Good. Bad. I'm the one with the gun.
If you haven't seen Army Of Darkness, I
suggest you stop reading this review and go do that. And slap
yourself upside the head for good measure.
Now that everyone has seen this gem,
let's talk about it. Sure, Army Of Darkness was a sequel of a remake
of the original Evil Dead (it's complicated). It's one of those cult
classic movies that everyone seems to have seen. It's a classic. I
mean, Duke Nukem stole one of his lines from Ash. One of the quotes
in the All Flesh Must Be Eaten core book is from this movie. Eden
Studios even snagged the rights to make a RPG (which I sadly do not
own but will acquire if I can find it for cheap).
So, I like the movie. I can't even
remember how many times I've seen it. It was common to pop it in
during parties when I was in high school. My friends and I used to
quote it and discuss how things worked, like the chainsaw hand, the
Death Coaster, etc. In short, you could say I'm familiar with the
movie. That's why, many years ago, I bought the AoD card game when I
happened upon it for $20 at my friendly local game store. Because,
why not? My friends and I were fans of the movie, we played board and
card games, and it would give us something else to play. Sadly, my
friends at the time seemed to enjoy dismissing anything I liked out
of hand (why the fuck was I friends with these people? Seriously), I
never really got the chance to play it much. In fact, the box was
destroyed and my copy of the rules were lost. Thankfully, I found a
PDF of the rules and printed them out. I also put the cards in
sleeves and then put them in a nice sturdy box.
Recently, I had a chance to play this
game with my new group of nerds, so let's talk about it, shall we?
The first thing about this game is that
it is most definitely a Munchkin clone. You can attack monsters and
other players. In fact, it seems to be expected. Okay, yeah, that
makes sense...
To make the game a four player game,
they had to give you plenty of characters to use. In addition to Ash,
there's Sheila, Arthur, and Henry. The cards double sided, so you
have “Ash” and “Evil Ash” with the exact same abilities.
Since Arthur and Henry really didn't have the “heel/face turn”
that Ash and Sheila did, they just have two different pictures of
them. The “Good/Bad” mechanic is actually pretty interesting.
Since the obvious goal of the game is to get the Necronomicon,
there's different goals for Good and Evil. If you're Good, you need
to defeat all of the monsters in front of you and have the book. If
you're Evil, you need to have at least five monsters in front of you
and have the book. Isn't that fun?
When it comes to the cards, there's
only a few: Monster, Item, Ally, and Event. Monsters are to be
defeated, Items and Allies give bonuses to combat rolls, and Events
are anything else. Each turn you can only play one card, so you have
to pick what kind of card you want to play very carefully. One other
thing is that Items and Allies can be lost when used or if you lose,
so you have to be very careful when using them. You can have more
than one in play, but can only have one of each face up at any given
time. And you really need to have them to defeat most of the
monsters. Defeating the Monsters requires rolling a d6 and getting
above the required number. They go as high as 8, which is the same
required to defeat another player.
Since you can screw over the other
players, you can place monsters in front of any other players. The
person playing Henry is about to win because he has the Necromonicon
and no monsters? Drop a really tough monster right in front of him.
The other thing is that your hand size is also your health. Lose your
fight against a monster, or another player, and lose a card. Lose
your last card and then you flip your character's card. This can make
it harder for someone to win, if you keep making them switch between
Good and Evil. Remember, it's inspired by Munchkin.
All in all, the game is pretty simple
and can be something fun to place for a change of pace. Or in between
other games. However, it's not the best. The wording of the rules and
the layout of the cards isn't the greatest. While having your card
hand be your health is interesting, it's too easy to have people keep
attacking you just to keep you down. Of course, I wasn't the biggest
fan of Munchkin. I swear that every time I played, some jerk would go
out of his way to target me for no real reason.
If you want to pick this up, it's not a
bad choice. It is fun. A little confusing, but fun. Just make sure
that everyone is on board for some fuckery...
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