02/12/2013

Playing Zombicide

About time! You've been watching my zombie hordes for weeks, but no action at all! This has come to an end, as I finally had a game (I had played the game with unpainted minis pieces of plastic, but this has been the first one with painted minis!).
As it is a widely known game by now, I'll skip the most tedious parts of the rules and focus on the action.

We chose a scenario from the rulebook. This was the setting:
 
Modular board, multiple configurations. Triceratops not included
 
We chose the survivors (well, we did it sorta randomly):
 
The heroes
 
Despite what weapon the mini is carrying, that's just for the show. Any equipment the character is actually carrying is depicted through cards in a character sheet.
 
Let's just pretend she's carrying a chainsaw
 
Each character has action points. Special skills depend on the character (or the weapons everyone is using at the moment). Generally speaking, you can use each action point to move one section (delimited by crosswalks or rooms inside buildings), search for items or use a weapon. Each time you kill (re-kill?) a zombie, you get one experience point. This way you can upgrade your survivor. But beware, the higher experience level you get, the harder it may become! You may get new skills, but when any character goes to the next experience level (the chart above in your character sheet, marked with different colours), more and more zombies will get in at the end of each turn!
 
Though it is in Spanish, I hope you don't need further translation
 
So you draw a card from the deck at the end of each turn and, depending on the most skilled character's level, you will have to put the corresponding number of zombies on  the board. As you can see, at some time, they begin to appear and wander around:
 
A Fattie is always accompanied by two Walkers

Trying to escape from the giant Triceratops behind her
 
The objective in this game was getting into determined rooms and search for items in them. We split our group (maybe not a wise decision, but we are acting a zombie movie so who cares), Phil, Doug and Josh went searching one objective and Amy went opening doors in order to allow free movements to the rest (only determined weapons can... 'open' doors).
 
Exploring the city

This trio gets into the scene
 
Some actions (shooting, opening doors with an axe...) make noise. Z's will automatically walk straight towards the closest survivor they see and will also be attracted by noise, so you have to be careful with what you do!
 
Amy is making some noise!

Zombies incoming!!

Don't worry, Amy is a tough girl!

Josh scatters three Z's with his shotgun
 
But they keep coming!
 
The Triceratops is still kinda disturbing

Ehm, you think anyone heard us?
 
Guys, I could use some help here...

Guys? Hey, guuuuys!

No, not you!

Nothing to do here

 In the meantime, the guys were holding the position with the most effective lead curtain:

Blamm blamm dakka dakka
 
But as soon as the zombies are slain, new ones keep appearing!

That football game was boring to death
 
Amy got another objective marker:
 
5 extra experience points for her

But Doug finally got caught. Oh, no!
 
Yummm... grrrr... argm... nom nom nom
 
Phil avenged Doug's death and got into a building:

Makin' a lot of noise here...
 
But, with no one in sight, that drew a lot of attention...

This is getting crowded...

So that's the plan, making the Z's go to the corner and, by that sacrifice, allowing Josh and Amy to reach the last objective marker.
 
No easy decisions in this game. All for the survival of the group
 
So Phil kept on shooting and killing zombies...
 
You want my brains? Come get'em!
...and more zombies:
 
This is getting ugly...
 
Josh and Amy run towards the objective:
 
C'mon, we still can get it!
 
But it looks like Phil had a situation where he was:
 
Uh-oh
 
He tried his best, but he finally succumbed :(
 
This is an epic movie scene. Add epic music to taste
 
When it looked like Josh and Amy were going to do it, we drew a card from the deck and... oh no!

Extra turn for all Walkers! Oh no!

Josh was unexpectedly dismembered, eaten and digested, but again his sacrifice allowed Amy to achieve the goal and reach the last objective marker.
 
Phew!

So we barely won the game! Pyrrhic victory! This is it, just a quick example of how it works and what you can expect if you buy it. Just a final pic to get the overall sight:
 
Zombie rush hour
 
This took us about... 45 min? An hour? But it delivered us tremendous amounts of fun. The game is terribly simple to learn and totally recommendable for anyone, even if you haven't ever played this kind of games. Wives and non-gamers usually approve, so now you don't have any excuse for your Christmas gift! Go get it!

9 comments:

  1. Nice report. Dam this game looks good with painted figures!

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    1. Haha, thank you very much! Every game is way much better with painted minis, but in this case the change is quite notorious. Seriously, if you are thinking about buying the game, I'd say a total 'go for it', it is truly enjoyable.

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  2. Fantรกstico Suber, da gusto verles jugar, un gran saludo para todos.

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  3. Si sigues recomendando juegos chulos voy a tener que dejar de leer tu blog! :-P

    Mola un montรณn la mesa (y agobia a partes iguales). La verdad es que hay que tener mucha fuerza de voluntad para pintar todos esos zombies (y transformarlos).

    Por cierto, con este tipo de tableros, te has planteado alguna vez usar bases transparentes?

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  4. Muchas gracias a ambos :)

    El experimento de conversiรณn/pintura ha sido muy divertido (mucho trabajo, pero muy divertido), y al final el esfuerzo merece la pena cuando los ves sobre la mesa. El juego no puedo sino recomendarlo, se juega en muy poco tiempo y es de lo mรกs entretenido.

    Pues he pensado lo de las peanas transparentes, sรญ, pero ya no querรญa mรกs trabajo adicional :S. Quizรก para el futuro, pero la poca cordura que me queda me exige que cambie de proyecto inmediatamente :D

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    I'm telling that this converting/painting experiment has been really fun (hard work involved, but utterly fun), and all the effort is worth of just for the moment when you see all the minis on the board. I cannot but recommend the game, little time consuming and provides tons of fun.

    I have thought of transparent bases, but for the moment I can't see me doing more work on these mminis :S. Maybe in the future, but the little sanity is left demands me to immediately change proect :D

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  5. Gran reporte de guerra! Eres consciente de que esto es solo el principio de tu particular apocalรญpsis zombi?

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  6. ¡Jaja, eso es lo que mรกs miedo me da!

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  7. Wonderful post ... I enjoyed reading it. ^_^

    I will be adding you to my blogroll so that I can follow your future posts. =)

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! Thanks for stopping by, I hope I can also catch your interest with following entries :)

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