Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode VI: Anna DeWitt & Little Sister

I have to admit I've taken a week off from the WarmaShock project, and have been indulging a bit in my love of Batman.  However, the enthusiasm for the project is still very much there, so I thought I'd mention the last couple of models to join the team whilst I'm in between bouts of painting the dark knight!

 

For those who have just joined the article series here, WarmaShock is an ongoing project to create a BioShock army for Privateer Press' Warmachine tabletop system.  So far the army has seen Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth Comstock from BioShock Infinite, and the security bots and Eleanor Lamb from Bioshock and BioShock 2 - all of which can be seen through the Article Archive tab at the top of the page.

In today's article we're going to be looking at two new additions; a Little Sister from the first two BioShock games, and Anna DeWitt from BioShock Infinite.  It might seem odd to feature two completely different characters in the same article, but I'm doing this for two reasons.  First, neither miniature needed much (if any) customisation, so if they had individual articles they'd be very short.  And secondly, the miniatures used for both characters come from the same Malifaux box set, so it makes sense to put them both together.

 

Thanks, once again, to GMorts Chaotica for allowing the shameless theft of the photos from his unboxing articles!

 

 

Little Sister

 

So the box set in question was the No Shelter Here set - Pandora's crew from Malifaux's Neverborn faction.  Straight away from looking at the front of the box it was obvious that I'd gone to the right place for a Little Sister!

 

 

Way back before this was a project to build an army - instead being just a plan to paint some BioShock-y miniatures - I'd actually taken a look at the Pandora box, but couldn't justify buying the entire thing just for a single model (it isn't availably individually, unfortunately).  However, once it became an actual army-build and I started throwing money away faster than I could burn it, the No Shelter Box became a more viable option - after all, what's a sixth Malifaux crew when you've already bought five?  Besides which, I'd undoubtedly be able to find use for some more of the miniatures.

 

So with the box set finally in hand, it was time to get a Little Sister onto the painting table!

 

 

Assembly was nice and straightforward - the newer plastic Malifaux minis tend to be exquisitely detailed, but the trade-off is often that they have tiny fiddly bits which make them a nightmare to assemble!  Candy avoids this nicely, with just three pieces to de-flash (which is minimal) and put together.  The only non-Little Sister thing about this miniature is the basket, containing candy canes and a human skull.  Not exactly fitting with the Little Sister aesthetic, but it's built into the model in such a way that it was beyond my skills to remedy.  I've no doubt a more skilled hobbyist could trim off the basket with a good knife and use green stuff to complete the dress (and perhaps even sculpt a Big Daddy doll into her hands), but at this point I'm not that hobbyist!

 

With Candy/Little Sister built, I needed a suitable base to attach her to!  Normally when I do tabletop armies, I just grit and paint the bases to look like a battlefield, but seeing as that wouldn't really work for Rapture (and only in a limited capacity for Columbia), I've been going for more scenic bases with the WarmaShock project.

For the Little Sister, my basing plan came from one particular area in BioShock 2: the Little Sister Orphanage.  In Rapture, Little Sisters are walking ADAM factories - the substance which allows the creation of the superpower-granting Plasmids - but they start their lives as ordinary little girls, and these girls come straight from the Little Sister Orphanage.  In large parts of Rapture, the flooring consists of lavish carpets or polished marble, but the orphanage is all wooden floorboards and other such typical orphanage furnishings.  Wooden floorboards are certainly easy enough to replicate, but whilst bits box-rummaging down at Titan Games I actually found a resin base which would work even nicer, as it featured a little more detail.  So I nabbed this base, stuck Candy onto it, and one paint job later, I had a Little Sister to add to the army...

 

 

The head popping out of the broken flooring was actually part of the base - presumably meant to be some kind of apparition arising out of a vortex, but being Rapture I just painted the vortex to look like water (with the addition of some clear resin effect), and just made the head into a melty-faced splicer, who had presumably just met his end at the hands of the Sister's Big Daddy!

In gameplay terms, she'll be using the card of Gaston Crosse - the new Mercenary journeyman warcaster.  It's a bit of an odd one, I admit, but I liked the idea of the Little Sister controlling her own Big Daddies, so in terms of gameplay it should actually be quite fitting.

 

Anna DeWitt

 

Warning!  This section of the article contains spoilers!  If you haven't yet finished BioShock Infinite then only continue at your own risk.

 

The other model in the No Shelter Here box I was planning to use was Baby Kade, the baby with the knife in his hand and demonic look in his eyes.  I wasn't sure what to do with him, apart from make him another resident of the Little Sister Orphanage - obviously the Sisters we always see in the game are probably around 6-7 years old, but one would assume the orphanage takes them in at a younger age.  This would also work with my plan to use him as Reinholdt, as he could then toddle along with the Little Sister and lend her a hand!

However, before I could get started on him, a good friend and fellow Titan Games regular suggested that he could be used to make Anna DeWitt - Booker's missing daughter from BioShock Infinite.  Always susceptible to suggestion, I immediately seized this idea and ran with it, and that very evening I started working on ideas of how to turn Baby Kade into Anna DeWitt.

 

 

The main problem with a baby in this scale is that there isn't much to work with in terms of conversion options, which meant that I'd have to get creative with the base to ensure that this ended up clearly being Anna DeWitt, and not just some random baby I'd thrown into the army for no discernible reason!

 

*FINAL SPOILER WARNING*

 

In BioShock Infinite, the protagonist, Booker DeWitt, is a man with a fair degree of inner turmoil, having sold his daughter to pay off a gambling debt (as you do).  Many years later he is sent on a job to capture/rescue Elizabeth Comstock from Columbia, and on this job discovers that she has the unique (and often helpful) ability to open up tears between parallel worlds.  Well, in a dramatic twist of events at the end of the game, it's discovered that Elizabeth Comstock is, in fact, Anna DeWitt, after Booker sold her to the game's main antagonist Father Comstock.  In a further twist, Comstock is, in fact, a parallel world Booker, and Booker-prime's attempt to back out of the deal as Anna was being passed through an inter-dimensional portal resulted in the loss of Anna's little finger, and Elizabeth's subsequent abilities years down the line!  Phew!

To make the model embody Anna, I decided to try and capture the essence of that moment in the base, so with a rough plan in my head, it was time to get started!

 

If only he'd used one extra "O", maybe Comstock would have listened...

 

First of all I assembled Kade, which was again nice and simple.  The teddy stayed on the sprue, as it had no place in this scene, and the knife was clipped out of his hand, but aside from that he was simply assembled as normal.

 

 

Then it was time to start the all-important base!  I started with a resin street-base which I had on-hand - one of many I'd bought for my Batman miniatures.  It was important that the base had a kerb, for reasons we'll come to in a moment...

 

 

Next I needed a wall.  It would be very difficult for Anna to be passed through a portal in the wall if there wasn't actually a wall, otherwise the portal would just be in thin air.  Actually, that would have been just as feasible, but from a modelling point of view it would have been a nightmare, so I was very grateful for the wall.

I simply used a piece of plasticard for the wall.  It was a little bit smooth for brickwork though, so I scored some lines on it to represent bricks, and then gave it a light sanding to try and give it a rougher finish.  The other side of the wall I left smooth, as this was going to be the interior of a room, and so was going to be wallpapered.  Then I just needed to create the portal itself, which I did by simply drilling a hole in the plasticard and gradually working it wider with a knife.

 

 

Then I just glued the wall onto the base, flush against the kerb, and used some wooden coffee stirrers to make some floorboards for the other side of the wall.  This is where the kerb was important, as that raised level meant that once I'd added the floorboards, both sides of the base were even with eachother, and it also sandwiched the wall in place, preventing it from being knocked off in an inevitable bout of clumsiness later!

 

With the base and the miniature both assembled, all that was left was to combine the two and paint them!  Again, the paint job did help to bring the scene together a little bit...

 

 

 

As Anna lost her left little finger in the incident, I wanted to add this to the grizzly scene, so I added a small pool of blood around her left hand, along with a streak of blood running down from the postal.  Now you could nit-pick at this point, as she wouldn't have lost that finger while the portal was open, but I'm playing the artistic license card here, as it captures the overall scene a little better.  On the pavement side of the scene, there is a small patch of blood on the ground, and I even added a dot of flesh for the severed finger.  Again, I used artistic license and scrawled the words "Bring us the girl, wipe away the debt" on the wall - these words weren't present in this scene, but they are the words that prompted Booker's sale of Anna, as well as his eventual rescue of Elizabeth, so I felt that including them added to the scene as a whole.

 

So that's the latest two miniatures for the army!  The splicers are almost done, so they will probably be the next article, but in the meantime thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this!







Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode V: Security Bots

The ongoing WarmaShock project has been progressing nicely!  It's been a couple of weeks since the last update, but that's because I've been working on the unit of splicers and the Big Daddies - I've got some fantastic miniatures finished for both, but I'm waiting until all splicers/BD's are finished in order to upload them as a whole.  In between splicers, however, I have been working on a few other bits and pieces here and there, so that I don't become bored or resentful towards the unit and stop giving it my best, and that leads me onto this update.

 

So far, this army has seen Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth Comstock from BioShock Infinite, and Eleanor Lamb from BioShock 2, so I thought it was time to revisit Rapture and add something quick and easy to the list.  Characters are incredibly satisfying to piece together - especially when you feel very passionately about them - but they don't often embody the world around them.  That's what I wanted to start doing; converting miniatures which felt like they held the very life and soul of Rapture and Columbia.  With the Big Daddies still being worked on there was one other thing which I felt was integral to feel of the first two BioShock games: security bots!

 

 

I've always had a soft spot for these guys (or at least since the first time I was able to get them to fight on my side).  In the first two games it felt like you could barely turn a corner in Rapture without walking past a security camera and sending a pair of security bots buzzing after you, so I really wanted to have a couple featuring in my army.

The main problem with the bots is that they are a unique shape.  While working on Elizabeth did give me some practice with green stuff, I still wasn't in a position where I would confidently and competently start sculpting something along these lines.  So when I started on these bots, I decided that I'd be happy to settle for a miniature which captured the overall feel of them, rather than a perfect, authentic replica.

The first thing I had to do was to find a model to use at its core.  Seeing as the security bot is basically just a machine gun and a camera attached to some rotor blades, the logical place was to start scouring my bits boxes for discarded weapons to work around.  Sometimes, though, logic gives way to good fortune, and a trip to my FLGS prevented me from having to start digging!

 

My local store, Titan Games, has struck up a good working relationship with Prodos Games - the company behind the tabletop system Mutant Chronicles: Warzone Resurrection.  On the day I popped into the store they were showcasing some of the miniatures from their up and coming Alien vs Predator game, and that's when I spotted something pretty cool amongst the range...

 

 

...the colonial marines sentry turrets from Aliens!  They may be the wrong shape for the security bots, but as far as capturing the overall feel goes, they seemed like as good a candidate as I was going to get.  And to make things even better, it turned out they were giving out free samples of the sentry turrets and alien facehuggers, so I ended up getting a pair of turrets at no charge and before the release date!  It certainly felt like a day of hobby win.

So with the miniatures in hand it was time to go home and start converting...

 

 

The turret miniatures themselves are of fantastic quality.  Now I have to say that I'm not the biggest fan of Prodos (to put it mildly) for reasons I won't bother going into here, but the entire AvP range is absolutely stunning.  Seeing as I was building bots and not turrets the majority of the stand would be discarded, but there were some parts on it that proved useful.  The turret itself has a very nice overall aesthetic so I kept it in one piece, but it did need a couple of additions.

First of all I wanted to bulk the turrets out a little bit, as they are quite slim.  The stand does include a large box which I assume is supposed to be the power unit for the turret, so I clipped this off the stand, filed down the excess, and attached it to the side of the gun.

 

 

Now the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that the turret is upside-down in this photo, and that's the way it's going to stay for the rest of the build.  First of all the indentation for attaching it to the stand is perfect for the rotor assembly, and secondly the light which was previously on top of the turret looks great hanging beneath the barrel of the bot.

 

 

Next it was time for the rotor blades.  I have to admit I have no idea what these riveted strips are from, but I picked them up whilst rummaging through Titan's bits box a few days beforehand.  I didn't know at the time what I'd be using them for, but they felt like they'd come in handy on the WarmaShock build as a whole!  Take this as a lesson, kids, buying online might seem great, but never underestimate the benefits of having a good relationship with your FLGS!

The sprue contained 8 of these strips, so I simply removed one, clipped it in half, and assembled it criss-crossed to make the rotors.  Using a clipped-down sewing pin I attached them to the turret, and the security bot had its wings...

 

 

If I was feeling impatient I could have left it there, but something about the bot didn't feel quite right.  I soon realised that it wasn't quite tall enough, as the Rapture security bots do seem to have quite a bit of height to them as they come hovering towards you in the game, so I needed to find some way to extend it downwards slightly.

 

 

Back to the stand!  The tripod had lost one of its legs when I removed it for the power pack.  The remaining skinny leg looked like it might work to add a bit of volume to the bot, so I clipped it off, tried a dry-fit to the model, and it actually did the job pretty well.  One dab of superglue later, and the first security bot was built!

 

 

Once the model was painted I attached a length of clear acrylic rod to the back of the model to suspend it above the base, and then all that was left was the base itself.  Seeing as these are specifically Rapture bots (Columbia does have its own fliers, but of a very different design) I wanted the bases to be fitting.  The Little Sisters are going to be built with wooden floorboard bases to emulate the flooring of the Little Sister Orphanage in BioShock 2, so I decided to do the same with the bases of the bots.  Titan luckily had some Malifaux Orphanage Base inserts in stock, so I bought these, painted them up, attached the bots, and hey presto!  The WarmaShock army had grown...

 

 

You might have noticed that I've put these on 40mm bases, instead of 30mm.  It might seem odd, but if you'll bear with me there's method to the madness!  I wanted the miniatures to have the feel of the BioShock security bots, so trawled through the Warmachine Mercenary units to see where they would fit in the best, and as daft as it sounds the Ogrun Bokur was the best!

 

 

Granted he has no ranged weapons, but the Bokur acts as a bodyguard to a warcaster or solo in the army, so this allowed me to have one bot guarding the main warcaster, whilst the other protects the journeyman warcaster.  They're solos, so they can happily whizz around the battlefield doing their own thing.  And finally - and I found this a nice touch - they're FA2, meaning that the army can only contain two of them.  If you've played BioShock 1 or 2 you'll know that your character can never control more than two security bots at once, so even this is fitting.

 

So that's the latest addition to the army!  As I said earlier, the Big Daddies are under construction (2 completed, 3 to go), as are the splicers (4 down, 6 to go), and the first Little Sister is also done, so hopefully the next update should be fairly soon!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this article, and I hope to see you again for the next addition to the force!

Good Cop Bad Cop Kickstarter Review

This review is for a project still at the Kickstarter stage.  As such, final game contents may vary from those shown here.

 

As Games & Tea heads towards its first birthday (we're expecting cake - please don't let us down), it's delighted us just how much we're making in-roads in the gaming scene.  Sure, we're probably at least a couple of weeks away from being mobbed by adoring fans in the street, but over the last couple of months we've had the nice experience of games developers approaching us to review their up and coming games.  It's our pleasure to bring you another one of these now, in the form of Good Cop Bad Cop from Overworld Games: a semi-cooperative card game of hidden identities, deception, and occasionally shooting someone just out of spite/to be on the safe side.

 



Good Cop Bad Cop is for 4-8 players, and each player (as the name implies) takes on the role of a police officer (or "cop", as we understand the cool kids call them these days).  Some of these cops will be the very embodiment of honesty, whilst some of them will be a crooked as a politician, and it's the aim of the game for each team to eliminate the leader of their opponents.  Unfortunately this isn't quite as easy as you might first think, as the crooked cops have done a fine job of covering their tracks, so nobody at the start of the game knows which players are crooked and which are honest (aside from themselves, obviously).  As such, the game starts out with an investigatory feel until players know just whom they can trust, after which it can descend into all-out interdepartmental war!

Well that's the rough outline of the game, so let's take a look at the components and then break down just how it all works!

 

There are three main types of cards in Good Cop Bad Cop: Integrity, Equipment, and Guns.

 

 

The Integrity cards determine whether a player is honest or crooked.  At the beginning of each game, each player is dealt three Integrity cards which they must look at and then place face-down in front of themselves.  If the majority of the cards are honest then the player is honest, and vice-versa.  One player will find the Agent card amongst their Integrity cards and one player the Kingpin, which will mark them out as the leaders of the honest and crooked cops respectively, regardless of their other Integrity cards.

Once these cards are placed face-down they have to remain in the same order, which will come into play as one of the game's major mechanics shortly...

 

 

The Equipment cards are the next to be dealt out, as each player is dealt one at random, which they keep hidden from everyone else.  The majority of these can be used at any point in the game, and have effects ranging from the revival of an eliminated player, to switching another player's allegiance for the remainder of the game.  Each player can only carry up to one item of Equipment at a time, so having the right gear on-hand can be a game-changer at critical points!

 

 

And then we have the Gun cards.  These are used to eliminate other players, including the all-important Agent/Kingpin.  There aren't enough Guns in the game for each player to carry one at the same time, so knowing when to sit back and investigate or when to arm yourself for the coming storm can be the key to victory.

 

Once everyone has their trio of Integrity cards and their item of Equipment, the game beings, starting with the player who most recently told a lie - of course getting said player to admit this can be troublesome, as their credibility has already been brought into question.

During each players turn they may only take one action out of four possible options.  They can Investigate another player, which involves taking a look at one of their Integrity cards and returning it to its face-down position.  This is where maintaining card order becomes important, as investigating would obviously become impossible if players could shuffle their Integrity cards between each turn.

The second action option is Equip, in which a player may draw a card off the top of the Equipment deck.

Thirdly we have the Arm action, where a player takes one of the Gun cards from the centre of the table and aims it at another player.  Whilst having a Gun obviously gives players the power of life and death/grievous wounding over the others, the act of taking one does require the player to turn one of their Integrity cards face-up, and so can bring the wrath of the opposing team bearing down upon them!  This makes Gun-grabbing a tactical risk, rather than something to just be done casually.

If you've got a Gun you might as well use it!  The final action is to Shoot, where the player pulls the trigger on their unfortunate target.  The target of the attack must flip all of their Integrity cards face-up, and if they are the Agent or the Kingpin they take a wound.  If they are hit a second time, they are out of the game, and their team is defeated.  If the shot player is just a regular honest/crooked cop then a single shot is enough to eliminate them from the game.

 

"That gunshot wound looks pretty nasty, boss.  I think you're gonna need two plasters for that."

 

After the action phase, if the player is holding a Gun they can choose to re-aim it at another target, and then play passes to the next player along.  Play continues this way until either the Agent or Kingpin are eliminated, or until one player takes control of both the Agent and Kingpin cards, which results in victory for the crooked team.

 

So that's the basics of the gameplay.  But how well does it work?

 

The first hidden identity game which we played was The Resistance, which, whilst a lot of fun, did have its share of shortcomings - one of which was that accusations of loyalty and treason started getting regularly thrown around at the very start of each game.  Good Cop Bad Cop has avoided this pitfall first of all by leaving all players in the dark about one another, and secondly by giving players the power to eliminate eachother.  Shouting up your suspicions about a crooked cop in the game's early stages may seem like a bold move, but in all likelihood it will just end up putting you on the wrong end of a crooked gun!  The option is certainly there to voice your suspicions, or share the findings of your investigations, but we found that most players erred on the side of caution and kept their opinions to themselves for as long as possible.

This makes the investigation part of the game highly crucial, as players are forced seek out just who they can trust and who is a threat.  After several games with a variety of different players, we have to admit that this does start the game off at quite a slow pace, however once players start to get an idea of who is on their side (even if it's just one other player) things start to pick up, and the game quickly becomes quite cutthroat and frantic!

 

Looks like we've got ourselves a Mexican stand-off...

 

One of the mechanics to which we all gave a wholehearted thumbs-up was the aiming of the Guns - specifically down to the fact that it must be done at the end of the player's turn.  This prevents players from simply aiming and pulling the trigger, as the round of play in between can completely change their plans on who to eliminate.  This comes into play all the more so in larger games, adding a whole new level of depths as affiliations may be revealed and new suspicions raised in their place.  One more than one occasion we've witnessed players picking up a Gun card and then changing their target three or four times before finally taking the shot!  On top of the aiming we also liked the fact that taking a Gun in the first place reveals one of your Integrity cards, giving other players  hint at your affiliation, or giving you a chance at a devious bluff.

And finally we have to give credit to the Equipment cards, which can literally change the course of the game at the drop of a hat.  There are some cards which appear much more potent than others, such as Taser, which allows a player to steal someone else's Gun, or Blanks, which prevents Guns from being fired during a particular turn.  However, some of the less-potent looking cards can be used to devastating effect at the right time.  The Bribe card is a great example, as it allows a player to switch one of their Integrity cards with that of another player.  This may not sound amazing at first glance, but if you're an honest cop and your Agent's already taken a wound and has weapons aimed at him by the crooked cops, it can allow you to take the Agent card for yourself, giving your team the drop on those dirty crooked officers!  Each Equipment card is completely unique, and with a hand limit of just one, it's unlikely that the entire deck will be cycled through during a single game, so repeats of the same effect will be avoided.  This is a bit of a double-edged sword, however, as players will soon learn the effects of each of the Equipment cards - if the only card that can foil their plan has already been played, they know that they can go ahead without any danger.  We couldn't help but think that if the Equipment deck was doubled in size to two of each card, this could be resolved, adding a little more tension as the game progresses.

The other real downside of Good Cop Bad Cop is purely statistical, and comes into play during smaller games.  It's entirely possible after the Integrity cards have been dealt out, that the Agent or Kingpin can be the only player on their team.  Within our first few test games we saw both sides of this, with the Agent left alone in one game, and the Kingpin left flying the crooked flag solo in the next.  This meant that once the single player shot their opposite number for the first time, every other player in the swiftly picked up a weapon and gunned them down before they could pick up another Gun and finish the job.  In both cases the imbalance wasn't noticed until the shooting began, but it was a bit demoralising for the single player to find out that they never stood much of a chance to begin with.  As we say though, this is entirely a statistical issue, and doesn't effect larger games.

 

Stepping away from the mechanics, it's physically a nice game to play.  Being purely a pack of cards, Good Cop Bad Cop is very easy to transport.  Things like the active player or wound markers could have been done as punch-out tokens, but by keeping them as cards the entire game fits very neatly into a box no larger than a poker deck.

As each player will never need more than 5 cards in front of them at once (three Integrity, one Gun, one Wound), it doesn't require a great deal of playing space.  In fact when out FLGS was packed to the rafters, our first games of Good Cop Bad Cop were played in a pub garden with five of us around a relatively small table!

And in terms of the cards themselves, they're pretty darn nice to look at.  You won't find any lavish artwork in Good Cop Bad Cop, but the simplified silhouettes on the cards fit the feel of the game perfectly, and make it aesthetically very pleasing.

 

Overall our experience of Good Cop Bad Cop has been a positive one, and if you wish to support it at the Kickstarter level then you have until May 20th to get on board here.

 

The Good Points

• Good Cop Bad Cop is an easy to learn game and quick to play.
• Set up space is small, and it's a game which can literally fit in your pocket.
• Unlike some hidden identity games, players are not rewarded for throwing blind accusations around.
• The wide variety of Equipment cards can shake the game up in various ways when players least expect it.
• It's a great game for large groups, accommodating up to 8 players.

The Bad Points

• Team-balancing becomes an issue in smaller games
• Experienced players can learn to wait until certain Equipment cards have been played, removing other players' chances to foil them.

Recommended Number of Players: 6+

The team-balance issue is most frequent in 4 player games, and occasionally crops up with 5 players.  With 6 or more it seems to have been pretty much eliminated, but Good Cop Bad Cop is definitely a game which gets better with larger crowds.  If you can pull together a full lineup of 8 players then we'd highly recommend it!
 

Average Game Time: 15-30 minutes

Depending on player numbers, Good Cop Bad Cop will take 15-30 minutes to play - obviously with higher player numbers there has to be more investigation before players start shooting wildly!  Being quick and fun to play though, the entire group was happy to play a few games back to back.

Replay Value: Medium/High

Whilst Good Cop Bad Cop doesn't have much by way of additional mechanics to make each playthrough different, hidden identity games by their very nature owe their replayability to the group.  They are the specialist gaming scene's equivalent of poker, and as long as you have a group who can stonewall eachother and keep their affiliations under wraps until the last possible moment, games like this can be brought back out again and again.

The Future: Under Investigation...

Good Cop Bad Cop is still at the Kickstarter stage, so right now all attention is on making this game see the light of day.  Once it reaches general release, the option of additional cards may be addressed.  With simple games such as this, too many additional mechanics can rob it of its character, but simple additions such as new Equipment cards - or even a third character card such as Internal Affairs for larger games - could be used to help it go the extra mile.  At this point this is purely our whimsical speculation, but it's worth keeping an eye on!

Price: £15/$14

Being a Kickstarter project, it's up to each backer how much they'd like to pledge to Good Cop Bad Cop.  A $14 pledge will secure you a copy of the game upon its release including postage within the US, so with the additional cost of postage to the UK, this works out around the £15 mark.

 

 

 

OVERALL SCORE: 8.5/10

Tea consumed during this review: Typhoo, milk and 2 sweeteners. Brew rating: 9/10

If you enjoyed this article and want to see more of the same, come and like us on our Facebook page to keep up to date with our reviews, as well as our general day-to-day ramblings!

 

Zombies Keep Out, Part 2: Gameplay & Verdict

In our last article we headed back to the much-beloved world of zombies, taking a look at the box contents for Privateer Press' new release, Zombies Keep Out - a co-operative game for 1-6 players.  Now it's time to have a good look at the gameplay mechanics, and reward it with its coveted* Games & Tea final score (*Games & Tea final score may not actually be coveted).

In Zombies Keep Out, players take on the roles of the Bodgers - a team of tinkering goblins who find their workshop under siege from an approaching zombie horde.  The players must work together to fend off the zombie horde and cobble together 3 contraptions to stop them, before the zombies overrun the barricades and swarm through the workshop!

The zombies' shambling routes are arranged into nice neat columns (whoever said zombies are messy?), with the zombie pool at the bottom of the board and the workshop along the top.  To begin the game, the bottom two rows are filled with zombies, with one in each space.  There are four different types of zombies - Creepers, Leapers, Brutes and Runners - each of which are colour-coordinated with a certain area of the workshop.  The initial setup zombies are placed to match up with their corresponding locations, so the cellar (far-left) is faced with yellow Creepers, the front doors (centre) with a pair of red Brutes etc.  With the zombies places, the initial barricade tokens are placed on each workshop location, giving the Bodgers' stronghold a decent headstart over the horde.  Then a face-down contraption card is placed next to each workshop location, initial part cards are dealt out to the players, and then you're ready to go!  This is a nice, short setup sequence, meaning that players won't be left waiting for mountains of game components to be sorted and shuffled.

The player most prepared for a real-life zombie outbreak goes first - which in a crowd of zombie fans can lead to some arguing before the game even begins!  Once the argument has been settled (trial by combat is a favoured way of resolving things), the game can finally begin as the zombies get underway!

The first phase of each player's turn is dedicated to the zombies, as the active player draws a Terrible Things card off the top of the deck.  The Terrible Things cards throw new ever-changing challenges the players' way, ranging from minor annoyances to flat out disasters!  Terrible Things include adding to the number of active zombies on the board (as in the example above), moving zombies, backtracking on an in-progress blueprint, discarding all-important parts cards, or getting bitten (which is one of our favourite mechanics, and will be mentioned in more detail later!).

Each Terrible Things card contains three options, and the player must choose one of these actions to go ahead with.  Once the action is chosen, the player discards the card face-down and carries it out.  The rejected options are never revealed to the other players, which is a nice minor rule to keep players from second-guessing eachother.  The chosen action must be possible however, so a player wouldn't be able to choose a "All zombies in the rear row shamble forward" option if there were no zombies in the rear row.  In the event of none of the options being possible, then all zombies on the board advance!

Whilst there are four different zombie types, Privateer Press have kept things simple in terms of movement, and each zombie only moves one space when prompted.  The zombies always follow the path of the appropriately-coloured arrow, so the grey Runners always shamble straight forward, whilst the Creepers, Leapers and Brutes do their utmost to head towards the matching area of the workshop.  Now moving one space at a time may seem quite harmless and manageable, but once the zombie numbers begin to rise, chaos can ensue!

Each space can only contain a maximum of 3 zombies, so if there are ever any more than that, the active player must shamble some of them further on until only 3 remain.  Of course, this can have a knock-on effect of causing further spaces to exceed their zombie limit, and further shambling is called for!  In worst case scenarios, a simple shamble can cause a butterfly effect which brings the whole workshop crashing down!

"Avon calling..."

If a zombie needs to shamble whilst in the final space of a column, they deal damage to the barricade and are returned to the zombie pool, and this is where strategic zombie-placement comes into effect.  The grey Runners only ever deal 1 point of damage to their target, but if any of the other zombie types ever hit a section of the workshop which matches their colour, it deals 2 damage instead.  If an area of the workshop ever loses its final barricade token, it's considered to be overrun, and the contraption behind it is removed from play, and any further damage which would be dealt to that section is instead dealt to the next section across in the direction of the central doors.  If the doors are ever breached, or three of the contraptions are destroyed, the zombies have overwhelmed the workshop and the players lose.

Once the Terrible Things card has been resolved, the player then takes their action for the turn.

We'd just like to pause at this point to make a small note about the turn sequence.  We think it's a bloomin' good sequence!  Most zombie games involve the player taking their turn first, and then the zombies activating afterwards.  By reversing the process in Zombies Keep Out, players are given the chance the react to the unfolding events, rather than being left on the sidelines for a round until the turn passes back to themselves.  It may only seem like a little thing, but it makes a lot of difference to the way the game feels.

Anyway, moving swiftly on to the players' actions.  During each turn the player may only take one action out of five possible choices.  Three of those options revolve around the part cards, so this seems as good a time as any to take a closer look at them.

There are three sections to each parts card, relating to the three possible actions for which they can be discarded in exchange.  To use the card to Defend, the player selects one space on the board and can remove a zombie of the specified colour, returning it to the pool.  The card above is a versatile one, allowing the player to kill any of the zombie types.  Some are more limited in their zombie-killing options, whereas others may restrict players to one zombie type, but allow them to kill two of that zombie instead.

To carry out a Repair action, the player can add a number of barricade tokens equal to the number shown to any location in the workshop, as long as they don't exceed the starting number of barricades.

To Tinker, the symbol on the parts card must match the next symbol along on the blueprint track of any contraption card.  If it matches, the progress counter can be moved one space along the track.

Once the progress counter reaches the final space on the blueprint track, the contraption is complete, and it can be put to use on subsequent player turns.  The one and only win condition for the game is to complete three of these contraptions, so good hand-management is key to victory.

Which brings us to Push The Button actions.  When a contraption is complete, a player can take a Push The Button action to activate the contraption during their turn.  Contraptions have a range of effects, from allowing players to draw extra cards, to allowing them to destroy zombies without having to discard.  Completing a contraption at the right time can turn the tide of battle!

And then the final action is simply to Scrounge, which allows players to draw two extra parts cards.

In addition to their action, players may also trade cards with eachother, ensuring that the correct parts come up when needed.

Once the player has taken their chosen action, play moves onto the next player, and another Terrible Things card starts the ball rolling again.

So that just leaves biting!  The bite rules were one of our favourite things about Zombies Keep Out, so we'll go into them in a little more depth here.  The only way players can get bitten is as the result of a Terrible Things card, and upon getting bitten they receive a bite token.  If at any point every player has at least 2 bite tokens, the game is over and the zombies have won (but seeing as the players are turning into zombies anyway, it's a win-win situation really).  The number of bite tokens a player has reduces their action options, but the rules about behaviour are the most fun!

After one bite, players can no longer trade cards, and must slur their speech for the rest of the game.

After two bites, they can no longer tinker either (picture a mindless player who can only bash things and nail up planks of wood!), and their speech must become barely intelligible.

After three bites, they can no longer use speech at all, and can only communicate through grunts and hand-gestures (imagine the fun of trying to teach the game to new players at this point!).  Also the player has to choose their Terrible Things option before even looking at the card, by grunting and holding up the appropriate number of fingers before drawing it.

And after four (or more) bites, the player has fully turned into a zombie!  They can only communicate through zombie noises, and instead of taking an action in the second phase of the turn, they draw a second Terrible Things card instead!

And that's the basics of Zombies Keep Out.  It's not the most complicated game by any means, but is a nice casual take on the zombie board game genre.  The quick setup time and small board mean that it's an easy game to get out, play through, and put away again, making it a nice way to break up a long gaming session.  It's also quick to learn, and within a few minutes of our first session everyone confidently knew what they were doing.  Being a casual game, it does create a very good atmosphere with like-minded friends, but this is where the issues with Zombies Keep Out start to arise.

It's a good social game, and the bite rules are fun for those who have been bitten and entertaining for those who are watching, but the flipside of this is that the overall experience begins to diminish as player numbers decrease.  When you're only playing with 2 players, for example, and one player gets bitten, it becomes less fun for the healthy player as they no longer have a coherent teammate to communicate with.

The solo game suffers from the same setback, as you're left trying to play a social game without the social element.  There are many cooperative games on the market which can be played solo - some, such as Firefly, work incredibly well, and some, such as Arkham Horror, are a masterclass in futility as the game mechanics fail to translate to a single player.  In both of these cases however, you're still left feeling immeresed in the game, whether scraping together a living as a planet-hopping transport captain, or struggling against an unstoppable tide of eldritch horrors.  With a solo game of Zombies Keep Out, you aren't left feeling like you're boldly taking on the army of the undead single-handedly, but instead feel more like you're playing a game of solitare - simply hoping you draw the right cards from the parts deck for the blueprints in front of you.

Solo will not be needed for this game...

And finally we should touch on the replayability, of which there isn't a great deal.  It's certainly a fun little casual game, but there isn't much going on to make one playthrough different to another.  Sure, you don't know what the next Terrible Things card might yield, but when they all serve roughly the same purpose - and the entire deck is cycled through once per game anyway - repetitition creeps in fairly quickly.

So is this the zombie game we've been dreaming of to keep our undead fandom satisfied?  Alas, no.  But at the very least it's a nice little casual game which will tide us over until the next contender steps into the ring.

The Good Points

• Zombies Keep Out is quick to set up and easy to learn.
• Up to 6 people can play at once, so it can accomodate a decent-sized gaming group.
• The bite rules lift the game up a notch, so as long as the group is willing to play along it creates a very fun atmosphere.
• The box and board are relatively small, making it an easy game to transport and play.

The Bad Points

• There's not a great deal to mix things up between playthroughs, and replayabilty suffers as a result.
• Being a social game, a lot of the atmosphere is lost with fewer player numbers, and solo mode verges on becoming a drag.
• Some variety in the zombie miniatures would have been nice.

Recommended Number of Players: 4+

Zombies Keep Out is a textbook "the more, the merrier" game.  The atmosphere doesn't hold up well with 2 players, and whilst 3 is a step in the right direction it's still not great.  6 players works very well, but anything above/including 4 should make for a decent session.

Average Game Time: 45 minutes (30 minutues solo)

For a casual game, Zombies Keep Out has quite a decent play time.  At 45 minutes, you're unlikely to be playing it more than once in a single gaming session, which is actually a good thing as it extends the game's otherwise meagre lifespan

Replay Value: Low

Whilst it's fun laughing at the grunts and frustrated hand gestures of your infected teammates, this isn't enough to hold up Zombies Keep Out by itself.  It's a nice little game for the first couple of playthroughs, but following on from that it becomes stale and repetitive, with nothing really to keep it refreshed.

The Future: Shambling

Zombies Keep Out is a new release, so the future is quite open at the moment.  The first expansion is already on the horizon in the form of Night of the Noxious Dead, but to be honest it doesn't look like it'll be enough to breath life into the core game.  The expansion features a new zombie type, new contraptions, new Terrible Things and new parts, but on the whole it looks like it's going to be more of the same, which isn't going to help an already samey game.

Price: £25

Zombies Keep Out will set you back around the £25 mark.  This is a decent price for a board game, but has to be weighed up against how much replayability you'll be getting out of it.  Being a new release from a big name in the miniatures world, it should be fairly easy to track down at your local gaming store if you fancy taking a chance on it.

OVERALL SCORE: 7/10

Tea consumed during this review: Typhoo, milk and 2 sweeteners. Brew rating: 7.5/10

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Zombies Keep Out, Part 1: Box Contents

We've mentioned (more than once) in the past that zombies hold a special place in our hearts here at Games & Tea, and as such there is no shortage of zombie games in our collection!  With zombies as popular as ever though, it seems that a new zombie game is getting released every other week, and it can sometimes be hard to separate the quality from the chaff.  So far we've taken a look at Zombie Fluxx, which we thoroughly enjoyed (although Fluxx isn't everyone's cup of tea), Zombies!!!, which we found clunky and very repetitive, and the yet-to-be-reviewed Zombicide, which seemed to be using a lot of fancy components to hide a lack of depth.  Now Privateer Press have thrown their hat into the zombie ring with the latest game in their Bodgers series: Zombies Keep Out, a cooperative board game for 1-6 players.

 

 

Privateer Press are perhaps best known for their Warmachine/Hordes tabletop systems, but are no strangers to the world of board/card games.  The light-hearted Bodgers series always centre around a team of goblins, and the different games all have separate themes, with the theme of Zombies Keep Out obviously being the undead.  It's not a game that takes itself seriously, as evidenced by the box art, so if you're looking a gritty, immersive survival horror game then you're probably best leaving now.

The players take on the role of the Bodgers, who have barricaded themselves in their workshop in reaction to a zombie outbreak.  As the zombies advance on the workshop and attempt to tear down the barricades, the Bodgers must rely on their resourcefulness and mechanical skill to construct 3 devices to fend the undead horde off.  Part 2 of the review will go into how this works in detail, so for now let's take a look at what you'll find inside the Zombies Keep Out box.

 

 

The Zombies Keep Out box is very nice and compact, and in fact is the smallest box for a board game in our substantial collection.  As a result, the board itself is also quite small, requiring only a small amount of set-up space to play.  The board shows the front yard outside the Bodgers' workshop, with the numbered circles representing the path of the zombies as they shamble towards their intended lunch.  The swimming pool at the bottom of the board is the waiting area for the zombies (cleverly referred to as the zombie pool in the rulebook), and the five areas of the workshop are represented along the top row; the cellar, the front door, the balcony, and two windows.

 

 

Of course a zombie game wouldn't be complete without zombies, and there are four types in Zombies Keep Out; Brutes, Runners, Leapers and Creepers.  If you notice on the game board, the front door, balcony and cellar are all colour coded, so the Brutes, Leapers and Creepers all shamble in the direction of their preferred targets.  The grey Runners are a little more mindless and just shamble forward in a straight line.  The little zombie miniatures are of a nice quality, but we have to confess to being slightly disappointed that the same sculpt was used for all of the zombies.  Even if there were only two or three different designs it would have been nice to add a little variety, but as it stands, all 45 zombies are identical.

 

 

In order to fight off the zombies, the Bodgers need to build some suitably ramshackle contraptions.  Zombies Keep Out features 15 contraption cards, with a blueprint of the device on one side and its abilities on the other.

 

 

In order to build these contraptions, the Bodgers are going to need parts, and this (appropriately) is where the part cards come into play.  As players are only allowed to take one action each turn (more details in Part 2), these cards serve multiple purposes.  They can be used to advance the blueprint track of a contraption as long as the part matches next requirement on the blueprint, they can be used to repair barricades if the zombies have weakened one part of the workshop, or they can be used to kill zombies in one location on the board, buying the rest of the team some precious time!

 

 

A zombie apocalypse is generally considered to be an unfavourable affair, as represented by the Terrible Things cards - the final card type in Zombies Keep Out.  At the start of each player's turn they must draw a card off the Terrible Things deck, resolve one of the events on the card, and then discard it face-down.  The Terrible Things options always advance the zombies' cause, by either causing them to shamble forward, adding more zombies to the board, biting players, or moving the blueprint track on a device backwards.  One of the nice mechanics in the game is that the players don't have to tell anyone about the two options they didn't choose - as the rulebook puts it, you have enough to deal with without the other players second-guessing your every move!

 

 

This just leaved the tokens, which are present in Zombies Keep Out in mercifully small numbers!  Progress tokens (left) are used to keep track of how close the players are to completing one of their contraptions.  Bite tokens (centre) are used to track how many times each player has been bitten by a zombie (which can have hilarious consequences), and barricade tokens are used to represent just how well the fortifications are holding up in each section of the workshop.

 

And that's the entire box contents of Zombies Keep Out!  Or at least the entire box content relevant to the game itself.  It also contains a handful of cards which can be used to add a zombie edge to some of the other Bodgers games, but as we're looking at Zombies Keep Out as a standalone product, we won't be looking at these.

But before we sign off on the box contents and move onto the gameplay, we're just going to take a quick look at the inside of the box, to see how well these components are stored...

 

 

Well it's certainly not the worst box we've ever seen (that accolade still sits firmly with BioShock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia), but it's not great.  The cards are just the right size to fit sideways into the box insert, so if you're careful about which way up you stand the box to store/transport it you should be able to avoid having them scatter all over the place.  The tokens and zombie miniatures, however, are free to rattle around to their hearts' content.  This can easily be addressed by the simple addition of a pair of resealable polythene bags, but it would have been nice if Privateer Press had included these as standard in the box.

 

So that's it for Part 1!  Come back for Part 2 where we'll be looking at the gameplay mechanics and revealing whether Zombies Keep Out has won a place in our cold, dead hearts...