Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game First Impressions

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game sees the Scoobies take on several Monsters of the week.

There’s a Pandemic in Sunnydale.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game, you help Buffy and her friends defend the town of Sunnydale from an onslaught of vampires and demons, while ultimately attempting to foil the big bad’s plot and prevent the Hellmouth from opening.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game Game Play

I played this solo controlling both Buffy and Angel fighting against The Master.

Players take turns taking an action until they have resolved all of their actions. In my case, I switched between 1 action each with Buffy and Angel.

Each character has 3 normal actions which are ‘Search’ to draw cards, ‘Use’ to activate their location’s ability, ‘Move’ to any location on the board and ‘Fight’ which I’ll get to in a bit.

Each character also has a Special action which is dependent on their character but when used will trigger an event card. 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.

Fighting is just flipping down a Vampire token face down in the Heroes location to Stun it. Demons are a little tougher and will require weapons to be equipped for them to be Stunned and both can be defeated and removed from the board with certain items too.

All the Bad Guys move by a logic system looking for Townie characters not in the same location as the Heroes and trying to get rid of them. Heroes can end a round in a location with Tonies but no baddies to rescue them, removing them from the board.

Winning & Losing

Your mid-game aim is to defeat the Monster of the Week while protecting Townies. You do this by going to its location, discarding certain items and then performing a test. This is just flipping over the top card of a deck and hoping a symbol matches.

Defeating one drops a clue token which, when activated, will reveal a card belonging to the Big Bad. 3 Minions of the Week will reveal 3 Big Bad cards which will reveal the Big Bad themselves.

Defeat the Big Bad to win by resolving the 3 revealed Big Bad cards to win.

Certain effects, as well as Minions and MotW, will deal damage to the Hero and these are added to a track. Minions that activate in a location with a Townie not protected by a Hero will be captured/killed etc and are also added to this track.

If the track fills up, the players lose.

Theme

All the Buffy is there. The Heroes all have thematic abilities that reflect what they do in the show. Having to deal with a Monster of the week, while trying to save Townies from regular Vampire and Demons, while also under the looming threat of a Big Bad gives a ‘series arc’ feel to the game.

You could even rig the Monster of the Week to play an actual series, that would be fun.

Those Monsters of the Week are a good talking point when they come up. As are the Items, Locations and pretty much everything else in the game.

If you’re a fan you’ll see a lot in the game.

Setup & Rulebook

The setup is straightforward as you put out the board and shuffle cards. Even solo the game isn’t a pain to set up.

The rest of the setup including starting Townies and Minions is all listed in the rulebook in a separate setup area.

But, the rulebook needed work. It doesn’t seem to have a decent order and there is an OVER explanation of components. Meaning it will explain a card in great detail, and then a few pages on it will explain how to use that card.

The lack of structure and subheadings makes finding specific things very difficult.

To show it’s not just me, there is a file on BGG that I use called “Buffy linear ruleset “. The rules are far from linear so thanks to user ‘ChucklePie‘ for this sheet. Go say hello…

Components & Artwork

The components are OK with nice cards and tokens. Actually, very nice tokens to be fair. Standees not minis which I’m all for. I’d love Buffy minis but I don’t need a £90 game.

Some of the item cards are tough to read. They use black text on a dark background. The middle bit of the card is fine but when the text goes out to the edges of the cards it gets difficult.

The art is nice. It’s the art of the comic which is taken from the actors from the TV show. Using the images of the TV show helps you get into the theme as I mentioned earlier.

Solo Accessibility

It’s quite simple, not very simple. There are a lot of rules, especially for the Bad Guy’s turn.

I was just taking my Hero turns and keeping in mind how Townies can become threatened and not thinking about much else. Of course, I did need to bear in mind how to defeat the Minion of the Week and the Big Bad.

It’s an open information co-op so if you’re playing with others it should be very accessible but maybe a little fiddly to teach.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game Summary

The game is very Pandemic adjacent and overtakes Reign of Cthulhu as my favourite of this kind of game. Buffy is my favourite IP of all time so this game belongs on the shelf with Legendary: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The important thing about this game (apart from being, fun, a challenge etc) is that it feels like Buffy.

It does that. You’re focusing on the Big Bad, that’s how you win, and that’s the real end game. But you also have to deal with the Weekly Monsters which pull focus and those pesky Minions too. You don’t want to let any members of the local community get taken, you’re the Hero after all.

Jesta ThaRogue