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!