Rowboat, Space Hulk: Death Angel, Cortex
The group that I failed to get together with yesterday (because of sleep) got together tonight, and we played some games. I showed up a bit early after work, and we played one of those games that was being demoed last Tuesday. I instantly wanted to hate it, even though it isn’t that bad. Oh, it’s not good, but it’s not terrible. It’s this weird trick-taking game…you lay out 4-12 cards (based on the suits), then each player gets the same number of cards, and goes through the line, playing cards that match the suit and try to get a high number. The game gets weird where, after you get your hand, you have to bet how many you think you’ll win. Go over, and you get some points, but also a liability that could lose you a lot of point, go under, and you lose a lot of points. First to 200 wins. It’s a weird dynamic, intriguing. Then there are these stupid one-time play cards, that let you instant-win a hand, or look at your opponent’s hand, and damn it feels like too much. It’s also a game that could obviously be played with a standard deck, but they made their own with dolphins and oars and whatnot. Okay, I’m siding on dumb here, but the betting mechanic is pretty interesting.
Got to play Death Angel with some more people, two others, which meant that we had the full complement of Space Marines, and after some fumbling with the rules, it went a lot better for the bros. Having a lot more teams to fire or activate doors and control panels really helps, and while having more guys makes the groups of genestealers pile up really quickly, we took advantage of some abilities that allowed us to stack up the aliens, and then shut them down. The fact that the blippiles are the same size late in the game no matter how many marines are in play, but they come pouring out in groups of 5, meaning that you’re traveling more often. We won after acquiring a huge pile of 17 genestealers, but pushing the button to launch them into space.
Then we played a one-shot of a RPG using the Cortex system, which I hadn’t realized was so versatile when I used it when I played the Firefly RPG. For one thing, the character creation system is fast…we had character ready to roll in five minutes. You just plugged some numbers into your attributes, some numbers into your skills, and pick some complications and an equal number of benefits, and bam, character. The conceit was the zombie apocalypse, and I played a lazy bike messenger, whose bike became the hugest liability on the planet when you are traveling in groups. It started simple in the suburbs, with a kid biting his mom and then it escalates greatly (my character vomits), then we went to a hospital and found a couple of survivors (my character vomits), and then we were on the road, heading north out of the city. There was this odd moment where we were free of zombies for about two hours as we calmly and quietly made our way to a cabin in the woods (my character stepped up and rode his bike to get a tire), but eventually the owner of the cabin showed up, and the small town nearby became overrun and we had to handle it. (my character vomits). I had to go home right then, so the bike messenger is probably dead now, but it was an interesting time, especially playing a character that is hugely uninterested in fighting zombies, or even helping.
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