Zombicide - Tips & Strategies

I’ve wanted to incorporate Zombie Dice into Zombicide for a while. Through trial and error and a bunch of playtesting, I’ve had a ton of fun playing a hybrid game that’s Zombicide at its core, but with the following rule adjustments:

– During the game, the only dice used are those from Zombie Dice. When you’re using a fight action, the red dice are used for weapons needing a 6 to kill (just the pan), yellow are used for weapons needing a 5 to kill and the green dice are used for everything else. Unfortunately, since the chainsaw uses 5 dice and needs 5+ to kill, you need two sets of Zombie Dice, as there’s only 4 yellow dice in the game.

– For every “brain” that you roll, you kill one zombie in the area you’re targeting. For every “feet/escape” you roll, you can move one space away (essentially giving every player a chance to be slippery like Josh). If you roll a “shotgun” (rechristened for my purposes here as “stuck”), you can’t leave the space, regardless of how many feet you rolled (you can still kill if you rolled brains).

– Brains and feet can stack on top of each other. For instance, if you’re in a space with 4 zombies using the chainsaw and roll 2 brains and 3 feet, you’d be able to kill 2 zombies and leave the other 2 behind without using another action.

Since this makes the game easier (both to kill and to run), I use a 4-player limit. This solves Zombicide‘s biggest issue – 4-player games are typically unwinnable (I understand this is fixed in Season 2). 2- and 3-player games let each player control multiple survivors, while 5- and 6-player games have enough survivors to be winnable… but 4 survivors is almost never enough. This modification fixes the issue… each player controls only one survivor, but has slightly better odds due to being able to kill OR escape on their roll.

In the first round before many zombies have spawned it may be best to have a few people exchange items. Letting someone have two pistols early can make a difference in fighting. If there is a room nearby Ned can often be safe without an item and taking a few turns to search. Wanda, Amy, and Josh have greater mobility so it can help to give them the Fireman’s axe or the crowbar so they open doors sooner.

Do not underestimate the power of noise.

Since the zombies will walk to any hero that is line of sight…if the zombies see 2 heroes they will walk where there is the much noise even if the zombies are adjacent to the hero…taking an action to make some noise is a great diversion when zombies are just about to eat your brain…..

While the noise tokens are a great visual reference to use during the game to indicate which area will attract zombies without line of sight, clean up every turn can get messy and tedious.

Instead, try substituting large groups of noise tokens with dice (a couple of d6s or d10s should be sufficient for a game) to indicate the same thing. Someone will need to keep track before placing the die, but at least it’ll be quicker to pick up than a whole bunch of trackers generated by a group of survivors.

Unfortunately, large buildings often have quite a number of equal cost paths towards the noisiest area (which is through the door you just opened). Because of the splitting rules for zombie movement, this can easily lead to quite a number of extra zombies getting added to the rooms in the building. So upon opening a large building, you’ll want to sweep it as quickly as possible, thus preventing extra zombies to appear. If you decide to open up a large building early on, keep in mind that you can use the rooms you already cleared out as places to search for gear.

Cars can be one of your most valuable weapons and should never be overlooked or under used. Much like the chainsaw, cars are a great way to deal with hordes especially after leveling up and gaining extra actions! Get in a car with at least 2 players so you can swap driving duties every turn and run ’em over! This has been a great strategy with my group especially with 4 players. 2 players drive over zombies while other well equipped players complete other objectives. By killing zombie hordes in this manner it gives the group some breathing room and helps avoid the running out of zombies “all walkers etc… get another action” rule.

I have found the best way to keep from getting housed in the first two scenarios is to open all the doors you will need opened while still in blue threat level. If you are on yellow or orange, between two doors and a spawn zone, an extra move for zombies or a sewer card can be devastating.

When you’re in a tight spot with other survivors and failed to kill all zombies threatening you and your group in your second to last action, passing your weapon on to another survivor with your last action can really help out. E.g., pass your ranged weapon to the next survivor that activates in order to help him take out the pesky runners in the square next to you that are threatening to kill you in the next zombie turn. Of course, this will only help if the other survivor(s) get to play after you do.

Keep an eye out for the sewer icons in the upper left corner of the Zombie spawn card. We keep overlooking at least one of these per game.

When this icon appears, instead of spawning in the room or spawn point like normal, whatever’s on the card comes out of each manhole cover on any tile that has a player token on it. This makes getting ahead of your party dangerous, especially as the difficulty level increases.

Special notes:
-If a player is a space that is part of two tiles, the zombie(s) spawn out of each of the manhole covers on both these tiles. If the player is in an intersection of four tiles – you guessed it, all of the manhole covers on all four tiles!

-If there are two manhole covers in a single space, two of whatever’s on the card appear in that space.

-These icons are only on a few on special cards. In the base set, I haven’t seen the abominiation icon on the sewer cards. Not sure if there are any in the “abomination pack” expansion.

When you open the first door of a building, you must draw a zombie card for each room, but the rules don’t specify in what order to populate the rooms. If you start with the room just inside the door, you could get a nasty surprise if one of the later rooms gets an extra activation card. (For instance, say you draw a card that puts a couple of runners in the first room, which is adjacent to the survivor who opened the door. In the next room, you get a runner activation card and those new runners swarm out and attack.)

To avoid this, start with the room farthest from the door and work your way back. That way, even if an activation card is drawn, there won’t be any new zombies in the closest room.