P68: Complete Zombie Throngness
March 15th, 2015
Pittsburgh 68, Shuffling Horrors
Sometimes you have to play your own game to learn it…
At one of my final Shuffling Horror: Pittsburgh 68 demos at Pax East, I triggered an unbelievable wave of Three Card Zombie bonuses. I went from two low value zombie throngs all the way up to six complete throngs (18 cards, 3 per throng). The bonus series was only stopped when one of the player’s reminded me of a rule that limits the number of bonus zombies I could take. He was sure I was limited to six throngs no matter what the deck was throwing at me. I honestly had no recollection of that rule and was a bit perplexed: someone knows the rules of this game better than me?!? I had to laugh.
The player went into his backpack, took out his own copy of the game, and paged through the rulebook. Sure enough, there it was in black-n-white on page 12: “A max of three bonus throngs is allowed.” This would be in addition to the Zombie Master’s initial three throng limit. Now, I could blame my forgetfulness on the fact that my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders by this point in the con, but, there is another reason for my not remembering: it’s a rule that applies to an extremely improbable situation.
Six Throng Bonus Limit – a rule that is easy to forget as it’s rarely needed.
That, and I had a zombified convention brain, too!
In this instance, I started the reel with two throngs: one throng had a single zombie card, the other had two zombie cards. I intentionally tried to trigger a Three Card Zombie to build my horde – I had no clue what was in store! The bonus streak was broken up by the appearance of a Sanctuary card, but that was moved out of the Dealt Hand and immediately replaced by another zombie. In the end, 18 of the 20 cards in Reel 2 were zombie cards. There are only 24 zombie cards in the entire 44 card deck…
This deal conjured up that grim moment in zombie movies where the survivors realize there probably is no hope left for mankind. It is great to know that Pittsburgh 68 can deliver that kind of terror (or excitement in the case of the Zombie Master). Luckily for the players, they had a plane to catch. We can only guess how the game might have ended.
That’s the kind of deal you remember for a long time!
