Zerg Crush

Not an ideal set-up, but this game is seriously big.

Didn’t get to bed until 5 in the morning last night, because of an epic session of Starcraft: The Board Game. Five of us were playing, and the game must have been almost 6 hours long. We’re a really slow group. We deliberate over every decision, heads in hands, moaning and wailing, shitting ourselves. We’re a group of players who really, really want to win.

The game took an age to set up. It was our first play, and none of the chits were even punched out of the boards beforehand. That’s very unlike me. Usually, when I get a new board game, I like to get inside and punch everything out, bag everything up, fiddle with stuff. Starcraft was a Christmas present, so I never quite got the time. That meant that yesterday I had to read the 40 page rulebook from cover to cover, punch everything out, assemble everything across two (YES! TWO!) tables, explain the whole deal to the players, and then play. So, add all the prep to the play time, and we’re talking about maybe 9 hours of Starcraft-related geekery.

But, man alive, what a game. I’ll probably talk about the game itself more at a later date, maybe even sling a video up, but I just had to scribble down my next-day feelings. It was tense and exciting from start to finish. Everyone was still upright and conscious at half four in the morning, when the last few orders were being carried out and the last few marines were being squished.

What amazed me the most was the fact that this strategy-deep, quite thinking-heavy board game still managed to feel like Starcraft. I was a Zerg player, and at the start I thought, okay, we’re all inexperienced players here. Let’s try an old-fashioned Zerg Rush! And hey, it worked! I got a conquest point victory, having spread my foul seed all over the table. In the game, I mean.

The great thing about the game is that I think everyone sort of felt that I’d won by a fair distance. But I hadn’t. I’d won by one point. If I hadn’t claimed that single Conquest Point, two other players would have been tied for a win. That’s how tight it was in the end.

Oh man. Theme, theme, theme. Loved it. LOVED IT.

LOVED IT!

Richard prepares his Yamato Gun. He's a Hot Yamato.