RogerBW's Blog

I haven't had time to go along to Wycombe Warband since last month, but I was there last night playing Zombicide.

It's fairly arguable whether this should count as a boardgame or as a wargame; I think I'll probably go for "both". We set up a moving scenario: our objective was to get all surviving players from one side of the board to the other (left corner to far corner).

We started by breaking into the first building, only to find lots and lots of zombies inside it.

And promptly mowed them down, though one of our number took a wound in the process. (Two wounds and you're dead.)

As we pushed on through that building, searching and killing zombies, we ended up pretty well kitted-out; there's no limit on how many times you can search in a room, though eventually the zombies will build up outside. I was specialising in ranged combat (and eventually gave away the pistol to someone who had more use for it).

We'd been fairly lucky with zombie cards, and the town wasn't too badly infested.

We broke into the isolated building (on the right) to retrieve a medical kit for the wounded player, and rushed for the exit.

We slowed down a bit with a cluster of four standard zombies ahead of us, but the roller-skating chainsaw waitress took them down in a single attack.

And we were able to run off the map to the exit. Even with four novice players, we'd only taken about an hour and a half, so we decided to play again.

Second time round, we decided that since we had to open at least one building to get the kit in it, we might as well go for the one in the middle which would provide a short-cut. So we ignored the first building and ran for the central one.

Things got a little hairy for a while, with two players getting wounded. But by mostly avoiding fights, we avoided moving our kill markers into higher difficulty zones (more zombies spawn as you get better at killing them).

The goth chick took down a Fatty with dual machetes, and we were able to get off the end again. This second play had taken about forty minutes.

This was a medium-difficulty scenario according to the rules, but we didn't lose anyone, and took a total of three wounds over two plays. Obviously there's a lot of randomness in the search cards (it could be a shotgun, it could be a chainsaw, or it could be rice and water which are only useful if the scenario calls for them, or a hidden zombie). I don't plan to rush out and buy it (it's £55-£60 depending on where you go, and a hefty box with lots of miniatures in it) but I'll be happy to play it again.

Next week: X-Wing.