Trashdome - Monsters Menace America VS Zombies!!!

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. 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!



*Votes for Monsters Ravage America count towards MMA.

Neither are frequent games on my table but I can stomach to play Monsters again and its got a freakin' pre-painted giant eyeball. Playing a game of Zombies!! is something a akin to dental surgery.

VOTE: MONSTERS MENACE AMERICA

I have never played Monster Menace America. In point of fact I know next to nothing about it. But one thing I do know about it is critical in the context of this particular trashdome: it isn't Zombies!!! Ergo I'm going to vote for MMA.

Vote: MMA. Because it's got a Godzilla lookalike and that lobster claws monster Barnes can't stand losing .

Easy. Vote: Monsters Ravage America.

Monsters Menace Anerica

Unlike Zombies!, it usually ends within a reasonable amount of time. I've never played a game of Zombies! that didn't end up dragging.

MattDP wrote:

I have never played Monster Menace America. In point of fact I know next to nothing about it. But one thing I do know about it is critical in the context of this particular trashdome: it isn't Zombies!!! Ergo I'm going to vote for MMA.

Seconded

Monsters Menace America, hands down. And I haven't played it yet...

1 vote for Monsters Menace Steve

...because Zombies!!!! is a really awful game.

OK, Zombies!!! isn't a terrible game, but it is terribly flawed. I think its presentation is very good, and for a lot of people who'd dropped out of hobby gaming during the Euro years, it came at a very good time. It just takes too damn long to play. The fans have, on the other hand, made some pretty fun variants and scenarios for the game which have helped make it a bit more than it is out of the box.

Granted, that's more to the fans' credit than the game's, but it seems to spark that kind of creativity in the players more than most games.

I haven't played Monsters Menace America in years, and honestly, don't remember that much about it. I do remember thinking it wasn't anywhere near as cool as a board game version of Rampage should have been.

Vote: Zombies!!!

I really enjoy playing both of these games, despite the fact that they both suck. Seriously. Zombies barely qualifies as a game, and MMA has the most anti-climactic ending I've ever seen... but I do enjoy running around bashing planes and mutating.

I'm going to have to vote for MMA, I fully expect this to be a landslide victory.

Vote: Monsters Menace America

I've never played Monsters Menace America but no board game in the world could be worse than Zombies!

Vote: MMA

Black Barney wrote:

I've never played Monsters Menace America but no board game in the world could be worse than Zombies!

Vote: MMA

Not true, have you tried Deadwood? (How aptly named.)

MMA for me. Not being able to attack other player's monsters with your monster and as JonJacob already pointed out the endgame, prevents it from becoming an AT classic.

Zombies brought me to BGG, which ultimately led me to the hobby gaming world but other than that Zombies!!! does nothing for me.

Okay, story time.

A few years ago, some of my friends had been revisiting childhood hobbies, like D&D and (eventually) boardgames.

I had been out of playing boardgames and RPGs for many years by then, but not as many years as the rest. We got together one night, and we played one guy's new copy of Zombies!!! It was fucking horrible. It provided, at best, a mediocre impersonation of a good time. Sitting around bullshitting or playing videogames would have been far superior.

That game sucked so bad I hit the Internet searching for Wiz-War. I thought to myself "I'll go find them a *good* game, to redeem the idea of boardgaming from that piece of crap." Naturally, Troll and Toad wanted to sell me one for two hundred bucks or something. And I found a kit of DIY files. So I spent probably thirty bucks in materials and a bunch of hours pasting stickers on poker cards and foamcore squares, until I had a copy the way I remembered it. (nicer actually)

Then like Ash wielding a boomstick, I returned and said "now this is a goddamn game." And all was well. An Ameritrash success story. At game nights, people still say "you brought Wiz-War, right?"

If Zombies!!! hadn't been so awful, I wouldn't have bothered putting in the effort. We'd have persisted in playing mediocre games, and probably drifted away from the hobby altogether.

So there. I vote Zombies!!!. Not because it's good, but because it's horrible. So bad, in fact, that something wonderful came out of it.

(I've never played MMA. Don't really care to. It's probably better than Zombies, but that would defeat the entire purpose of the story.)

Haven't played MMA but it does sound OK from reviews, and one of the guys brings it along now and then so it will get out on the table sometime. It looks/sounds like it has its heart in the right place for making a fun game.
I own Zombies and will play it now and then, but honestly it's not a game I would ever give a vote for in TrashDome (unless it was up against Caylus or Goa or such).

Vote: MMA