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The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 Review

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02 Jul 2018 23:35 #276780 by Josh Look

Finally, a game where you can be Wilford Brimley.

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03 Jul 2018 09:06 #276781 by hotseatgames
Good review. I'll add that the rotating Captain bit is cribbed from The Resistance, although in that game the Captain can't influence the results.

There is one negative to playing with more than 6. If someone is pretty much outed as Infected, people can legitimately leave him out of most of the game, never taking him on missions. That leaves him sitting on his hands, having no fun at all. This makes it all the more imperative that infected players play it cool.

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03 Jul 2018 09:11 #276782 by Shellhead
"If the infected players don't manage to destroy the outpost by the time the group makes it the helicopter," seems off. Is that the goal of the infected players? In the movie, the goal of the infected was to find more subjects to infect, while the good guys were the ones who deliberately wrecked the camp at the end to prevent anybody from surviving and spreading the infection.

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03 Jul 2018 09:14 - 03 Jul 2018 09:15 #276783 by Gary Sax
Good review!

Charlest had some pretty iffy things to say about the ease of deduce-ability and issues with what table talk is and isn't acceptable, I wonder if they've ironed that stuff out or if it's a game group to game group thing. iirc he thought it was pretty straightforward for authoritarian human captains to straitjacket the ability of things to sabotage by being hyper specific and commiting all members ahead of time to cards.
Last edit: 03 Jul 2018 09:15 by Gary Sax.

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03 Jul 2018 09:42 #276785 by SuperflyPete
Seems like I’d rather play Dark Moon or Battlestar based on this.

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03 Jul 2018 09:49 #276787 by hotseatgames

Shellhead wrote: "If the infected players don't manage to destroy the outpost by the time the group makes it the helicopter," seems off. Is that the goal of the infected players? In the movie, the goal of the infected was to find more subjects to infect, while the good guys were the ones who deliberately wrecked the camp at the end to prevent anybody from surviving and spreading the infection.


In this game, the humans want to escape in the helicopter, not doom themselves to freeze, like in the film. The Things can win by completely destroying the base or escaping on the helicopter. I have only played a couple of times, but I think a complete base destruction is highly unlikely. I think it's designed to always come down to that final showdown before the helicopter takes off, and that's good, because that final vote... is very sweet. :)

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03 Jul 2018 10:06 #276789 by Josh Look

SuperflyTNT wrote: Seems like I’d rather play Dark Moon or Battlestar based on this.


Just to be clear, I’m saying The Thing is the best game of the genre. I’m trying to up the rating from a 3 to a 5, my mistake when submitting it.
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03 Jul 2018 10:06 #276790 by charlest
Yeah, as Gary mentioned I think this game has too many problems for me. You can get around them, but it requires playing with a specific behavior and house ruling things.

The fact that the game doesn't restrict you from talking about what cards you put in (rather it seems to require it at times to coordinate) is a real flaw. It makes it so that an imitation has such a rough time of sabotaging.

This, combined with the fact that the game has a natural level of difficulty that's relatively high, means the imitations are probably best off just playing it cool the entire game. Sure, flamethrowers and end of game blood tests can nail them, but with the high level difficulty you'll be using those flamethrowers for missions and you will have enough failures to limit the end game blood tests.

At least, that was my experience after multiple plays with a couple of different groups.

Everything else in the game is neat (although I wish the characters had colored base rings as we often confused who was who). But I ultimately ditched it as Dark Moon is more smooth - and nearly as interesting with its expansion - and BSG is just a much better game for a longer experience.

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03 Jul 2018 10:10 - 03 Jul 2018 10:16 #276791 by Josh Look

hotseatgames wrote: There is one negative to playing with more than 6. If someone is pretty much outed as Infected, people can legitimately leave him out of most of the game, never taking him on missions. That leaves him sitting on his hands, having no fun at all. This makes it all the more imperative that infected players play it cool.


That’s true, and is probably the only of the common complaints about the game that is actually true. After 10 plays with most of the same people, the other stuff does iron out. I was once on the side of Charlie’s agument that being able to talk about what’s in your hand is a flaw, but I’m now to the side of it being a strength and a part of the strategy, for both humans and infected players just in different situations. We’re now to the point where the difficulty isn’t high, just where it should be, and the game is pure deduction and bluffing.
Last edit: 03 Jul 2018 10:16 by Josh Look.
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03 Jul 2018 10:18 - 03 Jul 2018 10:18 #276792 by charlest
Josh - do you guys disallow talking about who put in what after a mission check? Curious how you curb that problem.

Oh, and yeah, being outed as a bad guy in this game completely sucks. There's no tension as you're either excluded from play with nothing to do or you're included on a mission and it's pretty much gauranteed to fail. Hate that.
Last edit: 03 Jul 2018 10:18 by charlest.
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03 Jul 2018 10:22 #276793 by hotseatgames
This game does have flaws, as described. That said, it's entertaining and nails the film very well.

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03 Jul 2018 10:30 #276796 by Josh Look

charlest wrote: Josh - do you guys disallow talking about who put in what after a mission check? Curious how you curb that problem.

Oh, and yeah, being outed as a bad guy in this game completely sucks. There's no tension as you're either excluded from play with nothing to do or you're included on a mission and it's pretty much gauranteed to fail. Hate that.


We allow it. I can see where that would a problem for groups who are newer to the game, but the last couple times we’ve played it was a non-issue and we weren’t entirely able to deduce who blew it. Infected players can totally play sabotage cards, just not every time. You need to gauge those situations carefully, look for the missions where it’s either going to be a tough one to scrape by, or where it’s calling for very specific items, or if you’re captain, where not only can you get it to fail but you can also throw one or two players under the bus. Also, we’re now entirely aware of the fact that not throwing in a sabotage and throwing in a normal card that is either the wrong item or adds low dice numbers is just as effective. I think the difficulty level balanced out once we were all familiar with the big picture and long term goals to not throw every heavy hitting card in the same check. The humans also need to learn to play more conservatively and less desperately, which kind of goes against the grain in this genre, for the game to really fire on all cylinders.

I’ve had games early on where an Infected player is outed and yeah, it kills the game. But a more recent play saw an Infected still able to do some damage. They weren’t invited on every mission, but they still got to be captain. You’re going to run out of Rope cards eventually, and if you use one on the wrong person, you’re really set back. Flamethrowers aren’t used for any mission cards, only getting out, so using one to torch someone and kick them out entirely isn’t always viable. We had a game where went for it, killed the Infected player, but then had to spend more time dicking around looking for the other flamethrower. It was incredibly tense. We barely made it out and still had one end game blood test to find the last Thing. It was one hell of a game.

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03 Jul 2018 10:33 - 03 Jul 2018 10:36 #276798 by charlest
I guess I don't understand how you get past this problem.

Everyone puts their cards in. Captain looks at the cards when deciding if they should get rid of one. Captain randomly chooses a person who contributed - "What did you put in?"

If the captain does this every single time, the traitors eventually will be teased out. I'm not even talking about sabotage but just a player throwing in the wrong card that doesn't help is problematic and easily discerned if the captain does this.



Concerning an outed infected - certainly there's a few moments where you can influence things. But once you're outed in a high player count game, you spend 75-90% of the game just watching. You no longer take part in the group conversations and you have nothing mechanically to do. It's excruciatingly dull.
Last edit: 03 Jul 2018 10:36 by charlest.

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03 Jul 2018 10:48 #276800 by hotseatgames
I think asking directly what someone put in goes against the intent of the game and breaks it. Hell with that, I wouldn't play that way.

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03 Jul 2018 10:48 - 03 Jul 2018 10:49 #276801 by Josh Look

charlest wrote: I guess I don't understand how you get past this problem.

Everyone puts their cards in. Captain looks at the cards when deciding if they should get rid of one. Captain randomly chooses a person who contributed - "What did you put in?"

If the captain does this every single time, the traitors eventually will be teased out. I'm not even talking about sabotage but just a player throwing in the wrong card that doesn't help is problematic and easily discerned if the captain does this.



Concerning an outed infected - certainly there's a few moments where you can influence things. But once you're outed in a high player count game, you spend 75-90% of the game just watching. You no longer take part in the group conversations and you have nothing mechanically to do. It's excruciatingly dull.


We do most of our discussion before we even decide who’s in on the mission. We get everyone to state exactly what they’re putting in. This way, the entire group knows what should be in there. If it doesn’t add up, we start asking questions.

I think the difference is knowing where those moments are where you can do it and cause some confusion. Like I say in the review, you really do see a skill set develop that belongs to this game sand this game only. Unfortunately you need to push through some flawed plays to get there.
Last edit: 03 Jul 2018 10:49 by Josh Look.
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