Final Girl Starter Set with a free cat
I got this starter pack at 2024’s UK Games Expo in Birmingham when I worked the weekend on the Waterstones stand and had a great time demoing Azul Mini and yes it has taken me this long to get around to playing it…
Final Girl is a dedicated solo player game from Van Ryder Games, with three seasons of expansions and minis to take the place of the meeples that come with the boxes, this could become a dangerous obsession.
Final Girl is a highly immersive solo gaming experience that makes you feel like you’re living in a horror movie, playing as the fearless female protagonist facing off against relentless killers, all within the comfort of your own home.
As the Final Girl, you will be moving around the location to search for helpful items, save victims, and to confront (or run away from!) the Killer. Meanwhile, the Killer will be wreaking havoc in many ways, but most of all by killing innocent victims and attacking you! The game only ends one of two ways: either the Final Girl destroys the Killer, or the Killer slays her! In the rare instance that both die at the same time, the Final Girl has won, making the ultimate sacrifice to rid the world of a vile monster.
Each Feature Film has a unique Killer, an iconic Location, and 2 Final Girls, all of which can be mixed and matched to create your own personalized experience.
This Starter Set has the Core Box that is expanded upon with various Feature Film sets based on classic horror movies and tropes and the one that came with this package is ‘The Happy Trails Horror’
To play the game everyone need to get a Starter Set Core Box which comes with everything that you need to set up for the game which is:
- 1 Double-sided Player Board
- 11 Health Token
- 3 Victim Holding Boards
- 3 Victim Holding tokens
- 8 Tracking Markers
- 25 Health Markers
- 1 Rule Book
- 1 Time Marker
- 1 Bloodlust marker
- 23 Action Cards
- 27 Meeples
- 6 Custom Dice
Final Girl Starter set, cat more relaxed
But to play the game you actually need at least one Feature Film box to add to the Core Box and as I said the one that came with this was ‘The Happy Trails Horror’ which includes:
- Detachable Killer Board
- Detachable Location Board
- 2 Final Girl Cards
- 24 Terror Cards
- 3 Dark Power Cards
- 1 Epic Dark Power Card
- 3 Finale Cards
- 18 Item Cards
- 10 Event Cards
- 5 Setup Cards
- 2 Rules Sheets
- 6 Token
The interesting thing about this is when you buy more than one of the Feature Films you can start mixing up the horrors and girls so that there should be a vast amount of replayability in the games.
Finally getting around to playing this after such a long time!
What did take a long time was finally getting the boxes open and sorting out all the contents! I had to make sure I knew what each piece was going to do, the booklets and inserts make this really clear, and the storage for the game is well thought out.
Before I started I thought that it may be worth watching a video or two as though the instruction manual set everything out quite clearly it really does help the first playthrough to watch something that gives you the rhythm of the game.
So I set up to play my first game, drew an event and of course it was Fresh Meat which meant there was another six ‘victims’ on the board, which I really thought would make it much easier for the killer…
Hans did get the two Minor Dark Power cards early on and I really thought I was stuffed.
Got to admit I was completely unsure of what to do in this game so went for the tactics of getting as many ‘victims’ off the board as possible before Hans could get to them, avoiding him as much as possible, and getting the decent retaliatory actions in hand in case he snuck up on me.
This seemed to work as Focus became my MVP, keeping the Terror level down enough that I could gain the extra dice for my Horror rolls, and occasionally getting extra time on the track to buy decent Action cards.
So I usually had Guard and Retaliate in hand with three dice to roll for success, this was great, kept Hans from Damaging me too much as I scooped up the ‘victims’. It also meant I had those and all three decent attack actions when I decided to go in and claim his head after a short rest to get me to full health once more.
Made really short work of him when I did decide to swoop in.
Once I got my head around it I really enjoyed this game and really looking forward to the next playthrough, also looking forward to using Laurie’s bow in the next game!
The extra Feature Film boxes come in three series.
Final Girl Series 1:
- The Happy Trails Horror
- The Haunting of Creech Manor
- Slaughter in the Groves
- Carnage at the Carnival
- Frightmare on Maple Lane
Final Girl Series 2:
- Into the Void
- Panic at Station 2981
- A Knock at the Door
- Once Upon a Full Moon
- Madness in the Dark
- The North Pole Nightmare
Final Girl Series 3:
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