Good video. I have WGT? and had one of the best gaming experiences with it. 4 players, making it to the chopper with and end game of 3 infected and 1 human. I as infected persuaded the human to board, and we left to reveal ourselves. At the reveal I was convinced we were all infected but wasnt 100% sure. I had been infected in phase 1 by another player, and at the end of phase 2 i infected the 3rd player. I had no idea if the original host or player 3 that I infected would pass it onto player 4. Which is why I got the player I didnt know about to board with me as it was the best chance. The whole experience was super tense and the end game was fantastic. I wouldnt change that at all. However we did use a house rule on player elimination. A player could not be eliminated until phase 3, and they only were eliminated if after their NEXT turn from receiving 3 strikes they ended the turn with 3 strikes still. In phase 1 and 2 getting your 3rd strike meant losing the rest of your actions (trade allowed) and exhausted your green stamina. We didnt actually need to call upon the house rule though all game. Every player at 2 strikes was always super careful. But because of the random events you can simply get strike wrecked if you arent careful. Simply something like camp event gives you 1, you get a 1-2 Thing attacks while searching. I REALLY like the idea of the stamina lend for an extra die if sharing locations. Will definitely be taking that from the house rules in this video. Definitely recommend anyone else playing WGT? does the same. You will still have a great game.
This is one of the best comparison reviews I've ever seen. Period! Thanks Chris - absolutely fantastic review of both games and the comparison is top shelf. Keep it up!
Dude, this review was amazing. I love how much thought you clearly put into your opinions. You can tell you really want to like the games. I also enjoy the humor. Would love to see more of this
Revisiting this review with the imminent release of the new The Thing: The Board Game from Kickstarter. Fans of the classic film are now fairly spoiled for choice, between Chaplin's unofficial card game, the two games discussed here and the newest venture. Having gone through the new game's rules, it is another case of "similar yet different", perhaps feeling a little closer to Outpost 31's overall structure design-wise but also quite unique at the same time. It looks promising to me, though. It may end up surpassing the card game as my favorite implementation of the theme. We shall see when it arrives. Especially with a "2nd Edition" of WGT? being released which seemingly addresses the most common concerns, I'd be really curious to see a "Thing Game Throw-down" to compare all 4 games at some point. It would be quite an undertaking but, as a mega-fan of the film, I think it would be incredibly fun.
Couple houserules my group uses for Bob is that 1. you don't hand out 1 imitation card at the beginning you just shuffle the blood deck and hand them out so you could have no one imitated or you could have all 3 right away. It just kind of adds more paranoia. 2. If someone on the helicopter is infected, anyone else on the helicopter has to do one last battle using the 3rd section rules just to give them one last chance.
I actually live just around the corner from Certifiable Studios and I go there quite often. I too have played WGT? with one of the artists of the game and two others. I can't even tell you how many times I was accused of being THE THING (I was infected by another player later of course)!!! I will say that the game does cause you to get into actual arguments just like in the film. Which is a great thing. However I love the idea that you can co op with others as much as possible to be able to survive. The number one thing I do love about the game is the artwork, I happen to be an artist myself. But yes, the game is pretty long but it can be longer if you are not very understanding of the game. One thing I will say is that you will have to pay close attention to each of the abilities of each character. Using the abilities at the correct time can be a critical thing. In the end, I did enjoy playing WGT? But thank you for the thorough review as I did not know about the other one and wanted to see the comparison.
Big fan of all the stories and remake. I actually love the original film as it was Howard Hawks only film of the horror genre. Of course huge fan of John Carpenter's Apocalyptic trilogy. Prince of Darkness is very underrated.
Personally the 50/50 dice roll should be replaced with each player having special dice unique to their character. For example you need to fix the generator so the character with the mechanic skill would have the best chance. But no one trusts him so the leader has to make a judgment call on who to send. Plus you can make all rolls hidden so if the mechanic is infected he can pretend he didn’t roll a success and now the generator is beyond repair.
I'll agree that Infection at Outpost 31 doesn't play well with only four players. But with Six or Eight players it is incredibly fun and on of my game group's favorite games. And it is one of the main reasons I purchased Who Goes There, and two of the Expansion sets to bring the Player Count up to eight, to get a different take on the same theme. We haven't got around to playing Who Goes There yet, mainly because my group wants to play the familiar game, and for those of us that haven't played it, Who Goes There looks a bit complicated. I can't say I disagree with you review, but maybe Who Goes there is a better game at lower player counts, while Infection at Outpost 31 is better with Higher Player Counts. SO They are good in different ways.
Thank you very much for this comparison video. I never heard of "The Thing" the Board Game. I was very tempted to back "Who Goes There"? and passed. I was tempted again to be a late pledger, but I am also glad I didn't. I am so sad about the negative game flaws you showed because I didn't see them on other play throughs. I do like your idea for "repairing" the game, but again - I am not going to fork out money just to fix a game that should have been fixed from the start.
Agree with you on Outpost 31/Bob. The game sucks at less than 6, thankfully we're 6-8 quite often and the 3 times we've played it have had an awesome time. It is a borderline beer & pretzels game but I'm cool with that. I often call it DoW + Resistance. Doug/WGT was a pass for me simply because it's huge, long and fiddly.
Love your reviews Chris! Would be interested to hear your thoughts on the 2nd edition of WGT. It looks like they fixed player elimination. They also added blood test cards. Not sure they fixed the issue where the goal of the infected is the same as the humans.
What do you think of the 2nd edition of Who Goes There? With the addition of more blood tests to the general pool and frostbite making it much much harder to get killed off early on I'm interested to see if the adjustments they made were enough to change your opinion or not.
Oh also, they don't make it super clear, but whenever you have to do a skill check, you are allowed to do anything other than spend actions. If you have XP to spend on cardio to gain an extra stamina and thus another die, you can do it even after rolling your other dice. Same goes for cards like alcohol. I wish they had made that much more clear in the rulebook since I only learned that by watching the devs play.
They did not. While arguably they did make the game better, I am generally annoyed that they needed to do a 2nd edition in the first place to fix the honestly amateur mistakes they made. They added a two-tier test which is still somewhat worthless; they didn't fix the fundamental flaw with the end game and they didn't entirely remove player elimination. So yeah, kinda regret I back that second edition.
As far as Bob gameplay I think it does a good job. The whole idea from the thing movie is...blending in. If you are an imitation you want to get aboard that chopper, what the thing does after that had different results in each movie. Mcready said all it wanted to do was escape and go back to sleep, in the comics I heard the thing made it to civilization, in the 2011 movie it made it aboard the ship and got it started. I thought they did an okay job for the board game its just hard to deliberately infect someone without looking suspicious
Wow, amazing analysis! Presented in a fun, humorous way, excellent! So are there any actually good hidden traitor games which are highly thematic and not coop. For reference: I don't like Resistance or BSG. Samurai Sword (Bang! reskinned) is decent, but it doesn't feel meaty without a board. Saboteur is fun chaos, but it's mainly a party game. New Angeles is good, but unfortunately it had no expansion to flesh it out. And it's a bit long. Any suggestions?
I was considering kickstarting Doug, but my girlfriend was a bit sad that there were no female characters so we decided to go with something else (don't remember what game it was but it was one that was on kickstarter at the same time. Now, we're no sjw, but she does like to play females when she does play games with characters in it and I can absolutely understand that. Game looks amazing though, all those little ice crystals and plastic doodads are so satisfying to look at.... And those player boards, wow, just wow... I do feel a bit better about the decision after seeing this review though, but I would probably house rule the player elimination too instead lose a round or something (recovering in the medbay)... Not sure if that would work with the game, since I haven't tried it. But we usually do stuff like that when there is player elimination involved, we find a way that is punishing enough that you don't want to have it happen, but at least you could keep on gaming...
I like your comment and ofc it's good you tried to please your gf too, because ye in this case it's rational. I don't remember if Outpost 31 has male characters only. I do believe The Thing is mostly set in the conditions where only men would go. Again it's not "sjw sexist" nonesense, just women mostly never wanted "to go there". So who goes there? Men go there. Pun intended :D
Maestro Nope. That’s like saying no women would want to go into outer space, which is further away and more dangerous. There are plenty of women scientists and military in these outposts nowadays. “Who Goes There?” was written in 1938. That’s why there no women in the story.
@@alexcosta1695 None taken, it's not a complete deal breaker with no women in the game, but when there are options, we tend to go with the one where being a female is a possibility over the one where it isn't. And when this game came out there were several good games we could choose from, so this just wasn't picked over this simple reason. The thing was a great movie, apart from the horrible Norwegian spoken in the beginning ;)
I haven't gotten to play WGT but played the Thing and enjoyed it and it was 5 player count. I would agree that it does need to be 5 plus. My thoughts were to always draw 1 plus non infected card for amount of players where someone may not be thing to start the game. I like the idea of swapping cards are certain points were you could infect people through out the game. Great video of the two games.
Assuming you still with Dice Tower......now that The Thing the Board Game by Pendragon is just about ready to ship.....try getting their game and review this along side the two you just did. This new game looks better on so many levels esp. Paranoia (they have a delicated mechanic for this)......along with players voting each round who they think the Thing among them is. It also has a weather mechanic the can either make things worse or better at the base. This review/comparison was Stellar.....now add the new game from Pendragon.
Re: WGT?: This is a very nice review, just a comment on the traitor part and the end game. I'm seeing the complaint quite a bit that you can't really deduce who is the Thing by the game mechanics, and this is to a large extent true. Traitor behaviors are possible but they will be subtle at best. However, this misses what I consider an important aspect of the game - its RPG elements. The game puts you in a strange spot. Sometimes you're human and you try to help out, but people distrust you all the same. How do you convince them that they do really need you? In the end this part of the game is not only about the blood test mechanics. It's also about monitoring who has traded and bunked with whom and whether or not this has changed some of their behaviors. It's also purely about arguing, about bluff, about trust and distrust. There can be some level of guessing involved, often you just can't be sure. Sometimes you can outwit people into revealing their true motives. A good Helicopter Round could take quite some time and be full of high drama. You don't just win this game by being better than everybody else at cracking the game mechanics. You win by convincing people. If you lose it's not always because you made a mistake, it could just be because you acted funny. It can be exhilarating and frustrating in equal measure. It can definitely get tense. It's very much about that experience. This is something I believe that certain kinds of players instinctively like a lot and others really don't.
I guess they chose the chopper because they had one in 2011 and the thing did make it aboard even though we know that outcome. But in the carpenter movie they didn't have anything left to escape with that we saw anyway, it just ended stand off style.
I was the doctor. I got the blood test card and told everyone I had it. Then I got the host card and suddenly I didn't want to use the blood test card. That is probably the one way to get others suspicious of you.
Player elimination in short games is fine... but yeah... in a long game, it can doom the game, unless the eliminations are all near the end of the game.
As an owner of Who Goes There or "Doug", I am very surprised about your inability to reach the helicopter phase, even without the cook and/or the doctor. There must be something about your general tactics that are not going well for your sessions. Building gear is CRUCIAL before venturing out. And players trading eachother is essential to get that part going in the early game. We have played this 15+ times and we had our two first games not reach the end phase and then after that we have only had one game lead to a complete wipe. I think you will get a better hang of this by playing more, as our group felt this.
Note: In WGT if your helicopter cards equal whatever the needed amount is or more you don't need to roll the die. Certifiable said they didn't do a good job explaining it initially, but you don't need to roll the die to win the game, it's more of a failsafe. Here is a video where they explain it: vimeo.com/396748968/ec98241d2b Also, in the 2nd edition they added some rules to make death something that can be avoided to some degree.
Removing player elimination from a survival game? That won’t work. Removing paranoia by showing infection clickers to everyone? That definitely won’t work. I’d just reset the game if someone died early and teach everyone how to trade & build before sending them outside to die. This is much more preferable to changing the rules.
Clearly, that does work. And what if they died 90 minutes into a 3 hours game, would you still reset? Don't claim it doesn't work just because you disagree with it.
PrinceGastronome it doesn’t work because it removes the tension required in a survival game by the FEAR of elimination, not because I disagree with it. Just play a lighter game -don’t break the one you don’t like.
There are plenty of survival games that don't feature player elimination. Many cooperative games feature survival elements without player elimination. Any game with hit points can technically fall into that line, and those games often have the smarts to not eliminate a player half-way through a 3 hours game. It's a bad design. If it was an hour-long game, it wouldn't be as much an issue...but in a game like Who Goes There, it ruins the experience. Who Goes There is not "heavier"...it's flawed.
PrinceGastronome like I said -teach people NOT to die rather than blame the game. Or play one of those survival games where nobody dies. I’ll play this with all its “flaws”.
I agree that the prequel wasnt that great, but to be ok with talking about the so-so comic books and bad video game over the movie is insulting to the poor film. :)
Actually, I show more clips of that film, I was just making a joke and also felt the franchise background was running too long, And I liked the comics...except the last one--that was crud.
That was an outstanding comparison of the two games, and a stellar production. Kudos! I look forward to more videos from you already.
Good video. I have WGT? and had one of the best gaming experiences with it. 4 players, making it to the chopper with and end game of 3 infected and 1 human. I as infected persuaded the human to board, and we left to reveal ourselves. At the reveal I was convinced we were all infected but wasnt 100% sure. I had been infected in phase 1 by another player, and at the end of phase 2 i infected the 3rd player. I had no idea if the original host or player 3 that I infected would pass it onto player 4. Which is why I got the player I didnt know about to board with me as it was the best chance. The whole experience was super tense and the end game was fantastic. I wouldnt change that at all.
However we did use a house rule on player elimination. A player could not be eliminated until phase 3, and they only were eliminated if after their NEXT turn from receiving 3 strikes they ended the turn with 3 strikes still. In phase 1 and 2 getting your 3rd strike meant losing the rest of your actions (trade allowed) and exhausted your green stamina. We didnt actually need to call upon the house rule though all game. Every player at 2 strikes was always super careful.
But because of the random events you can simply get strike wrecked if you arent careful. Simply something like camp event gives you 1, you get a 1-2 Thing attacks while searching. I REALLY like the idea of the stamina lend for an extra die if sharing locations. Will definitely be taking that from the house rules in this video.
Definitely recommend anyone else playing WGT? does the same. You will still have a great game.
This is one of the best comparison reviews I've ever seen. Period! Thanks Chris - absolutely fantastic review of both games and the comparison is top shelf. Keep it up!
And...for the record - your work on this video warranted my instant subscribe to your channel. Thanks again Chris!
Dude, this review was amazing. I love how much thought you clearly put into your opinions. You can tell you really want to like the games. I also enjoy the humor. Would love to see more of this
Thank you!
@@SlipstreamFirst Agreed, wondering what you think (if at all) about the Who Goes There 2.0 changes?
This post really is a rich and creative work. Can’t find posts of this caliber often. Thank you, Mr. Chris.
Revisiting this review with the imminent release of the new The Thing: The Board Game from Kickstarter. Fans of the classic film are now fairly spoiled for choice, between Chaplin's unofficial card game, the two games discussed here and the newest venture. Having gone through the new game's rules, it is another case of "similar yet different", perhaps feeling a little closer to Outpost 31's overall structure design-wise but also quite unique at the same time. It looks promising to me, though. It may end up surpassing the card game as my favorite implementation of the theme. We shall see when it arrives.
Especially with a "2nd Edition" of WGT? being released which seemingly addresses the most common concerns, I'd be really curious to see a "Thing Game Throw-down" to compare all 4 games at some point. It would be quite an undertaking but, as a mega-fan of the film, I think it would be incredibly fun.
I know I am late to the party but thank you for doing this, great job!
This video is awesome! Chris has just ensured that I will always watch his stuff on this channel.
Awesome, dude, thanks.
Couple houserules my group uses for Bob is that 1. you don't hand out 1 imitation card at the beginning you just shuffle the blood deck and hand them out so you could have no one imitated or you could have all 3 right away. It just kind of adds more paranoia. 2. If someone on the helicopter is infected, anyone else on the helicopter has to do one last battle using the 3rd section rules just to give them one last chance.
I actually live just around the corner from Certifiable Studios and I go there quite often. I too have played WGT? with one of the artists of the game and two others. I can't even tell you how many times I was accused of being THE THING (I was infected by another player later of course)!!! I will say that the game does cause you to get into actual arguments just like in the film. Which is a great thing. However I love the idea that you can co op with others as much as possible to be able to survive. The number one thing I do love about the game is the artwork, I happen to be an artist myself. But yes, the game is pretty long but it can be longer if you are not very understanding of the game. One thing I will say is that you will have to pay close attention to each of the abilities of each character. Using the abilities at the correct time can be a critical thing. In the end, I did enjoy playing WGT? But thank you for the thorough review as I did not know about the other one and wanted to see the comparison.
Big fan of all the stories and remake. I actually love the original film as it was Howard Hawks only film of the horror genre. Of course huge fan of John Carpenter's Apocalyptic trilogy. Prince of Darkness is very underrated.
Thanks. Really enjoyed this review. Especially the homebrew section.
Wow. What a terrific video. Well done!
Thank you!
Excellent review!
Interesting ideas for "Doug." I'll definitely have to try them out.
They'll be posted today.
I'm curious what you would change for the new edition by certificable studios. Any comment about the new edition vs. The Thing?
Personally the 50/50 dice roll should be replaced with each player having special dice unique to their character. For example you need to fix the generator so the character with the mechanic skill would have the best chance. But no one trusts him so the leader has to make a judgment call on who to send. Plus you can make all rolls hidden so if the mechanic is infected he can pretend he didn’t roll a success and now the generator is beyond repair.
I'll agree that Infection at Outpost 31 doesn't play well with only four players. But with Six or Eight players it is incredibly fun and on of my game group's favorite games. And it is one of the main reasons I purchased Who Goes There, and two of the Expansion sets to bring the Player Count up to eight, to get a different take on the same theme. We haven't got around to playing Who Goes There yet, mainly because my group wants to play the familiar game, and for those of us that haven't played it, Who Goes There looks a bit complicated. I can't say I disagree with you review, but maybe Who Goes there is a better game at lower player counts, while Infection at Outpost 31 is better with Higher Player Counts. SO They are good in different ways.
Thank you very much for this comparison video. I never heard of "The Thing" the Board Game. I was very tempted to back "Who Goes There"? and passed. I was tempted again to be a late pledger, but I am also glad I didn't. I am so sad about the negative game flaws you showed because I didn't see them on other play throughs. I do like your idea for "repairing" the game, but again - I am not going to fork out money just to fix a game that should have been fixed from the start.
Awesome mention of the videogame! Played it when I was younger and I'm glad you confirmed that everyone pretty much was The Thing lol xD
Great video!
Agree with you on Outpost 31/Bob. The game sucks at less than 6, thankfully we're 6-8 quite often and the 3 times we've played it have had an awesome time. It is a borderline beer & pretzels game but I'm cool with that. I often call it DoW + Resistance. Doug/WGT was a pass for me simply because it's huge, long and fiddly.
Love your reviews Chris! Would be interested to hear your thoughts on the 2nd edition of WGT. It looks like they fixed player elimination. They also added blood test cards. Not sure they fixed the issue where the goal of the infected is the same as the humans.
What do you think of the 2nd edition of Who Goes There? With the addition of more blood tests to the general pool and frostbite making it much much harder to get killed off early on I'm interested to see if the adjustments they made were enough to change your opinion or not.
Oh also, they don't make it super clear, but whenever you have to do a skill check, you are allowed to do anything other than spend actions. If you have XP to spend on cardio to gain an extra stamina and thus another die, you can do it even after rolling your other dice. Same goes for cards like alcohol. I wish they had made that much more clear in the rulebook since I only learned that by watching the devs play.
They did not. While arguably they did make the game better, I am generally annoyed that they needed to do a 2nd edition in the first place to fix the honestly amateur mistakes they made. They added a two-tier test which is still somewhat worthless; they didn't fix the fundamental flaw with the end game and they didn't entirely remove player elimination. So yeah, kinda regret I back that second edition.
Are you going to do a Doug 1.0 to 2.0 comparison as the KS wrapped up recently?
Yes, but you will find that on my channel.
As far as Bob gameplay I think it does a good job. The whole idea from the thing movie is...blending in. If you are an imitation you want to get aboard that chopper, what the thing does after that had different results in each movie. Mcready said all it wanted to do was escape and go back to sleep, in the comics I heard the thing made it to civilization, in the 2011 movie it made it aboard the ship and got it started. I thought they did an okay job for the board game its just hard to deliberately infect someone without looking suspicious
Seems like most of the complaints about Who Goes There are rectified in the 2nd Edition of Who Goes There (rules update)
Wow, amazing analysis! Presented in a fun, humorous way, excellent!
So are there any actually good hidden traitor games which are highly thematic and not coop.
For reference: I don't like Resistance or BSG.
Samurai Sword (Bang! reskinned) is decent, but it doesn't feel meaty without a board.
Saboteur is fun chaos, but it's mainly a party game.
New Angeles is good, but unfortunately it had no expansion to flesh it out. And it's a bit long.
Any suggestions?
I was considering kickstarting Doug, but my girlfriend was a bit sad that there were no female characters so we decided to go with something else (don't remember what game it was but it was one that was on kickstarter at the same time. Now, we're no sjw, but she does like to play females when she does play games with characters in it and I can absolutely understand that. Game looks amazing though, all those little ice crystals and plastic doodads are so satisfying to look at.... And those player boards, wow, just wow... I do feel a bit better about the decision after seeing this review though, but I would probably house rule the player elimination too instead lose a round or something (recovering in the medbay)... Not sure if that would work with the game, since I haven't tried it. But we usually do stuff like that when there is player elimination involved, we find a way that is punishing enough that you don't want to have it happen, but at least you could keep on gaming...
I like your comment and ofc it's good you tried to please your gf too, because ye in this case it's rational. I don't remember if Outpost 31 has male characters only. I do believe The Thing is mostly set in the conditions where only men would go. Again it's not "sjw sexist" nonesense, just women mostly never wanted "to go there". So who goes there? Men go there. Pun intended :D
Maestro Nope. That’s like saying no women would want to go into outer space, which is further away and more dangerous. There are plenty of women scientists and military in these outposts nowadays. “Who Goes There?” was written in 1938. That’s why there no women in the story.
No offense dude but the thing didn't have ANY female characters
@@alexcosta1695 None taken, it's not a complete deal breaker with no women in the game, but when there are options, we tend to go with the one where being a female is a possibility over the one where it isn't. And when this game came out there were several good games we could choose from, so this just wasn't picked over this simple reason.
The thing was a great movie, apart from the horrible Norwegian spoken in the beginning ;)
@@Phelixc actually....the main character in the prequel was female! But I don't think anyone wants to talk about that one lmao
But now you must also add The Thing the boardgame to the comparison ^_^
I haven't gotten to play WGT but played the Thing and enjoyed it and it was 5 player count. I would agree that it does need to be 5 plus. My thoughts were to always draw 1 plus non infected card for amount of players where someone may not be thing to start the game. I like the idea of swapping cards are certain points were you could infect people through out the game. Great video of the two games.
Assuming you still with Dice Tower......now that The Thing the Board Game by Pendragon is just about ready to ship.....try getting their game and review this along side the two you just did. This new game looks better on so many levels esp. Paranoia (they have a delicated mechanic for this)......along with players voting each round who they think the Thing among them is. It also has a weather mechanic the can either make things worse or better at the base. This review/comparison was Stellar.....now add the new game from Pendragon.
He isn't.
Re: WGT?: This is a very nice review, just a comment on the traitor part and the end game.
I'm seeing the complaint quite a bit that you can't really deduce who is the Thing by the game mechanics, and this is to a large extent true. Traitor behaviors are possible but they will be subtle at best. However, this misses what I consider an important aspect of the game - its RPG elements.
The game puts you in a strange spot. Sometimes you're human and you try to help out, but people distrust you all the same. How do you convince them that they do really need you?
In the end this part of the game is not only about the blood test mechanics. It's also about monitoring who has traded and bunked with whom and whether or not this has changed some of their behaviors. It's also purely about arguing, about bluff, about trust and distrust. There can be some level of guessing involved, often you just can't be sure. Sometimes you can outwit people into revealing their true motives. A good Helicopter Round could take quite some time and be full of high drama.
You don't just win this game by being better than everybody else at cracking the game mechanics. You win by convincing people. If you lose it's not always because you made a mistake, it could just be because you acted funny. It can be exhilarating and frustrating in equal measure. It can definitely get tense. It's very much about that experience. This is something I believe that certain kinds of players instinctively like a lot and others really don't.
Now it’s THREE games! This sucks.
I guess they chose the chopper because they had one in 2011 and the thing did make it aboard even though we know that outcome. But in the carpenter movie they didn't have anything left to escape with that we saw anyway, it just ended stand off style.
I was the doctor. I got the blood test card and told everyone I had it. Then I got the host card and suddenly I didn't want to use the blood test card. That is probably the one way to get others suspicious of you.
Are you planning to pick up the second edition upgrade kit for Doug (currently on Kickstarter)? It seems to address many of your concerns.
I decided not to as I believe homebrew solves the problem as well. I did incorporate their suggested rule changes.
Player elimination in short games is fine... but yeah... in a long game, it can doom the game, unless the eliminations are all near the end of the game.
Has anyone ever played Stay Away? When we get together someone always ask to play it.
As an owner of Who Goes There or "Doug", I am very surprised about your inability to reach the helicopter phase, even without the cook and/or the doctor. There must be something about your general tactics that are not going well for your sessions. Building gear is CRUCIAL before venturing out. And players trading eachother is essential to get that part going in the early game. We have played this 15+ times and we had our two first games not reach the end phase and then after that we have only had one game lead to a complete wipe. I think you will get a better hang of this by playing more, as our group felt this.
ill stick to the excellent game standing in the background, scythe.
I've played Bob and boy was extremely disappointing, overlong and dull.
Note: In WGT if your helicopter cards equal whatever the needed amount is or more you don't need to roll the die. Certifiable said they didn't do a good job explaining it initially, but you don't need to roll the die to win the game, it's more of a failsafe. Here is a video where they explain it: vimeo.com/396748968/ec98241d2b
Also, in the 2nd edition they added some rules to make death something that can be avoided to some degree.
Removing player elimination from a survival game? That won’t work.
Removing paranoia by showing infection clickers to everyone? That definitely won’t work.
I’d just reset the game if someone died early and teach everyone how to trade & build before sending them outside to die. This is much more preferable to changing the rules.
Clearly, that does work. And what if they died 90 minutes into a 3 hours game, would you still reset? Don't claim it doesn't work just because you disagree with it.
PrinceGastronome it doesn’t work because it removes the tension required in a survival game by the FEAR of elimination, not because I disagree with it. Just play a lighter game -don’t break the one you don’t like.
There are plenty of survival games that don't feature player elimination. Many cooperative games feature survival elements without player elimination. Any game with hit points can technically fall into that line, and those games often have the smarts to not eliminate a player half-way through a 3 hours game. It's a bad design. If it was an hour-long game, it wouldn't be as much an issue...but in a game like Who Goes There, it ruins the experience. Who Goes There is not "heavier"...it's flawed.
PrinceGastronome like I said -teach people NOT to die rather than blame the game. Or play one of those survival games where nobody dies. I’ll play this with all its “flaws”.
Yeah, a survival game with nobody ever dying is... er... hmm... how to put this...
I agree that the prequel wasnt that great, but to be ok with talking about the so-so comic books and bad video game over the movie is insulting to the poor film. :)
Actually, I show more clips of that film, I was just making a joke and also felt the franchise background was running too long, And I liked the comics...except the last one--that was crud.
Really? 40min video?
You're right, should've been longer.