Review

Zombie szenario

After the Virus

This is when you fight for survival

Jacob Fryxelius, designer of the much-hyped game Terraforming Mars, which is probably known to all board gamers out there, a maximum number of three players, which is very rare, a deck building mechanism, cooperative play and Zombies, all this counts in favor of the new game by published by FryxGames for Essen 2017, the German version has been published by Schwerkraft-Verlag.

Each player is dealt one of four character boards, which in turn determine 13 starting cards (in case of three players only), which are also sorted out from the deck of cards - among those starting cards there are also three Zombie cards of value 1. Furthermore, the character card offers room for up to three wound markers, which takes to the one and only condition for losing the game: In case one of the players must take his third wound marker, all players have instantly lost the game together. A mission summary offers 16 different missions with varying targets and slightly varying set-up of the game. All players win together as soon as the respective mission target has been achieved by all players; this achievement need not happen in the same round, all it takes is for all to survive until all players have achieved the target. All other cards - various weapons, survivors, cars and other items of equipment, all familiar from other Zombie games - form the so-called area deck, which must be explored during the game.

A player turn comprises the drawing of five cards from the players own draw pile - like the mechanisms in Dominion; should Zombie cards be among those five cards, they are placed openly in your area. Those cards should be discarded until the end of the round or all zombies depicted on them need to be killed - if not, they cause one wound each, regardless of the number of Zombies depicted on a card. If there are less than five cards in your face-down draw pile, you first raise the „wave“ number by 1 - at the start of the mission this number is usually 1 - and then put a number of Zombies equal to your wave number on your discard pile; at this point, the number of Zombies can raise up to four per card - and believe this is not funny anymore! Then you shuffle your discard pile and put it at the bottom of the remaining draw pile.

In the Action phase of the game all players are active simultaneously, at least in theory, and they can do any one of seven action options as often as they want; some of those card actions build upon each other in consecutive order - for instance, you start with “exploring” and discard a card from your hand, without using it, to then tale the top card from the top card of the face-down area deck and place it into the area of “explored cards”. This is followed by „collecting“ to pay one of the cards in the „explored area“ by discarding of cards in hand and to put it „unprepared“, that is rotated by 90 degrees, into your playing area. This is, of course, followed by „preparing“, which means making an unprepared card available for use by paying its costs with discarding cards from your hand. And then, finally, you can „use“ a prepared card, that is, resolving the text on the card: First and foremost, of course, killing Zombies - what else - which usually costs ammunition or causes the weapons card itself to be discard, but at least the Zombies go back to their own stack, always sorted in descending order. Equally important is the saving of a certain number of „surviving persons“, which is often the mission target or at least a part of it, using the action card „sanctuary“.

What else can I do with my cards in hand other than discarding them unused for almost any any of the action options. Pink hand cards are “event” cards - for instance “turn heel” to discard one Zombie card - and are played and resolve instantly or placed directly “unprepared” into the playing area where they need to be made available with the “prepare” action. If, after all those action, you still have Zombie cards on display, each of these cards gives you exactly one wound and then the Zombie cards is put on the Zombie pile. If you take a wound in your arm, you can have only one prepared weapon instead of two; if you receive a would in a leg, you cannot play the “turn heel” card yourself, which really hurts especially, as this card instantly moves one Zombie cards, regardless of the number of Zombies depicted on it, to the discard pile.

And where is the cooperative aspect in all this, aside from the necessity of completing the mission target by all players? Well, basically it is restricted nearly exclusively to healing the wounds of other players and, of course, to the killing of Zombies or discarding of other players’ Zombie cards and of course there is the permanent discussion how you can use those options in an optimum one - a chainsaw which kills six Zombies at the same time is suited better to a player in distress with six or more Zombies on the table than to yourself, if you are only threatened by one or two zombies, because those can also be taken care of with a pistol.

Conclusion: „After the Virus“ will probably not stand out in the history of board games as Terraforming Mars does and will do, but Jacob Fryxelius has again created an excellent game, intense and outstanding on the thematic aspect, which is not always the case with Zombie games, and I know quite a lot of them. I must mention, however, that the missions are not that easy to complete, and it will take you a few games to find out how you can really cope with those Zombie hordes. Due to the multitude of cards - there are 40 cards in a player deck - you will have seen all cards only after a few games. If there is something to criticize it is that the player decks for all three players are completely identical; this, in itself, would not be a problem, but you cannot distinguish the individual decks by their backside. Which means, should they get accidentally mixed up, it takes you ten minutes to sort them. Therefore, I recommend the use of card sleeves with backsides of assorted colors, for which the cards themselves will be grateful as well, because they are shuffled very often.

Gert Stöckl

Players: 1-3

Age: 10+

Time: 60+

Designer: Jacob Fryxelius

Artist: Daniel Fryxelius

Price: ca. 25 Euro

Publisher: FryxGames 2017

Web: www.fryxgames.se

Genre: Cooperation, Zombie, deckbuilding

Users: With friends

Special: 1 player

Version: en

Rules: de en es hu

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Topic excellently implemented

Player decks have identical backsides

Missions are hard to accomplish

Compares to:

All cooperative deckbuilding games

Other editions:

Schwerkraft-Verlag (de), Reflexshop (hu), Maldito Games (es)

My rating: 6

Gert Stöckl:

A very “thematic” deck building game for maximum three players, which are quickly found, offering long-lasting fun to play due to varying mission targets.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 0

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0