Board Game Review: Zombies!!!

I had been wanting to play this game for a good long time, so you can imagine my joy when someone took this to the last Thursday Night Gaming, I mean, what cooler than a board game with zombies?

Ill tell you. A good board game with zombies in it, and this is one of them. Weighing in with 14 expansions, this is a big game series, but you only need the first box to get slaying, and I would add the expansions in number order.

Lets get to the game. We played the first game with the full 6 people. The rules are simple, draw map tile and place, draw cards, play cards, move and fight, and then move the zombies. Some map tiles are empty streets, some have lots of zombies and health on them.

Everything is done with just a d6. To fight, you must roll a 4+. That’s it. If you don’t, you can spend a life to re roll the die, or spend a bullet to improve the score by one. This is actually quite strategic, do you spend all the bullets you have, or use a life and hope you roll better? If you lose all your lives, you lose half the zombies you have killed, and go back to the start.

The goal of the game is to be the one who gets to the center square of the helipad tile (somewhere in the bottom half of the deck) or be the first to kill 25 zombies. Both are no mean feat, but going for the 25 kills is the most fun (and deadly!)

Lets say this as well, this is not a co op game. You can help each other, but alliances are formed and shattered rapidly. In the game I played, one player said to me “lets work together!”, so I agreed and helped, only to be left in the middle of a zombie horde after he speeds off in a car. Nice.

The cards add a nice touch to the game, being cards that can help yourself, or severely hinder other peoples ability to survive. Such as a car card which allows you to move ten spaces, to the Zombie Master! card, that lets you place 5 zombies anywhere on the board, usually surrounding a hapless individual.

The game we played lasted around an hour and forty five minutes, and that was with 6 people, only one of which had played before. This is a great game, there is some strategy, but mainly this is a free for all romp through a zombie apocalypse where there can be only one. Get this, grab your mates, and see who can get to that helicopter first.