The Plum Island Horror is a cooperative game for one to four players who are … let’s be honest here … predominantly masochists who have nothing better to do with their free time but get pummeled by a boardgame. Just chalk it up as another wasted night of being embarrassed by some plastic dice and cardboard counters. But if you nonetheless insist on playing this game, you can take comfort in the knowledge that it is actually an accurate simulation of one of the most notorious and covered-up events in U.S. history.

Thanks to the intrepid work of the somewhat-famous journalist, private investigator and former Battle Bots contestant David “Sherlock” Spangler, this horrific story has finally been brought to light. David is most famously known (in some conspiracy and cryptozoology circles anyway) for his bestselling books “Squatching For Dummies” and “Ancient Aliens: Fact or … Fact?”. But it was his tell-all tome “Beware the Shade: Where Horrors Hide in the Daylight” that brought this event to my attention. The story was just too good to pass up and I assembled my team of developers, headed by Ken Kuhn and Fred Manzo, to begin collecting first-hand interviews from survivors of the disaster who were made known to us through accessing documents made available by Mr. Spangler and the Freedom of Information Act. Whatever stories and details we could not verify, well, we just filled in the blanks as best we could (using our highly intellectual and analytical talents). Therefore, I think I am quite justified in saying that this is the most historically accurate and well-researched simulation of a historical event that you will find anywhere in GMT’s game catalog. Obviously.

Plum Island … A Happy Little Place

Plum Island itself is depicted on a 22” x 34” mounted map that consists of six major Tracks leading from the devastated remains of the Plum Island Research Laboratory on the north side to the environs on the southern coast which include the city of Greenport. Each track contains a series of connected square areas which represent a major terrain feature in that vicinity. This could be a shopping center, a zoo, residential buildings, a park – you get the idea. Some areas are split into two smaller halves and the preceding area will have a “Fork” feature that will randomly direct any moving Horrors into one of two of those small areas. Part of the “fun” in this game is trying to play the odds and predict where the Horrors will go in those circumstances. While the Horrors generally move straight down the tracks, there are many occasions that will have them emerge elsewhere … conglomerating along the entire length of one track, swimming ashore on a beach far along another track or just randomly emerging from some hidey-holes in any area. Player’s units can move almost anywhere on the island from one adjacent area to another, but a few paths are blocked by hills, forests or water. So movement can occur all along the tracks and in almost any direction for them.

The Horrible Horrors

The Horrors usually spawn in the northern-end Spawn Zones of each track (though special spawn instructions and events may create spawns in far more inconvenient spots for the players). When a Horrors Turn Order cube is drawn, the players will draw a Fate Card to determine where new Horrors spawn and which Tracks will activate any Horrors already located there. These units will move down the track toward the south end of the map, their actual speed is dependent on their relative size. The smaller groups of Horrors zip along quite quickly (think of the movie 28 Days Later) and are extremely dangerous as they can get past your units before you know it. The larger groups travel more slowly as the Horrors do have a kind of herd mentality (and fun fact … a group of Horrors is called a Murder of Horrors). Though slow movers, these large Murders are absolutely … well … murderous if you end up in hand-to-claw combat with them.

The Horrors will have three Turn Order cubes out of the eight in the Turn Order bag. Therefore, monsters will frequently spawn and activate throughout the round. Not good news for you and the gang. Your job as keepers of the peace is to get yourselves organized, coordinate your actions and make a plan (as useless as that will be). Better yet … make a few plans.

So, Who’s Going To Save Us All?

Each faction is controlled by a player (except in solo mode where the one player controls two factions). Generally, you will activate your faction once per game turn when your Turn Order cube is drawn (however in the three-player version, there is a “wild” cube and the players will pick a faction that will activate twice when that cube is drawn). You will have one Leader unit (who provides bonuses to units stacked with him/her), four faction units (each individually named and with a unique special action) and a Compound unit (which is a structure that you can build during the game for protection and housing evacuees). Players are allowed to first move their units for free during each activation. Then they are allowed a certain number of additional actions depending on the round.

The game is divided into three days with three game rounds per day (so nine rounds for a full game … unless you are horribly massacred before then, which is a likely outcome). During the first day, players start off slowly as the shock of the catastrophe dissipates. Therefore, players start with only one action per activation and build to getting three actions by nightfall. During the entire second day, players are in full swing and will each get three actions per activation. “Woo-hoo! Everything is going to work out great and we’re going to save the world!” Not so fast there, Sparky! After two grueling days of neighborhood heroics, your units start getting tired as supplies and morale begin to wane. So that third day starts off great but by nighttime, you are down to one action per activation again. Bummer deal, huh?

Three actions might sound like too many, but just wait till you hear about all of the things that you and your crew will have to do. You will most likely need to move your units to the right spot at the right time, get them into brutal combats with the Horrors, move civilians toward safety, collect supplies, evacuate survivors, decontaminate the environment and tons of other jobs. You will be able to use your actions to do some of those things, but you and your compadres will be woefully short of having enough actions to do everything. So what, pray tell, can you do about that? Well, you need to “Follow the Leader!”

Follow But Don’t Stalk

As I said above, there are normally not enough player actions to get done what needs to get done during your own activation. So what’s an overwhelmed and undersupplied potential hero supposed to do? Well, you need to push your luck a bit and that’s what the Follow Action is all about. After any player is done with their regular activation, each of the non-active players can opt to Follow. That means that they can do one normal action plus they may also do a special Reposition Action to move a Helicopter or Boat unit around the map (and it’s only during a Follow Action that you are allowed to move helicopters and boats … evil, right?). After you do the Follow you get to check to see if you caused an event to occur. If you don’t trigger an event, you wipe your brow and the next player around the table may take the same chance. However, if you do cause an event, then not only do you have to draw an Event Card (these might as well be called “Things Are About To Get Mighty Worse” Cards) but this also cancels any further Follow options for the remaining players.

So there you are – your players have nine rounds to coordinate a defense and accomplish what needs to be accomplished …. but what are you trying to do exactly? Well, essentially you are just trying not to lose. And how do you lose, you may ask. Well, I’m glad you’re curious about that … so here’s the bad news (yes, there’s even more bad news). There are four ways to lose this darn game.

A Losing Proposition

First of all, you will lose the game and be condemned by the entire world (and also hated by your dog) if you do not score a minimum number of Evacuation Points. Each civilian unit is worth a number of Evacuation Points and you must rescue enough of them to meet that threshold. There are a bunch of civilians that start the game on the map – don’t worry, they won’t live long. Others will pop up here and there via some Search Card results (more on those in a future article), including some VIP civilians who not only give you extra Evacuation Points but some have special abilities as well. So Rule #1 … save the peeps!

The second way you can lose the game is by allowing the Biohazard Track to reach a certain point where the infection explodes and consumes the entire island … with the inevitable result that it will reach the mainland of the U.S. and cause quite a ruckus. The Biohazard Track will be inching up throughout the game, which is a result of the Biohazard Cube mechanic (more on this in a later article as well). Suffice it to say, the more you directly tangle with the Horrors (in yucky hand-to-claw combat) the greater the increase in the Biohazard level. Use your Gunfire attacks if you can! Rule #2 … good hygiene is a winning strategy!

The third way you can lose this depressing game is by allowing the Horrors to physically overrun the island. If you are too busy worrying about evacuating civilians or tamping down the biohazard infection, then the monsters themselves might just overwhelm the island like a Black Friday crowd at Walmart. If that happens, the island’s infrastructure is destroyed and it’s only a matter of time before the monsters infest the entire island, eventually spilling over to the mainland. Players will suffer Overrun Points if the Horrors get to the end of any Track unchallenged or if there are so many Horrors counters on the map that you can’t fulfill mandated spawns. So players can also lose the game if they allow the Overrun Points to get too high. Rule #3 … don’t let the buggers get past you!

Finally, the worst way to lose is through complete unit elimination. Affectionately known as the Total Party Kill or the TPK in some circles. If at any point in the game no faction has a leader or faction unit on the board (sorry but compound units do not count) the game is over and you’ll have to record another devastating “L” in the record books. The only saving grace to losing this way is at least no one will experience survivor’s remorse, right? Rule #4… at least one must survive. If unsure who gets to live, draw straws. 

As you can see, you and your friends have quite a tough task on your hands. But hey – that’s why we play games, right? So we can all spend a couple of hours being humiliated by a sadistic designer and his Frankenstein-like creation. But have no fear! It is actually possible to win this game, and in future articles, I will detail the ways that you can do that. So please don’t hit that “Delete” button just yet … there is actually some hope that you will have a good time playing The Plum Island Horror.

Good gaming and thanks for all the support!

Hermann

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