BLAM! Surrounded by Zombies

This is what happens when you choose to shoot a gun around the hungry corpse laden city that is Atlanta.  At least in The Walking Dead Board Game this is what happens.  While you might hear plenty glocks firing in downtown ATL in reality, you won't hear "uhrrrrrr" followed soon after.

To begin, this game is based off of the ongoing hit series: The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman (published by Image), which has spurred further acclaim and success by the popular AMC show.  If you haven't heard of the series or show, you may need to be checked in for Alzheimer's because this piece of property is everywhere.  It just recently jumped on the board game bandwagon.

I love the series (though honestly, I haven't kept track since around issue 30) so I may be a bit biased on the game.  I'm also an avid board game enthusiast (comes with the comic book territory I guess).  But this game impressed me.  I'm generally nauseated by any property that expands too far from its initial form of media.  I mean, look at Superman on the Nintendo 64 (YouTube it if you've never played it).  I also see this game in spades in book stores and hobby stores, so it doesn't seem too popular.  But at a small box game price point, forty dollars retail, I decided to give it a go.

So you randomly draw from six of the funny book's main characters.  They don't typically start on the map where you'd expect (for example, Dale doesn't start at the campsite and Rick doesn't start in the hospital), which is fine.   I'm not role playing, I'm gaming.  From there you move about the board trying to secure safe havens.  Once you secure three, you win.  The game is fairly tough.  You can move anywhere on the board within three spaces in attempts to collect resources and reach safe havens to clear them.  However, when you do move, you attract zombies in your wake.  Every breath you take,  every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, they'll be watching you.  And following you.  And eating you.  Seriously, as you move across the board it completely fills up with zombies every space which you have to wade and fight through to get to resources or safe havens then fight more.

Now it's not all fighting.  Some of it features certain rolls of dice (the game is dice pool based) to pass an event.  One of the cooler event card types are questionnaires.  You ask the group you are playing with a question and depending on how they respond and how varied the response is, you could get a bonus, they could get a bonus, or you could all be screwed.  For example:  Rose pulled a card in which we were asked if confronted would we fight or flee.  Once decided we went around the room.  Sam chose fight.  John chose fight.  I chose flee.  Because the response was varied and we didn't all fight, I got away with the resources while they took damage (in the form of fatigue markers).  Now if we all fought, we would've all have gotten resources or if we all would've fled we all would've taken fatigue markers.  You may think I'm a jerk for fleeing, but I won.  But like all jerks, we will pay our dues.  Just like Shane.

If you are a board game fan or one of those fans of The Walking Dead (or a combo of both) I suggest you give it a go or look up more information on boardgamegeeks.com.  It will cover many more features and gameplay than I covered here as well.  Killing zombies while eating a mound of cookies with friends has never been more enjoyable.