This past Friday, Noah and myself traveled to our local gaming store in search of fun and adventure.
What we found, however, was a mall full of teens and tweens wandering around with their spikey hair, pants falling off their asses and cell phones seemingly growing from their ears.
Into the gaming store we went, there were a few people playing Warhammer 40k and probably a half dozen kids playing random card games, who’s names I won’t mention simply because I don’t want to. Nothing against those games but they are just not my cup of tea.
Not dismayed in the least, we journeyed to my car and after much digging, through hair combs, scrunches, shoes and various other unmentionables that my wife kindly left as gifts for me, we collected the games I had the foresight to bring with me. Munchkin, Munchkin Bites (yes these too are card games but they are an entirely different style of game, one of these days I may get around to explaining the difference), and Zombies!!. After a brief debate we decided to give Zombies!! a try.
As I had played twice before, I did my best to give Noah a quick rundown of the rules while I shuffled the cards and map tiles. Due to some sort of crazy luck I was able to get a decent dice roll (one of the few I got all evening) to see who got to go first and off I went.
Due to limited table space, we made a conscious effort to close off and contain our “Town” somewhat, thus leaving really only one direction in which to grow the board. I must say, it seems as though the creators made a few map tiles and got bored or in a hurry or eaten by their zombies or something because, other than the ‘named’ tiles, there is a surprising lack of different cards to draw. By the end of the game I believe our town had something to the tune of 10 movie theaters, 8 burger joints and probably 10 – 15 of the same nameless factory. I’m not sure if the expansions add any new ‘Regular’ tiles to the game but it would be nice to see something other than Bob’s Burgers or Movie Theaters.
Things were going well until I died, which was not a surprise to anyone, since dice hate me. It was then that Noah decided it would be a great time to play a card allowing him to place 10 zombies on any legal squares. So, of course, he surrounds me with zombies. Luckily I had a card in my hand called Alternate Food Source. The way we read the card, it seemed to say that a player was able to move through a tile containing a zombie without having to fight it. Makes sense, the zombies have another food source so they won’t attack you. It would have been great except for the fact that I played the card, then rolled a 2 (as usual), ending my movement turn on a space still surrounded by zombies. I managed to fight my way out of the crowd when … oh sweet irony … Noah dies and starts out in the town square I had just vacated, thus putting him smack dab in the middle of all the zombies he had surrounded me with.
At that point in the game we had already placed the Helipad and it became a race to the finish line, or the get-a-way ride as the case may have been. Noah had a distinct advantage though, he had a skateboard which doubles your movement. That combined with my inability to roll anything higher than a 2, enabled him to skate right up to the helipad. In a desperate attempt to escape fate, I played the one card I had that could possibly help, a card allowing me to make his movement for him. I promptly ran him into the nearest group of zombies I could find. Little did I realize that by doing so, I was allowing him to win another way, by collecting zombies. See, what I had forgotten was that when you kill a zombie, you collect it, if you can collect 25 zombies then you automatically win. By running him into the nearest group of zombies I gave him the few he needed to get to 25 and win.
Over all it was fun, although I doubt he will be playing that sort of game with me again, because I tend to be a little goofy. I have a very over-active imagination and it comes out sometimes. I spent about half the game making up back stories for the little zombie people, and making them point in certain directions because a girl zombie I named Harriet and a boy zombie I named Charlie, are in love but Reggie over there is also in love with Harriet and now he wants to eat Charlie but poor zombie Bob is in the way. Bob doesn’t love anyone, he just wants to get back to his burger joint to try making a new brain flavored burger. After that he was thinking about catching a movie at one of the 15 or so theaters in town. Hopefully they’re not all showing the same movie, if they are, then someones going to get eaten. But that’s a story for another time.
If that made you even remotely interested in the game you could either come over to my house and we can all sit in the living room floor and play it or you could head over to World at Play Games and buy your very on copy. And to show I'm such a nice guy here is a link straight to it ...
ZOMBIES!!
If you liked my little review and want to read some truly excellent board and card game reviews head over to Drake's Flames located here:
http://drakesflames.blogspot.com/
(Note to M.D. .. I can take down the plug if you want me to, I just really like your reviews and didn't think it would hurt to inform others of the site.)
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