Board Game: Welcome to Slaughterville

Well, we didn't play Alas for the Awful Sea yesterday, so instead...

The Game:Welcome to  
The Publisher: Rubio Games
Time: At least an hour
Players: Me, Michelle, Megan, Melissa - basically your name has to start with M

Can't have "slaughter" without "laughter."

Game Play: We actually tried playing this game a few months back, but the box didn't include the rules and we didn't feel like calling up the PDF online to parse them. This time, though, we did, and it's actually not all that difficult.

The game plays very much like Arkham Horror. The basic premise is that you're college students going to Slaughterville to combat the evil (OK, that's a little muddled, and actually most of the characters you play aren't college students, so never mind that). You choose a Villain, all of which interact with the rules a little differently, and you choose several locations, all of which have their own deck that gives you encounters while you're there.

Setting up.

We chose (randomly) the Serial Killer as our Villain. The parameters here are that you have to find and investigate the killer before 10 rounds are over, because at that point the killer fucks off and you lose. Of course, Slaughterville is full of monsters anyway, so there's lots to do even if you never see the killer.

Games involve coffee. Also Melissa went through like three characters.

Play progresses, again, a lot like Arkham - you can move, encounter a location, or trade with other players in your location. You get clues by defeating enemies in a fight, or very occasionally from other cards. In this particular scenario, you expend clues to track the killer, and every time you "fight" the killer by investigating (or by literally fighting him), you deplete his deck. You have to deplete it entirely to beat him; we lost.

But we were happy about it!

Combat works, again, a lot like Arkham; you roll against an enemy and if you roll more successes (5+) than they do, you win. Roll fewer, you lose, and take the difference in wounds.

Opinions: The general consensus was that this game would be fun to play again now that we know how it works; we didn't strategize especially well. That's normal in a game like this, and I think it's definitely got some replayability. The rules could be explained a little better in places, but again, you expect that (I suppose I could also go check out the Youtube explanation of play).

I was kind of not terribly thrilled by combat; it can stagnate, but you can spend a clue to get out, so there's that. The artwork on the game is fantastic and the card text is fun, if a little over-reliant on movie and media references.

Our Slaughterville.

Keep? Sure. Maybe we'll fight the slasher in fishnets next time.