No Go Zone

There's a very nice chap at the club called Gary (hello Gary!) who is a big fan of the Warm Acre series of games including Hour of Glory and Spy or Die Trying, both of which he has enthused about at length. I haven't had the chance to try them out but I am confident that they are everything that he's cracked them up to be, so I thought I'd take a closer look.

A copy of No Go Zone popped up on Ebay for 99p the other day, so I put in a bid and now have the rulebook to flick through. It's not a subject that immediately grabbed my interest but, on closer inspection, it's a really simple but very clever game, using some innovative diceless mechanics with some unusual but very imaginative gameplay elements. 

The basic idea is situation management, with the forces of law and order contesting control of the streets at closing time with the forces of lager fuelled, kebab toting chaos. The clever bit is the way in which the players can counter each others' actions using a series of suggestive, if not rather offensive hand gestures, playing one another off using a combination of tactics and brute force.

I see considerable classroom management potential in the POKE and SUPER-FLIP, by way of example, although I'm sure Senior Management would be less enthusiatic.

Anyway up, as it turns out the rules and thirty 28mm miniatures are currently available as a bundle offer for £20 from the Warm Acre website, which has to be a pretty good deal, even if you only use the figures for the imminent Zombie Apocalypse (which my Year 7 class inexplicably confused with the Solar Eclipse, for some unexplained reason that I have absolutely nothing to do with....really)

Anyway, the rules contain cardboard cut out road sections and vehicles as well, although these can also be downloaded from Wargames Vault along with 3D print and assemble-yourself  urban buildings. It's an unusual subject for a game but I think that No Go Zone is really interesting, even if it is just as a stimulus for diceless game mechanics and interesting gameplay ideas. 

I've read some other reviews which have been positive and suggest that it's a good 'beer and pretzels' style game, although limited in scope. I'm impressed with the game concept, so may well send off for the full-on bundle, adding some diecast police vehicles to patrol the mean streets of Winchester / Winnal (?). I'm also keen to have a look at Spy or Die Trying, which is on the shopping list for Salute in a few weeks time.