Zombies!!! review and AAR

So I played a game of Zombies!!! with my kids the other day and I have to say it was fun. I had seen reviews of it at Zombie Place, Board Game Geek, and The Man Cave; and I really wanted to try it out myself. I also wanted to have a look at the figures for possible use in an ATZ campaign.

I paid about $26 after taxes and a member discount from Barnes & Noble. The box is small, but it comes with a fair amount of stuff. Map tile cards, event cards, dice, counters and figures. The rules are fairly simple. Roll to move and kill zombies on a 4+ roll.

The tiles consist of streets and buildings, but you can only enter named buildings to search for lives or ammo. Your ultimate goal is to make it to the helicopter pad and safety. Each turn consists of drawing and placing a map tile, rolling to move, combating any zombies you share a square with, rolling for the number of zombies you can move. At any time during your turn you can play an event card, each player starts with and maintains a hand of three.

I played this game with my son (almost 6) and daughter (8) so we had to fudge a few things to keep the game moving. First off we displayed our event cards. My son can't really read yet and I knew that if I played any zombie attack or disadvantage type cards on him he would get upset. So the upshot was that my daughter was the only one who played event cards and she only really used the chainsaw. We also allowed players to keep their zombie kill total even if they got killed and had to return to the town square.

Being the youngest, my son went first. He immediately took off for the nearest building, intent on slaying zombies. My daughter sort of ambled around and I went for the ammo in the police station. I won't give you the blow by blow, partly because I can't remember it, but just the flavor of the game progress. My son basically just wanted to kill zombies. Being in his misogynistic phase (boys vs. girls) he wanted to kill female zombies so that dictated his movements somewhat. My daughter seemed to be wandering aimlessly around, but she did enter the lawn and garden shop with the express purpose of getting and using the chainsaw. I made quick work of the zombies in the police station and then headed toward the buildings in the upper left, mostly looking for more ammo. Zombie movement was not really an issue. I moved zombies out of my way, my son wanted to only move male zombies and it seemed completely random, and my daughter moved zombies in ways that baffled me but seemed to make sense to her.

So when the helicopter pad was finally played, wouldn't you know it, I was on the complete opposite side of the table. We all headed in that direction, me shuffling along like a zombie with a succession of 1's, my son getting killed because he wasted his ammo on crap rolls instead of losing a life, and my daughter pretty much unscathed all the way to the pad. The long and short of it is my daughter got killed fighting a zombie on the pad, my son had also been sent back to the main square a couple of times, and the old man got hot on the dice and strolled into the center square of the helicopter pad winning the game. There were a few tears, so we placed everyone at the pad and then commenced the body count. Daughter: 20, Son: 19, Me: 8.

Personally I think that zombie avoidance is the way to go. And lastly I broke out a scale comparison chart and put the zombie figures next to some IMEX WW2 figures from the Billy V set. As you can see the US Rifleman stands at 25mm and the zombies appear to be about 27mm. So apparently the zombie virus causes gigantism before it animates your corpse. So not perfect, but it'll do.

So I'd give the game overall a thumbs up. Easy rules, fairly quick to play and a decent value. You can get 100 zombies for $10 but I feel like the extra $15-$20 for the game is worth it. And the plus side is I don't have to play Monopoly ad nauseum with the kids.