Board Game Research - The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead
Inspired by the comics and not the television series. This game features all the artwork from Charlie Adlard, the artist behind the comics.

At the beginning, each player randomly selects a follower and main character and places them on a resource board. They are all given one of each resource and a private location to scout. 3 public locations are placed face up at the top of the game board for anyone to scout. The resources are available across the board in the form of food, ammo and gas. Food is used for getting rid of fatigue on your survivors, ammo can be used to roll the black dice which guarantees at least one zombie kill with each roll at the 50% chance of surrounding yourself with zombies and finally gas, which can be used to move an extra space with each use of the gas or move over zombies if you are unable to fight them.

The board is set out into a series of hexes which means that the game is not limited to just moving along a board but allows for you to strategically decide where you want to do. Each time you move you have to place a zombie token on that hex which allows for trying to trip up your opponents. There are no conventional dice but you are able to move up to 3 spaces each turn. Each time the player lands on a resource spot, he must draw as many encounter cards as there are resources. Each of these encounter cards involve a challenge that the player must try to overcome using the dice pool of the survivors that he has in his party.

Each of the main characters and followers have dice that are associated with them along with any special rules (i.e Shane has the ability to turn any "Zombie" to a "Hat") There are 3 types of dice: Red, Green and Blue and each of them are good at different things. The red is the best for killing zombies as it has the most "Zombie" symbols on it, the green is best for actions as it has the most "Hats" on it and the blue dice are the most versatile with an equal amount of "Hats" and "Zombies" on it including a "Caravan" symbol that gives the player the ability to choose it to be either a "Hat" or "Zombie". The dice pool is the collection of all the dice shown on the survivor cards that you have (i.e if you had Glenn as your main character with Carl as a follower, you would roll 2 green dice, 1 blue die and a red die) This give the game a lot of replayability as there are 6 different starting characters to play as, as well as numerous amounts of followers so that the game is not the same every time. Having dice that is not the conventional type of dice gives the game a more geeky feel.

The aim of the game is to try and scout 3 different locations before your opponents do. You can either scout one of the public locations (which are replaced upon successful scouting) or your private location (but you won't get another one). Each location card has a set of objectives for you to complete in order to scout it successfully with them getting progressively harder to do based on if it is your first, second or third location that you are scouting. This again gives the game a lot of replayability as there are around 10 different locations on the board.

Conclusion
The game was very fun to play, being a massive fan of the comics that I am, it was a must buy for me. I have played this game with geeks and non-geeks and it seems to be an enjoyable all rounder even if it follows a very geeky style. The non-conventional dice make it very different and take it away from the normal style of game playing that you are used to. The artwork and design of the board/tokens was very nice, not only did it keep in line with the art of the comics (being done by the artists of the comics helps) but it feels very zombie apocalypse-like and sets the theme for the game. One very interesting note about the game is that it has also been designed to be played solo as well which is unusual for a board game.