Board Games: Zombicide (Season 1)

I do not have a brilliantly tactical mind.  You wouldn't employ me to be the person who decides when to press the big red button, and chess (never mind that 3d space chess) is beyond me.  It's not what I look for when I play games, I want an experience and some character.  I want soul.  I also want a really solid game that doesn't just come down to luck and I want something that's going to give me a different experience each time I play it.  I'm also a sucker for really nice components...

I have mixed feelings about Kickstarter (you can read about them here if you're so inclined) but I read an article about a really board good game that had been Kickstarter-ed called Zombicide.  Knowing that a friend of mine liked co-op games I picked up a copy of it for him... This was Zombicide.

Zombicide is a co-op zombie movie survival game.  You play a character (or two) and there are some objectives in the (very nicely produced) manual.  The game comes with a number of tiles which you arrange as pictured in the manual and with various tokens you can add which change the setup / layout like doors and objective markers and Pimp mobiles.  There is a nice tongue in cheek motif to the game.  The characters are archetypes (with clear references to various pop-culture icons (for example Doug is very clearly Michael Douglas from Falling Down)) and you can gain objects like Molotovs and chainsaws to defeat your enemy foes.

 None the less the game has a real survivalist feel to it.  Enemies spawn constantly and then shamble towards you at an ominous pace.  The 'theme' of the game is very very strong, it manages to capture that 'Walking Dead' feel (I mean the early films but that's not to denigrate the recent (excellent) tv series.) It is a game where you hold your breath when drawing a spawn card and as the numbers of zombies build up there is a visual sense of dread that accompanies the game!  It encourages some amusingly heroic actions (characters throwing their lives away in a sacrifice to the greater good or passing over weapons to save other people) and in my gaming group at least amusing anecdotal stories build up (like the one pictured below when Phil bit the bullet after his bromance with Doug!)

The game has quite simple rules.  You get a number of actions per round and if you end up in a square with a zombie on the zombies go it hurts you.  No ifs or buts, it just does!  There are four different types of zombie - walkers (they move one space toward you each turn), Runners (they move two spaces toward you each turn) and Fatties (who move one space, are accompanied by walkers and are harder to hurt) and abominations which are really hard to hurt but also only move one space).  As the game progresses you get new skills the more you kill, but as people 'level up' you get more zombies spawning each turn as well... sometimes leveling up is particularly bad!  Characters have different abilities and some choices to make as to  which skills they want which leads to some nice variation.  

The components are nicely produced - the card products are good quality, colourful and well illustrated. and the miniatures are lovely.  The game is produced by Guillotine Games  in conjunction with Cool Mini Or Not (I admit I'm not sure of the link but I think they're maybe run by the same people or something!) and so I suppose great figures should be expected, but that doesn't detract from the fact that they really are cool minis with lots of nice detailing!  I read that lots of people like painting them.  As ever I wish that there was some sort of better storage offered for the game.  It all just has to be thrust back into the box when you're done, but besides that I think that the box and all its contents are excellent.

Of particular note I like the idea of the noise mechanic (shooting guns makes a noise and if zombies can't see you they move toward the noise, whenever you make a noise you put a noise token down.)  There's a 'make noise' action choice to distract the zombies.  It's not brilliantly practical in general but it is a lovely idea.

The game is pretty tough.  It took us quite a few goes to beat the first proper mission, but I like that challenge and it was a buzz when we managed it!  

My only other criticism is a kickstarter related one... There are 6 characters that come with Zombicide and they're cool, but the original Kickstarter offered lots more as stretch goals and add-ons.  They can be found on the website... but I will never have them.  They were Kickstarter exclusives and (apparently) they can sell on ebay for huge quantities of gold coins!  I didn't care / wasn't worried about that for quite a while - but now I feel slightly like I miss out - it's always the same characters that I play with because we don't have the extras to choose from.  I know there needed to be incentives to get the game funded, and I'm glad that it was... and yet I still feel like I'm missing out.  [It's worth noting that I think I could download the stats and there are card generators for them too, but still...] 

Zombicide Season 2 + Expansion were recently on Kickstarter and I backed it quite heavily, I'll be getting lots of extra characters and even some add on characters... BUT even sponsoring it there were lots of characters that I am not getting (solely because each new one was an extra '$10' or similar) so I guess I'll still be missing out.  But at least I'll be able to look down at those people who haven't got them... Oh gosh I've joined the ranks of the Kickstarter Zombie Elite!!!  

"BRAINS..."

Board Games: X-Wing Miniatures

Anyone who knows me or reads my waffle will know I'm a Star Wars baby, I was born in '77 and grew up with the films, toys, breakfast cereal and all manner of paraphernalia, but when I wanted to 'play star wars' I had to make my own games.  I flew my x-wing toys around the front room (making appropriate vrooom and lazor noises) and shot at tie fighters destroying them as I saw fit.  Needless to say my shots almost always hit and they almost always missed...

Then I graduated to X-wing on the pc (ibm?) and then the much missed Tie Fighter.  How I miss those days of blowing x-wings out of the sky and escorting the emperor...

And, just for the record, anyone who looks at that picture and thinks 'that looks a bit naff' - well, you don't know man... you weren't there!  Phenomenal.

I am not a big nostalgia fan, but I still have very fond memories of this game, the star wars roleplaying game I played (West End Games v1) and then there was Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars Battlefront, the amazing Timothy Zahn trilogy and some of the follow on books.  And of course Tales of the Old Republic...  Yes, I'm a fan.

When X-wing Miniatures from Fantasy Flight was announced I was in two minds, I'm not a big 'wargamer' but as it got closer to the launch I thought I would give it a try and I picked up a copy when they were still in stock in the UK.  I have to say it's a great game.  It manages to flow extremely well and the balancing of the stats - points - abilities - dice is extremely well thought out.  I am a big fantasy flight fan, and often their games are quite complex with quite a lot of rules.  Not so here.  Colour coded dice, templates, all the oddities on the cards - it's very very elegant.

Players decide what they're going to do at the same time, pop down a dial and then move according to pilot skill (least skillful first) and then shoot in descending order (most skillful first).  Pilots skill levels are on the cards and weaker pilots cost less points (meaning more ships potentially).  Each ship will have a couple of abilities which they choose and you get tokens to represent what you're doing (all beautifully made by Fantasy Flight).  The game flow is fast and the rules become second nature very quickly.  It makes for a wonderful play experience.

The box set (shown above) comes with 2 tie fighters and 1 x wing which is enough to play with, but you can buy more ships to enhance your choices - tie advanced and y wings were out at launch and they've since added the falcon, slave I, a wing and interceptor.  All of these can be combined for some pretty large scale battles, come with enough tokens for easy use and there are objectives and missions that you can undertake too.

The models are fantastically made - they look great, are beautifully painted and work really well in the game (robust enough to move, detailed enough to still be 'pretty') and are apparently 'to scale' (of imaginary ships!!).  Size difference can make a big difference in the game though, the falcon model is huge and this impacts on it's flying into asteroids (Han Solo must have had some good dice rolls in that scene in Empire!)

The balancing on the game really is phenomenal, and the way the dice roll against each other, especially combined with the add-on abilities pilots can buy.  I have (because I am a cynic) two criticisms of the game, but they are pretty minor ones.  The game should come with more dice.  FFG sell more dice, but really to easily run a game you want a set of dice each.  It's easily solved and I suppose would have added to the cost of the product but even so, lack of dice frustrates me.  It's also really difficult to store.  With models this nice you want to store them carefully and that's pretty difficult.  Battlefoam offered an elegant solution which was foam that fitted in the original box and held your miniatures (still not really enough space for tokens) and have now released one to hold wave two.  It STILL doesn't hold all the tokens and is quite pricey.  I'm not sure what the good answer is here - lots of people online offer suggestions, but I do wish that FFG thought more about how to store their (beautifully made, extremely well crafted) models.

Game mats are something that the game would benefit from too.  I bought myself a 3' piece of felt from amazon which was cheap and does the job perfectly, but some people have bought / made very extravagent ones.  It adds something to the game feel that is better than a tabletop, but isn't necessary.  I also quite often play some Star Wars music in the background when we're playing.  It again just boosts the feel of the game.

It's hard to do this game enough justice, its very well thought out, extremely smooth and plays like a dream.  It has some of the best mechanics I've experienced in any such game.  

Punchboard Joy

I enjoy all sorts of video games but I am also a great lover of boardgames,  I grew up with such joys as 'Game of Life', Monopoly and Upwords.  Now as an ever-increasing adult my love of boardgames grows greater and greater and of late I've been playing quite a number of different games, so I thought I would write some bits and pieces about some of those games and my thoughts about them...


Boardgames are a fantastic way of learning about rules because nobody else interprets them for you; they have to be read and understood by the players, as opposed to the computer doing all the calculations for you and not letting you do the things you can't do.

There's a particularly good games shop in Reading that will sell you games you want called Eclectic and can also advise on other games and new things to try, or of course well known online retailers can help you out.  I have also used Spirit Games and Infinity Games online for good service on mail orders.

Why is this called Punchboard Joy?  Well, anyone who plays any Fantasy Flight games (as well as a number of other brands) will know that they usually come with a piece of card which you push out tokens from.  These are called Punchboards.  I take a certain pleasure in pushing all the tokens out and then finding ways to store all the bits in a user friendly way.  I realise that this really is incredibly high up the OCD-sounding scale, but I like to tell myself that it's ok - I don't mind if they get a bit mixed up during play and mostly I only do it to make the actual gameplay easier.  I don't know if that's true but I like to think it is...

Rather than make this a horrifically long post as I waffle about each one this will be a sort of index, which also means I can update it later as I play more games.  So, here's the list, each one will link to a new page on my blog (linked to as they're completed):

X Wing Miniatures
Zombicide (Season 1)
Descent
Gears of War
Village
Ghost Stories
Chaos in the Old World