Resident Evil updatesUpdated a year ago

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Production Update for Resident Evil: The Board Game, with Sherwin Matthews

Happy new year, survivors!

Let’s begin with production – it’s begun!

Thanks to the extra attention from our production partners in the run up to Christmas, we’ve managed to get started prior to Chinese New Year.

Sadly, that will still mean we have to pause while the festivities are underway, but every day counts, and honestly, I’m keen to get my hands on the game just as much as you guys are. I have no doubt that we’ll see some production pictures and hopefully even behind the scenes videos in time, and as we do, we’ll be happy to share them with you.

Purely because I saw a couple of questions on this, I’ll reiterate – we’re expecting fulfilment to begin end-July / August for US, Europe, and non-Asia backers. Backers in Asia, you’ll receive your orders a little earlier as per usual.

This does mean that we'll need to close the pledge manager soon. So if you were still thinking of adding anything to your pledge, you have up until Friday 27th January to do it.

Thanks for your patience as always. And now, onto the first of our boss spotlights…

Enemy Spotlights in Resident Evil: The Board Game

Welcome to the very first Resident Evil: The Board Game boss spotlight. Last update I asked you all which of these terrifying foes you’d like to see before the others, and I’ll admit as well as a very clear winner, there were a couple of low count / absentees that surprised me… the poor Crimson Head Prototype, did you all forget about him?!

It Was… A Huge Snake

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen… Yawn is your winner.

So named by researchers for the creature’s vast, yawning maw, Yawn was an experimental bioweapon created by exposing the T-Virus to one of the adders native to the Arklay Forest. The creature quickly grew to a monstrous size and developed a wildly hostile nature to match, unfortunately proving far too aggressive to be any use in Umbrella’s B.O.W. Development program.

When the outbreak occurred, Yawn was able to escape captivity in the chaos, killing several researchers and guards in the process, before eventually building a nest in the rafters of the Spencer Mansion.

Imagine what might have been if it had escaped into the forest instead…

When it came to designing Yawn, more than anything we wanted to recreate the feeling of fighting against this terrifying foe in the game. For those of you that have faced it, you’ll easily remember how it circles around the player, choosing its moment to strike like a cat playing with a mouse.

To this end, we created an entirely bespoke system for how to move Yawn, never seen before in the Resident Evil tabletop series. But before we go any further, let’s talk a little about some differences between enemies and bosses, introduced to better emulate these unique foes.

For starters, bosses don’t make reactions. Instead, they each have a deck of unique behaviour cards, which you draw instead of tension cards during your turn. This allows the bosses to dramatically vary in their movement and attacks, and lends them more than a little unpredictability.

Because most boss bases are large enough to prevent them from fitting into the same square as characters, boss attacks also use a different attack system. Each attack has a range and effects as normal, but also includes an evade difficulty, which is the minimum value the character must roll to avoid being hit.

Finally bosses that have massive bases are also capable of inflicting collision attacks upon characters, in addition to their normal attacks. These are attacks that occur if a boss moves into the same square as a character, pushing them out of the way, and then forcing an evade roll to avoid suffering the effect of the collision.

Now let’s talk about specifics with Yawn.

Unlike other bosses, Yawn moves using corners like nodes, rather than counting squares. The direction of this travel is determined via a card, which some effects can flip (just when you think you have Yawn’s next move planned out).

The amount of corners Yawn moves is determined via individual behaviour cards, which can be anywhere from a single corner or all four in a single move.

Keeping up? Assuming you are, you’ve probably worked out that if you stay in the centre square, Yawn will never hit you with a collision attack. That sounds a little like an exploit, right? Don’t worry. Sometimes, just for fun, Yawn will make a diagonal dash too.

And that’s before we look at the giant snake’s special rules.

Snake Eyes

As you might expect, there are two versions of Yawn, which you encounter at different times during the campaign. Both have an entirely unique scenario, forcing you to adapt how you fight the monster off, as well as unique reference and behaviour cards.

Let’s start with the first time you meet Yawn, on the 2nd Floor.

This is how a boss card looks in Resident Evil: The Board Game. There’s a field for the creature’s name, then special rules, hit points, and if it’s on a large base, collision attack difficulty and effects.

This version of Yawn as you can see is pretty straightforward.

It has the single special rule, which further embodies the theme I mentioned before and disincentivises characters hiding in the middle of the tile. It has collision attacks, but they’re pretty straightforward to avoid and don’t inflict too much damage. It does however have a staggering 30 hit points which is quite scary, especially at this stage in the game, where you won’t have too much heavy weaponry to bring to bear.

Worried you won’t have ammunition for the task? Well, read on. As you can imagine with all bosses there’s a lot of depth not only on their reference cards, but also in the scenario rules and on their behaviour cards.

In this first scenario the objective is not to kill Yawn, but to drive it off. This can be achieved by removing behaviour cards from the deck. Each of Yawn’s behaviour cards has a threshold value on it, and if this is equal to or higher than the number on Yawn’s health dial, the card is removed from the deck after being resolved.

Then, you roll the encounter die. If the number on the dice is equal to or higher than the number of cards remaining, Yawn retreats, and the characters have survived… for the time being, at least.

Simple, right?

Well, lets look at some cards, so you can make your mind up.

Boss cards are broken into actions, which the boss performs from top to bottom in order. As you can see, Yawn doesn’t necessarily inflict much damage per hit, but hits quite a bit with its movement, which is difficult to evade. The trick is trying to predict its movement, and staying in the opposite corners, away from the direction of its movement at all times.

Just be wary that sometimes, Yawn changes direction…

The value in the bottom corner of these cards is unique to Yawn – those are the threshold values. So, as you can see, you’ll have to do quite a bit of damage in order to drive the creature off.

Death Rattle

So, how about the second encounter? Well, we’ll start with the reference card, like before.

It’s largely the same card, retaining the creature’s collision attack and hit points, and Limited Vision special rule, although you’ve no doubt noticed an additional rule has crept on there – Aggressive Reaction.

This not only forces characters to back away before attacking, but also to stay out of the centre square (if they hadn’t already learned), as it will always be adjacent. All bosses will require you to think carefully and build a strategy, survivors… and Yawn is no different!

So, reference card out of the way, how does the second scenario differ to the first, you might ask.

Well, for starters, unlike the first scenario, the objective here on the 3rd Floor is absolutely to kill Yawn, but that’s not all. Yawn begins with the same behaviour cards as it does in the first encounter, but once the threshold for the card is reached, instead of simply removing the card, you replace it instead. A sort of gated heat ups, for those mechanically-minded of you out there.

And good news, survivors – the replacement cards are significantly more dangerous. Thus, as the fight goes on, and Yawn becomes increasingly more wounded, it starts to move far more erratically, and lash out ever more recklessly.

Let’s take a look.

Lunge and Recoil is an early card, as you can see, shuffling in when the monster reaches half health. Blind Fury is a little closer to your goal, but increases the creature’s mobility significantly, also making it more difficult to avoid any collisions.

And Swallow? Well, that’s really there for Richard fans. Because that one-hit kill on a large evade value can really ruin your day. Think carefully before crossing that threshold, survivors.

And That’s Our First Boss!

Let us know what you think about Yawn, and whether we’ve managed to capture the sense of fighting it that you recall from your games… as well as which boss you want to see next, voting in the comments below like usual.

Until next time!