Events add more Townies and minions to the board as well as an effect that will have some kind of influence on the game, usually one round long. The game starts with generic vampires, demons and tasty townies on the board plus a single “monster of the week. If you haven't watched through the entirety of both "Buffy" and "Angel," there will most likely be a lot of spoilers. The event cards are, again, very generic and lack a deep sense of theme - one card restricts movement to a certain number of spaces without much of an explanation as to why, others stop the special abilities of locations again without explanation or thematic description. Every character has a stand-up with their dice written on them, and they're color-coded to their stands and their life meters.

It never builds up in the way I want, the final plot being resolved like normal and the game just…ending.An Event Check is simply when an Event Card is drawn and all the effects on the card are ignored – instead, the symbol at the bottom is consulted. Each hero character has a "card holder" which is a beautifully done piece of cardboard showing a full color picture of the hero with their name underneath, places for the cards they can acquire over the course of the game, a quote from that character from the series, and a quick reference to the number of Majik dice and Fight dice they get in the game. Buffy and the gang can almost, just about, come really close to killing all regular monsters on the map. A wounded (health in the lighter area) vampire only requires one symbol to kill, but a healthier vampire needs two.

One bad mechanism doesn’t necessarily destroy a game though – there are plenty of games I enjoy despite some problematic elements in their design. Those looking for a heavy game with groundbreaking gameplay won’t appreciate Buffy and those who aren’t fans of the show may struggle to find the fun.The players win if they successfully confront the Big-Bad three times via the 2-in-3 success rate random check before the apocalypse track fills up. You see, every time a special action token is spent and the action resolved an event card must be flipped over, telling you where new vampires, demons and townies must be placed, as well as hitting players with a usually nasty effect. But when you do actually face the big bad, you draw a card from the event deck in the hope it shows one of the monster-specific glyphs you need to actually succeed in the challenge. Because the game is cooperative and relatively simple, I cannot understand why the game has not been ported to the computer. In our initial play through against the Master, we found that Spike was usually off taking on the Monster of the Week; while Willow, thanks to Magic Supplies and the Glove of Myneghon, was zapping Vampires and Demons all over the board.

On the flipside of the Xander, Willow and Buffy card holders is a picture of them as a vampire and their modified Fight and Majik dice. Different locations in the game have different power that you can access, which makes it seem like there’s an extent to which you need to defend and optimise your control of areas to accomplish the tasks. It would have been helpful to have a space on the board for this or a handy reference card that can be placed near the board. So, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a fast, fun and exciting game to play especially if you are already a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The starting spots of all the characters is indicated on the board, such as Buffy and Faith starting in the graveyward and Oz in The Bronze.You have to work together, using all of your resources — including special abilities for the character that you play, whether Willow, Spike, or Buffy herself — to defend the helpless townies. Moving is the most obvious, allowing you to jump to any location you like on the board, regardless of whether there are any enemies occupying those areas, although the rulebook does say that for a harder game you can take a wound when leaving a location with baddies in it. One of the reasons XCOM succeeds as a game is that it doesn’t give you a lot of time to dwell on what’s actually happening. Fighting obviously lets you throw some of the vampires and demons around the place, but the basic fight action merely lets you stun a vampire – meaning it won’t activate at the end of the round – and won’t even touch a demon who simply shrug off even the Slayer’s attacks.