Zombies! by Twilight Creations Inc. is one of the go to games for certain members of my game group. Well mostly just the zombie buffs. But it’s a game that is so much fun. We all need a night of blowing off steam and what better way is there than to blow away zombies.
Zombies! starts in town square, the goal is to either reach the helipad first or be the first to kill 25 zombies. Easy enough you say? It wouldn’t be much of a game if things didn’t get more complicated. The thing is town square is the entire map at the start. The map expands at the beginning of each players turn as they draw a new map tile. This leads to some serious luck and strategy. Where you place map tiles can either help or hinder any number of players. And you cannot reach the helipad until it is played so you are stuck in town for at least a little while. Personally I love this approach as it gives the game a high degree of replayability and strips the advantage of board memory for veteran players.
The next thing to make the game more complicated is the combat. Once you hit a space with a zombie or start a turn with a zombie on your space, you must resolve combat. On a 6 sided die you kill a zombie rolling a 4, 5, or 6. Roll a 1, 2 or 3 and the zombie is winning. This can be changed by discarding bullet tokens; one for each number you wish to add (so a roll of one requires 3 tokens to get to 4) or you discard a life token to re-roll the die. Be careful, when you run out of life tokens you die. Discard half of your killed zombies and return to town square. You are dead until your next turn when you restart.
Finally there are action cards. You get three and can play one (and only one) from the beginning of your turn until the beginning of your next turn. This means you will need to strategize which card to play and when. Do you play the “Hey look a shotgun” card which helps you with extra bullets? Or do you wait so you can play “Zombie Master” on an opponents turn to make their life more difficult?
There are some downsides to this game. One thing I need to warn you of here is that many of the action cards are designed to cause problems in game for your opponents. Some players may not be willing to put up with the constant barrage of cruelty and harassment that comes with this game so play with players with thick skin and a good sense of humour. The next big issue I have encountered time and again is that there aren’t enough zombies in the basic box. There are extra bags-o-zombies supplied by the company so do yourself a favour and grab one when you pick up Zombies!
With the exception of #s 4, 9 and 11 the expansions for this game are all add-ons so make sure to grab the core game first. The first expansion I recommend grabbing is the 3.5 “Not dead yet!” expansion. This one is just action cards and I have to say it should just come with the basic set. The cards are so much more inventive and add more variability in play. The second expansion I would recommend grabbing is #6 “Six feet under.” This one will add in some more map tiles, notably the subway stations which help move you around the map, and sewer tokens which help you avoid zombies by hiding out in the sewers (not as useful as it sounds). There are also some extra action cards to play around with. After these expansions we have picked up everything to #9 (except for the blanks) and the rest of these are settings based. They come in to play once an entrance map tile is picked up and the map tiles can then be selected from either the main deck or the expansion deck at the beginning of each players turn. Really just pick them up as to whichever flavour of zombie setting you like. Normally we play with just one expansion so the game can actually end in one night.
I would recommend this game for any group who loves the zombie genre and can handle some extreme competition.
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