Ruling the Board: MWGC 1/19/13: City of Horror

City of Horror is a game where each player has a group of three people trying to survive the zombie apocalypse.  There are a number of buildings around the board which have distinct advantages and disadvantages.

Each turn, the players move one of their characters to a different location where there is a space or to the overturned food truck if there is no space available.

Along the way, you try to have as many of your people survive.  Not only must they survive, though, you need to acquire an injection and victory points where possible in order to board the helicopter that arrives at the end of the game to carry off survivors.

My team consisted of a male police officer, male punk rocker, and female business woman.  The woman stayed in the bank most of the game, and the police officer stayed in the hospital, so it was up to the punk rocker to move around, although he was mostly in the church.

After the players move, the zombies are added based off of the card chosen and can move.  Each location has rules around zombies and when they will kill someone.  The players have special abilities and cards to try to fend off the zombies, but few of each.

In our game, one player controlled most of the game, however, his controlling of the game did not end up to his advantage in the end as he had not made many friends and a fairly sly trade of mine while he was attempting to secure a trade that he thought would win him the game, crumbled his plan in one action.

In the end, the game took its slotted 2 hours to complete and every player had at least on survivor make it to the chopper. The scores were as follows.

Anna – 9

Scott – 9

Ron – 7

Francois – 7

Me – 7

Moishe – 2

Aaron – Zombie GM

Final Thoughts:

This game was fun, but the symbols and gameplay are a little tough to pick up on.  You really need to pay attention and figure out some of the meanings to get the most out of your gameplay.

Due to the fight to stay alive mentality of the game, people can get pretty competitive.  In our game, we had one person really get into it and get angry a few times and another person pretty much check out of the game at times.

City of Horror was a fun game with different scenarios to keep it interesting.  I’d like to do a bit of reading on it and get a better understanding before playing it again.