Last Night on Earth: Timber Peak

Hey Folks,

here it is. The latest expansion for Last Night on Earth and the first which can be used as stand-alone game. Does it fulfill my needs for more stuff to kill and more rules to torture my friends? Let’s find it out and take a close look….

What’s in the box?
1 rulebook
1 town center/radio station
6 l-shaped boards
6 hero miniatures with hero sheet cards
14 zombies miniatures
45 hero deck cards
45 zombie deck cards
10 melee hero upgrade cards
10 ranged hero upgrade cards
10 special hero upgrade cards
10 zombie upgrade cards
3 reference cards
4 scenarios
16 dice
alot of tokens/markers

Who are the new heroes?

Sheriff Anderson, Woodinvale Survivor:
Sheriff Anderson is a survivor which allows him to start the game with the “police shotgun” and the zombie card “haunted memories”. His natural leader ability allows him to spend 2 XP points to take any card from the discard pile instead of his searching round.

Jake Cartwright, Woodinvale Survivor:
Jake, the long term survivor starts the game with the zombie card outsider, which negates the pick up effects from buildings, but allows him to spend 2 XP instead of 3 to get a hero upgrade. As in the main game he still has his resourceful ability to draw 2 hero cards and keep one.

Sally, Woodinvale Survivor:
the last survivor of woodinvale who can spend 2 XP to play a heroic event on herself from the discard pile. Still a student she has her youth ability. She still has her lucky defense ability which allows her to force a zombie to re-roll one dice but she lost her lightweight perk which means she can use guns…. finally!

Ed Baker, the Lumberjack:
Ed, the lumberjack can handle 3 wounds before the final blow and his Jack of all Trades ability lets him start with one upgrade.

Alice, the Diner Waitress:
Alice is always on the go which allows her to use her movement twice when the roll is a 1 or 2. as a student she can’t handle that much wounds but has the youth ability too.

Nikki, the Bush Pilot:
Nikki starts the game with the signal flare because she is a Pilot . Her Rescue Gear allows her to discard one item to heal a wound from herself or another hero in the same space OR to cancel a zombie card on a 3+.

What are the new rules?

Experience System
One of the biggest game changers is the experience system, which allows you to level up your heroes or the zombie horde. Both sides get 1 XP for every wound they cause. Heroes can choose from three update categories (melee, ranged and special) and have to spend 3 XP +1 for each upgrade they already have (for example: Sally has already 2 upgrades and want to “buy” another one which costs her 5 XP) while zombies only have to spend 3 XP for a new upgrade without additional costs for already existing upgrades (the reason for that is that most of the zombie upgrades are one-shots. Those cards must be discarded after use). The heroes also have the chance to boost there upgrades by spending additional Xps which makes there upgrades more powerful.

Fire
With the addition of the fire rule gameplay gets heated up. Everytime your heroes blows somethings up (and sometimes caused by those clumsy zombies) a fire breaks out. But instead of just putting a fire token on the space, fire has an own fire phase in the zombie turn where it can spread out, getting bigger and can cause the destructions of whole groups of heroes/zombies and even whole buildings.

Always Hero Replenish/Alway Zombie Heroes
First introduced as additional rules in the expansions you CAN use they are now an inherent part of the rule system. Always Hero replenish allows you to choose a new hero after the old one died and the always zombie heroes transformes every hero who died into a zombie hero (which makes the “I feel kinda strange” card somehow … useless?)

Infection
Infection is handled differently than in the original game. Infection cards are no longer “remains in Play” which means you can’t get rid of it by playing a “remove a remains in play card” (yep… no more forum discussions about magically healing from a zombie infection). That makes it much harder to get rid of an infection and I will not spoil how you can destroy the infection 😉 . Instead the infected hero gets an infection marker which causes an additional wound on a roll of 1 or 2 everytime the hero gets hit by a zombie. If the hero gets 2 infection markers he/she instantely transforms into a hero zombie.

Double-Handed (only new if you don’t have another expansion already)
Introduced in the Growing Hunger expansion some weapons and items are double-handed. That means that they count as 2 weapons/items which causes a shortcut in your inventory limit.

What can the new cards do?

Well, the hero and zombie cards are mostly tweaked versions of the original game. All of them have of course different artwork which fits the expansion.
The hero cards contains a lot of new weapons (most of them are more powerful than there equivalent of the original game. Some are just a replacement. For example the pick axe is the same as the meat cleaver) but there are only two townfolks in the deck (who are really powerful when playing them in the right time). A real new addition are the double-handed items like the fuel can which gives you 3 gasoline (the card count as one and 2 additional fuel markers).
The most mentionable aspect of the zombie cards is the fact that nearly all of the fight cards have an additional effect (“undead hate the living” is the only card which didn’t change at all) like forcing the hero to take an additional wound or discard an item/weapon.

And what about the Upgrade Cards?

Each pile of upgrade cards contains 4 cards which are twice in the deck and 2 unique upgrades. Each upgrade category benefits the player with specific advantages, for example increasing the range of guns or force the opponent to re-roll. Most of the upgrades are really helpful but are not too powerful to force the balance on one side.

Anything about the new game board?

Like the boards in the original game, the center piece is double sided with the town center on one side and a radio station on the other. There are a lot of new buildings on the L-shaped pieces but also some already known buildings like the police station or the high school. On some of the outer pieces are trees which avoid heroes to move diagonally.

Tell us about the new scenarios!

Learn to Survive:
The heroes have to get 6 upgrades while the zombie player has to get 4 upgrades or kill 3 heroes

Mountain of the Dead:
The heroes have to protect the 4 generators ’til morning while zombies have to destroy 3 generators or kill 3 heroes

Radio for help:
In this scenario the heroes have to find the tools and repair parts and get them to the radio station and have to defend the generator. The zombie player wins by killing 3 heroes, destroying the generator or the sun sets.

Blow up the Town:
put 1 explosive in one building on every L-shaped board and reach the center of the town where the detonator stands. The zombie player wins by killing 2 heroes or the sun sets.

What’s your opinion about…

… the heroes?
I like the new heroes. They have some interesting abilities or in case of the lumberjack a huge wound resistance. BUT: I don’t like the fact that Flying Frog is dictating me who survived the Woodinvale Incident (and none of them is one of my favorite heroes). Instead of recycling 3 heroes from the previous games, they should made a full cast of new heroes and put in some additional small cards for each previous hero which you can simply lay on your hero sheet.

… the rules?
I really love the Experience system. It gives the game an RPG like flavour which creates a better bond between the player and the hero and gives the zombie horde an higher danger level than normal. Fire is an unpredictable danger for both sides and can get really ugly. The tweaked Infection rules clarifies some of those logic errors I had with the previous rule from the main game.

… the cards?
The changes of the cards and the new ones really intensify gameplay, moving the game to a faster climax and raises the difficulty (which is in my opion positive)

… the scenarios?
Learn to survive is a good scenario to get the feel for leveling up your heroes and you should play it first before trying the other scenarios. The other scenarios are really great. None of them gives the heroes the chance to hunker down. Instead they force them to move over the complete board and think about their next move.

Your final conclusion?

As an expansion it is a must have! It really spices up your games and don’t really change the balance that much. Both, the zombie player and the hero players have to use more tactics than before to reach their goal. But would I recommend it as stand-alone to new players who don’t have LNOE? No. The main reason is that the difficulty is higher than in LNOE which can be frustrating in some point. And for me personally I always had the feeling to play LNOE lite but I can’t point my finger on the “why”.

So… I hope this review gives you a better overview and helps you in your decision to buy it or leave it.

Yours sincerely,

Hauwegdenmist

This is the only expansion I own for this game at the moment, so I am not sure what the others bring to the table, exactly. However, I will say that this expansion fixes just about every complaint we had about the base game. The rule book is more inclusive and there are some much appreciated additions. We have yet to mix the two games, as this game plays wonderfully all on it’s own, but it is an option. The times we do go back to the base game we always use the rule set from this expansion.