Board/Card Games Report #2, Part 1: Anime Zombie School Fight!

Now that’s a Chatty title.

Last Friday, while  I was enjoying the last few days of the holidays, my good friend and expert mastermind PM invited me and my buddy Franky for a full day of card games, Anime and general geekiness.

As usual, these days are a blast.  Spending from late mornings to late evening doing fun geeky stuff is always great.

Before Franky arrived, I watched a few episode of the excellent Anime series: Rurouni Kenshin. Now, just so you know, unlike some other bloggers,  I’m not a fan of Japanese Animation. I don’t dislike it.  Its just that I don’t know much about it nor do I go out of my way to see some.  Like many North Americans, I’ve seen the horribly translated early 90’s version of Akira, I also love Miyazaki’s flicks and grew up on Mazinger Z and Captain Harlock.  But I never got INTO Anime… especially serials.

…until PM introduced me to Ruroni Kenshin.

This 20 minute serial (there’s 95 episodes all in all) is about a reformed assassin swordsman, called Kenshin.  The series is camped in Japan’s Meija’s era, after the revolution that toppled the Shogunate in the 1800’s.

Ten years after the revolution ended, Kenshin wanders around the countryside, helinp the downtrodden and going around with a reversed blade sword that can’t kill but can sure maim.

I was hooked to that thing after 5 minutes.  Its half -stupid, with the main character looking like an idiot and saying stupid things and then it turns dead serious in a micro second and you are exposed to a strong storyline coupled with some excellent animated fighting sequences.

Anyhoo, Franky arrived and we proceeded to play some cards. (We might have eaten lunch somewhere in that time, I forgot).

Zombie Fluxx

The first game we tried was a card game I had purchased for PM for X-mas.  For reason I’ll leave unsaid, PM is really into Zombies right now and I thought I’d feed his interest with Zombie Fluxx.

This game is part of the Fluxx family of card games.  If you don’t know about this game yet, this is part of the ‘must haves’ of any card gamer enthusiast’s library.

The game starts with only 2 rules (Draw a Card, Play a card) , no actual ways of winning (and a 3 cards starting hand).

Of course, many of the cards you pick up are new rules (or goals) that stick around after being played.

As you may imagine, the game becomes a mess only a few turns in.  Victory conditions usually depend on you having some specific ‘keeper’ cards in play in front of you when a given goal is on the table.

Now Zombie Fluxx has the added complication that you can draw Zombie cards that you must immediately play in front of you  (and replace in your hands).  They’re ‘Creepers’ (har har har) that can be killed (provided the appropriate rule is in play).  The keepers cards of that version of the game are very ‘in flavor’, my favorite one being ‘The Brain”.

Winning the game usually entails having a pair of specific keepers cards in play, like ‘brain’ and ‘sandwhich’, and a conditional element viz zombies (i.e. you must control zombies or not depending on the goal).

As a last twist, Zombie Fluxx has an Ungoal card that can make the Zombies win (and make all players lose).  While I don’t see why a player would play this, there’s so many ways of forcing you to play your whole hand that players must be careful not to let that card take the game.

So how does the game hold up?  I played several games and I still love it.  While I find it hard to develop a winning strategy, I like that you constantly must react to the new game states and try to play your many cards optimally. The jury is still out if I’ll eventually grow tired of the inherent Chaos and lack of planning (Magic the Gathering this game is NOT) of it all, but to date I enjoy it a lot.

Maybe some sort of Fluxx-Fu will appear through the chaos and enlighten us.

Lunch Money

I had heard of that game from several friends at Gen Con (where multiple tournaments are held) so I decided to buy it just before I got to PM’s place.  I knew what it was about (girls fighting in the school yard) but I was not prepared at just how disturbing the card art was.

Lunch Money is one dirty fighting game. You play cards that represents various hits and holds that allows deals damage to your fellow players (or you try to defend against them).

Its a good card game, very cutthroat.  When you are down on your last life chips, don’t expect others to fly to your help.  They’ll likely kick you to finish you off.

In fact this my one thing I didn’t quite like with the game.  If players collude to take out someone, there’s not much that player can do.  I’ll need to play more to see if there’s any use of game table politics that can influence that.

One of the things I wondered about that game before reading the rules was “How come roleplayers like this game so much?”  I’m sure its not the disturbing psychological effects of the pictures or the truly twisted premise of the game (although they are probably factors”

Then I discovered it while reading the rules.  You see players are encouraged to lay it thick with describing what one does to others when you play cards.  So if Joe kicks Moe, Joe is encouraged to say something “I wind up a powerful kick and wait for the perfect moment for Moe to lower his guard so I can shatter his jaw”.

That’s great description practice for those who want livelier battle descriptions in their RPG sessions.

We played a few games, and while we enjoyed it, we needed a break from all that kicking, knifing and chain beatings after.  Now that I’ve recovered, I’m looking forward to playing it again.

Up next: Pirate Munchkin, Classic movie and A very noisy card game.