Boardgaming 2021: minis are back, baby!

Games
1550

I’m a handful of plays into Final Girl now, and I like it a lot. Without having played Hostage Negotiator and internalized its strategic logic, I think I would have bounced right off of it as feeling too random and too cruel. But coming from that game, it is a much less stressful experience and I’m really enjoying the theme.

The Friday the 13th set and killer are simple and fun, but the Nightmare on Elm Street set and killer change the experience in mechanically and thematically interesting ways. I expected different map topologies and hit point variations, not unique player abilities and a new dreamworld mechanic. I’m tempted to pick up a few more modules in their next Kickstarter.

1551

Emerging from my hole of not having time for anything:

Anyone played Adventures of Robin Hood yet? I picked it up last night and it looks super cool. The board has all of these little pieces that pop off, flip over, and go back on the board as you explore. Movement you measure around the board like some sort of light wargame, apparently. It also has a 200+ page hardcover book for the legacy story bits. And finally it allegedly plays really well solo (@tomchick)!

Also I will be resuming posting new stuff soon!

1552

Sorry, HWHAT? A Robin Hood game by Michael “Idina” Menzel, designer of the Legends of And / Or? HELL YES!

Citation deffo needed on the “plays well solo,” though. Box says two playas.

1553

Oh maybe I’m wrong - it had 1 player highly rated on BGG. Off to the manual!

1554

Boardgamegeek says there’s at least one mission where 1 player has knowledge the other players need to figure out and it needs to be “heavily modified” to play that mission solo.

DANG IT!

1555

Found this thread about solo:

1556

Mmmk, but players who actually have the game a year later are saying it’s actually not (without mods, at least not every mission).

And the guy claiming it is soloable isn’t the guy whose name is on the box cover, even though he may work at Kosmos.

1557

Every box has new twists, apart from the Friday the 13th one that’s kind of the baseline. The Poltergeist can’t be attacked at all (although you can still use attack cards for some of her Terror cards) and brings a new “item” (a little girl) that you have to find in the item deck and escort to safety to win (not to mention moves and attacks on every killer turn), and the Manor is vertically oriented, escaping only happens at street level, and has cards that specifically affect rooms with windows, or the ladder letting people flee on one side of the manor. Geppetto has three puppet minions that steadily spawn and do terror killer actions as well (but can only get 2 spaces from him), though they’re flimsy. He can also control victims sometimes. The Carnival laces traps into the Item and Terror decks and they stick around to cause problems in the spaces they spawn in. And Inkanyamba and the Sacred Groves both have Wrath tracks that have to be managed with Atonement action cards and can be Unleashed to your very substantial detriment. (The Groves also add to the Killer’s Bloodlust track and Finale.) And, it’s just a “vignette” (not a “killer” per se and no accompanying location), but Terror From Above spreads hordes of killer birds all over the map that are fragile but dangerous (more so to the Final Girl than victims as they attack her constantly but have to hit certain thresholds and cards to kill victims) and tasks you with rescuing certain Special Victims instead of killing off all the birds (as this is…impractical).

Excited to see what all new twists and themes they bring with the January KS.

1558

I’ve now played 6? (8? More?) games of Final Girl. And I think my impressions of it are still what I’d call first impressions. :)

So what DT said about the “tangible” nature of the game is spot on. In Hostage Negotiator, everything feels very abstracted – what kind of building is it? Who are the people inside? I’m going to try a rescue mission, but…even that feels like it’s lacking some crunch. In fact the most tangible elements for me in Hostage Negotiator (a game I do actually really like a lot!) is the career mode play. I didn’t get too much of the theme of that game until I started a career.

But back to Final Girl. The theme is everywhere, from the excellent art and graphics to the included book on lore and scenario to the actual game mechanics. For instance, at the start of each game, you randomly place the other potential/likely victim of the Big Bad Guy at actual locations on the game board for whatever location you’re using. And you do that with a card draw that makes sure the placement is going to be part of a mix. And it’d be enough for the card to just say “Here’s the layout of where victims are for this playthrough”, but no…it goes beyond that to actually name the card. So one placement around the camp lake is “Skinny dipping”. Or on Maple Lane one setup is “Block Party”.

One thing that stuck out to me: Final Girl has a teensy bit of the same feel as a game of Too Many Bones. Helping victims escape the Big Bad gives your girl some short-term perks…but save enough and you flip her card and she becomes her ultimate, kick-ass self, with an immediate (and usually ongoing for the rest of the game) special ability.

There’s a lot of dice throwing that goes on. If you’re dice-luck averse, avoid this game. You’ll hate it. But I’ll also say that I don’t think dice luck has won me a game or lost me a game. In one game I had a huge advantage and I know I got sloppy and got myself killed. Sure, the dice throw was terrible that got me killed. But! It was my own sloppy play that left me stuck in the space with Hans when I didn’t need to be, and I made a tremendous tactical gaffe in the order I played a couple of cards and yeah. I deserved it. It wasn’t the dice.

Oh, one other thing I meant to mention: they’re not required or strictly necessary, but if you get the chance and don’t have them bought already, you really DO want the playmats for this game. The game turn system from Hostage Negotiator is the same with Final Girl, where you can’t re-purchase cards you’ve played earlier in the same turn, and keeping those action cards that have been played separate from the pool of available cards to buy is super important – and a little easy to mix up without mats.

Also also: can we just salute the design team at Van Ryder games for including a Final Girl named “Melanie” in that little “The Birds” mini expansion?? I laughed out loud when I saw that. Nicely played, VRG. Nicely played.

1559

My practically deaf sister-in-law better be listening for a UPS knock at our front door…I need this game delivered today.

1560

If you want, you can borrow mine, which was just delivered. I’m not going to have any time for it for a while. :(

-Tom

1561

Hmm, would Final Girl appeal to someone who hates horror movies and is too scared to ever sit through one ever again? Asking for a friend.

1562

…and would it appeal to someone who loves horror movies, but didn’t really enjoy Hostage Negotiator?

1563

A few reviews I’ve read from a few people who did not like HN were positive. I liked HN a little but just spent 40 minutes watching a How to Play video and the game adds a lot more to the HN gameplay so I hope that really adds more variety and strategy to the game…I love the magnetic maps and boards… I cant wait to get home!

Opened the Kickstarter package and there is just so much gameplay here. There is a scenario book with 4-5 specific scenarios for each “movie”. Along with the normal game and the more difficult side to the game board.

1564

It’s hard to say, because the game leans into its theme pretty heavily, with all sorts of sly references (like the “Melanie” joke to play off Tippi Hedren’s daughter, Melanie Griffith) and gameplay elements (there’s a game mechanic where the big bad guy isn’t necessarily dead when you think he is, etc.) I can imagine someone without a lot of horror movie frames of reference and appreciation maybe not buying into all that.

But maybe!

On this, I think it’s a little more likely. I really like Hostage Negotiator, but it feels like Final Girl has the same core gameplay loop…but with so much more going on. Like, Final Girl supersedes it now, sort of like Eldritch Horror displaced Arkham Horror in a lot of ways. Usable item inventory. Spatial movement on a game board. All sorts of things to help ensure that it’s unlikely that any two games here will ever play out similarly (setup cards, event cards, a variety of terror cards that are both villain specific and also setting specific.)

One of the things I really prefer about Final Girl is the winning conditions. In Hostage Negotiator, it always feels to me like for most of the game, the object of the game is for me to free hostages, and get more than half of them out before the Villain can do his/her thing. But then once you’ve met that winning condition, it almost feels a little tacked-on that “Oh yeah, and now you need to take down the villain too.”

In Final Girl, you want to help victim meeples escape to freedom too – but in FG it feels more like a means to power up your Final Girl. But always throughout the game, you feel very much more like it’s you vs. the big bad and everything feels like it builds a little more seamlessly to those confrontations.

1565

Thanks for all the Final Girl impressions. I am intrigued and would like to subscribe to your news-letter

1566

So Final Girl seems to be out of stock pretty much everywhere. I guess the company’s website has the core box and a few scenarios in stock, is that really the only place to buy this?

1567

For now, sadly. They’re doing a Season 2 expansion and Kickstarter in early January with reprints of the core box and Season 1 Feature Film boxes though.

1568

For what it’s worth, that’s all you need. Final Girl is a core box and five add-ons. None of the other frippery* in the Kickstarter matters. Each add-on contains a killer, a location, and two final girls. When you play, you pick a final girl, a killer, and a location. You can freely mix and match from all ten final girls, all five killers, and all five locations. So if you’ve got the core box and even just one add-on, you’ve got enough for a game with the same amount of content as anyone else playing that combo.

In other words, if you’re really curious, don’t feel the need to track down all five add-ons in order to buy it.

-Tom

* two game mats (why two mats for a solitaire game?), a handful of really chintzy minis, and a set of dice in a plastic Necronomicon with the faces for all the killers and locations so you can roll up a game randomly instead of picking yourself or using any other six-sided dice

1569

Oh I wasn’t planning on buying everything but I had read that the campground box was the best to start with as it’s the most “basic” and that one is out of stock. The ones that are available don’t immediately grab my interest from a theme perspective but if the gameplay is the same across the scenarios maybe that doesn’t matter.