The board game (or is it a wargame?) Zombicide is a brutal and exciting and imbalanced fight for survival. In the game, up to six Survivors embark on a mission (usually to retrieve supplies or a special weapon) in a city infested with up to 70-ish zombies. Of course, zombies are zombies. They shamble or, in a few special cases, run toward you, and ideally you use the power of modern firearm technology to shoot them in the head before they bite you. It's a tried and true recipe for reliable entertainment, and as an avowed fan of the zombie genre, I can't find a flaw in it. Despite my bias, I believe Zombicide is one of those board games that not every game, but every wargamer, ought to own, and not necessarily for the game itself. Zombicide has both some really useful assets and some interesting lessons in game design, so here are the five reasons I think every wargamer should own some edition of Zombicide.
Zombicide takes place on the mean streets of some ruined city. It cleverly uses zebra crossings (crosswalks) to mark different zones in the game, and manhole covers as a hiding place for zombies. There are 9 large double-sided tiles (the board has to be big enough to accomodate, on a bad day, nearly 70 miniatures) included in the box.
As it turns out, battle mats are really expensive. I use Battletech battle mats but for what they add to the atmosphere of your game, you can never really have too many. The Zombicide street tiles are pretty useful for modern and sci fi wargames in urban settings.
The one disadvantage to the street tiles is that they also include building walls and interiours. That's feels very board gamey. In most wargames, structures are meant to be represented by actual structures, partly so your troops can interact with them, and partly to help clarify line-of-sight (no need to ask whether one troop can see another when there's a literal wall between them on the board). I tend to cover some of the illustrated buildings with model buildings, but the more tiles you use the less likely it is you have or want enough buildings to cover every illustration. The ones I don't cover, I declare as the remains of ruins, and put a (physical) loot box or two among the clutter for my miniatures to search.
Not every wargamer agrees with me but, unlike battle mats, I do think you can have too many miniatures. Like, literally, you run out of storage space. However, even those that do agree with me likely also agree that you need a variety of miniatures. You never know when you're going to encounter an unexpected game opportunity for a setting you don't collect. You owe it to yourself to have some number of fantasy, some number of sci fi, some number of historical, and some number of modern miniatures. Zombicide has six Survivors who look decidedly modern. Mark that off your list!
The Zombicide survivors are admittedly possibly unusual (my favourite, I think, is Wanda the chainsaw-wielding roller-skating waitress) but they're really good. I'm alwasy nervous buying miniatures outside of, specifically, Warhammer. I've been disappointed by almost every other miniature company once or twice, for one reason or another (I may have a peculiar set of standards). But Zombicide is almost beyond reproach, right up there with Citadel's best. They're highly detailed, a pleasure to paint, and beautifully sculpted. Easily equal in quality to the Fallout miniatures, but more of them with 50% less irradiated mutants.
When you play wargames, you never really know when you're going to open a game book and see that you need 20 enemy miniatures to play through a scenario. It's true that you can just use tokens, but those aren't very cinematic. You could substitute in 5 of these and 5 of those and 10 of these-other-ones. I've done that before, and it works, but the result is that every mob of enemies ends up being a motley crew of the same 3 gibbering mouthers, 4 grecks, 5 orcs, 4 kobolds, and 2 demons. It works, it just means that no matter what I'm fighting, it's always the same group of non-uniform D&D monsters from Wrath of Ashardalon.
In short, it's an actual relief to have enough of the same baddies that make sense in both a modern and sci fi setting. Zombicide provides 60 zombie miniatures. They're mostly modern, but most of them also fit into my sci fi settings. There are a couple of different varieties, including the 40 walkers (including 5 unique sculpts), 16 runners (2 sculpts), 8 fatties, and an abomination.
Next time you need a handful of enemies, you'll have them.
I have mixed feelings about cards in wargames. On one hand, I feel like most wargames already have enough specialized components without adding cards into the mix. On the other hand, cards are a lot of fun and, when done well, they can actually alleviate the need for some of the specialized components.
Zombicide uses cards, and it uses them well. It's because of cards that Wanda the chainsaw-wielding roller-skating waitress can become Wanda the shotgun-wielding roller-skating waitress instead. The rules of what you see is what you get don't apply, because you have a card that overrides it. I can't say I'd want that in every wargame I play, but there are only six Survivors in Zombicide, and you're always playing against an AI, so you don't mind double-checking what weapon your miniature is using.
Broadly, though, Zombicide demonstrates that cards can fit into a wargame at all. You can extrapolate from that the concept of random tables, or use a hybrid form in which a random table selection is tied to a card (Hearts mean healing, Diamond provides a victory point, Spade provides a boost to attack, and so on). Play a few games of Zombicide and you might be inspired to add cards to some of your games to add variation.
In addition to a bunch of great miniatures, useful street tiles, and some clever mechanics, the Zombicide box also contains an actual game you can play solo or with friends! Yes, Zombicide is a game, and it's fun. Obviously you have to enjoy the zombie genre, and I know that's not for everyone. I can't get enough of it, between movies and video games and tabletop games, so Zombicide is essential for me. If you're a zombie fan, or ambivalent to what horde of baddies you fight, then you should consider Zombicide for your gaming shelf (I don't even bother storing the street tiles in the box because I use them so often) and your gaming table.
Header photo by Christopher Paul High, Unsplash License.