Zombies!!! The Board Game
I’ve kind of been on a board game kick, mostly spurred by some games I played whilst in NYC. I already mentioned Munchkin, which I now own in two varieties (the original Munchkin and the awesome Cthulhu Munchkin that callmesteam got me for my bday-thanks again, man) and then there’s Bang! which I purchased, as well. Now it’s Zombies!!! The Board Game. This game looks like a board game version of Left 4 Dead...if the goal of L4D was to actually leave your friends for dead. It comes with 100 plastic zombies, six plastic player figures, two dice, some event cards and a lot of tiles which becomes the playing field.
The way the game is played is that, each turn, you flip over one of the tiles, place it where it can fit (thereby creating the city, bit by bit) and then placing the number of zombies, life tokens and bullets as the card dictates. You then roll, move your character up to the number of spaces and fight any zombies you move through. Fighting zombies is resolved with a die roll, where you have to get a 4-6. Anything less can be bumped up by spending an equal number of bullets or by taking one life point in damage and rerolling until either you or the zombie is dead. Once you move, you roll the dice again and move that many zombies one space. Eventually, as the board is created, you’ll have tons of zombies milling about. The event cards can either help you (give you bullets, etc.) or hurt a friend (their shoe is untied, so they can’t move, for example).
There’s two ways to win. The first is that anyone who kills 25 zombies will automatically win. If your character dies, you start back in the town square and lose half of your zombie kills. Since the place is crawling with zombies, chances are you will die. So getting 25 zombie kills is difficult. The other way to win is reminiscent of L4D (though, technically, it’s the other way around since Zombies!!! has been out for quite awhile, is in its second edition and has tons of expansion packs) in that eventually you’ll put down the helicopter pad tile. Once that pad is down, the first person to reach it wins the game.
So there’s a smattering of strategy in how you want to win. You can either go the road of least resistance and try to make it through town alive, in hopes you’ll reach the helipad before anyone else. Or you can also go the guns-blazing route and try to kill as many zombies as possible.
There’s other zombie games out there that look equally interesting and I’ve looked at. One of them is made by the same company and its called Zombietown. This game seems to be more strategic, since the goal is to last ten days. It tasks you with rescuing survivors, taking over houses and barricading them up to survive. It sounds fun but when I looked over the rules, it also seems way more complicated and slower-paced.
The other game that looks similar is called The Last Night on Earth. This one sounds like a lot of fun, but it is sadly sold out everywhere I look. This one, like Zombietown, takes place on a persistent map (of a manor) and there’s zombies to kill. But its little twist is that there are scenario cards that are to be like “different movies.” So one might be to defend the manor against the zombies, while another might task you with something else. The other little twist is that some people play survivors while others play as the zombies. I’d like to play this game, but it’s out of print, I believe...which sucks because its expansion pack (which, of course, is dependent on owning the original) is still being sold. I’m hopefully they’re just going to refresh it or something.
Anyway, these are my new obsession. I can’t wait to play the Zombies!!! game.
The way the game is played is that, each turn, you flip over one of the tiles, place it where it can fit (thereby creating the city, bit by bit) and then placing the number of zombies, life tokens and bullets as the card dictates. You then roll, move your character up to the number of spaces and fight any zombies you move through. Fighting zombies is resolved with a die roll, where you have to get a 4-6. Anything less can be bumped up by spending an equal number of bullets or by taking one life point in damage and rerolling until either you or the zombie is dead. Once you move, you roll the dice again and move that many zombies one space. Eventually, as the board is created, you’ll have tons of zombies milling about. The event cards can either help you (give you bullets, etc.) or hurt a friend (their shoe is untied, so they can’t move, for example).
There’s two ways to win. The first is that anyone who kills 25 zombies will automatically win. If your character dies, you start back in the town square and lose half of your zombie kills. Since the place is crawling with zombies, chances are you will die. So getting 25 zombie kills is difficult. The other way to win is reminiscent of L4D (though, technically, it’s the other way around since Zombies!!! has been out for quite awhile, is in its second edition and has tons of expansion packs) in that eventually you’ll put down the helicopter pad tile. Once that pad is down, the first person to reach it wins the game.
So there’s a smattering of strategy in how you want to win. You can either go the road of least resistance and try to make it through town alive, in hopes you’ll reach the helipad before anyone else. Or you can also go the guns-blazing route and try to kill as many zombies as possible.
There’s other zombie games out there that look equally interesting and I’ve looked at. One of them is made by the same company and its called Zombietown. This game seems to be more strategic, since the goal is to last ten days. It tasks you with rescuing survivors, taking over houses and barricading them up to survive. It sounds fun but when I looked over the rules, it also seems way more complicated and slower-paced.
The other game that looks similar is called The Last Night on Earth. This one sounds like a lot of fun, but it is sadly sold out everywhere I look. This one, like Zombietown, takes place on a persistent map (of a manor) and there’s zombies to kill. But its little twist is that there are scenario cards that are to be like “different movies.” So one might be to defend the manor against the zombies, while another might task you with something else. The other little twist is that some people play survivors while others play as the zombies. I’d like to play this game, but it’s out of print, I believe...which sucks because its expansion pack (which, of course, is dependent on owning the original) is still being sold. I’m hopefully they’re just going to refresh it or something.
Anyway, these are my new obsession. I can’t wait to play the Zombies!!! game.