[  Mood: Happy ]
Game night the second was a smaller scale affair, split between playing various versions of SJGames Munchkin and HorrorClix. We started with Munchkin Cthluhu ( http://www.sjgames.com/munchkin/munchkincthulhu/ ).

Munchkin Cthulhu (MC from here on out) plays a bit differently than its cousins, mostly due to the cultist mechanic. For this reason I don’t think it would integrate with the rest of the series as well as the other sets. For one thing there is a definite lack of early game co-operation like you see in the other incarnations of Munchkin. Instead it is pretty brutal from the outset and lends itself to some pretty gleefully cut-throat play. Because of the cult mechanic most games tended towards everyone being converted to cultists thus ending the game and awarding it to the toughest cult member.

After the sanity blasting horror we decided to move on to carnage. We hadn’t had a chance to use any of the Alien set in actual HorrorClix play so my friend got his down from the shelf and we had a quick 100 point game to help us remember the rules. One thing was obvious pretty much from the outset, nobody wanted to use sub-plot cards.

The three armies consisted of two aliens, one predator and one vampire enforcer and my mighty team of a gray alien and his radioactive zombie minion. (I wanted to put some of my The Lab expansion dudes to work) We decided to use the AvP pyramid map but to not use the random doors on it because we wanted a quick game. At first it looked like the Aliens would dominate, they had some nasty, nasty powers at the outset.

Naturally they came after my team.

Suprisingly they proved to be somewhat paper tigers, the zombies’ 1 click to adjacent radiation damage mixed with the Grey’s ability to cause action tokens (thus essentially freezing creatures in place) proved to be a suprisingly effective strategy against the aliens. We took down one and seriously hurt the other.

Meanwhile the ignored for the most part Predator and vampire surrounded our fight, The Predator dropped the other alien and my zombie while the vamp took out my grey but took a little ‘probing’ itself before the grey dropped. The true menace in that fight turned out obviously to be the Predator. Those guys are hellaciously tough for the point value and have a hardcore dial.

For round two we decided to break out the Alien Queen and see what was up. One player took over the Alien Queen, two aliens and a drone while I got to break out part of my Hellboy box set in the form of the man himself Hellboy. The rest of the team consisted again of my lil grey alien buddy and an asylum ghost. My friend’s army consisted of a wolf pack; three dog soldiers and the massive Direwerewolf (unique and tough as hell).

We took out the queen’s punk henchmen with ease (again, the Aliens themselves are tough for about three rounds then go down like chumps) and were ready for the queen. I had gotten bottlenecked on one side of the map though and the queen went for the wolves. They put up a fight but the queen’s four (you heard me right FOUR) clix of damage quickly took them out of the game. The big wolf did about seven clix of damage to big mama before falling to vicious acid and claws.

So my crew was left alone at one side of the map with AQ looking right at us. We took out one of her egg sacks before she ran up and squished the grey into fruit pulp. She then turned on the spirit and dispatched him with ease. Hellboy put up a pretty serious fight (he was pumped from saving three victims, each a bonus to his damage, I was doing five a pop) doing ten points to AQ before getting smoked by the three actions a round she was able to take.

We discovered that AQ has 27 clix before dropping.

Twenty Seven.

Just let that sink in. We had hardly hurt her really. Obviously we are going to have to come up with some different strategy for her in the future.

After that we played a few rounds of Munchkin Fantasy and called it a night.

Next game night, assuming we have the population (as you could tell it was a bit of a small group) I want to do some more Arkham Horror. Craig keeps threatening to run some more Year of the Zombie as well. All I have to say to that is, my boy Frank Santiago says "Bring it."