Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Zombie State is a fun but extremely challenging doomsday scenario where 2-5 players can compete or work together as suits them. Each player controls one of 5 near-future regional superpowers (Asian Alliance, European Defense League, etc., each operating within its own continent); each world power is desperate to contain and (hopefully) eradicate the zombie virus. The storage box, game board and various components are all very durable and there is a very nice plastic storage tray insert that sports separate bins for storing all of the components separately. Each player gets their own large color-coded play mat that summarizes what they can do on their turn and explains all the available technology to be researched. Average game time is about two to three hours and the complexity of this strategy game is moderate but a bit simpler than other moderate difficulty world conflict games like Axis & Allies 1942. The gameboard map (including sea zone connections between continents) resembles Risk but, fortunately, gameplay does not. I've heard it compares to Pandemic but I've not played that game. As zombies spill across national borders, the game becomes more interactive with the other players, although ultimately, you're on your own. Working together is generally the best strategy but you can attempt to wall off your areas from your neighbors or even trick the zombies into moving away into your neighbor's lands. This is a bleak game of mobilizing and deploying your military, population and resource management, and researching new technologies to combat the zombie hordes. Researching the various technology trees allows you to customize your strategy and gain an edge on the zombie threat; there are three tech trees (Medicine, Science and Military), each divided into three tiers, and skills from one tier usually complement those in the others. You get a lot of tokens (active/inactive zombies, extra resources beyond those provided on the map, quarantine zones, research tech testing and success). You also get 5 "freedom points" per player shaped like bowling pins and color-coded, as well as three card decks: resource cards, random events, and outbreaks. Depending on your remaining population, you replenish a variable number of freedom points and resource cards every turn. As you lose countries to zombies, you lose freedom points and possibly resource cards (if the country overrun produced any). Each round, the zombies become active and either feed (reducing population and creating a like amount of zombies) or move to adjacent countries (preferring those with the largest population). If the moving zombies encounter your military units (represented by tank minis), a battle ensues. Once they have fed or moved, any zombies not destroyed by your military go inactive until the next round (once every player has had their turn). On your turn, you can spend freedom points and/or resource cards to mobilize more military units, barricade existing units for a defense bonus, deploy and engage existing military units into battle, purchase additional resource cards (food, fuel, metal and wood, and chemicals) or research new technology. You also resolve three new random event cards (some good, some bad) and move your markers along the virus mutation track. The mutation track begins at 1 and ends at 15 when the virus goes airborne and the game ends (whoever has the highest population when this happens is declared the winner). At various points along the track, players will be hit by new random outbreaks or more outbreak cards will be shuffled into the random events deck (3 per occurrence). Players who have researched higher technology accelerate their progress on the mutation track and will, more often than not, have bad things happen to them first, but they will usually be in a better position to deal with the bad stuff and win the game. I liked Zombie State's gameplay and the durability of the game board and components. In my opinion, it's better than other more polished-looking but much less fun zombie games like Zombies!!! 2nd Edition or Last Night On Earth The Zombie Game. It is also unique in providing a global view of the conflict on a grand scale rather than focusing on the plight of individuals. What I didn't like about it were the high school art class illustrations decorating the box, cards, rulebook and tokens. Seriously, art this amateurish could have snuck by quality control in the 1970s or 80s but not by today's standards. For a game as expensive as this, such poor artwork is inexcusable. The game looks rather old school as a result, despite having some very nice, modern and professional plastic minis for the tanks and sealed borders (kind of like having a bag full of mini-Berlin Walls complete with watch towers). Ultimately though, you play a game because it is fun and not for how sexy it looks, right? So here's my final verdict: Zombie State delivers the goods for end-of-the-world and zombie fans who enjoy strategy games of moderate length and complexity. You really do get a feel for what it must be like to be a weary world leader sealed in an underground bunker somewhere making life or death decisions, knowing those disappearing blips on the map are real people who, however misguidedly, put their trust in you. Will you lead your people to victory or disaster? Will the walking dead rule the earth? The future is in your hands...
GAME REPORT #1: (August 16, 2010): My first game was a three player one where the rules allowed us to ignore North and South America. Asia, Africa and Europe (barely) survived, with Asia easily in the winning position after discovering a vaccine and the cure after luring most of their zombies into Eastern Siberia. Once there, they had nowhere to go; zombies won't move into unpopulated adjacent countries so if you can create "containment zones" you can peacefully get rid of tons of your unwanted zombies by strategically sacrificing a portion of your civilian population. Unfortunately, this is not a strategy you can count on every game nor is it a guarantee you will win, as another infection outside your zone is only a random die roll away! Africa had been holding their own amazingly well early on (despite massive outbreaks) with an aggressive, high-tech military that was always on the move (complete with air strikes) but the dark continent was quickly being overrun by the endgame thanks to migratory hordes of hungry zombies coming down from western Europe. I played Europe. After an initial devastating outbreak in the UK, I had swiftly conceded everything west and south of Moscow to the living dead but was grimly hanging on with an impressive four tanks guarding Moscow and a series of walls and depopulated "containment zones" that were succeeding in blocking off the rampaging hordes of African and Asian ghouls. I concentrated on developing military and defensive tech. This turtling strategy, while effective in preventing my doom, let me come in a distant second. We all cooperated (while still advancing our best national interests) and the Asia player used his civilian decoys to great effect on our borders, preventing zombies from moving out into our populated areas more than once. Lots of scary fun was had by all and the game was fun even while we were losing. There's just something about zombies eating people that puts a smile on my face...
GAME REPORT #2 (August 17, 2010): I just tried a five player game and some of us weren't nearly so lucky as the first game. Through a series of disastrous random event cards and outbreaks, the Asia player was utterly annihilated by turn 8. All of his resource production centers were eaten alive and soon he had zombies in every country under his control. With his resource production centers destroyed, he no longer produced any resource cards nor could he mobilize any military to respond to the emergency. In short, he was doomed and none of the other players could spare him any aid, being forced to deal with their own infections. As soon as the first player is destroyed, the game ends early by initiating a final round (and desperate quest for replenishing population points which win the game). The rest of the players were in desperate shape. Europe had a horrifyingly low score of only 5 population but would not have survived another round. His last bastion, the UK, was completely surrounded and infected by zombies. North America was on its last legs with a rapidly dwindling population of 8 and only two uninfected countries left; they were maybe good for another round or two at best. South America, after desperately ceding the north all to the way to Mexico to create undead containment zones for Brazil, was actually hanging in there with a population of 12. I won as Africa with a healthy (all things considered) score of 15 population with four countries left on the west coast. But I would have lost half of them before another two rounds were up as both my heaviest population centers had just been infected. Both South America and Africa fared pretty well in this game up until the final two rounds, when a double outbreak hit in our most heavily populated countries. Had the game continued, I suspect South America would have recovered faster than me and eventually won but I am pretty sure Africa would have hung in there and still taken second place. Everyone else, unfortunately, would have been zombified into oblivion, with vast swaths of the planet overrun or completely depopulated. This is a tough, scary game not for the faint of heart! I'm still enjoying it and stand by my "thumbs up" recommendation. I can't wait to play it again... The random events and different tech strategies ensure the game never plays the same way twice, even if you are playing as the same superpower.
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The world is too late. The virus known as MV1 has gone global. You the leaders of your people have moved quickly to consolidate your local governments in hopes that you are not too late to carve some chance of hope out of what appears to be none. Warning Choking Hazard! Contains small parts, not for children under 3.
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