Zombicide Black Plague

[Universal Head]

@Jack Can you tell us what’s good about the Zombicide games, how they play? They just seem like hack and slash dice rolling to me. Which is fine of course, but I have heaps of games of that type.

@The8thPagan Yep, gaming keeps me young! Well, that and moisturising … 🙂 I still get a huge kick of ripping the shrinkwrap of my latest toy and it keeps me in touch with my inner 12 year old.

[8th]

I seen you sniffing cardboard. You’re a hardcore games addict 🙂

[Universal Head]

One day I should start the Universal Head Clinic. For boardgame rehab.

[8th]

Although I can’t speak for Zombicide specifically (I own Prison Outbreak, but bought it for the zombie horde as we are running an on/off Zombie Apocalypse RPG), I can give you my theory on ‘hack and slash dice rolling’ games.

I’m an RPG gamer with board games as a sideline.

It’s good to have a character get better, to improve, to develop, to complete objective…

But it’s a lot more fun watching the fumbled dice roll and consequent failure.

To some the objective of the game is to win, but with thematic games, be they RPG or board, the objective is to have a laugh with your friends (well it is for me).

So going back to Zombicide… winning is a bonus. Watching your friends get eaten by zombies while you eat junk food and drink beer is the real fun.

[Universal Head]

As you can tell from my game videos, I’m definitely of the same mind. 🙂 It just seems that the Zombicide games just don’t bring anything new to the table (boom-tish!) that isn’t covered by a lot of games I already have. I could be completely wrong, as I haven’t played them.

[8th]

I bought Zombicide Prison Outbreak as a solo game (with bonus RPG miniatures) as I only get a board games day every couple of months at best and we have a lot of games to play.

Played the tutorial mission and there are tactical elements in movement, making noise and dealing with zombies, so it’s not just hack and slash, but with my limited experience I would not feel right recommending, or suggesting avoiding.

Clearly it has something going for it. People bought B-Sieged just for the Zombiecide Black Plague miniatures and cards!

And the Kickstarters go absolutely nuts ($1.5 and climbing for Z:BP).

Z:BP, looks more varied with wizards and magic to change things a bit and the new character boards look far more impressive than the flimsy character cards on Zombiecide.

[8th]

Getting a bit tedious with stretch goals for Z:BP. Heroes and NPC zombies.

Something different would be nice. At least Blood Rage replaced cardboard tokens with sculpted plastic.

[ozmo]

I backed black plague. Never played Zombicide but my daughter saw the Nun and liked the theme. I went ahead and picked up Zombicide last week to make sure we’d like it. 🙂

We do. It’s fun. Theme is spot on and UH nailed it – run around, roll dice, kill zombies, get eaten. But there’s a good tension in the game and it requires some good planning & decision making to survive the scenario. We’ve only played a few scenarios so far and they’ve had different goals and “feels” to them. The longer the game goes on the more difficult it gets. So you’re motivated to move quickly & act. It’s a fun, solid, co-op.

I still prefer the D&D Board Games for light co-ops since they have more diversity IMO. But my friends and daughter are really enjoying ZC quite a bit. I am looking forward to Black Plague as I like the medieval theme and I can see potentially combining it with some other mini games. There’s already a project underway on BGG to bring other minis into the ruleset.

I have the base game and I can see picking up the Toxic City Mall Expansion. Possibly the Prison expansion. But I think that’s about the level of investment I’d go for at this point. with only having the game for a few days I want to see it’s longevity.

I do keep it in my bag I take to work though – there’s a lot of interest in it and it could be a good intro game at my office.

I reserve the right to change my opinions as time goes on. 🙂

[Universal Head]

Sounds pretty fun. I just feel I have enough invested with CMON right now. Keep us posted on it though, maybe I’ll give in to temptation later!

Here’s my latest KS backing: Monstrous.

I know the guy personally and he’s a good bloke, I definitely think this is one worth backing. And great value!

[ozmo]

I’ve heard some good things about Monstrous. It’s on my potential list.

Black Plague will be my first CMON kickstarter. Zombicide is my first CMON game I’ve purchased.

My problem is right now I have too many games and not enough time/players. Our local shop shut down rather unexpectedly. So we’re keeping things going between my house, my office (conference rooms after work), and some other shops in the area. But it’s been harder to keep people together.

And I have Armada waiting to be played, X-Wing, Imperial Assault, Heroes of Normandie…well you get the idea. 🙂 Stupid Zombies.

[Jack Romeo]

Zombicide is a big hit with my group, which in addition to Zombicide lately has been playing Eldritch Horror, Eclipse, Cthulhu Wars, Shadows of Brimstone, and Dead of Winter. The reason we enjoy Zombicide is the pure co-op, simple rules, the joy of loot and character improvement, sudden spikes in difficulty, unexpected turns, good balance of risk-reward, replay value, and a very nice art style. One mission can be fast, there are games we have failed completely within 20 minutes, or long, where we struggle for a few hours and have our victory hang on late game nail biting spawn draws. It requires a fair bit of coordination, but there is still room to do your own thing. And as mentioned earlier by someone, it’s fun even if we lose.

I haven’t played the latest season yet, currently painting up the last few of the zombies now, but it introduces a skill deck for character development and team actions that allows several survivors to act at the same time.

Compared to other games in the co-op genre like Shadows of Brimstone and Zpocalypse, I’d say the biggest difference is that the enemy movement rules in Zombicide is a lot better. I found both SoB and ZP to be pretty bad, and constantly wondering if an enemy would go one way or the other.

In Zombicide, the rules are as follows. Zombies in a square take the fastest route towards the noisiest survivor they can see, or the noisiest square on the board if they cannot see any survivors. The squares on the modular board are fairly big, and finding the fastest route is a matter of counting the squares if multiple paths are an option. If there are two equally long routes or several equally noisy targets, half the zombies go in one direction, half in the other. Uneven numbers are evened out by adding zombies to the board. If a zombie is in the same square as a survivor, it deals one damage instead of moving. Take two damage, and the survivor is dead. Zombies on the other hand does not take damage; they are either killed or undamaged.

The games depth comes from different zombie types, different weapons, different survivor skills, and different missions. In addition to mission difficulty, the difficulty can be tweaked by making adjustments to the spawn deck and adding different zombie types.

All in all, we enjoy Zombicide a lot and find it easy to introduce new people to it. It’s great as an action board game, and if you have any suggestions for similar board games we should check out let me know! 🙂

[Universal Head]

Argh! Mustn’t – be – convinced – have – enough CMON – Kickstarter games – backed!

[Author]

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