Nate Rethorn
United States
Toledo
Ohio
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This mini-expansion is a must-buy for Last Night on Earth, mostly because the scenario and the expansion cards are heavily tilted towards the zombies' side. As usual, both the heroes and the zombies each receive about half of the expansion cards.
Two of the heroes' new cards, Hedge Trimmer and "Ruuuuuun!" are excellent additions to any hero deck. The Hedge Trimmer allows you to re-roll extra fight dice if there are multiple zombies in your space; as you get overrun with zombies you have a better chance of killing them. It's a nice balancing act. "Ruuuuuun!" is also a great movement card for the heroes; rolling two dice and keeping one can get a hero out of a tight spot at a crucial time. Unfortunately, the other two cards aren't nearly as interesting: the Backpack increases your carrying limit (which really doesn't matter that much since it's to the heroes' advantage to spread out their weapons and items as much as possible), and "How Do You Like It?" is either too situation-specific to be of much use or ineffective at actually hurting the other player. Discarding ten zombie cards is nice in theory, but the zombie player has more than enough opportunities to then pick out the best discards from the pile. It doesn't slow down the zombies' tempo in any way close to what would happen to the heroes in the same situation.
On the other hand, the zombie cards are uniformly excellent. "Divide and Conquer" is the most aggressive of the bunch, and it's always fun to watch a hero player to slip up and forget that standing alone on an L-board can be the death of you rather quickly. "Risen From The Grave" is one of those deceptively powerful cards that allows you to draw any card out of the discard pile at the cost of only two zombies. This always causes the heroes' faces to turn white when it's played, as there are a hefty number of one-shot power cards that can be devastating if played again. "Feels No Pain" can either pump a zombie's attacks or prevent it from being killed; it's a nice utility card to have in hand but feels a bit less powerful when compared to the previous two. And "The Smell of Brains" is brutal if there are a lot of zombies in close proximity to each other.
The included scenario also favors the zombie player quite heavily. The zombies are given an incredible power boost with their fight dice, hand size, and auto-spawning rules. They also automatically turn killed heroes into zombie heroes, but must kill five of them to win the game instead of four. The heroes have a much tougher road ahead; they must kill four zombie heroes or hold them off until dawn.
This scenario leaves the heroes fleeing headlong to all corners of the board in a desperate effort to escape being killed--and if one of them does happen to fall, the other heroes have to turn around and kill the newly-spawned zombie hero as soon as possible. The zombie player can afford to be much more aggressive here, since the only way to win is by eliminating five heroes. But it's a short timer (only 13 turns), so the pressure's strong from the beginning and never lets up. I think this is one of the most fun scenarios to play, mostly for its role reversal and frenzied auto-spawning zombies. It's rare to see heroes in headlong flight for the entire game; when staying alive is your only objective, luxuries like searching and self-sacrificing don't exist.
Overall, Revenge of the Dead is a solid addition to the Last Night on Earth series. It doesn't offer much for the heroes, but it's a welcome enhancement for the zombie player.
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