Last Night On Earth

With that game lost, I moved on to the zombie survival game, Last Night On Earth from Flying Frog Porductions. Now, I've played Zombies!!!, but I feel that this game does it better, and it's just packed with options.

The map is a random setup with various buildings from the town including: the high school, the hospital, the police station, gun shop, a mansion, and many others. There are 8 characters, 4 of which will play, with 1 or 2 zombie players. The object of the game is for the townsfolk to last the night (20 turns), or for the zombies to eat them. Fair enough. There are also advanced game rules and scenarios that create differences from the basic game. There are event cards for both the townsfolk heroes and the zombies, and equipment to be found in buildings like: pistols, shotguns, meat cleavers, gasoline cans, lighters, first aid kits, etc. While a townsfolk with a weapon definitely has an edge over a single zombie, there are 14 zombies on the board, and they will respawn in various places. Also, many of the zombie actions cards can give a combat bonus, a burst of speed, curse a hero, and other deadly events.

Everyone had a lot of fun, and the trash talking zombie players had us pretty nervous for most of the game. Now, as this was the first time any of us had played, we weren't 100% on the rules and made one biggish mistake. I, with several items in my hand, asked how much my character could carry. A quick glace at the rules from the game's owner didn't find anything, so he said unlimited equipment in play. For future reference, the limit is 4 items, and its on page 12. Anyhow, that meant that we were all decked out with gear, and burning through the hero deck pretty quickly. It didn't really change my actions much, as the only gear I used throughout the game were the cards I started with (my trusty pistol killed quite a few zeds and never ran out of ammo), however a few of the other heroes, without trusty guns and lucky ammo rolls, were just lobbing stuff at the zombies left right and center, and we began to feel fairly unthreatened by the end due to our unlimited supplies, and some poor decisions on the zombie players side. That being said, the zombies won in the end by playing a card that discarded the last few cards of our deck, forcing a zombie win, even though most of us were unhurt (which the Hero players felt to be a lame win).

As for the game, I was Sheriff Anderson (who starts play with a gun! Awesome!), and as the police station wasn't in play, I started in the center of town with Jenny the farm girl (the farmhouse also not being in play) surrounded by zombies. We decided to make a run for the high school, as there were fewer zeds on that side of the map, and my son started over there. This unfortunately left nurse Becky to fend for herself in the hospital, and it looked touch and go there for her for the first few turns. Anyhow, we cleared out the school, and began scavenging for stuff while Becky made her way across town. From the windows and roof of the school, we sniped down the zombies pursuing her, but she didn't join us, telling us that our idea of sticking together and holding out in the school was a death trap idea. But the zombie players seemed to be taking there sweet time in coming for us, so I stayed in the school with my son and we pretty much shot down anything that came our way. Jenny hung out for a while, but getting bored ran out with her chainsaw seeking combat. That’s where things were at when that zombie card finished the game.

As you can probably tell from the length of this post as compared to the other two games, I really loved Last Night On Earth. Good game and it definitely puts the fear into the hero players as long as they're following the equipment rules properly. The zombie players, despite their lack of brain eating success, also had a great time, pretty much oow-ing, ahh-ing, and maniacally laughing at every card they drew and talking a lot of trash. I plan on buying it myself sometime.