Trashdome - Last Night On Earth vs A Touch Of Evil

WELCOME TO TRASHDOME!

This is part of a series of bloody matches to the death. Show support for your favorite game so it will do better in the fight. You can support it by writing why you think its the better game and more importantly by betting on it. End your first post in this thread with the title of the game you're placing a bet on (i.e. voting for) so its clear to me when reading it later. You have until Friday when I tally the bets and declare the winner. The winning game may return for future matches, the loser will be dead. Counting expansions or not is entirely up to you just as playing with them or not is. I will reserve my bet for any tie-breakers.

Although you should be familiar with both games, there is no rule that says you have to have played both of them. The only rule in Trashdome is this;

Two games enter! One game leaves!

Should be a blowout.


I'll vote Last Night on Earth. Pure, visceral fun. I like and own AToE, but it has a few clumsy bits and it is hugely derivative.

Although AToE seems to be the more story-driven game, the range of storytelling with Last Night on Earth seems much larger.

Last Night on Earth

Havent Played the other, but when I saw it being played it just looked kinda off, and took them a while to wrap up. The Elder mechanic seemed cool though.

LNoE however (thanks Sag!) has just gotten some big play time in my life recently both with my brother and brother-in-law. Both loved it and we've only played the basic scenario. My BiL isn't a self described gamer, but he loved it and got the jist of it pretty quickly. The game just makes sense and since he was playing the heros he didnt have to worry about the housekeeping that I did as the zombie player.

The art is PERFECT - and the CD is best left unmentioned. Yikes. Good idea and effort - mundane result.

GO ZOMBIES!

I'll give the nod to LNoE (I think its a bit better) but both of these games were flops with my group.

-Will

this one is easy. I traded my a touch of evil for last night on earth + expansion and glad for it.

co-op games need to have a real balance in the system that's missing from A touch of evil. even if you are playing the competitive version, there just isn't much tension from "losing" the game. don't even try the co-op version.

would rather play arkham horror any day. might be better compared to an "adventure" type game like talisman.

last night on earth is not perfect. far from it. can have some balance issues, depending on your group. we've had to tweak it to make the zombies stronger. but just having someone else playing the "bad guys" makes it alot more fun. it can be extremely frustrating for one side or the other if the cards go just wrong...
nothing deep, but really puts you in the mood of the cheesy b-movie zombie flicks. my game group still talks about our second game of this, when the circular-saw wielding prom queen singlehandedly mowed down a legion of zombies to protect the manor house.

basically both have issues. ATOE is boring, while LNOE at least is enjoyable.

Vote:Last Night on Earth

For simple medium length games LNoE seems to work better for me than AToE. Blasting zombies with different weapon power-ups and simple dice combat is always a bit of fun.

Vote: Last Night on Earth

I like em both but LNoE is more my style.

LNoE.

I've had many fun games of LNoE including a lot of laughter and memorable events.

I haven't played AToE but the Arkham-lite reviews haven't sparked much interest -- might as well just play Arkham Horror!

Vote: Last Night on Earth

grimnir wrote:

the Arkham-lite reviews haven't sparked much interest -- might as well just play Arkham Horror!

This has been my feeling towards a few other games being called Arkham-lites. In this case and others I'd rather make time for Arkham. I think its also related to the Blue Moon/Dominion type stuff versus an actual CCG debate as well in the sense those games could be called CCG-lites. In some ways I consider LNOE to be DOOM-lite as both are scenario-based tactical mini's games with horror themes and an overlord. But unlike my preference for Arkham over Arkham-lites or Magic over Blue Moon, I'm just as happy to play LNOE as I am DOOM.

AToE gets knocked out with a single punch. The audience is in turmoil, because they expected a brutal showdown. ARKHAM HORROR is brought into the ring to replace AToE and satisfy the fans.

I think AToE gets called Arkham Horror-lite a little too lightly. It really isn't much like AH. Yeah there are "investigators" and "clue/investigation" tokens, a big bad and you must roll 5s and 6s to hit, but AToE plays much more like Talisman or Prophecy. You roll to move, have an encounter, that's about it. There are no gates to play whack-a-mole with, no adjustments of skills, no dual forms of health (health and sanity), no magic spells, no devouring of investigators, and fewer loss conditions.

So yeah, Arkham-lite is a misnomer. It's really a Talisman clone.

LNoE is definitely a game of diminishing returns. I'm at the point now where I'd probably actively avoid playing it, and in fact I just put my copy up for sale in my shelf-cleaning post. It's not a terrible game...just not a terribly good one either. I really think subject matter is what's carrying the game as far as it's gone. To be honest, there's things about Twilight Creations' ZOMBIES titles that I like better than LNoE.

Fragility is fine in a game. I like variety. But I've seen complete and total landslides for both sides in LNoE, and for every session we've had a good game there's been a TERRIBLE one that one side or the other had literally no hope of winning simply because of how the cards played out or how the spawning went down or whatever. A couple of the first games I played were of the "Hey guys, you gotta try this" variety that wound up being really bad games...thus turning off tables of people at a time from the game. That's suspect design.

I got GROWING HUNGER and really just kind of felt blah about it. It looked like some fun stuff, but at the end of the day it didn't make me like the game any more.

AToE, on the other hand, I still like. I think it's a good second-tier game, I like that it's not excessively long or complex yet it has a unique atmosphere and setting even among other adventure games. It's good for an end-of-night, after-a-few-beers choice. I think the competitive game definitely trumps the co-op one, and I think overall it's a better design than LNoE. It's not really like AH at all once you get past the "clue tokens" business.

Neither game is the caliber of some of the top titles we've had in Trashdome...this is definitely a sideshow bout that should be listed way at the bottom of the card.

Anyway, AToE is my pick.

I haven't played AToE, and LNoE was perfectly acceptable fun...so I vote for LNoE

You can't really compare a game about zombies to a Judas Priest song.

NeonPeon wrote:

You can't really compare a game about zombies to a Judas Priest song.

This is how fucked up some of my relationships were in high school...this was "our song" with a girl I dated.