Last Night on Earth: Escape in the Truck

A classic scenario. The only way out of the zombie infested town is a single old pickup truck marooned in the center of the town. Unfortunately, it has no gas in the tank and the keys are lost somewhere in the town. Such is the life for the poor survivors in the Escape in the Truck scenario for Last Night on Earth. This is definitely one of my favorite scenarios in the game. It combines a good story with a clear, obtainable objective and is generally a lot of fun. It is also one of the few scenarios that the heroes can win quickly if they get a little bit of luck. Of course, if they get no luck they will be slowly torn apart as they continue their futile search for automotive supplies.

The goal is pretty straightforward in Escape in the Truck. The heroes need to find some gasoline and put fuel in the truck, then get a set of keys and two heroes into the truck and get out of dodge before the sun comes up. The challenge here for the heroes is to find the items and survive long enough, the zombies should focus on constant harassment of the heroes and be prepared for the showdown at the truck, which is when the heroes will be their most vulnerable. Like most of the scenarios in LNOE the advantage goes to the defender (in this case the zombies) but this one is a little more evenly balanced than most of the others. It is also one of the shorter scenarios, lasting only fifteen turns. So the heroes have little time to waste.

One aspect of this scenario that I enjoy is that you actually get to use some of the cool pieces that the game comes with. There are tractors, meteors, evil books and all sort of other neat little game pieces that rarely see the light of day because there is no actual use for them. But here, you at least get to employ the hard working old truck. Which looks like it is from the 50’s. I have a hard time believing that this is the only functional truck in town, but I’ll suspend disbelief for the sake of the game. But yeah, having an actual truck in the middle of the board is nice.

The board pieces that wind up being used don’t make a ton of difference in this game. The gas station is nice to have, but really only comes into play once you have already used the gas once. And you only need to use it once, so there. Should your gas carrier get killed (which is a possibility) it is convenient to be able to go pick up another quickly. Like any scenario that involves getting items Jake the Drifter is an ideal choice for the party to have. His ability allows him to cycle through cards twice as fast, doubling the possibility that the valuable keys and gasoline will make an appearance. The other hero that is very useful here is everyone’s favorite prom queen, Amanda. Why? Well, for a single turn one of the heroes is going to be an absolute sitting duck and she is the best choice for it. In order to gas the truck up a hero must begin the turn on the truck, sacrifice the gasoline, and do nothing else. It is literally a sign on the hero that says come and maul me to death, quickly. Which is what usually happens. But if the hero does not survive the turn the gas is lost and the truck still has no fuel. Amanda has the two wounds that is typical of the teens, but her Hide power allows her to cancel any fight with a good roll. I’ve seen her frustrate the zombies to no end with this. Make sure that she has a weapon and a hero card to help her out and she just may live to take the ride out of town. In the absence of Amanda try to get someone well armed to fuel it up. Like in most scenarios, Becky totally sucks.

It also makes sense for the heroes to work in pairs. One to do the searching, the other to lure them away and take shots with some sort of gun if they have it. The fact is that if the heroes are not constantly searching they are not going to do so well.

The zombie strategy should be to keep the heroes on the move, thereby not allowing them to search over and over. The more that they are on the move the less likely they are to get the stuff that they need. It’s sort of Zombie 101. The real key to this scenario is to not allow the truck to get fueled up. At some point the heroes have to go to the truck and wait out a turn there. There should be a horde of the undead waiting there for them, preferably equipped with every nasty Zombie card there is to just take apart the hero who is foolish enough to challenge them.

The actual escape is much easier to accomplish because the heroes can just show up there and end the turn in the truck. As long as the have some keys they are good to go, so the play here for the zombies is the fuel up period.

Last Night on Earth can be a complicated game at times. Some times the rules drag or are so obtuse that they seem counterintuitive to the rest of the game. When this is coupled with a more complicated scenario (such as Plague Carriers or Zombie Apocalypse) it can really slow things down. Escape in the Truck is simple and clean, it’s obvious what needs to be done and how to do it. The hard part is actually doing it. For the heroes it is very exciting and satisfying to see that truck pull away to victory (I wouldn’t fault you if you actually made an engine noise and physically drove the truck off the table), and the zombies should always elate in foiling the plans of the living.

Last Night on Earth Hero Ranking

One of the aspects of Last Night on Earth that I really enjoy is the large selection of characters to choose from, or have randomly chosen, depending on how you set the game up. There is a pretty big disparity between the best and worst of them, so I’ve decided to rank them all! One thing I will say is that strategy and cards are more important than the characters, it is certainly possible to do well with a bad bunch of heroes. It’s really all about weapons and planning.

1. Sheriff Anderson: Guns don’t kill zombies, Sheriff Anderson kills zombies. Actually guns do kill zombies, which is what makes Sheriff Anderson the best hero in the game. Not only does he come strapped with a revolver to start the game, but his Man of Action power assures that he will never be without one for long. Whenever the Sheriff searches he can choose to pick up a gun as long as there is one in the discard pile. Since he starts the game with a gun, if he does not have one then there is one in the discard pile. See how this works? The fact is that guns rule in LNOE and Sheriff Anderson is always packin'.

2. Rachelle: Rachelle would be the number one if I were ranking my favorite characters. A curious out of town police officer, Rachelle arrives on the scene looking for a fight. She starts the game with a revolver, flashlight, and an ability to ignore any wound she receives on a roll of six. That is quite a package. My only criticism of Rachelle is that the revolver and flashlight are both really awesome, but if she loses them she does not have a ton going on for her.



3. Jake: The shady Drifter Jake Cartwright has a knack for turning up useful items with his Resourceful ability. Anytime Jake searches he draws two cards, keeping one of them. In a scenario that requires certain items he may actually be the best character to have. And since he is drawing so many cards he is usually a pretty good fighter due to most likely having a competent weapon as the zombies come crashing down all around him. I also really like his picture a bunch and his miniature is top notch. It is also not a coincidence that the top three heroes all have abilities related to items.

4. Sally: Despite her diminutive stature the High School Sweetheart may actually be the best pure fighter in the game. Her Lucky ability allows her to force a zombie to reroll any or all of it’s fight dice once per battle. That’s really good, especially since zombies are usually not rolling a bunch of dice. The two health boxes make her vulnerable, but it seems that she does not lose fights all that often. Her only drawback is that the revolver is the only gun that she can use, which I think just means that she can’t use the pump shotgun.

5. Amanda: The charming Prom Queen is one of the better hero’s in the game, relying on her looks and small stature to survive the zombie onslaught. Whenever Amanda shares a space with a male character, so eager are they to please her, that she grants them an extra die in any fight. Sounds more like a cheerleader than a prom queen, but whatever. The ability is rather circumstantial but a nice boost when it happens. Her real strength is her hiding ability, which essentially makes her a traveling cornfield. Whenever she fights a zombie she can roll before the fight starts and cancel the fight on a roll of 4+. Sure, it doesn’t kill any zombies, but it makes her a huge nuisance to the undead.

6. Sam: Sam the Diner Cook, former military, is the toughest hero in the game. The only character with four health boxes, he’s the one that you want slugging it out with the zombies. Unfortunately zombie slugfests rarely work out for the hero, so even Sam should avoid them. His Brawling ability to potentially cancel a fight card played against him does make him a better fighter, though a weapon would be even better. He should have a meat cleaver or something. In many of the games that we’ve played Sam’s glaring weakness has been exposed on more than one occasion. The zombie player can infect him with any of those cards that turn the hero into a zombie when they take another wound, thus nullifying the large amount of health that Sam has. That sucks for any character, but it hits Sam the hardest. Still, he’s a solid character.

7. Johnny: The quote on Johnny’s card sums him up pretty well, “I ain’t goin’ out like a chump.” Too true. Johnny usually does wind up getting killed, but no one would ever confuse him with a chump. His ending is usually spectacular. His Blitz ability is one of the most interesting in the game. During his move phase he can run around the board and fight zombies, and continue to move. His potential for destruction is unmatched, with a decent weapon he can decimate the enemy ranks in a single turn. He also wins fights on ties, which is like giving him a +1 to each fight die. However with only two health boxes the zombies only need a couple of lucky shots to take him out. Johnny has the highest home run potential of anyone in the game. Maybe he should be ranked higher.

8. Father Joseph: I don’t know what to make of Father Joseph. For starters he has one of the biggest handicaps in the game; he is unable to use guns. I don’t know why this would be, I can’t imagine that the Bible says something about killing zombies. In order to just be average he is going to need a pretty good ability. His Strength of Spirit allows him to sacrifice a point of health in order to cancel a zombie card on a roll of 3+. Considering how devastating many zombie cards are this is pretty good. The problem is that this ability is fueled by his health, and since he can’t use guns it means that he is going to be mixing it up with the zombies and short on health anyway. He is also immune to Last Night on Earth cards, so pairing him with Becky makes a pretty good combo. As the only Holy hero he benefits the most from the Faith cards.




9. Kenny: An outcast teen working at the supermarket, Kenny is able to focus his anger and kill a zombie in a fight even if no doubles are rolled. In order to use this ability Kenny has to take a wound (not a great option considering that he has two health boxes) or discard an item that he has. This ability, the awesomely named Cleanup on Aisle Seven, can be useful because anytime that you can kill a zombie is a good thing. But the cost is steep. In a one on one spot he can safely sacrifice a health to do it, but if there are other zombies around then he is basically sending himself to the morgue. And the other option is not much better, there are just not that many items that are worth sacrificing for a single kill and have it be worth it. In some scenarios the lighter is a good option, and maybe something like the jumper cables. I sort of see why the other teens don’t like Kenny too much.

10. Becky: Becky seems like she should be real good. In a zombie invasion scenario, wouldn’t we all want a nurse around? Especially a cute one like Becky? Especially in game where health is at such a premium? The problem with Becky is that she can heal the other heroes, but she has to be in the same space as them. Generally heroes should avoid being in a space with one another because of the devastating cards that cause them to lose a turn, so she runs the risk of that every time she uses it. And that is her only power. I have seen Becky go through an entire game without using her ability once, actually I’ve seen that happen more than once. Sorry Becky.

11. Billy: Someone may want to run a paternity test on Billy since he bears little resemblance to his father Sheriff Anderson. A misunderstood teen, he would rather run from his problems than face them. This makes him slightly better at running, so he gets a +1 to his movement roll each turn. Clearly not a power player, but I will say two positive things about him. One, his power automatically works each turn so you will get a lot of use out of it. Two, I’ve seen many games of LNOE come down to the last turn and often success hinges on a couple of movement rolls at the end of the game. If you need someone to get the keys to the truck or sacrifice himself to destroy a spawning pit, Billy may be your man.

12. Jenny: Jenny the Farmer’s Daughter is a total bum, I don’t know what else to say about her. I suppose her ability to keep hand weapons from breaking has it’s uses, but she should really be avoiding close combat anyway. Like with all the teen characters she has two health boxes, making her very vulnerable. She gets a slight bump in the rankings if the barn or cornfield is in play (she gets a an extra fight die in either area), but to take advantage of this she just needs to hang out in the cornfield which isn’t really a good idea. Oh, I don’t want to forget that she also gets a bonus when she rides that horse card.

The Heroes Strike Back. Finally.

I’ve recently written about the struggles of the heroes to win the quick version of Last Night on Earth. Every time out they just seem to get slaughtered. The other night the stars were aligned and a major breakthrough occurred as the isolated hero emerged triumphant. So who was this lone, brave warrior? The unlikely Amanda, Prom Queen. Honestly I’m surprised that Amanda was the one to finally pull through and throw a victory into the hero column. For starters her abilities are not particularly well suited to being a solitary hero, or so it would seem. Her first ability is totally nullified by the scenario because it allows her to add an extra fight die to any male hero that she shares a space with. I’m not sure what that power says about Amanda, but that is a blog for another day. Normally it’s tough to use but good if you can get it going. The second allows her to avoid a fight by hiding. On a roll of 4+ she disappears from the zombie’s sight and lives to fight another round. She is essentially a traveling cornfield. An excellent ability but one that I foolishly thought would not be good for this scenario since the objective is to kill zombies, not just survive them. As a student hero she has the standard two wounds, which blows. It seemed like an uphill battle but kudos to Mike for working a good strategy.

The smart zombie strategy would be to disperse the undead all over the board and make the hero pursue, you only have to survive ten rounds as the zombie player. But we sort of have an unwritten rule that the zombies should be aggressive, which I did and went after her from the start. Mike rolled well when it came to hiding and barely had to fight in the early rounds, using a couple of cards to help him out when he did have to throw down. The hiding bought him time to search and come across some good cards. He hit the jackpot with the chainsaw, the ultimate weapon for this type of matchup because it absolutely chews up zombies. Any time a hero wins a fight the zombie is killed, rather than just defeated. Somehow this weapon was just sitting there in the post office. Odd. I actually thought that I had her on the ropes because she was surrounded until the weapon came into play. I didn’t last long after that. Mike rolled well, I did not and the rest is history. Congratulations Mike. Well played.

Zombies quickly slaughtering heroes!

The Growing Hunger expansion for Last Night on Earth comes with rules for a quick, two player version of the game. It is supposed to take about ten minutes and the goal is simple; one hero has to kill six zombies before the end of ten turns. It uses a modified board of only two pieces. They are set up to form a rectangle. Lately Mike and I have been sneaking in a whole bunch of these to get our zombie fix and it has been an absolute bloodbath for the heroes. I would estimate that we have played around 20 games and the hero has not won once. Zilch. As in zero. It’s been close a bunch of times, but in the end the zombies continue on their path of mindless destruction through small town America. Dark times indeed.

The game is certainly fun for what it is, a fast skirmish type of game, but it is filled with issues. The fact is that using all the pieces for the full game just does not translate well to this shorter version. The rules come with a couple of changes but they don’t really address all the problems. Any card that addresses two heroes (as in two in the same space or something similar) instead gives the player that drew it the ability to move the sun tracker a step in whatever direction they want. Considering the game ends in a zombie victory when the sun tracker goes to zero this is a really powerful change. I realize it works both ways, but it seems like there are more zombie cards than hero cards in this category. We just ignore the cards when they come up and draw again.

Another issue is the Bitten and I Feel Strange cards. Both of these do the same thing, when a hero takes a wound they essentially get infected. The next time they are injured, instead of taking a wound they turn into a zombie hero. This is bad enough in the full game, but in a game when there is only one hero it ends the game entirely. Bad news for the hero. Those cards are grossly overpowered in this type of matchup.

Additionally the game is very dependent on the hero that you wind up with. We always do a random draw for characters so pretty often you wind up with someone who sucks. In the normal game the high school characters are a mixed bunch. Billy and Becky are total wastes, but Amanda and Sally are pretty good. I still have mixed feelings on Johnny, I respect his ability but I have a personal hatred that I can’t seem to get past. But in this version? All zombie fodder due to the two health boxes, it’s just very hard to keep them alive. Plus, Amanda’s power lets her give an extra fight die to a male that she shares a space with. So that’s useless in the short game. The other night I was psyched when I got Sam the Diner Cook. He has four health boxes (the most in the game) and I drew the med kit (which heals you fully) in the beginning. I figured that with that combo I could just out slug the zombies. Until Bitten was played on me after the first fight, essentially nullifying all the health I had since the next hit turned me into a zombie. Ooh, I was so mad!

With a little bit of strategy the zombies can easily avoid the hero, making them run around the board and chip away at them. Usually the sun rises before the zombies are in any real danger. What needs to happen is the hero needs to get a gun early and have some luck with it in terms of holding onto it. Pick off the zombies and ride into the sunset. Eventually the hero will come out on top, but things are very grim most of the time.

The game is actually a lot of fun, I don’t mean to be so critical of it. But a little more thought should have gone into the rules, rather than just slapping it together and throwing it into the instructions. I really like the idea of the hero customizing the hero deck, maybe take 40 cards and shuffle them up. Lots of weapons and no lighters. But that takes time which defeats the whole purpose of this variant. Or maybe make a hero duo have to kill 10 zombies? Again, this is making the game longer.

So, it seems to me that I need to find a good, fast two player game. As far as two player games go my favorite is still Starship Catan, but I would love to find some others, especially ones that play quick. Like 20 minutes quick. Anyone out there have any suggestions?

Zombie Apocalypse- Last Night on Earth

Everytime that I play Last Night on Earth I am reminded of two things; how poorly written and confusing some of the rules can be, and how much of a fun, tense game it actually is. Most of my gaming takes place at night, but yesterday Mike and I found ourselves with some afternoon time available for gaming. We decided on LNOE, which in my opinion is much better as a two player game than with a larger group. The game is naturally zombies versus heroes so it makes sense to have it as a two player game. It works fine with multiple players, but when a gamer is controlling an entire side by themselves it really lets you develop strategy and execute a plan. There is something to be said for the heroes to all be controlled to by a different person, it sort of reflects the chaos of a real life zombie invasion, but it also really minimizes each players contribution to the game. A single hero may do very little on any given turn.



We went totally random in the set up and I wound up with the zombies and Mike got the heroes. We drew the Zombie Apocalypse scenario (from the Growing Hunger expansion) which has all sorts of crazy stuff going on in it. 21 zombies for me with autospawn. Well stocked buildings, search markers, extra cards, and respawning heroes for Mike. The goal of this particular scenario is for the zombies to destroy six buildings before the sun comes up (buildings are destroyed when a zombie occupies every space in the building and there are no heroes in it). It¹s a nice little change of pace since it is normally the heroes trying to accomplish a task, and the zombies stopping them. Mike wound up with a pretty good squad as well. To start off he had Jenny, Sam, Sally, and the kick ass Rachelle. With his bonus cards he got lucky and came strapped with some serious firepower (revolvers and pump shotguns), which goes a long way in this game.

The game started off slow for me as I was having a hard time getting my zombies out onto the board. And with small numbers it was easy for Mike to pick them off with his many guns, he knows better than to get close to the brain hungry zombies. We had also ruled before the game that the buildings that were only a single space (the morgue and something else) were only rooms inside of another building, so they did not count as a destroyed building. They also did not get a free search marker. Eventually I was able to get some large numbers of zombies on the board and start to do some damage, in two rounds I was able to destroy three buildings and kill Jenny (though she was promptly replaced by the far superior Amanda). I will give Jenny some credit though, she held out for a bit and took some zombies with her. I¹ve never thought much of Jenny but on this day she did her farm proud. On the other hand, my zombies were fighting like wimps all day (lots of 1¹s and 2¹s) and I really struggled in fights.



While all of this was going down Rachelle was absolutely wreaking havoc on the zombie population with her firearms. I tried my hardest to keep my zombies apart from one another to avoid the blast of the shotgun, but then she would just use the revolver and pick them off one by one. She was a force to be reckoned with. I think that she is my favorite character, or my least favorite on this day. She starts with a gun and a flashlight, which is very good in itself. But then she also has a power that lets her ignore a wound on a roll of 6. It doesn’t work all that often, but when it does you sort of fall in love with her for being such a tough chick.

For a couple of turns I felt like I was on pace to win this thing and then everything started going wrong. I had destroyed four buildings and I had masses of zombies getting ready to overrun two remaining structures. A gruesome battle in the supermarket left Sam the Cook dead. Johnny the Quarterback appeared in his place and in a single turn, using his blitz ability and some well played cards by Mike, managed to take out five zombies and nullify the threat to the high school. I was devastated. I still had a shot as a fifth building had gone down and I was massing to take over the supermarket. The problem is that I was running out of time. The other option that opened up to me was that I had killed three heroes (Rachelle died a hero, I¹m sure that the police force honored her in some way), so one more death would win it for me (if the zombies kill four heroes victory is automatic). I had enough zombies to take over the supermarket but Mike brought Amanda and Sally to the vicinity and the zombies were lured away from the building (and victory!). On the last turn of the game all I had to do was defeat one of the two high school girls and I would win. Mike just needed to survive. I got to give it up to Mike here, he totally had the right strategy. He didn’t need to kill the zombies or charge into the building, all that he needed to do was lure them out and he put himself into a position to do so.

My rolls were pathetic and I had nothing all that useful in my hand. I had shambled a couple of zombies to the space and the fight wound up being seven zombies versus the two girls, but in the end the girls survived and the town stood for another day. Amanda has a great ability that lets her hide and potentially cancel any fight that she is in, and she was able to get rid of two of them that way.

What LNOE does well is create very dramatic situations that often play out until the very last turn of the game. It¹s a lot of fun. The characters all have distinct personas and as they move around over the course of the game they develop personal histories unique to that game. Maybe I get too into it, but I definitely get invested in what is happening with them. It is also nice to play a game that is not operating on a grand scale, such as colonizing alien galaxies and saving the world from invading orcs. Everything in LNOE is on a small scale. Small town being invaded by zombies, there are a handful of survivors left to battle them. We know all of their names and what they have, what motivates them and what they can do. They fight with jumper cables and meat cleavers.

Back to the point that I raised earlier about the rules being confusing. A lot of the text is worded in ways that make it difficult to understand how an item or event is supposed to operate. For example, the pump shotgun. Do I roll a die for each zombie in the space, and if any of them are a one is the gun out of ammo? Or do I roll them all and then roll a separate time to see if any ammo remains? I think that myself and Mike are fair with rules so we were able to come to fairly simple conclusions and keep the game moving, but with larger numbers or less experienced players it could really be an issue and slow down what is otherwise a very fun experience.

Last Night on Earth- Hero vs Hero

Now that the zombies have been fended off and the dust has settled it is time for the survivors to fight for supplies and supremacy. A friend and I modified the rules of Last Night on Earth and made it into a battle of hero vs hero, the goal being pretty staightforward- kill the other team. We set it up sort of like capture the flag with teams of three. Each team had a counter that served as a flag, the other team had to get to the "flag" and bring it back to the building they had designated as their fort. Easy enough.



For the board we used four of the L-shaped pieces to form a narrow rectangle, which seemed a little constraining so we also added the large square piece off to the side to give a little more space to move in. The move and search rules were unmodified from the original game and for combat we just went with the higher roll causes a wound, tie goes to the attacker. We used just the Hero deck for cards and there were more than a couple we had to ignore because they specifically mention zombies and couldn't be altered all that easy, but not a problem at all. We randomly drew our
heroes and proceeded to kill one another. We also gave each character a random hero card to start.

One thing became obvious right away, this was going to be all about firepower. Guns ruled the day (makes sense) and I was in serious trouble from the get go. I had Father Joseph (can't use guns), Sally (can only use the revolver), and Billy (a fast runner!). Mike was packing an arsenal with the gun toting Sheriff Anderson and Rachelle plus Becky to run around and scavenge.

I tried to capitalize on Billy's speed and make a dash for the flag. He wound up getting pinned down in the gas station and shot to death by his father. The rest of the battle sort of went the same and I lost pretty convincingly.

I think that the game went pretty well and was definitely fun. It was fast (about 15 minutes) and has a lot of potential if we fleshed out the rules some more and came up with more story driven missions. I would play again.

Last Night on Earth Review

I’m not one of those obsessed zombie fan boys who feels the need to engross themselves in all things brainless, but I had seen Last Night on Earth (Flying Frog Productions) staring out at me from the wall of my local comic store for several weeks so I decided to buy it. Besides I had picked it up and read over the box so many times that the folks in the store were probably starting to think that I was going to steal it. The packaging is excellent and the box wasn’t so big that I couldn’t fit it in my backpack. So I bought it, rode home on my bike, and introduced it later that night to my regular gaming group.

First off, the components of the game are of exceptional quality. It has two decks of cards (hero cards and zombie cards) and both are glossy and have high quality cinema style pictures on all of them. They have been shuffled a bunch of times and seemingly show no wear so far. The heroes and zombies are all represented with nice plastic miniatures; you can actually tell who the heroes are from the pieces and there are a couple of different zombie poses (I personally like the groping zombie the best, but I’m sure that not all feel that way). The game board consists of a central square piece and then six additional L-shaped ones that wrap around the central piece to form a big square. Each contains different buildings that one would find in a typical small town. The game never uses all of them in any scenario creating a somewhat random playing environment (woe to the heroes denied access to the gun shop and the police station). Set up is very easy; some shuffling, set up the board, pick up a scenario, and you are on your way.

The game pits the players against one another. It is zombies vs. heroes. I think that the ideal game is five players (four controlling one hero each and the fifth being the brains of the zombies) though a one on one game is surprisingly good (one player controlling all four heroes). Once you get the hang of it a game should take about 1 ½ to two hours, though this could be considerably less is the players know what they are doing.

In most scenarios the objective is for the heroes to accomplish a certain goal before the sun comes up; at which point the zombies overrun the small town and presumably humanity is doomed. No pressure. Some examples are to destroy the spawning pits from which the zombies emerge, prevent the zombies for overtaking the manor house, or to find some keys and gas up the truck in the center of town and get away. The game does a good job of recreating the climatic ending of a zombie movie. The urgency is certainly there as the sun tracker counts down and the constantly spawning zombies allows no rest for the weary heroes.

Each game turn consists of the zombie turn followed by the hero turn. The zombie turn appears to be the more complicated of the two. Not necessarily in strategy, but in the sense that the zombie(s) player has more options available to him (Her? Them? It?) Each turn they draw a number of cards from the zombie deck, all of which succeed in making life miserable for the players in a variety of ways. Locked doors, shambling zombies of superhuman speed, and the dreaded Undead Hate the Living card (which allows the zombies to fight better). The zombie are very limited in their movement, but they do have the advantage of being able to eat their way through walls and other obstacles. They are also very hard to kill. After moving the zombies fight any heroes they share a space with. At the end of each turn there is also a chance that more zombies may be spawned into play, which is why the heroes should concentrate on the goal of the scenario, rather than just playing the role of zombie slayer. Trust me, they will just keep coming.

In most scenarios the burden lies squarely on the shoulders of the heroes. Based on who the players wind up with this could consist of a bunch of high school kids overmatched by an army of the living dead or the town sheriff and priest carefully slaying zombies while the local drifter loots for supplies. For the hero turn the player decides if they want to move or search the building that they are in for supplies. They can fire a ranged weapon and then fight whatever zombies are in the same space. On turns when no zombies are in the area the hero turn can go by very fast, so make the most of it. Working as a team also goes a long way. Zombies also have no choice but to go after a hero that is closed to them, so they can also be used as bait to lure zombies away from crucial areas.

The first handful of times that we played the zombies had the clear advantage, easily whupping up on the heroes with relative ease. The more we played though, the winning strategy became more apparent. Heroes can not allow themselves to be pinned down and surrounded, they need to try to get themselves some ranged weapons, and they need to keep the scenario goal in mind at all times. There is nothing wrong with getting a hero killed if he is able to accomplish something in death. There is even something heroic about it, and really, isn’t that what being a hero is all about? Besides, under a lot of circumstances a new hero will come into play. Now, after playing a bunch, I would say that the games are pretty balanced between the two groups. And it was very exciting the first time that the heroes won, even if it took about a dozen games to get there.

The characters are not at all equal to one another. There are clear winners (the gun toting Sheriff Anderson) and losers (Billy, the useless son of the sheriff. He’s a slightly faster runner than the others. Wow. Apparently the apple has fallen very far from the tree in this case.). I have no problem with that, some people would be better at surviving a zombie apocalypse then others and this reflects that. I would recommend picking the heroes that you want to use for the first couple of times because it is hard to learn the rules when you are getting killed quickly. After everyone has the hang of it I recommend the random draw for characters because it is a lot of fun to see who you get stuck with. Billy, Jenny, and Johnny seem to be at the weak end of the spectrum, with Sheriff Anderson being the ass kicker of the group. The others all have their uses and if someone plays them to their strengths they should be just fine.

My main complaint with the game is that some of the rules are open to interpretation and a bit vague at times. Clearly I am not the only one who feels this way since Flying Frog has put a very lengthy FAQ on their website to address the numerous discrepancies in the rules. Many of the issues stem from the use of the word “turn” and what exactly it refers to. Many of the cards in the game have effects that last for a turn, but it is not made clear if this is just the players turn or the entire turn (i.e. all of the zombie players on a given round).

The game is also very open ended and ripe with possibilities for custom scenarios, which the game makers clearly support. There are a couple of new free scenarios on the Flying Frog website, plus the game comes with a lot of extra pieces to use in creating your own scenarios. I’ve only tried to make my own a couple of times, and I have struggled a little bit in getting the balance right. So far they have all been pretty one sided, but I see no reason why they can’t improve given some more time to play around with it.

This game is a winner, even for non fans of the zombie genre. We’ve played it about 25 times so far and I would happily play it 25 more. The changing scenarios really keep it interesting as do the wide range of characters available and the randomness of the board. And I know this sounds ridiculous for a game about zombies, but it seems grounded in reality. A person should not be able to kill a zombie without some difficulty and if zombies were overrunning a small town I’m not sure that anyone would be able to stop them. And this game is cool with that.

All in all a very good game. It’s a bit pricey at $40+, but seeing the quality of all the components you certainly see what you are paying for.