Our Review

Zombies Attack!

Walking Dead

You try to survive!

For many seasons Walking Dead has now been a successful TV series that that is watched enthusiastically by fans all over the world. Games publisher Kosmos has picked up the hype and acquired a license to do the German language version of a board game based on the series, published by Cryptozoic Entertainment. Games on license topics are nothing now, but just because a license topics works well as a TV series or film this does not necessarily mean that it will work as well as a board game. I will report how well the transformation has worked in this case.

The story game is the story of the TV series, which in this case tells us that the Zombie Apocalypse is imminent and that humans must fight for their survival. As you might well imagine this is not easy, especially as Zombies never play fair, as that is contrary to their nature.

This side of Zombie characters is a topic that is also featured in the board game, which is a cooperative game on the one hand, and not cooperative on the other hand, with the basic mechanisms of humans, or rather survivors, versus Zombies. Survivors must try to cooperate and to win the game over the Zombies. But take care, a survivor can turn Zombie, if you are careless, or rather, Walker, as they are called in the game and in the series. Thus it can happen that you have to play against a member of your team. And this can very easily happen in this game that can be played by up to four players.

But before you can start to fight for your survival, you must cope with some preparations. Part of them depends on the number of survivors who want to take part in the game, as the rules introduce more Allies Tokens in the game when more players are sitting at the table, and this is more than necessary in the fight against the powerful Walkers. There are also more equipment cards, called Scrounge cards, which are also of paramount importance in your fight for survival - a game of three players gives you 6 Ally Tokens and 30 Scrounge cards, in a game of four you use 8 tokens and 40 cards. Two Walker markers are set out next to the board representing the situation that you fight against.

Each player chooses one of six characters corresponding to the characters from the series and takes the marker for this character. Each of those personalities commands a different special ability that is of importance in the game. As you find out about those nuances and learn to use them only after several games, let me tell you now that you should play the game more than one, if you want to survive. Starting point for the markers is the middle of the board, the so-called camp, which is a safe haven for the survivors.

Next to his character marker each player receives, at the start of the game, two Ally Tokens and five Scrounge cards. Those accessories are very necessary for a player, because contrary to the number of equipment cards the game starts with all Walker cards in play, and let me give you a hint, they are damn strong! With only those limited auxiliary means you must now try to save mankind from extinction!

The aim of the game is to collect one tile each from the four different types of Location tiles and then get yourself back to the camp. Which is easier said than done! The four locations are corner spaces for Police Station, Abandoned Car Lot, Department Store and Center for Disease Control. All locations must be dealt with in the same kind and thus represent the same kind of challenge.

You play in clockwise directions and have four turns or actions when it is your turn. You start with a dice roll for movement and move then forward accordingly and resolve the conditions/demands of this case. Then you draw new Encounter cards and then, finally, end your turn - so, thus you start with a dice result and move forward the exact number of steps you rolled - you cannot forfeit steps, you always move the steps dictated by the dice roll!

You can end your turn on seven different types of cases: On a normal case you only need to reveal an Encounter card, which means that you draw the top card from the draw pile of Encounter cards and read the text. The majority of those cards make you fight a Walker and that can be very difficult. The card always carries a value for Strength, in the so-called Strength Icon, which you must overcome. You also draw and resolve an Encounter card on the cases marked "Attack +1" and "Attack +2". But those cases assist you in some ways with your attack, as you can raise your own combat strength by the given value of +1 or +2.

When my movement ends on the case marked "Draw a Scrounge Card" I may draw a Scrounge card from the draw-pile which might assist me in in my fights against the Walkers. Therefore you should aim to finish your movement on such a case as often as possible. After drawing the Scrounge card you must again draw and resolve an Encounter card. Should your movement take you to the case "After this Encounter, take another turn" you draw an Encounter card and try to defeat it, but have then another complete turn afterwards.

So, obviously, you have to draw an Encounter card on nearly all the cases on which you end your turn. The only exception is the case of "No Encounter". The most difficult cases are the Locations, which you must visit in order to have a chance to win the game. TO reach those cases you do not need an exact dice result, because, when you finally end up on such a location you must successfully resolve not only one encounter, but two of them. Single encounters are difficult enough, but two such encounters in a row are a real challenge.

An important advice here could be that you should keep your "good" Scrounge cards for those locations and not waste them on other encounters. The same advice goes for the Ally tiles, of which you have two at the start of the game. Those Ally tiles can help to avoid being turned into a Walker, as Survivors are bitten when an encounter with a Walker is lost and may change into a Walker themselves. Then their goal in the game is not to survive but to make sure that the others do not survive! Whereby the Zombies get additional players to the board, which in turn makes the game even more difficult.

Well, after you have moved the time has come for fighting and you meet a Walker due to an Encounter card. You draw such a card from the pile and read it; fortunately there are also very few harmless blanks, that is, cards that do not make you fight. But there is also the fact that an Encounter card introduces additional rules. When the card is known you may choose as many Scrounge cards as possible or as you choose to raise your own attack Strength. A fight is only considered to be won when the attack Strength of a Survivor is equal to the Strength of the Walker. And this is the point where for me the absolute imbecility in this game happens, because you must choose and discard such a card before your dice roll. At the point of choosing those cards you have of course no idea what you might roll, so it can happen that you shoot your wad with a card that you did not need and might have kept for later.

This does not mean to say that you could win a fight without such cards, because the Walker strength begins at 6, I only think that you could make use of your Scrounge cards more efficiently and more wisely. This rule takes out the tactical element that could help to overcome the chance element, because with choosing Scrounge cards after the dice rule I could improve my dice result in an optimum way, as I have all the information.

This rule introduces an imbalance in favor of Zombies to the game, which may correspond to the TV series events, because there the Survivors also don't have too good a chance against the Zombies, but as there are too few Scrounge cards in play you should not have to use them frivolously.

Another element that flogs the same horse again is the fact that a Survivor automatically wins an encounter when he rolls a 5. But as I have to choose my Scrounge cards before rolling I cannot use them at all and have needlessly spent and lost them.

For all those reasons I think this rule is simply idiotic because I believe that it ruins the game, especially as you - due to the enormous Strength of the Walkers - need the Scrounge cards in order to remain in play long enough for all Survivors to win the game together. This rule only makes sense if you play the game in the faction of the Walkers, because it assists the Walkers which again tips the balance in favor of the Walkers.

Should you, after adding your scrounge cards played before rolling dice, the result of the dice roll and an eventual bonus given by the case you stand in, have achieved at least the same strength as stated in the Strength Icon of the Encounter card and thus have won the game, you either take a Scrounge Card or an Ally tile. Should you not have accumulated enough Strength value, you have lost and are bitten. This bite can be deflected by discarding an Ally tile. This Ally tile is then taken out of play.

As both Ally tiles and Scrounge cards are essential and equally urgently needed for fighting Walkers each player has to choose for himself what is more necessary to him. If you are bitten and have no Ally tile to discard you turn into a Walker automatically.

All Scrounge cards that have been played are discarded to a pile and stay there, they are not shuffled again, when your stack is depleted, which again renders the rule to play Scrounge cards before your dice roll nonsensically, because all cards can only be used once in the game. As soon as the draw pile is empty, which happens very very quickly, no additional cards come into play.

The only exception to this rule is the mutation of a Survivor into a Walker; in this case his Scrounge cards are shuffled into the draw pile. The character board of the survivor and his collected Location tiles are taken out of play. From his next turn on he embodies a Walker and his character marker is exchanged for a Walker marker. The player receives the badge of the Zombie team and four Walker cards and let me tell you, those cards are all damn powerful!

A Walker's goal is to kill the survivors, and as soon as a second player has been bitten and turned into a Walker the mode of the game is changing to cooperative game play, because from now on it is Team Survivors versus Team Zombies, whereby in my opinion the advantage is on the side of Team Zombies.

When one encounter has been resolved the turn passes to the next player who can be Survivor or Walker, because Walkers, too, have three actions that they can implement in their turn. The start with a movement action that works similar to that of the Survivors, the only difference is the fact that Walkers can, contrary to Survivors, move in the Sewers in order to be able to attack Survivors more quickly. Again a rule that tends to be advantageous to the Zombie faction, because there are a lot less Sewer cases and they are therefore much faster passed than normal cases.

Then a Walker player can decide to play a Walker card or to forfeit this option. As his goal is the elimination of Survivors he will choose to play it, because Walker cards offer an additional effect plus a strength value for attack. It is important to remember that these cards only offer an advantage to a Walker if he shares a case on the board with a Survivor. Is he in the same case with more than one Survivor, a Walker decides who he will attack, and his choice will usually be the weakest of the Survivors.

A fight of Walker against Survivors works exactly as it does when an encounter card is drawn, that is, with all the draw-backs involved. When the Walker wins, we know what happens, the Survivor is bitten. But it can also happen that the Walker loses the fight, but, contrary to the case for a Survivor, nothing much happens for him, he just needs to take his marker off the board and discard his Walker cards. In his next turn he can place has marker on the Sewers and begin again. As there are four different Sewer cases he can even choose the region where he wants to start again. And as the Walker player is definitive not a Zombie idiot he will for a surety choose an area where a survivor is present. And of course, the Walker gets four new Walker cards. In any case, the turn passes to the next player, regardless of the outcome of the fight.

The game can end in different ways, as soon as the first Survivor has managed to collect four Location tiles and manages to get back to safety in the Camp. Should at that point be only one Walker in the game, the Survivor who reached the camp has won alone. Should there be two Walkers in the game at that point, the Team Survivors wins. Those are the winning conditions for the Survivors, and I believe that the winning conditions for the Zombies is much easier, because those are simply to eliminate all Survivors. As the normal encounters with Walkers based on cases entered do not stop as soon as a Walker comes into play, it is rather easy for the Zombies to put an end to all Survivors.

My overall impression of the game is, that it is not balanced at all, because there are much more ways to lose the game than to win the game, that is, if you are a member of the Survivors been. And some might even think, well then I aim from the start to become a Walker, but where is the challenge in that strategy?

In the same way the cooperative element in the second part of the game for me comes across like "I want but I can't", because this element is only introduced at a point in the game when two Walkers are active and at that point the Survivors have all but lost. I believe that the game should from the start on work as a cooperative game in that sense that the Survivors can collect the four Locations tiles as a team together, what would still be difficult due to Walkers and encounters, but manageable.

This game shows once again that not all license topics can be adapted to a good board game. Often something is rather forcedly put together to fit the topic of the license which results in a game that works. However, I do see a lot of potential in the game, but it needs some revision work, because it was not fun to play the way it works now. How should it, if as a Survivor a have been barely given the chance to win. Why should I try to?

Isabella Prior

Players: 1-4

Age: 16+

Time: 30+

Designer: Cory Jones

Artist: Larry Renac, Marco Sipriaso, Nancy Unzueta, John Vineyard

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Kosmos 2013

Web: www.kosmos.de

Genre: Zombie, horror, cooperation

Users: With friends

Special: 1 player

Version: de

Rules: en

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Based on the TV Series

Unbalanced in favor of the Walkers

Cooperative play comes too late in the game

Compares to:

Other Zombie games, games with strength comparison

Other editions:

Cryptozoic Entertainment, USA

My rating: 4

Isabella Prior:

The game is unbalanced in favor of the Walkers who have a definite advantage over the Survivors. Licenses do not necessarily provide bases for good games.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 2

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0