Bobbies and Zombies

Family Game Night at Little Shoppe of Games was finally a go for me last night. I've been itching for some gameplay after I was sick two weeks ago, and visiting a friend at the hospital last week, so I was glad to be well enough to make it up there last night. Lane and I started out needing a two-player game, and decided to go with Scotland Yard. I'm surprised I'd never played it before. It was similar to Mr. Jack, in that one player played the five Scotland Yard detectives, while the other the mysterious Mr. X they were hunting. This time, however, up to five people can play cooperatively on the detective side. For our first game, I took the side of the detectives, and Lane took on the role of Mr. X. Sadly, his edition of the game didn't come with the baseball hat pictured above. The game mechanics are relatively simple. Each spot on the map can be reached by one or more modes of transportation: taxi, bus, and/or underground. Each detective has a set of tokens for each of these modes, and plays them to move from one location to the next. As the detectives play their limited tokens, they go into Mister X's pile. He starts out with considerably fewer than any of the detectives, but soon amasses huge piles of them. He also uses them to move about the map, but he's also got a special set of black tokens. Mister X alone can use these to travel along the Thames by boat, and they may also be used in place of any of the other tokens to mask the type of transport he's using. Lest the game seem too stacked for Mister X, whose movements are hidden from the other players, he must on certain turns reveal his location. Strategy is key in this game. Because the detectives do not know Mister X's initial starting position, it's vital in the first few rounds to get them all as close to underground stations as possible so when X is revealed for the first time, they can rapidly give chase to the right part of the map. From that first reveal, it's a matter of figuring out all the possible places he could have gone by the means of transportation he chose each round. In our first game, I got exceedingly lucky at the outset when I caught Lane glancing at the southwest corner of the map and guessed he had started there. I managed to get my detectives to surround him. Then it was just a matter of methodically closing off all possible escape routes while I moved my detectives in. In the end, he had nowhere to run. Jess and James arrived just as we were setting up for a second game; this time with me playing Mister X. While James settled in to feed his Bioshock addiction, Jess split the detectives with Lane and set off on my trail. For a while, I managed to confuse things greatly by burning through my black tickets. Rather than use them all for boat rides, I decided to conceal all of my means of transportation to keep them unable to guess where I was going. I was on my way out of the area along the Thames when Jess landed one of her detectives on me and the game was over. It was a lot of fun watching them calculate all of the possible moves I had from from each spot, and usually see them head in the wrong direction. I would have gotten away, I suspect, if I had realized that a certain bus route wound around a fair distance between stops instead of hopping from one location to the one immediately next to it, but I was afraid to stare at any part of the board for too long. After that, I asked if we could get out my copy of Gimme the Brain. Ever since I bought a rubber ball in the form of a brain at the Our Body exhibit, I've been dying to use it. Lane and Jess agreed readily, and off we went. The premise is that you are a group of zombies working in a fast food restaurant. There are several jobs to be done, some of which require possession of the single brain the restaurant has for you. To get the brain, you play bid cards and the highest bidder wins. Every time you perform a task that requires the brain, there's a chance you'll drop it, resolved with a six-sided die. Jobs are either one or two-handed, and each turn you can only perform two hands worth of jobs. As with all of the Cheapass Games, the premise and mechanics are pretty simple, and leave a lot of room for truly hilarious gameplay. All of the bid cards have reasons printed on them why you need the brain that round, from "My hand is stuck in the safe!" to "The customer is wrong!" and need to be read aloud during bidding for the full effect. The job cards are similarly amusing. My favorite was "Look! A monkey!" which let me distract the only player paying attention (the one with the brain) long enough to steal it myself. As I was looking up the website for the game, I was highly amused to note that the one FAQ for Gimme the Brain relates to a card "Sharing is Caring" which caused endless confusion last night. After a couple of rounds of Gimme the Brain, we were all ready to call it a night. A good evening of gaming is definitely the perfect way to unwind before heading home to bed.