In this episode, we each share the top ten items from our 2023 Holiday Wishlists. Some practical and others, not so much. Play as 1 of 12 iconic characters (and as either a human or an imitation) from the movie, such as MacReady, Palmer, and Blair. The game is for 4 to 8 players and one we highly recommend. If there’s an uneven split (you’re not playing with 6 players exactly), don’t worry! As long as it’s relatively even, it’s okay! Be sure to look at what Captain powers characters have, as they can help you when you’re leading a group of supposed humans on your turn! Take your respective miniatures and place them in the ‘Rec Room’ on the board. Deal out 5 supply cards to each player. Your hand is secret, don’t show anyone!

A game round consists of a few steps, but the main action is through missions. The Captain draws a mission log card and gathers a team of players to go in it. Each player secretly hands in a Supply Card, which are shuffled and revealed. If the numbers are high enough, the team is successful and they reveal the room chip, if not, the contagion level increases. Room chips will be either Gear, Discards, or force a battle with The Thing. Everyone puts their cards in. Captain looks at the cards when deciding if they should get rid of one. Captain randomly chooses a person who contributed - "What did you put in?" Missions are more than just a captain asking people onto the team to engage in some up-down voting. The drawn mission card dictates specific success conditions – obtaining an axe or a few petri dishes – but also the types of people needed on a mission. Some mission will require Mechanic players or researchers so you can’t always depend on the one or two people you trust. Even if you could bring them with you, hearing “Sorry man, I don’t any of the items you need” will sink your gut as you look around and figure out who else you can trust. John Carpenter’s The Thing remains one of my favorite horror movies of all time. Along with Alien, it is one of the few movies that still unnerves and scares me every time I watch it, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. There is a rising tension that permeates every part of it that is brilliantly coupled with the audience sharing the characters’ uncertainty about who is human. The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 will arrive later this year from USAopoly, Project Raygun, and Mondo to put you in the shoes of those characters. I played at Gen Con and I walked away calling it my most anticipated game coming out of the convention.

Final Thoughts

I have a love/hate relationship with social deduction games. This relationship tends to lean towards the hate side. Most of the social deduction games out there I am not a fan of. I find them too fragile, easily broken by the wrong group of players, or that one gamer that just doesn’t get it. But there are a couple I absolutely love and those have been part of some of the most memorable and enjoyable gaming experiences I’ve had. Board game adaptations aren’t always the easiest to pull off, as they can’t rely on the same linear storytelling as something like a video game, but Infection at Outpost 31 pulls from existing board game tropes and wraps it in the movie’s signature brand of tension and body horror. Yeah, as Gary mentioned I think this game has too many problems for me. You can get around them, but it requires playing with a specific behavior and house ruling things. To win the game, players must complete missions, locate and identify the imitations, and escape the Outpost. Your ability to uncover the truth is critical to discover the imitations and win the game.

John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing was a milestone of the Horror genre. Both were immensely successful and influential, pushing the boundaries of practical effects at the time, and raising the bar for cinematic horror going forward. A group of people trapped together not knowing who is friend or foe? Sounds like a pretty engrossing social deduction board game concept, don’t you think?Is the game hard? You betcha it is! Some might argue that it is TOO hard, but to that I say: No, you’re wrong… shut up and look for The Thing before I torch you. Would discovering who was an ET from hell be easy? No way! Would you be scared and frozen with fear? Damn straight you would be. All of the mechanics in this game steer the players into a state of mind very similar to that of the characters in the novella and movies. I have nothing but respect for the designers of the game for fostering that kind of experience, and I cannot recommend this game more highly. It should be on the shelf of every horror fan.

If you get the chance, thank Michael Phelpz for putting a lot of work into this update/mod. Have fun! However, the player can exhaust both charges to ‘torch’ a player, removing them from the game. After accusing someone of being an imitation, all players vote with a thumbs up or down on torching said player. Note, only one player can be torched in a game with 4 or 5 players.

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If it’s obvious when players are lying, the game becomes a bit of a process. Simply running through the motions without any real tension or drama. However, if a player can really hide their true motivations and create some chaos, then this game can become truly epic. Unlike most games, the harder this game is to win, the better it is as an experience for those round the table. I was not old enough to see the movie The Thing on the big screen in 1982. I had to wait about 6 years later when a High School friend rented it. The Thing seemed just the right kind of wrong to me. Disembodied heads growing legs and eye stalks, and gaping maws opening in a man chest seemed to emulate my love of the macabre and Lovecraft. This brings us to today’s review, The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31.

Put the remaining Smoke/Fire tokens, ‘Power Out/Room Destroyed’ cards, item cards, and dice within reach of all players. Now, the really important bit. It’s time to decide who is good, and who is bad. Then there are a couple of games that came out that I love. The first was Shadows Over Camelot and that was followed by Battlestar Galacticanot long after. For quite some time I considered BSG my favourite game. Then we had that one bad game. The one where one of the players, despite being explained multiple times how the loyalty cards work messes it up, and you don’t learn until after playing for 6.5 hours! This is what I mean when I call these games fragile. I was a huge fan of the 1982 movie: The Thing and I can say the same of the board game The Thing. The excellent rising tensions and emulating the look and feel of the 1982 film won me over and this game will stay in my collection for a while. Like most social deduction and hidden traitor games, this one is a social poker game where you’re trying to convince everyone that you’re Human, even when you’re Human or not.I think the difference is knowing where those moments are where you can do it and cause some confusion. Like I say in the review, you really do see a skill set develop that belongs to this game sand this game only. Unfortunately you need to push through some flawed plays to get there. For anyone who just wants the basic setup of the game and no scripting, here you go: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1833127677 The staff frantically begin a sweep of the base, desperate to purge this alien infection before escaping to warn McMurdo Station that somewhere, out there in the frigid darkness, something horrible is waiting. Once chosen, these players move their miniatures to the ‘Escape’ space on the board, and the moment of truth arrives. These players reveal their Blood Sample cards one by one. If the escape criteria is met, congrats! The Human players win! However, if one imitation made it on board, the Humans lose, and Earth is doomed. Be sure to make the right call! One More Thing… Much like the titular entity, the allegories attached to John Carpenter’s The Thing have mutated since its 1982 release: Communism, AIDS, immigration, and perhaps today, COVID. Essentially, it taps into and reinforces the fact that fear and paranoia are tightly and eternally bound within the vicious cycle of human existence. Cheery stuff. But, as nihilistic as it sounds, Mondo Games’ The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31– and social deduction games in general – explicitly exemplify tabletop gaming’s power to conjure playful positivity from undesirable emotions. Tie this to a beloved cult cinema classic, throw in some miniatures, and you’ve got a level of engagement that’s hard to match.