The Walking Dead

Nothing to carry to the club last night apart from my 'man bag', an old toiletry bag which is convenient for dice, tape measure, camera, laser, 45 deg template, super glue and tokens for whatever game I am playing. Another miserable January night appropriate for fighting the undead.

Andy had mentioned a few weeks ago that his mate was organising a Walking Dead game, it started off as a Mantic Games kickstarter and is now available for those who sit on the shelf and wait. It has the distinction of not being influenced by the TV show but by the original graphic novels, this actually does not make a huge difference or any to be honest as Sheriff Rick is missing a hand in the comics but he still has two in the game. I had a quick look online at the excellent 'how to play' videos from Mantic and others, these really are a great way to showcase a game and go a long way to help understand rule mechanisms, I would love to see more of these for games and rulesets. After learning about the mechanics I still wasn't too sure of the point of the game.


In the event Andy's mate didn't turn up but Andy brought the game anyway, so we set up with some terrain, cars, obstacles, houses etc. and two survivors each, we entered the board and headed for different objects placed at random. As you move and fight you create noise and this is what brings the zombies into play as they move towards the nearest sounds, at times you can also direct the undead towards other survivors thereby hampering their attempts at trying to gain the loot.

Looks quiet enough.

 I had Sandra and a guy who was handy with a baseball bat, and I picked up a couple of objectives right away but turned out to be as useful as a chocolate frog in a heatwave, sadly while getting these Sandra was bitten and slowly but surely began her path to becoming a zombie. The bat guy took most of the game to finish of a Zombie in a nearby VW camper van, go for the head you idiot! In the end Simon won by killing three zombies and gathering three objectives, I had killed four and had three objectives but Sandra turned before the last phase and I lost the objectives as being a zombie she found no need for them and promptly dropped them. Women eh.

The head, go for the head....

I am not sure we played the game right, all the rules were in place but something seemed to be missing, perhaps we did not have enough zombies, no new zombies turn up antil near the end and even then it was only one or two. I think the game has potential but it needs better scenarios and more of a storyline, there has to be a point in survival not just killing zombies. I have Zombicide and in comparison so far I would have to say Zombicide is a much more exciting game, I would play Walking Dead again but it would have to mature a bit first, a campaign for instance where every scenario is leading to a particular end.
 

Sheriff Rick and his annoying son.