Escape from New York (2024)

[Whiterook]

"You go in, find the President, bring him out in less than 24 hours, and you're a free man."

In Escape from New York, an adaptation of the John Carpenter movie of the same name, you play as Snake, Brain, Maggie, or Cabbie and attempt to rescue the president and his precious tape and bring them to safety, while dealing with the gangs of the most dangerous prison in the world – all of Manhattan.

You will play the roles of the heroes, exploring the dangerous streets of New York, searching for the president, his case containing the government tape, and a diagram of the bridges so you can escape from the city without stepping on a landmine.

You can work together, searching for these three things, or you may decide to secretly satisfy your own personal objective at any moment during the game, escaping from New York alone and betraying your companions. Whatever your decision will be, you must face the Bands of Manhattan, headed by the Duke of New York, who will hinder you by moving Prisoners and Bosses to eat up as much of the short time-frame you have to complete your mission.

This one got my attention the very first time I saw it! Loved the movie, and I can’t help but think it’s a great game on concept alone. I did see that players rated it as a great game to play, and I see the complexity is medium. Maybe I’ll get it on the table at Compass games Expo next month! It plays solitaire too, so I can try and learn and play it first.











Looking forward to getting this one… and more miniatures to paint!

[mikeh]

I dig the cabbie with the molotov cocktail.

[Whiterook]

Oct 22, 2024 16:24:27 GMT -5 mikeh said:

I dig the cabbie with the molotov cocktail.

…looks like the guy that owns that, took one of the miniatures and hacked the torso off on angle and mounted it on the separate taxi cab figure. Here’s a pic of the figure…



…and again, the taxi cab mash up…



…I’m not sure I’m brave enough to hack up and modify two minis into one! Plus, does it affect choices in gameplay, with one less human figure; or how do cabs work and does having a figure in it alter things? (…this is how my mind works)

[Whiterook]

Oooooh, this puppy arrived yesterday and I’ll be ripping the shrink off this weekend. The first impression at start is, what a heavy box for its’ size!!! It’s packed with goodness, for sure. I peeked at the rulebook online and it seems very reasonable… about 14 pages of actual rules, in a nice color-packed rulebook, in a style that has nice big print, nice graphics, and lots of sidebars highlighting what was covered on the subjects as you go. Doesn’t look overly complex, which is what I was expecting as the game was rated as Medium Complexity.

I won’t know what is in the box until I open it   …and I don’t want to look at an unboxing video — I view my games like presents on Christmas morning… I want the joy of opening it for myself and discovering the treasures within! 

[Whiterook]

So I opened the box, and I have to say, the components are gorgeous! I can sense this is going to be a fun game! Unfortunately, no miniatures 

…doing a little searching online, these came separate from the core game, and there’s a lot of KickStarter Exclusive swag that I would only be able to find of eBay and I am sure I wouldn’t like their prices. Problem being, I also have a suspicion that the “extras” will become hard to get, and therefore, way over-priced.

So, I bit the bullet and ordered the Escape from New York – Heroes & Prisoners boxed set from a retailer named Cardhaus… BGG rates them as legit and has great reviews so, I took a leap of faith.



At $17 (about 22 with shipping), I get 44 Miniatures in ‣ 1 Snake Plissen ‣ 1 Maggie ‣ 1 Cabbie ‣ 1 Harold "Brain" Hellman ‣ 40 Prisoners and 4 Plastic Rings. The cool cab you see, seems to be an exclusive item, so more research needed on that.



I’ll see how the game plays, and adding these minis replaces the cardboard standees with 28mm miniatures for a more immersive feel, so I figure all in all, the core game was 41% off, so I did better than even breaking even in total thusfar. (I told you… I’m a frugal New Englander!). Based on how much I like the game, I may hunt down some of the other expansions… I know I can get a Police and Gang expansion set pretty readily at the moment; a lot of the other stuff will probably be either unavailable or too expensive.

[Whiterook]

OK, so did a little data mining   …seems this was a Gamefound pledge campaign (…which I am seeing more and more good products from them, though I still like KickStarter better). The full enchilada pledge (a.k.a., All In) would have cost $138.42 USD (not including shipping from the UK).



In that pledge you got:

- 1x Core Game Box
- 1x Heroes + Prisoners Set (including Snake Plissken, Brain, Maggie, and the Cabbie)
- 1x Bands of New York Expansion (add’s a fifth player)
- 1x USPF (United States Police Force) expansion
- 1x Neoprene Playmat
- 1x Stretch Goal Box with all unlocked stretch goals

Note: the President miniature is not included in this pledge. Also, the items listed in red are one’s I have not bought at the time of this writing.

…that would have been a tall order price for me back in October 2022, as I had just retired and money was super tight as things shook out financially. This makes me feel a little bit better actually, because I would have gone all in on this otherwise, as the movie has great memories and appeal for me.

The real interesting ones besides the Core Game, are the Heroes/Prisoners Set (which is why I bought that yesterday). And also, the Stretch Goal Box…in this latter, Gamefound kinda sucks on post pledge details so, I am piecing together what exactly was in this, but near as I can tell, it was 4x plastic brief cases, 25 plastic roadbloacks, a plastic helicopter token, a drone, some cars, some added cards, the cabbie taxi miniature. Found this picture on BGG…



That’s the gist of it… maybe some other stuff, but it’s just too painful to look through all the updates the way the site works and having to “open more”.

Hard to say if some of the stretch goals ended up in the core or expansion boxes, but some may have, such as the improved linen cards. 

And of course, I just looked on eBay, and a couple schmucks on there already have the core and stretch goal box pairing for $200!