Games Night!

Last night my wife and I had our regular games night with our friends (plus our son who would not go to bed).
The games on tonight were
Zombiecide and Takenoko, we started with Zombicide.
For those who don't know Zombicide is a Co op boardgame where each player chooses a character and you all pick a scenario (There are plenty to choose from). The board is made up of tiles. Each tile has building insides and roads printed on both sides allowing great flexibility. The scenarios tell you which tiles to use and where to put them. The scenario we chose was a small one (4 tiles)  and we had to rescue a survivor who was in 1 of 4 locations. Once we located the survivor we all had to leave the board where we started.
The zombies appear from various spawn points (scenario tells you where to put these). They also appear in a building the first time you open the door. They are spawned by drawing a card for real spawn point and room in a building you've opened. The 4 types of zombie are :
Shambler / normal
Runners
Fatties
Abomination
The bigger zombies require certain weapons to kill them. The number of zombies spawned depends on how many zombie kills you have. There are four levels the higher you go the note zombies you get!  Your character does get bonuses as the levels go up to.
The characters start with the bare minimum of equipment. A crow bar,  fire axe,  pistol and frying pans! All spread out amongst the group. The characters we had were :
Phil (my character)
Doug
Ned
Amy
Wanda is the survive we are out to rescue.
My character Phil is a cop so he starts with a pistol so I had that and a frying pan.
A turn in Zombiecide involves every player getting 3 actions plus any bonuses their character gets (my character's bonus was he started with a pistol. Another example is Amy who gets a free move). Your 3 actions can be move, shoot, reload, search, open doors and check objectives. You can only search one per turn though, you can search vehicles or the room you are in. Once all the characters have gone is the zombies turn. Each action you do could create sound,  this is represented by sound counters with a loud action obviously having more sound counters. The zombies all move one square towards the largest pile of sound counters. (runners can do to actions such as run and attack where as other zombies either move or attack). After all the zombies have moved you spawn more zombies!
Our game began,  we checked the closest building and had to battle a Fattie almost straight away! After Ned took a wound (2 and your zombie meat!) we took him down. A plethora of weapons were found in an abandoned police car in the centre of the map. I ended up with a sawn off shotgun and a machete., Amy had a rifle and a katana. Ned a crowbar and fire axe. Doug has twin sawn off shotguns! The first building was cleared by Ned and while Ned checked the objective Phil Doug and Amy held the crossroads. Ned made his way out and headed over to the next building. With zombie numbers growing out was getting harder to hold the crossroads. Amy's rifle picked zombies off at long range,  Phil took out the fatties with his machete and Doug cut a swathe through the zombies with his twin sawn off shotguns. Need broke the door down cleared the room and found Wanda!!  Now we had to beat a retreat. The group fell back off the board with Doug watching the rear with those trusty shotguns. I racked up 14 kills but Doug took the most with 20+ (notable mention to my son who insisted on rolling some dice and scored 6 zombie kills). It was a great game,  I'm so glad my friends introduced me to this game. The Co op games are excellent fun and much different to the competitive ones.
Next up was Takenoko. I had never heard of this game before, it involves growing bamboo and getting a panda to eat bamboo. Everyone gets a turn where you can do 2 things. The simple aim is to gather as many points as possible so when the game ends the person with the highest scores wins! You get points by doing 3 types of mission. Gardener missions involve trying to grow bamboo of various colours and heights. The Panda missions involve trying to get the panda to eat certain colours or colour combinations of bamboo pieces. The last mission type is terrain,  the game is played on different coloured tiles and the terrain missions involve you trying to get certain patterns and combinations of tiles. This game was so much fun and you need to think a lot about strategies and how to react when someone upsets your plans. My friend took the win while I came last :-(
Overall a cracking night with great friends bring on the next game night!!
If you want to read something different give my friends blog a read (she won Takenoko and was Ned in Zombiecide)
http://lifeinthekawaiilane.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1
Have a good one folks!!