The latest Last Night on Earth expansion comes in a smallish box, but it's crammed with a good amount of stuff; 4 scenarios, 5 counter sheets, 3 new decks of cards and about 8 each of new Hero and Zombie cards. My first impression is that the new scenarios, combined with the new mechanics, make this more of an "advanced" version of LNOE, moreso than Growing Hunger, but for a LNOE fan looking for some more depth and variety, that's a great thing. Here are some details...
There are 3 new decks, Survival Tactics and Unique Items (which benefit the Heroes) and Grave Weapons (for the Zombies). If a Hero rolls 5+ for movement, instead of Searching, they can draw either a Survival Tactics card or Unique Item card, depending what numbered building they're in (Unique Items = 1-3 or 1-2, Survival Tactics = 4-6 or 5-6, 3-4 = choice of either). So basically, any time you were going to search anyway, you'll have a 1 in 3 chance of getting one of those cards instead of the usual Hero card. And by and large, those are quite powerful...
A few of the Survival Tactics cards...
Several of the Survival Tactics cards are of the same type as other Hero cards, but the difference is that these cards, as well as the Unique Items and Grave Weapons, are never considered to be "Hero" or "Zombie" cards, and cannot be cancelled as such. And some of them include new elements like "Duct Tape", which allows you to combine two of your Items to gain the effect of both at the same time; "Use the Sewers", where you can add sewer tokens to the board to allow for faster movement (I'm glad that there is a counter provided for being "in the sewer" which is placed off the board and which requires one movement space; I didn't like the idea of teleporting across the board between sewers, which is how I thought it might work from the original description... I also like that the Zombies can use the sewers as well); "Ammo Belt", which lets you put 3 Ammo tokens on it and discard them instead of discarding a Gun, or to add +1 to a roll; and "Barricade the Windows", which gives additional barricade strength (more on barricades below).
A few of the Unique Items...
The Unique Items offer some kind of bonus, and sometimes an additional bonus if a particular character has them. For example, <PERSON>'s Pendant allows its owner to discard it to cancel a wound, but also gives <PERSON> an extra Fight die if she has it. 699
<PERSON> Bible gives any other player his normal ability to take a wound to attempt to cancel any Zombie card on the roll of 3+, and if Father <PERSON> has that, then he automatically cancels a Zombie card if he takes a Wound. I'm a little disappointed that there aren't more examples of that in the Unique Deck than there are; from the earlier description of this, I expected there to be more character specific bonuses like that, but a lot of characters aren't represented in this way and not all of these cards offer that kind of thing. Presumably, we'll see more character-specific Unique Items with future LNOE expansions.
One of the Grave Weapons cards...
The Grave Weapons cards may be drawn by the Zombie player instead of spawning 2 normal zombies, and they give a specific zombie a particular ability, per the example above. I really love these, because much as I like LNOE, one criticism I have is that the Zombies don't seem to have as much character or as many tactical choices as the Heroes. This improves both of those things. Survival of the Fittest provides tokens (see the counter sheet above) to place under zombies with Grave Weapons, but having played the game now with the tokens, the value of having the miniature set became apparent, because it can be a real PITA to move around all of the Zombies with the markers. I am disappointed that while the mini set includes a new Grave Weapon type (Crawling Torso), it does not include two of the existing types (Recently Dead and Explosive), so you still have to use markers for those. But that's more of a complaint against that set and not against SOTF itself.
Barricades
SOTF includes several new or updated "dot" mechanics in the rulebook, and probably the most significant of those (and long-awaited by LNOE fans) is for Barricades. Basically, when you are in a building, instead of searching, if your movement roll was 4 or higher, you can either erect a barricade or reinforce one. A Hero can also take a wound at the end of a Move Phase to build or reinforce a barricade. 728