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Ares Games | The Thing: The Board Game | Horror Board Game | Ages 13+ | 1-8 Players | 60+ Minutes Playing Time

£9.9£99Clearance
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The game starts with each player being given a Blood Sample card. This will reveal their role in the game, to them alone, either that of a human or an imitation. There will be one imitation dealt at the start of the game to one of the players. Finally we have the dog movement phase where the adorable husky miniatures move around the board based on location cards. These pesky canines can be a problem for two reasons. If a character is alone with a dog in a room they draw from an infected bag and have a small chance of being secretly infected. The other reason is that if a revealed alien finds itself in a room with a husky, it will consume it and grow in strength!

The Thing - The Boardgame is a "hidden role" game, in which one player is initially the Thing and the other players are humans. The purpose of the Thing is to infect others, to prevent the survivors from escaping from the base (which can happen in three different ways), or to try to escape with them by behaving as a human. Finally, each player rolls two dice, with the player rolling the highest number taking the revolver token. This is your first Captain. Now it’s time to work your way through Outpost 31, discern the imitation(s) among you, and hopefully escape! You must cooperate to survive but who is really on your side? And if you reveal The Thing are you ready to fight it? The road to victory is truly hard, but not impossible. Be I love how this encourages co-operative gameplay and brings out table talk. You will be debating and at times, arguing over what to do as the situation grows more intense and the pressure rises. First of all we roll the blue weather dice and consult our chart to see the effects. Clearer skies mean the base uses less fuel and the rescue helicopter will move faster to the base. Bad weather means more fuel is consumed and the boiler room can break, meaning the humans can freeze to death. This can also cause the generator to break resulting in the base being plunged into darkness.The Thing – The Boardgame is a game created and produced by Pendragon Game Studios. The English Edition is distributed by Ares Games. The tension as you all decide who to perform a blood test on and then waiting for them to reveal their role card is unmatched in any game I have played. Set in a South Pole research station, the story details the invasion of an alien being, that has the ability to transform its appearance and starts to take over different people within the camp. The perfect theme for a hidden character game, so perhaps it was a mechanical choice more than a thematic one? Or maybe designer Joe Van Wetering is just a fan of the movie? Are We Alone? At the end of each round if players have acquired the right components blood tests can be used to determine someone’s allegiance and could be used to force a player to reveal as an alien. However, the revealed alien may do more damage once they’re in the open. The humans can run out of food in the base and begin starving. When the base runs out of food, every player’s hand size is reduced by one, but players didn’t seem too hampered by this limitation. The power can fail and create darkness. In the dark, players must randomly turn in their action cards the leader rather than choosing. This also didn’t feel debilitating. Eventually in several games we ended up being both starving and in darkness, and yet the humans soldiered on without seeing too much change. I did stop making fun of Norris as his special power is to have a flashlight. I’m sorry Norris, your character power is much better than I originally thought.

The Thing is played over a series of rounds each consisting of 8 phases. The game can end in a number of ways. The humans can win if they manage to identify all alien threats and escape the outpost. Yeah, we’ve been here a while. This ‘How To Play’ is a long-un, as The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 has a simple baseline with many moving parts surrounding it. Hopefully this guide has made a semblance of sense, but I have one more parting tip. The Thing - The Boardgame is an intense game experience for 1-8 players based on the 1982 cult movie directed by John Carpenter. It is a game that mixes different mechanics to create an experience that is as faithful as possible to that of the original film. Keeping the base operational feels true to the progression of the film. Working together to keep the heat and the lights on, while trying to figure out the motivations of any suspicious characters is one of the highlights of this game. I have had countless games where seemingly innocent actions by players can raise eyebrows and motivations were often questioned.What I love here though is that each character has an ability balanced enough and thematic to their character. Clark is the dog handler so he can ignore the dogs ability to infect him. Nauls is the cook and can use fewer food tokens when managing the kitchen area. Having these abilities gave the game a lot more replay value for me and allowed for some fun combinations of characters.

In addition to these elements, players also have to manage Outpost 31. The game board shows the same rooms as seen in the film, and each of these rooms allows players to perform a different action. Human players have to feed themselves and keep the boiler and the generator on to avoid being in the cold and dark. If there’s an uneven split (you’re not playing with 6 players exactly), don’t worry! As long as it’s relatively even, it’s okay! Be sure to look at what Captain powers characters have, as they can help you when you’re leading a group of supposed humans on your turn! Take your respective miniatures and place them in the ‘Rec Room’ on the board. Deal out 5 supply cards to each player. Your hand is secret, don’t show anyone! A selected leader will then shuffle and one at a time reveal the action cards, then decide where to apply these at the locations. The cards consist of use, repair or sabotage. Use lets you perform area actions like supply a room or draw an item card. Repair allows you to fix broken areas of the base. Sabotage will damages areas, resulting in escape methods becoming inaccessible. Based on the iconic 1980s horror movie by John Carpenter, The Thing: The Boardgame is a semi co-operative hidden role game for up to 8 players.

Now, let me tell you why you should let me use the armory - if I find a flamethrower I promise to use it responsibly... This chip could either be a useful item such as some Rope or The Thing itself which would start a battle. If they fail in any way, either through missing the requirements of the room or via a sabotage card, then the room could be lost to fire. Loose too many rooms and the game is lost. Get Rollin’

However, the player can exhaust both charges to ‘torch’ a player, removing them from the game. After accusing someone of being an imitation, all players vote with a thumbs up or down on torching said player. Note, only one player can be torched in a game with 4 or 5 players. In addition to these elements, players also have to manage Outpost 31. On the map are the same rooms as seen in the film, and each of these rooms allows players to perform a different action. Human players have to feed themselves and keep the boiler and the generator on to avoid being in the cold and dark. The Thing will try to sabotage these places to make life difficult for humans...or not, trying to camouflage itself among the humans and infect them when the perfect opportunity presents itself. Power Out - Place a ‘power out’ card on the room in question. Counter it by discarding a Flashlight supply card.

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Later in the game, more will be dealt out amongst other human cards. In a seven or eight player game, there is the chance for two more Imitations to be dealt. In a four to six player, there can only ever be one more. This is the main rule difference between player counts, but the overall feeling with more players is very different. For a game about table talk, the more in this case is very much the merrier. Infection at Outpost 31, the board game adaptation of John Carpenter’s cult horror movie The Thing, is making a return later this year. The humans need to deduce who is their friend and who is their foe and ensure they don’t take any imitations on the chopper with them come the games’ climax. Are you ready to take to the blistering climate with your so-called ‘friends?’ Here’s how to play. The Setup If players wish to enter a room for a mission with any of these effects in play, they must discard the relevant card to counter it. Also, a player not on a mission may discard a card to remove the effect while others do a mission elsewhere. Split the yellow room tokens into their respective sectors (1, 2, and 3), shuffle them, and place one yellow side up in each room. Make sure not to look at the underside until completing a mission in that room, which I’ll get to shortly.

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