Hello survivors, welcome to the zombie Apocalypse. Pull up a shotgun and and I’ll tell you the tale of a band of everyday people doomed to try and not get eaten in and around the city of Atlanta. Don’t make too much noise, in fact you may want to trade that shotgun in for a sturdy axe, because noise is what brings the Walkers around.

If you have read the comic book or seen the show on AMC, you’ll quickly recognize the theme of Z-Man Games’s The Walking Dead Board Game. Now don’t get too confused with Cryptozoic’s version, of the Walking Dead Board Game because it’s all we can do to differentiate the names in our database. Cryptozoic has the license to produce the T.V. version of the game, Z-Man has the license to produce the comic book version and that’s the one I’ve recently had the pleasure to play.

If you are a fan of the comic, T.V. show or enjoy games that simulate surviving a zombie Apocalypse, this game can be an hour or two of fun for you and your family and friends. If you are looking for a bit more control over your fate and enjoy deeper strategy Euro-style games, you may have to take off your serious hat, relax and enjoy the story that this game has to tell. Your fate is in the hands of an Encounter deck that randomly decides how many zombies you’ll have to face, how many resources you’re going to need to succeed and how many more followers will join your group to fight off the Walkers.

Just like the world created by Robert Kirkman, it’s not easy to survive in this game and have everything go your way. You are going to struggle and fight for resources and your life. You start the game with a main character and a follower. You also get 1 food (used to heal fatigue/wounds), 1 ammo (used to roll a special die that helps kill zombies, but may make too much noise and surrounds you with more zombies) and 1 gas (used to move more than your allotted 3 spaces or zoom past zombies tokens on the board without a fight).

The player board shown above shows Andrea as your main character and Rachel as your sole follower for the moment. The bandaged wound counters on them show how much fatigue they have and if they ever get 3 of them, they will die. The number board helps you track your resources in order from top to bottom: food, ammo and gas. Underneath your board shows your scouted locations; succesfully scout 3 of them and you will win the game. On the right side you can keep inventory items gained from some encounter cards to add effects and powers to your group. Your main character and followers will each have their own effects and sometimes drawbacks.

On your turn you will get to do 2 things in order. First you can consume any number of food to heal that many fatigue counters off of your party. Then you can move your main character’s avatar on the board up to 3 spaces. If you move in to a space with resources you have to stop and reveal the top card of the encounter deck and play through the encounter for each resource on the space.

So, if a space has one of each resource on it, ammo, food and gas, you will have to go through 3 Encounters. Each Encounter has its own Challenge and consequences for success or failure. Most of the time, you will get the resource from the space regardless of success or failure but sometimes failure will result in you not getting the resource. Encounters are where you fight most of the zombie hordes, but your activity will draw zombies to areas of the board where you’ve been. Any time you move, you will randomly draw a Zombie Token and place it face down on the space you left.

These tokens have a number hidden on the bottom from 1 to I think as high as 12. If someone wants to move into or through that space, they will have to turn the token over and fight that number of zombies. Also, if you use the black ammo dice in a fight there is a chance you can surround yourself with zombie tokens. If BLAM! comes up on the ammo die, you will kill the number of zombies it says but you will also surround your character’s avatar on the board with zombie tokens on all 6 sides. You can use a gas to race past these tokens and avoid a fight.

In addition to the black ammunition dice, your party will determine the pool of dice you get to roll for encounters and zombie fights.

If you look back up to the player board picture you will see that Andrea gives you 2 blue and 1 green dice and Rachel gives you 1 green die. These will be the 4 dice this party will roll in an encounter or fight. Zombie heads on the dice count as zombie kills; in a fight if you roll the same number of kills as there are zombies in the pack you are fighting you will kill them all. Any you don’t kill will add Fatigue tokens to a party member of your choice. There are also baseball caps represented on some sides of the dice, these represent actions needed in some encounter rolls. Some dice will also have a side with an RV, this is a wild and can be used as a zombie kill or a hat. And of course, some sides are blank, these are the ones I’m really good at rolling. The red, blue and green dice each have their own ratios of these symbols representing a character’s specialty in fighting or other actions.

As I said, winning the game requires safely scouting 3 locations. These locations are on the board, but are only available to scout if they have the corresponding card dealt as part of the 3 community cards at the top of the board. You shuffle the Location deck and deal 3 for the board and 1 secret location to each player. If you land on one of the available locations, you have to complete its task at your current level. If you have scouted no locations, you need to complete the first level task. If you’ve scouted one, you need to complete the second level and finally the third level to win a game. When you scout a location you collect the card face up, but note that you only have to scout that location once at the current level.

For example if you scout the football stadium at level 1, you’re going to have to scout other locations for level 2 and 3.

If you land on your secret location, you reveal it to announce that you are scouting it. If you succeed you leave it face up as one of your scouted locations and do not draw a new one to replace it. If you fail to scout it, you can turn it over to scout again next turn or come back to it later. If a player successfully scouts one of the 3 community locations, they collect it and a new one is drawn to replace it.

This is a very luck filled game and your fate is in the Encounter cards and the dice you role. Your dice pool is grown when you collect a lot of followers improving your chances at fighting zombies, completing encounter actions and scouting locations. Unfortunately, collecting more followers relies on drawing the right encounters. You can increase your odds by going for resources on the board and doing as many encounters as you can, but if your luck is running bad, you may just run in to no cards that give you followers.

This is a good thing for an intellectual property game that focuses on simulating the dire world represented in the comic books and I give it points for capturing the hopeless feeling of trying to survive in a world filled with hungry zombies. If you go in with a sense of humor and can laugh at your misfortune and the misfortune of your friends, this is a great game for you. I’m especially good at drawing multiple, “Kill 7 zombies,” encounters when I only have 1 follower multiple times in a row and rolling nothing but hats and blanks. I usually follow that up with an encounter that requires me to roll just one hat and proceed to roll 7 zombie kills. It’s epic bad beat story tellin’ at its best and infinitely better than a marathon of Titan.