Zombies!!! (2ed) - Tips & Strategies

When I play this game with people who can’t tolerate the long length (My wife especially, who loves the game until it goes past an hour and a half), I adopt a perma-death rule.

*Start the game with 4 hearts and 3 bullets

* When landing on a space with a zombie, roll 1d6. Result of 1-3, the zombie has knocked you down, you lose a heart, and the turn goes to the next player. Result of 4-6, you defeat the zombie as normal.

* Once you lose all your hearts, you are dead. Game over.

* You can allow hearts to go past 5, we usually max at 7 so that it gives newer (and unlucky) players a bit more chances.

* For 2-3 players we still leave the zombie kill count at 25. You can lower this to 20 for 4-5 players. This can also be removed altogether, leaving only the helipad way to win (but in my experience does make the game a bit longer usually).

* If all players die, the zombies have won. One player must still make it to the helipad per the base rules, to win (or kill the set number of zombies)

ADDITIONAL VARIATION (To make the “Rush for the helipad” not so easy)

* When the helipad comes out, have the person with the lowest kill count (zombie pile) choose where to place the “pilot” on the board (has to be in one of the named buildings). In order to flee using the helicopter, a player must get the pilot and then proceed to the helipad. If the player with the pilot dies, the pilot is dropped on the last square that player occupied.

* If an opposing player lands on a square with the player possessing the pilot, the opposing players enter combat to see who “steals” or “keeps” the pilot. Both players roll 1d6, highest value takes the pilot.

I have a piece of construction paper that I cut so it holds 20 cards (4 across x 5 down). I placed the cards on the paper and cut ***** at the corners so the cards could be tucked under (like business cards in a binder). When done, the cards are removed and I stick the board to the fridge. Now, instead of a slight bump moving all my pieces or spinning my cards, they all sit still and we can get to playing!!!

ps Prior to this, we tried putting the cards under plexiglass but the static always moved the cards.

Rather than rolling 1d6 for movement in Zombies!!!, we use the house rule of HEATH + 2. So everyone starts with a movement of 5, and can max out with a movement of 7.

It gets a little tricky when you play event cards that effect the movement roll, but you can decide whether you want to adapt them to this rule, ignore them, or roll in that specific instance.

Our group uses zombies from a few different sets including a Bag o’ Zombies. We STILL run out of figures when playing.

One of our solutions is to only keep basic grey zombies in our trophy collection (switching them with others from the board as needed). When we have more than five, we trade them in for a zombie clown (5 for 1) and use those as “five zombie” tokens. This also helps keep each players personal area more organized.

For people who already dislike the game because of its occasionally epic length, this rule won’t help you.

But, if you find yourself in a game night with more than 6 people, Zombies can easily be expanded if you have every player pieces (and if you own Zombies 4, then you should have 6 extra guys). We just added in the 7th person, got rid of the zombie-kill win condition, and added in a smaller expansion (which included an extra helipad).

The result was a long game by virtue of the amount of turns in a round, BUT the ending was very fun, and the number of folks playing event cards on each other was out of control. So next time you suddenly have too many folks to play a normal board game, try this out.

Another way to help speed up the game is to have certain zombies carrying health or bullets. Label the bottom of the zombie piece for the added excitement. This way after killing a zombie you might find health or a bullet.

One of the great things I love about Zombies!!! are all the expansions. But you can run into some serious grief if you don’t do a bit of card maintenance at the end of every game and keep the cards for the various expansions separate. It seems like common sense but it’s something that a lot of us forget to do.

If you are running a tutorial game or are playing with newer players it can cause a lot of confusion if you have the cards all mixed together but aren’t playing with the tiles for that expansion.

If you play this game a lot, and especially with expansions, then do yourself a favor and buy a bag of zombies. I often found myself running out during some longer play sessions.

If you are looking for plastic tokens to represent your bullets and/or hearts instead of cardboard ones.

You can go to this site for some alternative tokens that you can use with Zombies!!!

http://www.litko.net/categories/Shop-By-Compatible-Game-System/Zombies%21/

I am not affiliated with this site in anyway.

In most games of Zombies you will end up with a section of the town that you do not go to, but zombies are there. Once the Helipad comes into play, when we roll to move zombies, you can choose to move zombies from the area of the city that no one is going to to the starting place or to move the zombies as normal.