Here's a review I did of Zombiecide back in 2015… Sorry, the photos are in the PDF, neither online…
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GOT ANY FOOD? GO LOOT!
By Russ Lockwood
At Steve's 15th Annual Gaming weekend, we played Zombiecide, a beer & pretzels game of grabbing survival stuff and bashing zombies. It has some logic leaps, but otherwise is quite an entertaining game.
Setup:
You play the survivors of the usual zombie plague out to do a "mission." In our case, we six survivors (in real life Steve, Dan, Ed, Mike, Phil, and myself -- all playing for the first time except for Steve) are looking for six items of food in a zombie-infested town, and we need to put them into two cars and drive off the board.
The Town:
The town consists of six geomorphic foot-square geomorphic boards (the game contains nine of these, double-sided) that butt up against each other in various fashion. Our scenario showed us in a single-room (area) building across the street from a big 14-room mansion that will contain the food, weapons, and other loot. A small two-room building to our left and also across the street was also available. The streets also contain areas, cleverly delineated by crosswalks.
Two cars, a police car and a pimpmobile, were located in the street, one on each side of the mansion. The reason we need to use two cars is because the rules say you can only fit four people per car. Yeah, that's another logic leap.
An exit market showed where we had to drive to in order to leave and four other markers (three on different streets and one in the two-room building) showed zombie spawn zones.
The mansion had four entrances/exits -- all locked doors. Zombies were locked inside, but we could not enter until we opened at least one door. Apparently, windows are not an option (I warned you of logic leaps).
Survivors:
Hey, that's us. Each got a card with a description of any special attribute, spots for five possessions (cards), and a color-coded row along the top that tallies our zombie kills. Record a certain number of kills and your abilities increased.
Each survivor gets three actions per turn. An action is move, shoot/swing/attack, search, and so on. Special attributes often figure into these actions. For example, the girl on the rollerskates can move two areas per action instead of one. My character, Ned, gets a free search action. And so on. Although you can only take one search action per turn, you can take multiple move and attack actions.
Weapons/Food/Equipment:
The game contains 62 equipment cards that offer a wide array of weaponry and equipment. Of the 62, seven are food cards. Since you need six to complete your mission, where you find them in the deck has a lot to do with success or failure. If you find them early, you can leave before the zombies become a band of brothers. Uncover them late and you're facing the apocalypse army.
Ned the Legend (that's me) started with an axe. If I recall rightly (dangerous ground here), five of the six players started with a weapon -- a pistol, crowbar, and two frying pans. One did not wield a weapon, or, maybe we gave something to the sixth player. I mean, we're in a looted town, there should be a stick somewhere, but I can't remember -- should have taken notes.
Most everything creates noise, which is recorded in the area with a triangular marker. Apparently, zombies possess excellent hearing because they can hear a survivor breathe on the opposite side of a building or deep with the mansion. In any case, noise lures zombies.
Zombies:
Most are Walkers. They move one area, have one hit point, and are probably looking for brains. Next step up are Runners, which move two areas per turn, take one hit point, but are the last to drop when attacking an area full of zombies. Fatties take two hit points and move one area. There is also one large abomination that takes three hit points.
Note that only certain weapons deal out two and three damage points and are the only weapons that can kill a fatty or abomination. You cannot pile on one-damage hits to kill a fatty or abomination. Another leap of logic on that, but that's the physics of zombietown.
Zombiecide contains 71 plastic figures (32mm scale): 6 Survivors, 40 Walkers, 16 Runners, 8 Fatties, and 1 Abomination. They are quite nicely sculpted with a variety of poses. Steve went the extra mile and painted all the plastic figures, which makes for a cool-looking board game.
Zombie Cards:
Each turn, zombies spawn -- you flip over a Zombie Card and place that many zombies in the area with a marker. Then you go to the next marker, and more zombies (usually) appear. In this game, four spawn sites meant four cards.
In addition, when you enter the mansion, each room gets a zombie card that tells how many zombies are in the room.
Here's the cool mechanic part. The zombie cards have four color codes which correspond to the color coding of the players' kill tally. The game starts with all players having zero kills and are in the blue zone. At about 7 or 8 kills, the color coding becomes yellow. At around 20 kills or so, the color becomes orange, and then at 40 or so, it turns red.
When one player hits a new color, all zombie cards use the new color. As you can imagine, the warmer the color, the more zombies show up. At blue, a number of cards have zero zombies. At yellow, each card will have at least one show up, quite often three and four, and some have even more.
So, you have a game clock mechanism (more and more zombies) within a game clock mechanism (search for six cards out of a deck). Nicely done, that.
Zombie Movement:
Zombies use preprogrammed movement. Zombies will move towards any survivors they can see, closest first. If not, they will move towards the loudest noise, closest first, then next loudest and so on.
Combat:
Each weapon rolls a certain number of six-sided dice trying to meet or beat a number to place hits on zombies. The bigger and badder the weapon, the more damage you can do. Most hand-held weapons do one damage, although the axe does two, and the zombies must be in the same area to be hit. Some guns have a range of up to three areas. The molotov cocktail has a range of one area but kills all zombies in that area. You get the idea.
WELCOME TO ZOMBIETOWN
"Well, we made it this far without seeing a zombie," Ned said, peeking out into the street. "The mansion across the street looks intact. The doors are locked."
Six survivors huddled in a small building across from a mansion.
"Anyone have anything to open the door?" Steve asked, fingering his main weapon, a frying pan.
"I have an axe," Ned replied.
"I have a crowbar," Dan noted.
"I have another pan," Ed said.
"I have a pistol," Phil noted.
"I only have roller skates," Mike said. "Shouldn't there be a stick around here?"
"Well, we have to get a move on," Steve suggested, and headed out the door on the way to the police car.
Rollerskate Mike headed for the pimp mobile, Dan moved across the street and opened one of the front doors with his crowbar.
Immediately, we heard the call of the zombie: "BRAYYYYYYNS!"
Phil moved to the front door. Ed crossed the street and entered the house, searching for the all-important food, but found a glass bottle -- which was half of what he needed to make a molotov cocktail.
Gripping his axe, Ned also crossed the street, entered the house, and found a baseball bat.
Ten zombies immediately started to shuffle towards the front room, attracted by the noise. A couple more appeared on the street.
"You gotta keep quiet in there," Dan urged. "They'll hear the noise."
"What noise?" Ned asked.
"Apparently, your breathing." Ed offered.
"My breathing? What about your breathing?"
"All breathing."
"Shut your festering gobs, you mouth breathers!" Phil commanded. "You're making noise. There's 10 zombies in the mansion heading this way."
Mike rolled to the pimpmobile and found a shotgun as Dan entered the house and searched. Phil pumped lead into nearby zombies, splattering them. Ed and Ned searched. Steve made it to the police car and searched, mistaking a bag of rice (one of the seven precious food cards) for a bag o' glass and dropped it, picking up an assault rifle instead.
Three zombies shuffled into the front room with Ned, Ed, and Dan. Dan brained one with a crowbar. Phil shot the other two. Whew, that was a near-run thing.
Actually, the laws of physics in Zombietown mandate that when a survivor shoots into a room containing zombies and other survivors, the zombies are the last targets hit! Leapin' Logics, zombies get shot last? Yes indeed, although one house rule is that survivors are hit only if a shot misses a zombie. As newbies, we called a mulligan and ignored such physics that one time.
Back in the mansion, Ned and Ed searched, with Ned finding the gasoline and giving it to Ed, who made a molotov cocktail.
After this, events occurred quickly. The survivors cleared the mansion of zombies, putting Mike at the front door and picking up a better array of weapons, but many zombies formed a conga line heading for the front door. The first big group was picked off by combined fire and retreat. Another horde, including a fatty, was in Ed's sights when he loosed the molotov cocktail. WHOOSH! A little zombie BBQ.
Mike took a drive up the street, blasting zombies whenever they appeared. He was about to turn the corner, when he found out that physics in Zombietown mandate hitting everyone in the road, including other survivors with their thumb out looking for a lift. Mike backed the car back to its starting position and headed back into the mansion.
About this time, Ned hopped into the police car and moved it down the street, Steve in the rear-view mirror yelling about what sort of brain-dead driver moves the car towards the zombie spawn zone.
Ned, very ineffective at killing zombies but very good at finding food and weapons, shrugged and said, "Get in the car! Get in the car!"
"No need to panic," Steve retorted. "We need to draw the zombies away from the others."
"Bloody backseat driver--"
"I'm not in the car!" Steve yelled from down the street.
"Then get in the car! Get in the car!"
Steve finally entered the car.
The sixth of the food items turned up and was loaded into the pimpmobile, with Dan at the wheel and Mike beside him. Ed, now feeling immortal with an atomic-powered flashlight, or as we all called it, a light saber, hung around just inside the front door, waiting for a ride.
Ned drove the cop car to the corner of the mansion, then gunned it across the intersection and headed to the next corner.
"STOP HERE!" Steve yelled. "We got a clear line of fire down both streets and will draw the zombies this way."
Due to the physics of Zombietown, Ned used an action to borrow the assault rifle and his other three actions to gun down zombies. Steve then borrowed the gun back and blasted more zombies, clearing the streets. Indeed, there were but three zombies left in all of Zombietown prior to the next spawn.
The pimpmobile with Dan, Phil, and Mike eased in front of the mansion, picked up Ed and drove out of town, followed immediately by the police car with Ned and Ed.
GOOD GAME
That was an entertaining little game despite some of the logic leaps. With six players, we were able to regulate our zombie killing and thus keep the color code limited to yellow. If it was a four-player game, I suspect that would be more difficult limiting the color codes, not to mention a reduction of available firepower to sweep the streets and rooms of zombies.
We were also fortunate that we only had to go through about half the 62 equipment cards to find the six items of food. We actually found all seven, but, in Zombietown physics, if you are searching the police car, you MUST find a weapon and discard everything else. So, the bag of rice was "found" in the police car, but had to be discarded as it was not a weapon.
The game took about three hours. The description above is best I can remember, although truncated and quite possibly mixing up player actions and finds as turns move quickly once you get the hang of it. Definitely worth a second playing.
