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 ….

Desire often trumps logic. Sometimes we want something so badly that we overlook flaws inherent in people, jobs, movies, or games. In my case, Last Night on Earth. The game seemed perfect: a co-operative, competitive table top game that pits human heroes against my favorite undead. The game comes with five different scenarios, eight different playable heroes, and a mostly-randomized set of map tiles that mean each game is just a little bit different from the last. LNoE comes a TON of awesome collateral such as an old truck, gasoline, and townsfolk tokens, and most importantly, a bunch of plastic zombies. The production value on this game is outstanding. With scenario titles like “Die, Zombie, Die!” how could we go wrong?
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