After Action Report – Halloween Game Night @ Comic Quest – October 31, 2013

This Thursday I went to Comic Quest for Thursday night gaming again.  They had advertised a Halloween themed event and since my regular haunt was not doing anything for the holiday, I decided I would check the Comic Quest event out.

There were Halloween themed decorations set up in the game room and they were giving away candies with the store logo on them which was kind of fun and in getting into the Halloween spirit.  Unfortunately the attendance was not all that great there were around 15 people at the event with 2 – 3 games being played at any time.  This is lower that I have seen it on a regular Thursday event at the store, which I kind of expected because of the holiday.

I was able to play four games during the event.  All of them were horror themed to go with the theme.

The first game was Last Night on Earth.  Last Night on Earth is one of the zombie apocalypse games that have been coming out of over the last few years.  It is one of the few that came out before The Walking Dead television show became a hit so it was a game that was trying to stand on its own merits versus getting on the zombies are cool bandwagon.

The players divide up into teams one player controls the zombies and the other players are survivors.  The players then pick a random scenario and the survivors try to complete the objective while the zombies try to stop them.

Game play is not very difficult.  The players move or search for equipment, exchange items with another player, make ranged attacks, and make hand to hand attacks.  The zombies have a similar turn in that they can spawn more zombies, move and then attack the players.

The scenario we were playing was to kill 15 zombies before the end of the night.  The survivors were at a disadvantage as they are in all of these games.  They start with no equipment and the zombies are on them before they can start to get anything of any use.  We tried to get something that would help us but we lost one of the survivors by the second turn and a second one soon after.  At that point the scenario was over with the survivors losing, but we decided to keep playing to the death of the last survivor since it went so quickly.  Even by fighting to the bitter end we were only able to seven zombies before the last player died.  This was a loss for me.

The second game was Zombie Dice.  Zombie Dice is a fairly light game of the roll and shout variety.  In this press your luck game, the players take turns rolling an ever increasing dice pool trying to roll as many brains as possible and avoid shotgun blasts.  The player may end his turn at any time and score the brains that they have.  If they roll 3 shotgun blasts before ending their turn they do not score any points.  The first player to 13 brains wins the game.

The game started out well.  I used my standard strategy for press your luck games which is go only until you are short of doom and end your turn.  In the case of Zombie Dice I decided I would stop my turn once I got 2 shotgun blasts.  It served me well.  In the first round I got 3 brains.  The second round I was able to roll 5 more brains.  The third round I was only able to get to 10 brains which had me worried because I was tied for first at that point.  In the fourth round I was able to win the game by rolling 5 more brains for a total of 15 brains.

Next up was a game called Shadow Chasers.  In Shadow Chaser, the players are divided into two to three groups:  Hunters, Shadows, or Neutrals.  At the beginning of the game no one knows who is on what side.    During the play of the game the players need to find out who is part of which faction and achieve their faction’s goal.

A game turn goes as follows.  There is a board set up with six spaces.  On each of the spaces a card is placed with the number 2 – 10 in them.  Each card has a action associated with it which normally consists of taking a card from one of the deck or doing or healing damage.  On their turn each player rolls a 1d4 and a 1d6 and totals the number.  The number rolled determines which space the player goes to.  The player takes the action and then if they player is in a space that is adjacent to another player he may attack them.  Once the players reach their objective, which is usually to kill off the other side, the game ends.

This was another good outing for me.  I was able to figure out who my partner was fairly quickly so I was able to concentrate on taking out the Shadow faction.  It started to get hairy about halfway through the game.  My partner was on his last leg and I was not doing much better.  I was able to steal a weapon from one of the other players and start dealing more damage.  Plus I was able to heal all of my damage.   Unfortunately my partner got killed shortly after that and it was two on one.  At that point I went on the attack and was able to take out my two opponents and win the game.

The final game of the night was Ghost Chase.  In Ghost Chase the players are ghost hunters trying to find a ghost, played by another player before the night is over.  The player can move through the house by using doors and other access points.  In the meantime the ghost player can move into any adjacent room with the only limit being they can only go into a room one time during the game.  The players do not know where the ghost is except every 4 – 6 turns when the ghost must reveal themselves.  The game ends when the players find the ghost or when the night is over.

We played the game with optional cards that allowed the ghost to cheat twice during the game and reuse a room that had already been in.  This actually made the game harder on the hunters of which I was one.  We were able to corner the ghost a couple of times only to have the cheat go into effect and lose track of it.  Even with our best efforts we were not able to get close to the ghost a third time and lost the game.

My stats for the event were:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Last Night On Earth	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	-		2.00
Zombie Dice	1	1	-	-	-	-	-			1.00
Shadow Hunters	1	1	-	-	-	-	-			1.00
Ghost Chase	1	-	1	-	-	-	-			2.00
Totals	4	2	2	-	-	-	-		-	1.50

 If You Are Interested In Purchasing The Games Mentioned Here: