Last Night on Earth: Hero Pack One

first of all: this is the first review I EVER wrote and english is not my native language so have mercy with my grammar 🙂

This is the first Hero Pack for Last Night on Earth and definitely not the last one. So let’s take a look deep inside the box…

What’s in the box?

1 full color rule booklet (a double sided piece of paper)
4 new hero miniatures (with hero cards)
1 scenario “hunt for survivors”
5 hero deck cards
5 zombie deck cards

Who are the Heroes?

Jade, the High school outcast
– As every student she can’t bear that many wounds as the adults but have the youth ability to heal herself.
– Her second Ability is called “Rebellous” which is really powerful when you are a lucky dice roller because every time you loose a fight, as long as you throw doubles you prevent all wounds (not only one). AND as a nice side effect you roll one additional fight dice as long as you are in the same space as another strange hero.

Mr. G-o-d-d-a-r-d, the chemistry teacher (sorry for the name spelling but it seems that you can’t write the name without getting it censored)
– The only one who IS a fire item! That means: his fire ability gives him an additional item which can’t be discarded because he don’t just pick a fire item. so, technically you can say he can carry 5 items (4 hero card items + the fire)
– The “quick thinking” ability allows you to discard 2 items and draw a hero card from the draw pile or choose an event (no play immediately cards or townfolks) from the discard pile. In my opinion only helpful when you are carrying useless stuff which is not worth to trade.

Stacy, the investigative reporter
– Her “daring” ability let’s her ignore the “Taken Over” effect.
– With the Reckless ability she can draw a hero card immediately when her move ends on a spawning pit.

Victor, the escaped prisoner
– Victor is the only hero with a negative ability called “Convict”. This gives him right at the start the “I don’t trust ’em” Zombie card.
– The “lock pick” ability is only useful for owners of the growing hunger expansion because he can ignore locked doors.
– His “rage” ability gives Victor one additional fighting dice for EACH hand weapon he carries.

Are there any new rules?
That depends on which expansion you have. One rule should be definitely new and that is “Sacrifice”. there are two zombie cards in this expansion where you have to pay something to play it.If you only have LNOE without the expansions there are special rules for the scenario in play:

Hero replenish: When a hero died or joined the dark side you can draw a new hero.
Hero Cards (1): the heroes get an additional starting hero card, for example you start in the middle of the board instead of drawing one card you can draw 2.
Zombie auto spawn: let the zombie player skip step 3. so he always can spawn zombies as long he has zombies in the pool.

What can the new cards do?

Hero Cards

Hunting Rifle (2): Has a range of 5 and hits on a 3+. If you skip the move/search phase you can shoot twice!
Hero’s Sacrifice: When a hero dies you can a) move the sun-marker one space up/down or b) roll a D6 for EVERY “remains in play” zombie card and discard them on 4+
“I know where it is!”: play it on a random buiding and every hero who is searching in this building can discard the card and choose one item from the hero deck
Monkey Wrench: add one fight dice when the zombie player is playing a fight card. but what’s makes it really powerful is when the hero wins a fight he/she can choose a “remains in play” card and on a roll of 4+ discard it.

Zombie Cards

Zombie Surge (2): Immediately spawn 1d6 zombies who may move and attack. your sacrifice: choose a hero and let him/her draw a hero card.
Hungry dead: Everytime a hero lost a fight draw one zombie card. your sacrifice: remove 3 zombies.
Nowhere to run: discard 10 cards from the hero deck
Twisted Angle: play on a hero when his movement roll is a one. now he/she has a movement -1 (remains in play)

What is the new scenario all about?

It’s called “Hunt for Survivors”. It’s a mix of “save the townsfolk” and “escape with the truck”. the heroes goal is to find townfolks and escape with them in the truck.The big difference is that you don’t search for the hero cards. one player already have the key marker and the townfolk markers are in random buildings. the townfolk markers works independent from the cards and do nothing. when the player with the keys and/or the townfolks got killed, they just drop them instead of discard them so another player can pick the stuff up.

So, what’s your opinion about…

…the heroes?

Jade:
in the right hands she can be a real pain in the a..! (from the view of the zombie player of course) When I got the chance to play her I’ve got her killed in the first rounds because of my dice luck while a friend had so many doubles I had huge problems to get rid of her.

Mr. G-o-d-d-a-r-d:
Give him gasoline, move him into a bunch of zombies and sacrifice him for the greater good! I don’t like him. “Why?” you ask? The first time he got in play, right in the first round, he had his “last night on earth” with Sally, the Highschool sweetheart… in the directors office… what a perv!

Stacey:
oh boy… the most worthless hero in the game. How many horror movies did you saw where the reporter is the first one to get killed or is the reason that a bunch of other people get killed? nothing more to say.

Victor:
What a monster! Give him 2 weapons and you have your tank. Team him up with Johnny and you can rename “Last night on earth” into “Zombie Killer Massacre”.

… the new cards?

The hero cards are totally overpowered while the zombie cards are not that powerful at all. The reason could be that the sacrifice rule only effects the zombie cards. But I really like the additional “discard 10 hero cards” card.

… the new scenario?

I really like it. I’m always complaining that there are so many scenarios where the heroes just hunker down in one building and searching the whole hero deck until they find what they want. This scenario is one of the rare ones where the heroes are forced to move across the board. So both thumbs up for this scenario.

… the whole product?

The quality of the content is the same high level as everything of flying frog. The minis are nice and the cards are the same material as in the mainbox. But like the most small expansions from flying frog I would say that 24.95$ are too much.

and the final question: Who would enjoy this expansion?

If you want a bigger hero-pool to choose from you can buy it. If your group of heroes has problems to survive the additional cards will help them alot. Everybody else: well, you have to decide for yourself if it’s a good addition to your gaming group or not.

I hope my review is helping you a little bit and it doesn’t leave you more confused than before.

Yours sincerely,

hauwegdenmist