Zombicide

Just over a year ago, Penny Arcade ran a comic and article about a recent Kickstarter scam project that was snuffed out by the community. This piece by the PA guys hit home a bit or at least served as a warning. By this time, I had backed over a dozen projects and hadn’t had any issues but it made me aware that there were some out there.

Anyways, after that brief discussion of the comic, Tycho explains that Penny Arcade has lent out their Cardboard Tube Samurai character as a stretch goal to a boardgame called created by a small French studio, Guillotine Games. I took the time to check out the Zombicide Kickstarter and fell in love almost immediately but the price tag was high. I sent the info along to one of my good friends. We had a discussion on Facebook and decided to both back it after some initial reluctance.

Let’s be frank here, $100 for a board game is a lot when you’re used to Monopoly and Risk which top out around $30. Previously, the most expensive board game I had purchased was Red Dragon Inn and its expansions which totaled about the same. My general thought process when buying any type of game is based on how much play time I’ll get out of it multiplied by about $5 which will get me an hour of a good movie. And Zombicide looked ridiculously re-playable and customizable. And so I quickly backed it just two days before the end of the Kickstarter. I ended up pledging for everything, the Abomination pack, all the extra survivors and an extra set of tiles.

The game itself is a lot of fun and challenging. The co-op aspect has quickly made it a game night favorite.¹ Hordes of zombies pour out across the board and each player must contribute in a balanced manner or else it’s easy to get overrun. The mechanics are sound and with the addition of zombivors we never have to worry about a player having a quick exit from the game and having to sit back and watch the rest of us play.² The scenario setup takes a bit of time to get everyone prepared and ready to play but the basic rules are fairly intuitive and easy to learn. Some rules can be hard to interpret and there are a lot of rules which makes the game pretty complex.

Since it’s delivery in early Fall last year, my friends and I have basically played it non-stop. Generally at least once every two weeks. We’ve played almost every scenario in the book and online, including the Switch City Campaign. And we’ve played dozens and dozens of hours. We’ve also built custom heroes for each of my friends somewhat suited to how they like to play but mostly influenced by how they are in real life. The scenarios themselves have a good range of easy to insta-death but there never seems to be a short scenario. The miniatures are well-sculpted and I hope to get around to painting them one day.

All the fun times spurred me to back the Season 2 Kickstarter without any hesitation. I also ended up ordering every available survivor. Which when they arrive, I should have nearly 100 survivor and zombivors. I know Zombicide is pretty pricey but if you love killing zombies there’s no way to not love this game and get hours upon hours of entertainment.