Trashdome deluxe: Dudes in a Corridor

8 "dudes in a corridor" style games enter, you get to rank them in order and it would be awesome if you could, in a single phrase or sentence highlight the "best bit" for each title and the "downside"

Incursion
Doom
Space Hulk
Forlorn Hope
Aliens
Claustrophobia
Legions of Steel *
Earth Reborn *

* I don't own these two, for reference. feel free to add any titles that should also be here. I suppose Descent is missing, but other than Claustrophobia I was thinking more of modern/scifi style environments

Incursion
+ Great rules, cardplay, awesome models
- Expensive as fuck due to models, non-modular board, assembly required

Doom
+ Lots of plastic, tight rules, inexpensive, modular board
- A little too much focus on exploration

Space Hulk
+ Production value incredible, modular board, more tension than any other game, ever.
- Expensive, assembly required.

Forlorn Hope
+ Space hulk on a budget
- Looks cheap as fuck

Aliens
+ Awesome.
- OOP, mainly a solo game.

Claustrophobia
* No comment.

Legions of Steel
* No comment

Earth Reborn
* No Comment

ADDITIONS:

Mutant Chronicles SotC
+ Great production value, innovative levelling/upgrade system, campaign rules
- OOP.

Space Crusade
+PvPvP Space Hulk. Awesome.
-OOP

Sucking Vacuum
+ PvPvP, tight but easy rules
- Cheap looking, even the Alien Menace reprint

BattleStations
+ Ship-TO-Ship rules W/ boarding, variable ship layout, RPG
- RPG, a little complex.

Legions of Steel is by far the most comprehensive Dudes in a Corridor rule set. I remember hearing the quote that it felt as if it were designed by the military. It feels like you are realistically engaged in close quarter combat. The theme is derivative, but you can't beat the system. After playing LoS, I didn't even want to play Space Hulk again. It's boring in comparison.

stupid unintuitive forum editor.

Chapel wrote: Legions of Steel is by far the most comprehensive Dudes in a Corridor rule set. I remember hearing the quote that it felt as if it were designed by the military. It feels like you are realistically engaged in close quarter combat. The theme is derivative, but you can't beat the system. After playing LoS, I didn't even want to play Space Hulk again. It's boring in comparison.

If you know how to get hold of a PDF of the rulebook that would be awesome (happy to pay), actually I thought it was a blatant rip off of SH, so am surprised to hear you say that, and am now intrigued to know more

Earth Reborn - Excellent system, period. Downsides - setup can be slightly heavy, lacks characters.

I'll add:
Gears of War - Simple dice and cardplay system is clean and fun. Low barrier for entry. Downsides - None yet, but may have potential to become samey.

Maybe not as cool as SPACE HULK, but let's not forget this classic:

Earth Reborn

/discussion

Gears of War is a great game and very accesible. But it suffers from a really bland setting so even though I like it, it's not something I play often - it just doesn't feel like a story I want to play even though I know I'll like the game. Could be because I've never played the console games, though. Also some of the missions are simply too long considering how fast the game play moves - it makes the pacing wrong, somehow, so I would love some shorter missions for it.

Mutant Chronicles: Siege of the Citadel on the other and is simply awesome. The really cool thing about it is how you both cooperate and work against each other. But it has to be played with enough players to use the individual objectives, and you also have to play a campaign (though not neccesarily the entire campaign) for it to shine.

mads b. wrote: Gears of War is a great game and very accesible. But it suffers from a really bland setting so even though I like it, it's not something I play often - it just doesn't feel like a story I want to play even though I know I'll like the game. Could be because I've never played the console games, though.

Makes me wonder how much the licence is actually working against it than for it. If it was a more generic setting would it have gained more traction for boardgamers?

It's really a shame because, despite being rather two dimensional, it does what it does very well. The team play is definately there, the spawning is handled well, the AI is pretty solid. The ammo system is pretty awesome too. I can't really think of anything bad to say about the mechanics.

For the record, I'm not a fanboy of the console game. I thought it was meh at the time... but it coulda been a mood thing. I'm actually into trying it again now.

Incursion

The Good: Simple, quick, and cheap(ish). Plays an awful lot like Space Hulk, so it provides a good alternative if you can't get your hands on that game, but it distinguishes itself with some fairly interesting cardplay. Also, the graphics are good, and the setting isn't totally hackneyed (at least in board gaming).

The Bad: There's a very limited number of different board setups, unlike most of the other games in this thread. The overwatch rules are retarded, and lead to stupid, game-y tactics that don't make much sense.

The Ugly: Zombies. Enough with the fucking zombies already, pop culture.


Doom

The Good: Hmmm... Well, the figures are pretty cool I guess. Deathmatch mode plays relatively decently.

The Bad: Every-the fuck-thing else about the game. As a tactical game, it sucks; facing doesn't matter, and when you're shooting, there's never any incentive to do anything but close range as much as possible. Defensive positioning is pretty much impossible. The Overlord's cards break the game, and make running like a bunch of scared little boys the marines' best strategy more often than not. Anyone remember running away from all the monsters in the computer game? I don't.

The Ugly: The artwork that's lifted straight from the third computer game. It looked great at the time, now it looks like dated crap. Fuck Doom.


Space Hulk

The Good: Is actually Space Hulk, and not a passable rip-off of Space Hulk like so many "Dudes in a Corridor" games. The tight corridors and relatively slow movement of the marines force some careful planning, and a few tough decisions about when to push forward and expose your units to attack. Having a row of Genestealers advance on one of your marines in overwatch creates palpable tension.

The Bad: The basic game isn't all that great on its own. It's a bit too simplistic and lacking in variety. Regardless of how good you are or how well you play, the stakes are so high on most die rolls that it's incredibly tough (read: basically impossible) to mitigate a stroke of bad luck.

The Ugly: The newest version. It looks great, but they fucked up the rules big time. It's probably not that noticable for new players, but if you know what you're doing as the marines, you'll win just about every time.


Aliens

The Good: It plays exactly how you'd expect a game based on the movie to play. The scenarios mirror the key scenes perfectly. It's simple, but decent fun.

The Bad: Random, random, random. It's a fun game, but it's not much of a game. You'll have figured out how to play optimally a few games in, and after that, it's all up to the dice. You'll have seen everything there is to see gameplay-wise right off the bat.

The Ugly: Bullshit expensive, needs the expansion, and I hate to say this, but the also astronomically-priced metal miniatures to shine.


Claustrophobia

The Good: The dice assigning mechanic is inventive, and gives the game a character totally unlike all the others discussed here. More than any of the others, it's a game of finding your enemy's weakest point and punching as hard as possible by setting up a good play with cards and your dice selections.

The Bad: Frustrating as hell if you're not the demon player. When your characters take wounds, they also become less effective for moving and fighting, and have fewer options for dice to be assigned to them. Realistic, yes, but it also means that once you start losing, you stay losing and shit keeps getting worse no matter what you do. Some of the demon player's cards can fuck your whole game up and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

The Ugly: Takes up a ridiculous amount of table space for no good reason. There's just no need to have such gigantic board tiles when almost none of that space gets used. Also, doesn't even remotely qualify as a "Dudes in a Corridor" game, mostly due to the fact that there are no corridors.


Legions of Steel

The Good: Relatively simple ruleset still allows for things like cover fire, sweeping with your weapon, aimed vs. rapid fire, throwing grenades around corners, and so on. Superficial similarities to SH there may be, but they're two totally different games. In SH, only one player has guns, in LOS, both sides do. That makes all the difference in the world, and if you thought SH was tense and high-stakes, you ain't seen shit.

The Bad: The robots seem to have a very heavy advantage in almost all of the scenarios. Like SH, it needs some expansion stuff to fill it out, and good luck finding all that.

The Ugly: Pretty much everything about the artwork, but in a good way.


Earth Reborn

The Good: Damn near everything about it. Most of the rules systems work like a charm, model a lot of cool and detailed stuff, but remain simple. The gear you get to use is awesome. Blends all the best bits of Euro, AT, abstract strategy, and minis game design into one eclectic but somehow coherent package. Hilariously over-the-top cheesiness.

The Bad: The shooting rules are a little out of whack. All the characters move so fast that there's never any reason to try long-range shooting. There are some balance issues, and it feels like it needs some expansion content as well.

The Ugly: There probably will never be any expansion content because the game seems to have flopped because people would rather play shitty games with good graphic design than great ones with crappy-looking cards. Sad.


Bottom line: Get Earth Reborn. Scare up a copy of LoS if you want the best tactical play of the lot. Play Space Hulk if you must. Don't go out of your way to get anything else.

Thanks for the post mjl1783, and this thread in general all others, i havent played any DIAC games but love squad tactics style games e.g. the video game frozen synapse. Would probably prefer Spacehulk or legions of steel thematically, but finding a copy at a price im willing to pay. Might hunt down Earth Reborn instead. Alternatively i could put together my own game. Ive got a 15 GW imperial guard Stoom trooper models still kicking around which make good generic troopers. All i need is some cork board to make corridors an opposing side or two, and a rule set i can download, retheme and modify.

Well, just for the hell of it, I'll offer up a few more alternative nobody will probably have heard of or give a shit about.

Firefight by Alternative Armies is actually a pretty cool little game that's quite derivative of 40k in terms of setting, but doesn't make an attempt to ape Space Hulk. You can get the original game for about $5, which is what I have. It switches between two scales, you have chits that represent your different squads which you move around a very abstract grid, and while the game is on this level, the bad guy player can use cards to setup booby traps and ambushes as you're moving through these post-apoc city settings. Once a firefight starts, the game zooms in and you play out a tactical skirmish on these modular tiles which correspond to the terrain your squad occupies on the grid. The whole thing is based on this weird action dice system somewhat similar to War of the Ring of all things. The cool thing about it is that it allows for a bunch of different types of actions, like having one lightly armored unit act as a loader for another soldier with a heavy weapon so it can fire faster. It is a miniatures system, though, so unless you can proxy in some figures you already have or make up some cardboard stand-ups, expect to make a fairly heavy investment for the minis. There is a new edition which ditches the larger scale stuff and focuses on the tactical game. I haven't played it, but it's supposed to clear up some of the rules holes from the first game, some of which require a decent amount of ad hoc ruling at the table. Still, it's definitely worth checking out.

Though it probably has some of the butt-ugliest graphic design ever, Dark Horizon: Escape is another OoP thing that you can get for next to nothing, probably even unpunched, plus it comes with quite a few metal figures right in the box. It's a cyberpunk theme, and one side plays these anti-corporate freedom fighters that have a weird Mad Max obsession and dress like they came straight out of The Road Warrior, fighting the ordinary cop-looking security forces of the capitalist oppressors. The flow of the game is a little sluggish, since a round is broken down into a series of "impulses," with just about every single action, right down to moving one square sometimes, counts as an impulse. So, play switches back and forth between players once every five seconds. The shooting rules are on the muddy side; they don't shy away from modifiers and math. The hand-to-hand is done with cards so you can select whether you want to kick, punch, block, etc. without letting the enemy know which maneuver you chose. Obviously, certain moves work well against others, and others not so much. The other cool thing about it is that the good guys are all loaded up with cybernetic implants, and if they get shot, the implants can start malfunctioning. If, say, you're outfitted with bionic knee actuators and you get shot in the leg, you may start running around uncontrollably. It sounds a little cooler than it actually is, but it is unique, and it's still about as good as your average Space Hulk copy.

Lastly, Hour of Glory. I've been evangelizing this goddamn game for years now, but sadly, it seems dooomed to complete obscurity. The basic game is WWII a Metal Gear Solid board game. There's no other way to describe it. On its own, it's a fun, simple push-your-luck game cobbled together for different RPG and tactical minis design elements. It's light on content out of the box, but the publisher has put out a lot of alternate rules, scenarios and units so you have tons of options to make it as dense and strategic or light and random as you want.

BUT, it's not really a in the genre we're talking about. The expansion ruleset, Bunkerstorm, is. It takes a bunch of the rules of the basic game, and turns it into a 5-on-5 team skirmish with, believe it or not, area control and resource management mechanics. I know that doesn't sound like it would work in a shootout game, but somehow it does. The idea is to have a majority of soldiers in a room so you can "secure" it. If you do, it can act as a good defensive position if the enemy tries to break in an retake the area because your guys will gain the iniative, or you can use it as a makeshift infirmary and drag your wounded comrades there for medical attention. You can move much more easily if you secure contiguous rooms, and can even pop out of the shadows and make "stealth kills" on enemies poking around your territory. The rules are too batshit crazy to describe in a way that gives you a good idea how the game works, but they force you to use smart team-based tactics, treat different types of weapons logically, and allow for things like cover and armor piercing (which almost never happens in these games). It's violent and nasty, yet still very think-y and positional. It's smaller in scope than the other games in this thread, but I'd put it against every single one of them any day of the week, including Earth Reborn of which I am a rabid, slobbering fanboy. It is one of the precious few games to have come out in the last decade or so that feels truly original from the ground up, and not a mish-mash of different bits of other popular titles. There's nothing else like it, and there will never be anything else like it. If you to play a tactical computer FPS on a board, this is the game to play.

This reminds me of GenCon in the late 90's where someone had put together a set of scenarios that combined Legion of Steel and Full Thrust. It was an awesome experience going through ship to ship battles, then shifting it to a boarding party scenario. I need to put that together again one of these days.