Last night I had the pleasure of attending another open gaming night at All Fun & Games in Apex. This time around, a rep from Steve Jackson games was there. We’ll call him “John”, since that’s his name. He also happens to sound exactly like Steve Wozniak.
Anywho, John brought a bevy of Steve Jackson games such as Munchkin and Chez Geek and so on, but he was demoing Ninja Burger. Now, before I get too far ahead of myself, let me give a brief background on SJ games and Munchkin. SJ produces all types of games including board, card and RPG. They seem to be more popular in regards to their card games. I blame Munchkin.
Munchkin is a parody of Dungeons and Dragons, except it’s played with cards. You can draw a race, class, weapons and items, and you can fight monsters. The thing about SJ games is that there’s a whole lot of screwing over the other players with cards that do various nasty things. So, remember these two things as I speak about Ninja Burger.
Ninja Burger plays very similarly to Munchkin: you choose a ninja to play as (they each have different skills and abilities) you get fortune cards, go on missions, earn money and honor. It’s basically a ninja version of Munchkin.
The first game we played went ok, I didn’t win but the gentleman who did (and also beat me at San Juan - I don’t want to talk about that) had to leave. This is important, because the person who wins the most games gets a free copy of Ninja Burger. The second game, I won. Around this time, John had to open up the prize Ninja Burger so a second group could start playing.
The third game I played was brutal. It took around 2 hours. I did really well most of the game, staying in the lead, but as we kept getting closer to the end, people kept hammering on me. Remember those nasty cards I mentioned? Well, they kept playing them on me and I went from way in front to behind everyone else. During the whole second game I’m starting to seriously feel the effects of exhaustion from lack of sleep, not drinking enough water, Taco Bell, and a pretty mean headache, so all this pick-on-J-Rizzle nonsense wasn’t making things better. My mood was not at a highpoint. Thanks Steve Jackson games.
The girl playing with won in the third game, and the second group had already played several rounds with multiple winners. If one of the ones who had already won, won the last round, it was all over. Luckily, a new fellow managed to win. John called for one last winners round, which was to only last 5 missions per person. The person with the highest honor at the end, wins. There are 6 people in this last game, and if I hadn’t felt like I was on the verge of puking, I might have been nervous.
The game went quickly with only 5 missions, and I drew NO missions that catered to my characters skills, nor did I draw any particular ninja gear that came in very handy. I was lucky not to be playing with cutthroats, and strategy-heavy individuals; they were all very chill. The only reason I won, is because of dice rolls. Nothing else I did really helped much except for my character’s ability to draw an extra mission and choose which one I could go on. I would have been elated, but I was still feeling pretty sick and I had a long drive home. Now that I’m feeling better, I’m quite pleased with the turnout.
Monday, John will be at SciFi Genre in Durham doing Frag. I’m stoked.