As an excuse to grow our nerd powers Jeremy and I have recently taken to having (read: attempting) a weekly board game night. Powers beyond and perhaps a bit of nostalgia have made us do it, so lets get to it. As a prelude I just want to let you know that I am not usually an avid board game player. As a young lad I would play Mouse Trap and Clue and so on, but I never got into D&D (which I honestly don't know why). I've done a handfull of card games (no pun intended), even made a Warhammer rip-off called Paper Craft (which was awesome, holla at me Jake), but for pen and paper RPGs and other types I am severely new. So don't expect any technical terms or critical thought patterns, this is based on sheer fun factor.
The first game we played was Zombies!!! Yes, that's Zombies!!! with three exclamation marks. Why? because… Science!!! and marketing. This is a 2-6 (possibly more) player game in which you make the board. Every turn phase begins with the player drawing a map tile. These map tiles have 9 squares, most of which your character can move to. Some map tiles have buildings on them, these buildings contain a specific number of life tokens, ammo tokens, and zombies(!!!).
This round of Zombies!!! included myself, Jeremy, and my wife Leeanne. We played two rounds, the first a short one, and the second full length. The mechanics of the game are fairly simple: You draw a map tile, roll the movement dice, find a zombie, land on the same square and enter combat. As far as combat goes you roll the dice in an attempt to hit a number above 3. You roll a 4,5,6 you win. If you roll a 1,2, or 3 you have two choices: You can use bullet tokens to make up the difference, or you can use a life token for a re-roll. Basically your life tokens are your… life. If you run out of those you're done.
The goal of the game is to either collect 25 zombies (by killing them) or survive until someone draws the helipad tile. This tile, when drawn, is placed anywhere by the player with the fewest zombies. Survivors race to the center of this tile to make it out alive.
To augment the game there are cards with certain conditions and attributes. Some help you in a pinch, others are just there to screw the other players over. Of the two games we played (one being a short round…(ha)) we didn't use the cards all that much, save for some devious zombie planting by me. I could tell though that this wasn't because they were ancillary, we were just finding our feet with the game, after all, it was the first time any of us had played it.
The game starts off pretty casual and really only gains steam once there are several tiles and tons of zombies. It gets downright hectic when the helipad tile gets played, because then it's essentially a mad dash. Zombies!!! has had many, many expansions and I plan on getting a few. It's one of those games that gets better the more people you have playing it. With just the first kit there is a limit to how big your city can get, but with the expansions it can get absolutely huge.
While I agree with Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame that a Video Game must be able to stand on single player alone, I believe it is the opposite with board games. Honestly in this medium it is all about who you play with. I had good friends with me so I had a great time. Zombies!!! is a fairly simple board/card game hybrid, it's easy to pick up and play. You'll get a lot of laughs and a lot of friendly punches after you pull a mean move to block a friend from reaching the helipad. It's staying up on my game shelf, and I suggest you add it to yours.
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