Board Gaming - Outlive

Outlive

This post-apocalypse game is set in a world where nature has taken back control and is over running all things. Between the few remaining supply camps, you run one of 4 survivor compounds, and rescue is on its way. At least, rescue for one of your compounds that is! Only the best will survive and you have just 1 week to show rescue that you are the place they should land their choppers.

The game is played over 6 rounds (days), with the day phase being moving the heroes and collecting resources, while the night phase is feeding your survivors and other administrative duties. And possibly solving events.

^{We were playing with the kickstarter edition that has nice minitures, but they're a bit tougher to tell if they're laying down or standing up than the normal edition's numbered meeples.}

There are 8 locations around the board, 2 settlements/towns, where random supplies could be found by searching the cupboards, or where specialized equipment can be collected. 5 resource locations (water, wood, metal, microchips, and bullets), and a supply ship, where you can get more survivors and some food, as well as modify turn order.

You need the microchips to work the dam to get water, but otherwise you go to the location and collect some resources. How many you collect depends on your hero. Each player has two 3 point heroes, a 4 point and a 5 point. For each point, you can collect 1 resource. In the towns, each point allows you to collect one equipment or look in 2 cupboards.

^{Clockwise from the top left we have the Forest (Wood), Dam (Water), Armory (Bullets), Town, Mine (Metal), Supply Ship, Factory (Microchips), and Town)}

Because nature is taking over, there are also animals to hunt in some locations (Forest, Mine, Factory), and they take a number of points equal to the number on them to kill. You can use bullets to increase your number by 1/bullet. Depending on the animal, you will get some about of food, and you get to keep the animal as a trophy that might bring you better rewards in further hunts.

^{Hunting wasn't an issue for my neighbour, and his food supply was immense. Pity it's almost all perishable and has to be used each turn...}

The movement around the board had an interesting thing to it where you couldn't move to a location where one of your heroes already was. That doesn't mean you couldn't use that location this turn if you used it last turn, just that the hero that was there had to be moved first. You could also only move 1 or 2 locations in either direction, and you couldn't stay at the location you started at. This made for careful consideration of which order you moved your heroes, and where each one was going to so you didn't block yourself from being able to move to a useful location.

With nature running the show, each day there was also an event that needed to be dealt with. Some, like the wildfire shown below were merely inconvenient (especially if you wanted wood...). Others were quite painful and had to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

^{Wildfire: remove some of the wood from the wood supply}

You also have to manage your compound, building the rooms in it and filling them with survivors, but the more survivors you have, the more supplies you'll need to care for them...

^{My compound with 3/7 rooms built, but not many people currently inside}

There is also a contamination track that needs to be managed. If you can't protect your survivors, it goes up. As you don't deal with the events, it goes up, and there are only a few ways of reducing it.

With everything going on in this game, it actually ran a bit quicker than I'd expected, with a 4 player game with 3 of us learning taking just over 3 hours. It also didn't really feel like it took that long either, which is a good sign of enjoyment.

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^{Upgoats made by the talented @ryivhnn}