July 31, 2005
Make it a Cheapass night!
Posted by Jess in
Gaming
I've said on many occasions how much Matt, myself, and our friends love to play board games.
A very small company called Cheapass Games noticed two observations about board games, as noted on their website: They a lot of money, and are the same in most ways, except for the board.
In their words, a board game usually consists of a board, instructions, and then the remaining parts such as dice, timers, counters, markers, and pencils can account for about 75% of the remaining cost of production which gets passed on to us, the consumers.
Cheapass Games has a solution to the problem. Their games consist of a board, instructions, and anything else unique to that game only. They tell you what extra pieces you need to "borrow" from another game, such as timers, dice, etc. As they put it, they'd rather invest in one good set of "gaming paraphernalia" rather than have twenty sets of crappy ones.
Because of this, the games are relatively inexpensive to buy, and take up a very small amount of space. In addition, the primary game creator over at Cheapass Games, James Ernest, is proving to be a brilliant mind in game design. His games are easy to learn, mind-bogglingly unique, and incredibly fun to play.
Our favorites:
Give Me The Brain!
This is a card game in which all players are Zombies, working at a restaurant called "Friedeys". The bad news? There's a lot of work to be done, and only one Brain to pass around. Be the first to aquire the Brain (dice) to get your tasks done and thus get rid of all your cards.
Each card is a "job" with other helper cards. Some jobs are one-handed, meaning you can do two in one turn. Other jobs require both hands, and you can only play one of them. However, you're a zombie, so that "extra" hand you find lying around in a helper card can become handy to play another job.
This is probably the most entertaining (and quick) of all Cheapass games we've played. Not only is it fun to play, but the cards themselves are hysterical in both text and pictures. "Give me the Brain! I have to make a Cheezabunga!"
Kill Dr. Lucky
Kill Dr. Lucky is a board game that will probably take about an hour, but is incredibly fun. The board, cards and rulebook are provided, you need the people markers.
The board is set up with lots of numbered rooms. Dr. Lucky is a playerless character who moves from room to room also. Your job, as players, is to aquire a weapon card, manage to move to the same room Dr. Lucky is in, and kill him without any other player "seeing" you do it. By seeing, I mean being in any other room that has a line of sight in conjunction with the room you are in.
Strategy City, folks!
For the more optimistic people, there's also Save Dr. Lucky.
This game reverses the strategy, except you now have to save Dr. Lucky, while making sure someone else is in your line of sight to watch you do it.
This game is especially fun because if you play this immediately after playing "Kill Dr. Lucky", there's a fun set of penalty rules for saying the wrong thing, ie. "I'm going to kill him with..." Gotcha! Wrong game, dude!
Deadwood
Deadwood is a fun board game about trying to make as much money as you can by being a movie extra. This is probably our favorite board game among all of them.
The game comes with rulebook, board, and cards, and you need to provide 6-sided dice to use as people markers, several more 6-sided dice to use as currency, and coins as markers.
Players use 6-sided dice to represent themselves, and the current good-role level. Upon making more money, you can go to the Audition house to pay money to "up" your dice, say from a 2 to a 3 and get better paying roles that way. At the end of the game, he who has the most moolah, wins!
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