Cheapass Games (a tribute)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Way back when (May 30th, fer the love of cheese), I started an IMHO thread looking for your favorite board games. Well, it was met with resounding response, which was greatly appreciated. MrVisible, God bless his soul, suggested Cheapass Games, a game manufacturer that specializes in game concepts.

Their philosophy is simple. If I may quote them directly:

Once I saw the site, I decided to purchase two games - Devil Bunny Needs a Ham and Kill Dr. Lucky. Becoming instant classics with my friends, I purchased The Great Brain Robbery and Chief Herman’s Holiday Fun Pack just recently.

So far, Kill Dr. Lucky has been the hands-down winner. Tranpiring a few minutes before the plot in Clue, you and the rest of the players are trying to (hold onto your asses) kill Dr. Lucky in his mansion with various items you find along the way. However, you can’t do it when others are looking, and all your attempts of murder have a very good chance of being thwarted (thus his moniker of Dr. Lucky). Its a quick learn, games can go relatively fast (and are fast-paced if they stretch a bit long), and can easily accomodate any variations you may wish to impose.[sup]*[/sup]

Devil Bunny Needs a Ham, for $2, is the cheapest game I’ve ever purchased, besides a deck of cards. Extremely simple, this game is a quick amusement for me and my girlfriend, as its usually pulled out while we’re watching TV.

Chief Herman’s Holiday Fun Pack, while having nothing to do with the holidays, is indeed a pack of fun. While not into dice games, this book of rules contains a lot of interesting stuff, including a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to play with 20-100 people! It also contains a bunch of poker variants, if that is your bag, baby.

And we finally played The Great Brain Robbery last night. It was tough to explain to everybody, being their first time, but it went over pretty well. One person in the group likes to stick with the tried and true, but I think everyone else will want to make it a regular occurrance. You have to love the possibility of your character running around with a block of cheese in its head.

Who else here has played any of these games? Yeah or nay?

[sup]*[/sup] I’m looking for the expansion to Kill Dr. Lucky, entitled Craigdarroch. If anyone has a copy, please let me know. I’d buy it from you, or settle with a photocopy (in this case, I’d be happy to send Cheapass Games $5 for the right to copy).

2

Sorry Euty, Coldy, and UncleBeer. This is most likely IMHO. I just got caught up in the moment.

3

A couple of other fun Cheapass games.

Lord of the Fries - You are a short order cook in one of Hades’ many resturaunts, do you have what it takes to fill the current order? Very fun.

Girl Genius, The works - Not sold by Cheapass Games, but done by James Ernest (Founder/owner of Cheapass) for Phil and Kaja Foglio. Very enjoyable card game, based on the same rules used for xXxenophile, but rated PG rather than R/X.

4

Greatest cheapass game has either gotta be Before I Kill You Mr. Bond… Sweet game. Another game, I can’t remember if it’s Cheapass or not, is Apples for Apples.
Gotta thrown in some points for The Great Brain Robbery too. And if you wanna try a wonderful game that is in no way cheap(about $30 if I remember correctly) go buy The Settlers of Cataan. It’s loads of fun if you have the money for it.

5

Apples for Apples rules, and is not CAG.

I would counter DarkPrince’s advice and recommend that you not buy the Settlers of Cataan. Not if you have anything else you’d like to be doing for the next month of your life, anyway.

6

Well I just bought three games from them after checking out the site.

So coming in the mail to me are

Before I Kill you Mr. Bond

Witch Trial

and

Kill Doctor Lucky

Woo Hoo new games!
Zebra

7

My favorite Cheap Ass game, out of a great many I’ve played, is “Deadwood”. The players are bit-part actors working studio backlots, and the amusing things are the names of the cards which randomize which movie and scene is being shot on various places on the board. There’s an expansion set for it too, which adds even more amusement, with genres besides westerns, such as “The Shake the Camera and Bitch Project, scene 23, Pile of Rocks.”

8

Zebra, good for you! You’ll have to report back once you get to play them. Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond is an excellent purchase, and one I need to get soon. You see, MGM has just filed a cease and desist order, and Cheapass Games is going to stop production, and predicts to be out of stock by August.

Can you say collector’s item? (If there are any collectors out there…)

9

I love Cheapass.

Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond.
WitchTrial
Kill Doctor Lucky

All rock.
It might not be cheapass, but the concept is similar. My favorite is still the Eubola Monkey one.

You are lab researchers and the dreaded virus escapes in your lab. You done you suits and grap your tranq darts to go save the monkeys still in the lab. First person to five monkeys (one from each station) wins. If your suit tears you have to go back to the beginning and patch it. If your friend looks like he is winning, you can shoot him with your tranq gun and he loses a turn, as well as drops his monkey. Its a great game.

10

Ah, cheapass!

Witch Trial is one of my favorites, mostly for the dialogue that crops up in the proceedings. In the last game I played, I prefaced every speech with, “I’m just a simple country lawyer, and I don’t know anything about this big-city lawyering. I just know what’s RIGHT and what’s WRONG. And what’s WRONG is this TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE! banging fist on table”

Kill Dr Lucky is lots of fun, but best played after a resounding match of Save Dr Lucky. Dr Lucky is a passenger on the Titanic and it’s your job to try to get him off the ship alive.