Seal Team Flix: Breaking my Distaste for Dungeon Crawls

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This is the game where you go around gunning down environmentalists, yeah? Kind of a turn-off for me.

Great review. I love articles that get into deeper analysis of what works and what doesn’t.

GorillaGrody wrote: This is the game where you go around gunning down environmentalists, yeah? Kind of a turn-off for me.

They are really anti-humanists. I don’t think anyone would have understood if we had used that term, but I regret that “eco-terrorist” turned some people off.

Thanks for the review, Gary. I agree, 2x boards would be great. And sadly impractical.

Great work! Makes me want to get this back out and play it again soon.

hotseatgames wrote:

GorillaGrody wrote: This is the game where you go around gunning down environmentalists, yeah? Kind of a turn-off for me.

They are really anti-humanists. I don’t think anyone would have understood if we had used that term, but I regret that “eco-terrorist” turned some people off.

I mean, it really sounds like a fun game. But in an age in which even moderate conservatives like Schwarzenegger are being called eco-terrorists (or even anti-humanists), it just sets off my dog-whistle alarm. In future, I'd recommend Nazis. Everyone wants to shoot a Nazi.

I think we have enemies for the expansion that can be universally disliked.

in the Clancy book Rainbow Six the bad guys are a group of eco terrorists who are planning on releasing a humanity-killing plague on the world.

Not sure on the backstory in Flix but that would count I think.

Thanks for the kind words.

Yeah, that's basically this game theming-wise lj.

Like I said, modern military themes in a light game generally aren't at the top of my list for a lot of reasons, many of them political. It's a legit reason to be turned off if it doesn't work for you for whatever reason. That said, I didn't have too much trouble with it, the focus of the game is on a pretty interchangeable OpFor style besides some light interstitial stuff in the scenario book. There are only three types of enemy and they are very generic.

LJ nailed it. That’s the main reason I went with antihumanists. It started out as Islamofascists but I’m not keen on them nor was Zev so we decided to change.

Anyone reading page one of the manual has it laid out unequivocally, Gorilla. These are folks that are to the far left of VHEMT. They are a death cult who seeks to end human life on Earth to save the planet.

It’s funny to me that people with no idea what the game is about simply thinks “conservative dog whistle” when people seeking to be offended are the only ones who hear it clearly. This is maybe the third time I’ve heard this particular phrase used by people, and only one person has been like “fuck yeah, kill lefties” on BGG, and he was trounced

One of the designers is an environmentalist who has worked to reform e-waste recycling for 20 years or so, FWIW

I caught the whiff of compromise in the theme. I appreciate that you don't want to offend a billion people, (any particular billion) so you need to have an enemy that's way out beyond one of the fringes, and best if they don't actually exist. I think something like Hydra might have been a better concept, but I'm not the guy that produces hit board games.

Heck, Zev wouldn't even name real diseases in Pandemic. Presumably he didn't want to call out influenza or ebola in case there was a future epidemic that made the game look ill-topicked.

I think anyone concerned with the opponent can simply insert whomever they like. I think you could release this game multiple times a la the C&C system with different settings and eras, and really have quite a franchise. Nazis, Communists, Assyrians, Jesuits. Okay, maybe not Jesuits. But the English . . . hell yeah! Let's set it in 1774 and flick off Thrower's relatives!

My intention is to make this game a gift for several reasons -- 1) the new owner will be forced to play it with me in gratitude; 2) he has to assemble it; 3) he has to store it. It's really the perfect solution. But the more I hear from reviews like Gary's above the more I'd like to have this one to play with my boys on a snowy day. So I'm torn.

GorillaGrody wrote:

hotseatgames wrote:

GorillaGrody wrote: This is the game where you go around gunning down environmentalists, yeah? Kind of a turn-off for me.

They are really anti-humanists. I don’t think anyone would have understood if we had used that term, but I regret that “eco-terrorist” turned some people off.

I mean, it really sounds like a fun game. But in an age in which even moderate conservatives like Schwarzenegger are being called eco-terrorists (or even anti-humanists), it just sets off my dog-whistle alarm. In future, I'd recommend Nazis. Everyone wants to shoot a Nazi.

If they're terrorists (and I believe that word was used rather than fanatics or protestors or ...) then I have no problems in ending them in all ways possible.

ubarose wrote: I am probably the most squeamish person around when it comes to military board game themes, and I initially thought that I would be put off by having to shoot at eco-terrorists (a.k.a. contemporary humans). However, when I actually played, it didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. They were fictional enough, and "evil" enough that I was able to rationalize it - also, other players humored me about not saying they were dead when we hit them, they were just "down".

Are you down with S.T.F? Yea, you know me.