I hate buying games entirely on speculation. I am frugal, but I had heard so much good stuff about Zombies!!! I decided to plop down thirty bucks for the game and the first expansion. Then months pass and no chances to play until last weekend, when we had some spare time after a play test for a naval wa rgame. I will only discuss the come game and not the first expansion for Zombies!!!
Zombies!!! is a beer and pretzels game and a great deal of fun. The players start out in the town center and every turn each player draws a city tile to add to the board. You get some goofy looking cities, but it ensures every game will be different. The goal is to get to the helipad, which is buried at the bottom of the deck. If you can’t get to the helipad, you need to kill 25 zombies. Either strategy is a challenge, but killing zombies is what the game is all about so much violence against the undead will ensure regardless of what strategy you take. On each tile is a road that connects it to other tiles (dead end, cross roads, T intersection, etc). Also if the tile has a special location on it (helipad, drug store, toy store) some perks are in that building such as extra health or bullets. Oh yeah and every tile will have zombies on them, 1 for each connecting road space and more if there are special buildings on the tile. But the game is all about killing zombies, so no worries.
Players also have cards that either help them out or hose their opponents. While everyone is fighting for their lives, they are not helping each other. The cards might give a chance for a special item at one of the special locations. The cards might let you control another players movement or add more zombies to the board. For example I played a card that filled up the hospital with more zombies to overwhelm Dave and when it is my turn he plays a card to control my movement and he makes my character fight his way into the hospital. A player can only play one card during a game turn (from the beginning of their turn to the beginning of their next turn), so there is a nice dichotomy of nailing the other players or protecting yourself. Cards are replaced during a player’s turn.
Fighting zombies is an easy process. A player has 50-50 odds on a d6 to kill a zombie outright. Should the player roll a three or less the combat is a failure. They can add bullets to bring the roll up to 4 or higher, or sacrifice a life and roll again. Luckily there are tiles in the game to replenish life and bullets. Moving around is accomplished by rolling a d6 and moving the number of squares. Each tile is 3x3, so moving across the city could take a while, especially if you are an unlucky dice roller. Also zombies are moved at the end of a player’s turn with can be helpful for pressing another player or removing them from your immediate area. Should things go bad and you die, you sacrifice half your zombie kills and start over in the center of town.
The presentation of Zombies!!! is one of the best I have seen for a board game. The players and zombies are not chits or cardboard widgets, rather they are small plastic models. So as you kill and collect zombies you pluck the zombie off the board and put it in front of you. The only knock about the figures is there are not enough of them and you either buy an extra bag of zombies (about 10 bucks) or just use poker chips to represent you kill total. The tiles and cards are well done and have hilarious campy graphics on them.
Game play in Zombies!!! can start to drag at the end of if the players are unlucky or the helipad is unfortunately placed. This makes the end game play a little repetitive, but luckily there are always lots of zombies to occupy your turn as you fight to get to 25 kills or to the helipad…which has all 9 spaces filled with Zombies.
Zombies!!! is the best twenty bucks I have spent on a game in a very long time.
