Two thin men face each other in a dusty street. Residents peer from around corners, atop overturned carts, and through thick window glass. A lone tumbleweed hops down the thoroughfare. No sounds can be heard except for a slight desert breeze. The Arizona sun glares directly overhead, forcing both men to narrow their eyes into slits.

“Draw.”

I rolled two six-sided dice, hoping to earn an advantage over The Accountant™ by scoring a hit before he had a chance to return fire. Unfortunately, I am playing the role of a young cowboy, full of guts but low on experience. I miss.

The Accountant™’s grizzled gunslinging veteran unholsters his Peacemaker and cracks off a shot. He gets a +2 on his combat roll, which allows him to score a hit. I slide my health meter down by one. Three more hits like that and I’m dead.

I don’t know if I should move or keep shooting — the rules don’t allow me to do both — and if I make a break for it and get shot again I’ll definitely be too wounded to win. What would a gunslinger do? I think, rolling the dice in my hand. Stand and fight.

Roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll … I’m dead. But I died with my boots on, and that is what Cowboys: The Way of the Gun is all about.
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I wrote a review about zombie board game Last Night on Earth this January. I praised the production value of the game, but disliked the ambiguity of the rules and felt that the humans were very over-powered. I found the humans to be unstoppable with their fast movement and higher combat rolls. Even if a zombie player could corner them, it was nearly impossible to hurt a human, let alone kill them.

The good thing about a blog is that people eventually find out when you bitch about stuff. A few people responded to my negative post about LNoE and suggested I was playing it wrong. Despite their efforts explain it, or say that the game was really slanted towards the zombies, I kept my nose pinched shut and shelved the game for about four months.

Luckily, my friend The Accountant™ was in town and we gave LNoE another try. We read the rules for EVERYTHING, even if we felt like we already had a grip on what to do.

Turns out I was wrong on a very fundamental but game-changing issue: humans roll, but do not add their 2D6 combat dice. They just choose the highest die. G Ramon Gomez tried to tell me, but it bounced off of my thick skull. Sorry Ramon, you were right.

Suddenly the game became a challenge. Humans weren’t wading into zombies unarmed or searching a two-space building while five zombies were knocking outside. That isn’t to say the humans were defenseless; The Accountant™ stumbled upon a nasty combo that allowed one of the characters to roll four combat dice: one for the chainsaw, and one for a hero event card that also killed zombies any time she won instead of when doubles were rolled. The headshot: she was also “lucky,” and could make a zombie player re-roll any one die. I attacked her with about ten zombies and she killed them all without a single bite.

The rules are still unclear in parts, particularly for some scenarios such as the Manor. We decided to draw a different scenario altogether after trying to discern a particular scenario rule. This game needs a real FAQ, forum, or examples of combat, none of which Flying Frog has readily available.

I liked playing LNoE so much that I am considering buying their Growing Hunger expansion. Now if I just had a large enough tabletop gaming group to play it consistently ….

In an effort to expand my collection of board games that look really cool but we never actually play, I purchased Monsters Menace America from Tanga.com in December of 2006. It so intrigued my friends that I’ve only played it three times so far. I kept trying to push it on them, but they wanted to play Settlers of Catan, Pecking Order, Magic: the Gathering, or any host of other games. Even Hoity Toity got a nod over MmA.

Sometimes life tries to give you omens and portents. STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME, PLAY SOME OTHER SHITTY GAME INSTEAD!! But most times, I just don’t listen.
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