I just want to give the RevSF community an official warning.

I am bringing sexy back!

That is all.

(cue disco music)
You know it’s gamin’ night and the dice are right, yes it’s gamin’ night, oh what a night (oh, what a night)
(end disco music)

Another gaming night loomed. I made sloppy joes for the troops (believe it or not I actually dreamed of sloppy J’s the night before…go figure). That coleslaw and potato salad ensured we hade a room full of happy belching gamers. The beer (both root and boozy) was chilled, seats were taken and we were ready to roll.

We started with Fantasy Munchkin (as was becoming usual). Which drug on unusually long. The usual bitter infighting kept everyone from getting ahead, and the addition of the ‘Need for Steed’ expansion produced a lot of useless steed modifying cards but no actual steeds. Considering the door and treasure card stacks were both almost 25 feet tall (we had all of the expansions in there) it was not suprising we didn’t see anything to ride around on. Finally, after some quiet work in the background Sherman pulled a power combo and took the game with little resistance. (A quiet sneaky Sherman is starting to become a theme, a resistance movemant is sure to follow)

Next up was TCI’s ‘Zombietown’.

http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/zombietown/index.php

I was looking forward to this as I had only played it once before and had enjoyed it quite a bit. The first part of the game didn’t see much zombie action with the players shifting them around towards one another rather then pulling more deadheads from the central graveyard. This lead to some player vs.player conflict in the form of a bloody gun battle between me and my neighbor Corey. (Based on some pre-zombie uprising damage to my trash cans he had done with his SUV.)

Well, I say bloody, it was-on my part. I drew I believe four jammed cards in a row leading to my demise and early depature from the game. It then turned into a fortify and sit tight situation. The players bunkered down in one or two houses and waited for day ten and the zombie horde to become untenable. Corey went on to narrowly achieve victory with a crafty end of game jump to a nearby empty house for the extra five points. Sherman came a close second from behind his ridiculously heavilly fortified pair of condos.

We decided to leave the zombie blight behind for a return to quaint Arkham, Mass.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/arkhamhorror.html

I can’t lie. I love this game. From start to finish it is a quality product and just gorgeous to look at. It is a quality, quality peice of work. Anyway, a few players needed the quick ‘this is a team game’ reminder and we were off. A better understanding of the rules on the parts of all the players really caused the game to click along and raised the fun factor immensely. We commenced to charging through gates willy-nilly and doing some monster stomping. I managed to dispatch a big horde of critters with a use of the Pipes of the Outer Gods followed by an immediate trip to the Asylum. Well worth it in my opinion.

Our game night host Craig really TCB’d like Elvis in the end game playing the nun (snicker). He went on to close and seal the last gate of the six we needed with Yig being a mere one doom token away from awakening and stomping us into dust. I would like to note this is the closest Craig has come to winning any game at a game night ever. So, you know, kudos to him.

After some "whews!" of relief we again breifly discussed ‘When Darkness Comes’

http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/wdc/

But it looked to have a playtime comparable to Arkham Horror. We had lost a player back to the wilds of Northern Kansas City and it was late so it was decided on a quick couple of rounds of Munchkin instead, resulting in a win for me and a win for Mike respectively. They were pretty classic games only interrupted during round two when laughter errupted regarding Mike’s ability to ‘beat off’ some monsters. ("His hand isn’t strong enough to beat off that creature!" good times…good times…)

At that point it was after midnight and people were fading fast. Still, plans are brewing for the next night and what to play. And almost as important…what to cook (I am thinking Thai Potstickers).

‘Mass Effect’ is coming out and that looks pretty damn awesome. It is being hailed as a replacement for air, a restructuring of the narrative theme and Jesus.

That’s great and all but I am BARELY into ‘Oblivion’ not to mention I am still playing World of Warcraft and at some point want to play Neverwinter Nights 2. This just isn’t fair. I still want to play some more ‘Dead Rising’ for "Bob’s" sake!

Not to mention the real world games. I want more, more, more Arkham Horror. I don’t get near enough of that. Plus I haven’t even unboxed MY copy of Zombietown, we’ve been playing my friends…

TOO MUCH!

*sigh*

I need to create a multi-me machine so I can do all the crap I want to do but don’t have time for.

Game night 3 was a smaller affair that kicked off with a burp, thanks to KC Strips, fried new potatoes and corn on the cob. It took a bit for the food stupour to wear off and everyone to get motivated enough to actually play anything. But once we did, it got rolling.

Fantasy Munckin was the game of the night. We added Clerical Errors and Unnatural Axe for fun and profit (some of the cards are genuinely halarious). The games got more cutthroat as time went on. I won the first one, Mitch and I both won the second one (we were both playing level 9 clerics when a Divine Intervention came up), Mitch won the third and Sherman got the fourth. Munchkin is a fun fast paced game normally but the fourth round took FOREVER mostly because three of us were theives and spent a lot of time stealing from each other and losing levels. Still, much fun.

After that the bloodlust and cutthroat vibe was high in the room (must have been all that red meat, man those steaks were fantastic…ahem, anyway)we decided to play some Zombies!!! We managed to play out every tile in the town including the helipad (Sherman has a reputation for closing off the town so the helipad can’t be played). A couple of buildings became power struggle centers; notably the Sporting Goods store and the Police Station. Multiple event cards resulting in building repops and zombie waves on the streets made both places ridiculously dangerous. Nonetheless players kept trying to assault them, mostly due to beer and bad attitudes. Both eventually fell, but while we were scrapping over the crumbs in both buildings Sherman was strolling around town accumulating zombie kills like he was on a rabbit hunt.

He eventually bagged his 25th kill and the game while the rest of us were thinking about running for the copter and not beating each other up. Fairly classic Sherman strategy.

After that it was homeward bound for the troops. (World of Warcraft for me) and planning for the next Game Night.

I’ve been reading a HUGE amount of zombie fiction over the last six months. I go through genre phases every now and then. Just to give a quick overview I thought I would list what I have read so far and rate it on a 1 (worst) to 5 (best) scale with small amounts of commentary here and there.

—
Brian Keene
The Rising (3)
and
City of the Dead (4)

Serious downer of an ending. Fun read though with a different spin on the zombies

—

Joe McKinney
Dead City (4)

If 24 had zombies it would be this book.

—

David Wellington
Monster Nation (4)
and
Monster Island (5)

Monster Island is the one of the best zombie novels I’ve read so far, hands down.

—

Bowie Ibarra and Travis Adkins
Down the Road (3)
and
Down the Road: On the Last Day (3)

Eh, it was something to read.

—

J.L. Bourne
Day by Day Armageddon (3)

Written journal style. The guy had obviously read World War Z.

—

Max Brooks
The Zombie Survival Guide [4)
World War Z (5)

World War Z is a must read for anybody who has enjoyed a zombie movie in their life ever. If you haven’t read it go buy it now.

—

Len Burnheart
Reign of the Dead (1)

Avoid this book at all costs.

—

David Moody

Autumn (3)
Autumn: The City (4)
Autumn: Purification (3)
Autumn: The Human Condition (4)

The Autumn series is a mixed bag. Atypical zombies in a plaugue style world with a UK twist. They are well written for the most part and focus on the characters more then the zombies. The Human Condition is a fun collection of short stories set in the world of the first three books.

—

Whooooooo baby!

http://www.starcraft2.com

I am jazzed. I loved the first StarCraft like a fat kid and his favorite cupcake. I played it for years. I have high hopes for 2. I forsee hours and hours of my life taken away with gleeful troop building and ass whomping.

I’m not sure how to feel about this. The first entry in live search for ‘Kaosdevice’ is basically an asian girl fellating a piece of octopi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkADu4zhaYI

Since everyone else in blogspace was talking about the End Times I would point out my current sign of the end…

Behold! The World of Warcraft credit card.

If I had some property with a large woods on it I would name the tree covered area Whitaker.

That is all.

I picked up the new Nine Inch Nails album ‘Year Zero’ last week. I like it although musically it is pretty par for the course NIN with a couple of stand out tracks I enjoyed. What is more fun is going down the crazy rabbit hole of dystopian future they set up as back ground information for the album. It is classic dystopian, drugged out mega christian America sort of stuff. Fun reading though, you can get started here:

http://www.ninwiki.com/Category:World_of_Year_Zero

You should check out ‘Plauge Zone’ the free serialized novel written by the talented David Wellington. You can read his other novels there free as well, but I encourage you to buy them (like I did) and support the dude. It is worth it if you like zombies, or good stories, or good stories including zombies.

http://www.brokentype.com/pz/