Zombies!!!

playtest review by Mark O'Mealey

Introduction

This "beer & pretzels" game is as good as any and better than quite a few. You have to love a game that has 100 plastic zombies for just $19.95. Since buying this game last weekend, I've played it four times. The game is designed for 2 to 6 players. In the first two games we had four players, in the second just two, while in the fourth we had five. There are two different ways to win: be the first to reach the center square on the helipad board section or be the first to accumulate 25 zombies. The first three games were won by a player reaching the helipad, while the most recent was won by zombie count. With four games under my belt with a varying number of players and both kinds of victory conditions met, I felt I had enough game play in to do a honest playtest review. Without further ado, let's dive in, shall we?

Presentation & Contents

Zombies!!! comes in a sturdy cardboard game box measuring roughly 6x9x1 3/4". For those of you not used to Imperial measurements, that's roughly 15x23x4.5cm. The cover, which plays off of the B-horror movies by which the game is inspired says Widescreen Edition to continue the association and come to think of it, the box is about the same size as early VHS tape boxes (although Widescreen wasn't an option back then). There's a picture of a dude looking somewhat like Ash from the Evil Dead movies wielding a blood-splattered chainsaw after taking out the side of a zombie's face. Four other zombies are behind him. The artwork isn't going to win any awards, but I've seen worse and it captures and conveys the sense of the game perfectly.

The back cover features ad copy including a contents list of 30 map tiles, a 50 card event deck, 6 humans, life and ammunition tokens, AND 100 plastic zombies. In addition, there is a snapshot of one of the Event cards, two of the map tiles, and another picture of three zombies in various stages of decomposition.

In addition, there is the "For 2 to 6 Players Age 12 and Up" label on the box sides, while a small, discreet (idiot) warning about small parts not intended for children 3 and under appears on the bottom right corner of the front. Upon opening the box, the inside sides contain a more humorous warning that prolonged exposure may result in necrobiosis, necrolatry, necrophagia, and necrophobia, which was enough to send some players scrambling for the dictionary to find out what all those words meant.

The box itself is made from a think cardboard and as already stated, is quite sturdy. With proper care it could conceivably outlast the contents.

Opening the box also confirms the contents listed on the back of the box as well as reveals two d6 (one blue, one red) and a four page rulesheet. Actually, the front page is a brief bit of flavor text followed by a sort of foreword/endorsement from George Vasilakos, creator of the "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" RPG. The second page of the rulesheet begins with a "Thank You" for purchasing the game and another (completely accurate this time) contents list, so the rules themselves don't begin until about the middle of the page. Credits take up the bottom portion of page four, so altogether the rules themselves take up just over two pages.

The tokens come in two die-cut counter sheets and must be punched out before play. Players familiar with any of the old board wargames from SPI or Avalon Hill will recognize these as they are the same size as traditional wargame counters. To my mind, they overdid it on the bullet tokens, while leaving you short on life tokens (represented by a heart drawing that looks like the actual organ, not the silly valentine variety). Although we never ran out of life tokens, we got pretty low a couple times. Meanwhile, although there is no limit to the number of bullets each player can have, we always had tons available and I can't imagine a game requiring that many.

The Event cards are standard playing card size and thickness. As with any game featuring cards, eventual wear and/or accidental bending will result in "marked" cards. Since this is a social game, it won't matter as much as a tournament CCG deck, but if you are worried about it you could always put them in card protector sleeves anyway. I didn't and after just four games, a couple cards are already suffering from bent corners, etc. Since this game is seeing more play than the average CCG deck in my house, I may break down and sleeve them before any further damage occurs. All the artwork is by Dave Aikins and looks decent enough. It is neither photo-realistic, nor cartoony. It is neither too humorous, nor too gory. Since art appeal is entirely subjective anyway, I'll leave it at that. You won't buy the game for the art, but you probably won't sell it because you can't stand the art either.

The map tiles are roughly 4x4" (or 10x10cm) and of the same thickness as the Event cards. I would have liked to see these on slightly thicker card stock myself. Slightly heavier card stock would have helped them stay in place on the table. As it is, they slide under one another too easily even though we were trying to be careful and we found ourselves constantly adjusting the board as a result. Since the map tiles need to be shuffled before each game, I can understand why they aren't thicker. Also, thicker map tiles would have resulted in higher cost not to mention straining the capacity of the already overflowing box. Although also susceptible to wear, the map tiles aren't shuffled as much as the Event cards and don't get handled nearly as much, so barring an accident (spilled drink) or deliberate mishandling, they will probably hold up just fine. The artwork depicts a slightly isomorphic top-down view of the buildings. My only complaint is that every piece of the same type has the same artwork, so multiple theaters playing "Evil Dad" and multiple Media Buy stores make up the town layout. Since more than once (over the course of the four games), two of the same piece ended up adjacent to one another, it made the joke less funny for some reason. All in all, a minor complaint.

The dice are standard 15mm 6-siders with rounded edges and white pips. Not much to say here other than acknowledging that the game is truly complete and playable right out of the box as a result. Matter of fact, you only ever roll 1d6, so you've got a spare!

The plastic zombies are approx. 28mm high, including base. However, they look smaller than typical Games Workshop figures and all 100 are the same exact casting. Those looking at a cheap means of filling out an Undead army will probably be disappointed if that is the sole reason for buying the game. The humans are the same size and other than being six different colors, all have the same pose as well; a man in a suit carrying a rifle. For those interested, the six human pieces are colored red, blue, green, yellow, a light brown/tan, and black, while the zombies are all a off-white/bone color.

That's it for contents. Let's proceed to game play.

Rules

Game play is relatively simple. Although the rules are short enough as it is, I will attempt to summarize them even further for the purpose of this review.

To set up, shuffle the Event deck and deal each player 3 cards. Take the Town Square map tile out and place it in the center of the table. Each player takes a "human" figure and places in the center square (each tile is made up of nine squares). Each player receives 3 life and 3 bullet tokens. With the exception of the helipad, shuffle the map tiles, then put the helipad on the bottom of the stack. Determine who's going first and begin.

The Turn

Restock your Event card hand back up to 3 cards if necessary. Take and place a map tile. Map tiles have to be placed where they will logically connect. Since the map tiles are shuffled before each game and players may place them wherever they like subject to connection constraints, the game board grows organically over the course of the game and will probably never be the same layout twice, which is nice.

In addition to straight, corner, "T", and 4-way intersections, the map tiles also include a variety of "named" buildings. Although there are a couple of exceptions, the named buildings are almost always dead ends. Name buildings are the only ones that can be entered and they contain some mix of bullet and life tokens as well as zombies. If a player draws a named building map tile, they place these as well. Only one bullet or life token may be in a single square, not both, and only a single zombie can be in any given square.

The helipad is always the last map tile placed. Rather than the person whose turn it is, the person with the fewest accumulated zombies gets to place it. In the event that all eligible road connections become blocked before the tile deck is exhausted, the helipad will not enter play and ceases to be a victory condition.

Roll a d6 and move up to that many squares. If you move into a square with a zombie or there is one in your square at the beginning of your turn, you must fight it. Simply roll a d6 and on a 4 - 6 the zombie is defeated and added to your pile. On a 1 - 3, you have failed to overcome the zombie. You can use bullet tokens to increase your roll on a one bullet for one point basis, so that you can raise your roll to four. If you can't or don't want to spend the bullets, you must surrender a life token and roll again. If you lose your last life token, you move your game piece back to the town square and lose half your accumulated zombies. Next turn you start with a fresh set of 3 life and 3 bullet tokens. Assuming you defeat a zombie you may pick up a bullet or life token present in the square and movement can continue up to the full amount of your movement roll. In practice, this is probably the reason for two dice; one for movement value and another to fight with without "forgetting" your move score. There is nothing in the rules about this though and we didn't enforce it as a house rule resulting in a few, "How many can I move again?" situations. You can always pick up life or bullet tokens in unoccupied squares right away. A player may never have more than 5 life tokens, but any number of bullets may be gathered.

When you have finished moving, roll a d6 and move that many zombies 1 square each. Discard a single Event card if you want before passing play to the next player, who follows the same sequence. Play continues until one player satisfies one of the victory conditions.

Events

The Event cards are what makes the game more than an exercise in game piece movement and luck of the dice. An Event card can be played at any point in a round; a round being from the beginning of a player's turn to the beginning of his next turn. The Event cards contain a mix of cards that can benefit you or potentially hose an opponent. It is often hard to decide between playing a beneficial card or screwing with someone else. The Event cards are what make the game fun.

Since you can discard a card during your turn as well as play one per round, you can potentially draw two new cards at the beginning of your turn. On the other hand, you never have to discard or play a card if you don't want to and can hold onto the same hand of 3 cards for several rounds. You can never have fewer than 1 card in your hand or more than three. There were a couple of occasions where a person with two cards in hand couldn't remember whether they had played one this round or discarded, resulting in a few "gotcha" situations, but it is generally easy enough to keep track if players don't agonize over their turn too much.

Cards that benefit you include a variety of weapons that modify your combat ability in some way as well as movement cards. Cards that directly affect other players include those that force them to skip a turn, not move, or even let's you move their game piece. In addition, there are several cards that result in fresh zombies being placed on the board. In fact, once all the named buildings are in play (or no further map tiles can be played) this is the only way in which new zombies can enter play.

Game play observations

In the early rounds of the game, players had a tendency to avoid zombies, preferring to wait until they were better equipped although they also had the least to lose at this point. Since most weapons in the Event card deck can only be played when your game piece is in certain locations, players were tempted to hold onto weapon cards hoping the appropriate tile would be placed nearby. On the other hand, once the map tiles were out, players were more readily discarding weapons tied to locations far removed from their current position in hope of drawing something more useful during their next turn.

In the first four games, players seemed to prefer to use cards that produce zombies to jack with opponents. On the other hand, "dying" and losing half your zombies only made you more likely to get to place the helipad, hopefully where you would also be the one to benefit, so everyone was fairly casual about it and not too concerned when they had to start over. Zombie accumulation didn't seem to be viable goal as no player ever managed to get more than a dozen or so before getting sent back to Town Square and losing half of them. Once the helipad was placed, the game became a mad dash to be first to reach it, as in all cases no one was close enough to a win by zombie count to do otherwise. In the fifth game, where the helipad wasn't an option and the only way to win was to be first to bag 25 zombies, the players were much more likely to use those same Event cards on themselves. This produced two very distinct types of game play. It will be interesting to see if players' strategies evolve in future games.

Most Event cards are duplicated, so there aren't 50 unique ones, but there are a few. If I had a hand in the game design, I might have been tempted to throw in a couple more zombie generating cards. In the fifth game, play slowed down once the zombies placed in buildings got thinned out too much and we had to cycle through the deck waiting for a zombie generating card to be drawn and played. It would also potentially make zombie accumulation a more viable objective in games where the helipad is in play since it would be harder to avoid zombies that way. On the other hand, perhaps playtesting resulted in the balance between too few and too many zombies and more games will prove this out.

With such a short rules sheet, it may seem inevitable that some questions would arise, but we managed to settle all of them with friendly debates that established house rules. For example, nowhere in the rules does it address diagonal movement. In the first game we played, we allowed it. In the second and subsequent games, we didn't. About the only place where diagonal movement would come into play is inside of buildings and not allowing it generally means requiring players to burn extra movement points to pick up bullets and life tokens or perhaps fight their way through a zombie occupied square to get to an otherwise unguarded token in another square. We determined that this is a good thing, hence the decision not to allow diagonal movement. Again, the rules don't address it, so I'm not sure what the intent of the designer was, but in the end, I don't think it impacts overall game play that much either way.

Another example is the Event card "Butter Fingers" which allows you to choose a player to discard a weapon or up to two bullets. We first argued about who got to decide what got discarded, since it isn't explicitly worded like it would be on a CCG card, but decided that the intent of the card is to jack with an opponent, so the person playing the card should get the choice.

Another example is whether effects from weapon cards can be combined. Although wielding an Axe and a Chainsaw simultaneously while shooting a gun may not be all that realistic, the rules don't address it and since they didn't prohibit combining effects, we decided that it was in keeping with the spirit of the movies the game mimics to allow it.

The question of player alliances came up in the most recent game. Again, not discussed in the rules, although it is clear that there can only be one winner. We decided to allow it, but weren't sure just how far to take it. Agreeing not to jack with one another or to both target another opponent seemed fine to everyone, but what about revealing Event cards to each other? On that one we were split between those than wanted to and those that thought that was taking it a bit far. In the end, we couldn't agree and the two players in favor sneaked looks at one another's cards for the rest of the game while the rest of us politely pretended not to notice. We'll have to revisit this one in the future.

Overall, there weren't that many rules disputes and the instructions are pretty good. None of the rule disputes were major sticking points and with the exception of the player alliance thing, all were resolved quickly and to the satisfaction of all. For those used to playing board games/CCGs with copious rules where every conceivable question can be answered by looking in the book or subsequent errata, you'll have to be prepared to wing it a bit, but remember, it's all about having fun, not being right or winning. Although it is a competitive game with a clear winner, if you're taking this game too seriously, you're aren't playing it right.

Although I didn't time any of the games, average game length was over an hour, but under two, being closer to two.

Final thoughts and ratings

I don't particularly care for the 5 point scale used here which partially accounts for the ratings I gave. The game has endless replayability as far as I'm concerned. The organic board layout is a plus, as is the sheer statistical unlikelihood that you'll ever play the game the same way twice. Strategy with the dual victory conditions and variety of Event cards is not only possible, it seems key to winning, although there is also enough of the element of luck involved between card shuffling and die rolling to keep things from getting predictable. Substance wouldn't be a perfect score if a different scale was available, since the rules sheet, although adequate, could have been just a bit more thorough. However, I couldn't bring myself to drop the score a whole point down to a four, so a five it is.

For style, I gave it a three. I arbitrarily decided to dock style for "average" art and the flimsy map tiles. Again, there's nothing "wrong" with either, but heavier tiles and/or art that blew me away would have made it easier for me to give it higher score. Also, I would have liked to see a bit of variability in the zombie figs. Even two different zombie poses would have improved the style a bit. Hey, a three is average on the five-point scale and this game doesn't do anything to distinguish itself enough to be more than average in terms of style IMO.

If you average the two scores you'd get a four. Personally, I tend to favor substance over style, so the higher rating in that category is more important to me. Honestly, you get a lot of game for your 20 bucks. If GW made this game they'd give you virtually the same components in a much larger box so everything would rattle around loose and you'd have a harder time storing the game. The artwork would be better. The zombies would have multiple poses and each player piece would be a unique figure, but you'd have to assemble them before you could start playing. The style score would be a 5, but the price tag would be $70 too. As far as I'm concerned, the box is just the right size and I like that you can read the rules in a couple of minutes and other than punching out the counters, start playing right after that. I'd strongly recommend this game to anyone that likes to have fun. Use it when you don't have time for a full blown miniatures combat game or you need a break from the RPGs.