In particular, a custom deck of cards, dry erase boards. Those are things that I kind of expect now in a roll and write game. I have a laminator when a roll and write doesn’t come with dry erase, but that should be standard at this point. Yes, it might cost a little bit more, but also, you don’t need to print a stack of 100 sheets.

The Game

The game itself, I will say it looks intense and like there is a lot to do in the game. The board is basically split into four parts. And you can maybe guess why that is the case. It’s split into four so that you use a part depending on the suit that you pick. That makes sense and is going to give the roll and write more of a thematic feel.

So on a round it looks like every player goes at once, and important thing for me in a roll and write. They use the three cards that are flipped over. One for the suit, the part of the board you go to. Another for the number, which will be what you activate. And the final one is building up a poker hand? I don’t know what the poker hand is for.

Back or Brick

I really like my roll and write games, so Fliptown is a Back for me. And I think that it can be a good back especially if you do the print and play version. I did bump up my pledge to a physical copy though. The reason, I love my roll and write games.

But for $5, you can print everything off, you just need a standard deck of cards for the random element. That is an amazing deal. I’m a big proponent of print and play roll and write games. Granted, I need to print off several of them and start to play them. But for $5, I get a game where I can help support someone’s passion project. And while Fliptown is bigger and I expect to see it in retail, if you just want to try sooner, that $5 pledge level is amazing.

Is Fliptown a Back or Brick for you?

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/zombicide-undead-or-alive?ref=profile_saved_projects_live

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Pros

• Proven company
• Proven game system
• Wild West Theme
• Fun Parody Characters
• Campaign and Scenario based

Cons

• FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)
• Shipping

The Page

I know people have issues with CMON for reasons. They drive a very hard FOMO Kickstarter campaign. And that is a knock on it for me. When I look at the page, it is plastered with Kickstarter exclusives, which are cool. But if someone finds out about it later, generally those minis or things are sold on the secondary market for a massive premium. So Zombicide: Undead or Alive really wants you to back it now and get in on it.

The page itself, like most CMON pages is laid out well. They are going to show off their minis, which is fine. That is what they are known for, and the minis look great.

The Game

The game itself is a known system. They’ve done Zombicide 1st and 2nd Edition. Zombicide: Black Plague, Zombicide: Dawn of the Dead, and Zombicide Invaders. This is a dice chucking monster fighting game. You run around trying to kill zombies, complete objectives and get the hell out of Dodge. And with the iterations they have improved upon the game to some extent most of the times, so the game play now should be better than before.

I also like that in the Steam Punk expansion is adding in a campaign to the game. I’m not sure how much there is campaign in other Zombicide games, but I like that there are just scenarios you can play but also campaigns as well.

Back or Brick

I’m torn right now on if I back this one or not. I feel like I’ll end up backing it because of the old west zombie thing. This game is a Back for me. I know that a lot of people this might be a hard one to swing. The cost isn’t cheap and the shipping can be even more expensive if you are in certain parts of the world. But I think this game is going to be good dice chucking fun, and I feel like it’d be a nice addition to my collection, kind of go into it with the Village Attacks pledge that I have coming eventually.

How about for you, is Zombicide: Undead or Alive a back or a brick for you?

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The idea for this campaign is clearly the wild west, we’re looking to create something that feels less like high fantasy and more like cattle rustling and duels at high noon. And, borrowing a little bit from the Lord of the Rings, the people mining for gold have dug to deep. And now monsters are pouring out of the mines and troubling the towns and villages out in the wild.

The players can start out with some smaller things, some cattle going missing, accusations and weird occurrences happening down by the mine. I’d almost give it another worldly vibe to it, to borrow a little bit from the board game Shadows of Brimstone.

Now, you have a couple of ways you could go for the bad guys, you have have the mines leading into the underdark and going so deep for some special magical material has caused them to disturb the residents down there and get them to fight back. Or, I think most interestingly, make it the Gith. The reason the Githyanki and Githzerai are more interesting is because you wouldn’t expect them. But they live in a limbo area and almost have a pirate vibe to them, so give them a stagecoach, train robbing vibe and they are out there to get this magical materials that makes magic much more common. Almost an Eberron style where there are trains, people have their wands which is a common weapon that can just sling six charges of something like a six shooter.

So as the players dig deeper they find out that what they thought was happening isn’t actually it. The Githyanki and Githzerai are certainly causing issues as their magical materials are being grabbed from the mine, but what the materials are being used for is now being called into question both by the Githyanki and Githzerai but also by the people who run the mines and give the players a mystery of what is happening there.

This unravels a big conspiracy that leads all the way to some other monster who is the real monstermind behind the mines and who is getting these magical materials in order to invade limbo and take out the Githyanki and Githzerai and make them into mindless drones, in fact, some sort of massive mind flayer would make a lot of sense here as the Gith do not like Mind Flayers.

Finish the campaign with some sort of epic western battle, the mind flayer is coming to town for a showdown at high noon, but the players don’t have a shot with a direct confrontation, so their only hope is to intercept the flayer while they are still on the train. And if you don’t want to do a mind flayer, do something like a vampire or someone who can glamour or mind control their way into the hearts and minds of the people.

That could be where you wrap up the campaign, but now that you’re touching limbo and the outer reaches of the worlds and planes because of the mine, and now that the magical material has such value, you can even have a bigger bad come after it. Maybe while all of this is going down and the players are dealing with the big bad mind flayer or vampire, there’s a cult that suddenly springs up with a charismatic Rakshasa as it’s head who is working on summoning something even more powerful from the outer edges of the multiverse into the world to rule it all and for the Rakshasa to rule under it. So similar feeling to the first part of the campaign, but different in that instead of going out somewhere like the vampire or mind flayer was planning on doing, it’s trying to bring something here, and even if something happens to the Rakshasa, it will be back.

So what do you think about it, is this a campaign that you’d play in or run? What part stands out to you as the most interesting?

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Now, that could be less exciting, because there are a lot of generic themes out there, and a lot of games that are using themes over and over again. Especially now with copyrights not being extended to kingdom come, there are more works that are now public domain. A few years ago Sherlock Holmes became public domain and HP Lovecrafts work some time before that.

So what are some of my favorite themes on board games?

Epic Fantasy –
Super generic, but I really do enjoy a good fantasy game. Especially since a lot of them have a better developed story than most. Now it helps that I’m a big fantasy fan, so I can quickly understand what is going on with the various fantasy tropes and it allows me to get quickly into the story being told. Games like Gloomhaven and Legends of Andor do a good job of baking story into the actual game play themselves. I think what I like about the fantasy theme on board games is that it gives me a bit of that feeling of playing an RPG in a lot of the games and I can make my decisions like I am that hero. In a lot of ways it scratches my itch to play an RPG when I can’t be in a game as a player or as the GM.

Lovecraftian –
I did a big board game battle post about all of the Fantasy Flight games that I’ve played with the HP Lovecraft world theme on them. I’m a bit surprised with how main stream Lovecraft is in board games, but it works in most of the cases. I will say that it gets slapped onto a lot of games that don’t need it. Like in Unspeakable Words, you’re just doing a pretty standard word game, but it has the Lovecraftian theme and cute Lovecraftian artwork on it. Now, that’s fine because it takes a game that wouldn’t have artistic direction and gives it some, but it’s kind of silly. Then there are games like Arkham Horror, Mansions of Madness, and Arkham Horror LCG that are just steeped in theme. Those games seek to make you feel like an investigator of some background who is really going through this world, dealing with the monsters, progressing the story, looking for clues, and sometimes dealing with the events of the normal world. It also does a good job of setting an aesthetic that is generally pleasing to play in but also being a horror focused game. It really doesn’t rely on blood and guts like some horror games would.

Sci-Fi –
Another super generic option, like epic fantasy, but I figured I should say more than just Star Wars. While the Star Wars games are great that I’ve played, Imperial Assault and Star Wars: Rebellion, there are other sci-fi games out there that I’ve liked as well. It’s interesting because you have a wide variety of scope with games in the Sci-Fi genre. Games like Star Wars: Rebellion, Battlestar Galactica, and Cosmic Encounters are planet level Sci-Fi games. And while Cosmic Encounters doesn’t feel like quire as grand a scope as Rebellion, it’s still a bigger game in some ways. Compare that to Imperial Assault and Clank! In! Space!, those games have a focus that is much more on a smaller part of the world. You’re on a planet or in a space ship dealing with things, but you aren’t as worried about the whole cosmos. Having that variety is what makes Sci-Fi such a strong genre to me.

Now, there are so many more genres out there, but you’re not going to have that much issue finding games in these genres, and I tend to gravitate towards them. There is one that I want to see more of though.

Weird West –
I really enjoy the weird west setting. Some might say that it’s a bit Lovecraft mixed with the wild west, and that’s probably pretty accurate. But when people say a Lovecraft game, that’s generally meaning 1920’s and Arkham area. Weird west can be a lot more than just that, and I like Shadows of Brimstone for that, though I’ve only gotten it to the table once. I need to go back and fix the monsters and hopefully stream that game at some point in time so I can actually play it some more. But the game is interesting and has some cool big moments to it.

Mythological –
Now, some might say this is part of fantasy, but I think I would qualify it differently than “Epic Fantasy”. Theming of games like Lords of Hellas, which I haven’t played or Santorini which is really an abstract game, but has the Greek mythology added to it, that’s a theme that I can get behind. What makes it generally pretty thematic is that all the deities have their own powers which really do track with the mythology that you’re in. Even if you aren’t going the standard Greek, there are now a lot of games with Norse Mythology. Blood Rage on the cards you draft does a really good job of creating that mythological feel for each deity that you can draft cards from. In fact, those cards are where you really get the theme of Norse Mythology in Blood Rage.

I could go on talking about more themes in board games. There are games with a heavily influenced theme by Japan and/or Anime. There are games t hat have cool adventuring themes that give you the Indiana Jones feel. There are a few themes that I’ll generally avoid though. If a game has the “trading in the Mediterranean” theme, that’s a hard pass for me. I’m also kind of done with the zombie theme at this point. I do like Dead of Winter, so I’m not opposed to it, but a zombie themed game isn’t all that interesting to me most of the time.

What are some themes you like in board games. What are themes that you want to see more of in board games?

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Imagine yourself in the wild west, you’re in a small town with a saloon, sheriff’s office, a blacksmith, and it’s a mining town. The mine itself produces a mysterious magical stone, but as you dig deeper into the mine, you come across some crazy creatures that you’ve never seen before. They have tentacles and look like the things from your nightmares, but you kill them or run away from them and push deeper into the mine until you see a shimmer up ahead, what is that up there? You turn to the US Marshall with you and say, “Well, we’ve come this far, there’s no going back now.” You plunge through the shimmer and find yourself in a mysterious land that is like nothing you’ve seen before and there is a giant monster standing in front of you, larger than any others that you’ve seen. “Maybe this was a bad idea.” And you draw your six shooter.

This is Shadows of Brimstone. It’s a cooperative dungeon (or in this case mine) crawl game that is set in the weird west. You can take one of four archetypal roles from the Wild West and you form a band that heads down into the mines to try and keep the darkness and the monsters from escaping. I’d describe this game as D&D lite. There’s still plenty of dice chucking to be done, and you have a chance of facing off against monsters in every room of the mine, but you don’t need a dungeon master to tell the story. In fact, you don’t even have to use one of the adventures that the game comes with, you could simply go down into the mine and battle, or you could play it as a campaign and keep your characters from game to game. Shadows of Brimstone has a great look and theme to it where what you do does seem to fit into the game not that the theme was put around what you are doing.

So, now after saying all of that, let me say that I’ve played this game once thus far, but I do want to play it more, and ideally a lot more.

This game, to me, was a nice way to be able to do combat and kind of mess around in a dungeon/mine type environment as compared to normally running a game. When I played we didn’t get too heavily into the role playing aspect of it (though you definitely can), instead we were learning the rules and figuring out how all the mechanics work. I think in future playing of this we’ll start to dig into more of the story aspect to it. And that is actually how the game wants to be played. In the core rules (there is a separate book with the adventures) it gives you a little adventure to go on, this allows you to figure out the mechanics without really jumping too far into the game. I’m excited to take a deeper dive into the game once I get the minis glued back together again (glue gun does not work, get model glue for model airplanes/cars) and we can find a consistent group of people to try it with (or even a semi-consistent group). Besides being able to play in an RPG type of game (or dungeon crawl really), I also really enjoy the theme, all of the characters are thematic, the weird monsters thing is something I always love, and the game feels the right weight. By that I mean that it doesn’t seem like too much of a slog to play, but it doesn’t seem like there isn’t any strategy to it, which we figured out when we died at the end of the game.

Talking about components/quality wise, it seems like it’s good quality, and all of the card board pieces seem like they are solidly made. The cards are nice, which is great because there are a ton of them. The one complaint I would have is with the minis, they actually went together quite quickly, but now with so many minis being 3d printed or coming in a single piece, I just wish this game were a bit newer so that they could have done that. Still, it wasn’t hard to get the models out of the die cast sheets and gluing them went fast and will go fast again, if only I had used the right glue to start out with. Another thing about this game is that I wish it had come with about 10 plastic bags, no real reason not to just drop them into each game. We have sandwich bags so it’s easy enough for me to get all of the cardboard pieces into their own bags for now, but I’ll probably end up getting a cross stitch thread plastic box to store and sort them in, but those things are cheap and really nice, it would have just been nice to have it’s own bag.

Overall, I like this game. While the rules seem daunting and I’m sure we weren’t playing all of the rules correctly, they actually read quickly and they make a lot of sense. It allows everyone to play and not have to have someone who is running the game. It’s cool to look at and it’s cool that the mine doesn’t always come out the same way each time. There are plenty of other fun mechanics that make the game harder as you go. I don’t know that this game would be for everyone, it has so many pieces that it seems intimidating just looking at the box.

Overall Grade: B+

Casual Grade: C+

Gamer Grade: B

(So, I know that doesn’t average out to B+, but I think this game kind of hits that curve where it’s probably fine for everyone to play and that if you’re super serious and play with other super serious players, it might be a little light for you strategy wise, if you are casual, it might be intimidating, but it’s a good game to blend groups.)

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