SPALDING WARGAMING CLUB
An hour, mind you. Not the "fifteen minute zombie race to the finish" it advertises itself as. For a light, frothy, party game, this can drag a bit.
In The Refuge you survive the zombie apocalypse by racing across an empty-looking board to be the first person to get into the haven at the other end. All you need is a Key, but since you start with a Key and can always choose to draw a new card instead of moving, that shouldn't be hard, right? Wrong.
Every time you land on a skull-icon Spawn space, you add a zombie to the board. Land on a Hazard space and you get to move a zombie. If a zombie enters a player's space and the player has no weapon, back to the start they go. There are Safe spaces that zombies cannot enter, but there are also Switch spaces that let you swap places with anyone on a Safe space. Then there are cards that let you steal cards from other players, jump over zombies, kill zombies, move diagonally and so forth. Plus keys.
In practice, the game is about persecuting anyone close to the top of the board: you steer zombies towards them, steal cards from them, swap places with them - and that's before you even know if they have a Key! The game has a "take THAT buddy!" quality to it which is funny and swingy but can go on a bit too long, as anyone who looks like they might win gets busted back to the start again.
We've got the Kickstarter edition with extra cards and these do improve things a lot. For example, the Bank card lets you put a card aside for later (i.e. a Key) and it cannot be lost or stolen. Don't get me wrong: this is a fun game, but it's more fun when it takes 20-30 minutes than 45-60.
OUR HOUSE RULES
Lay out 5 face up cards as the 'array' and re-stock the array up to 5 whenever cards are removed. All instructions to draw a card mean draw a card from the array, not the deck.
Each player who is NOT on a SAFE space at the start of their turn must discard a card from the array. Whenever a player draws a card from the array they should replace it with a face up card from the deck.
If a player chooses to DRAW A CARD on their turn, they may EITHER draw 2 face down cards from the deck or draw one face up card from the array and replace it.
RELOAD can draw WEAPON cards from the discard pile and also WEAPON cards from the array (replacing them with cards from the deck); EMP also causes all cards in the array to be shuffled into the deck and a new array is dealt.