Zombies Random Game Generator

This past week I picked up MidEvil and Zombies 3.5 to complete my Zombies Series collection. The result is now I have a shit-ton of Zombies games without an order I want to play them in. So here’s a quick and dirty random game generator I’ve devised. Every roll should be with a D6 (since that’s the dice the games use.)

Table 1 – Which Core Game?
1-3 – Zombies, roll on Table 2
4 – MidEvil, roll on Table 3
5 – Martians, roll on Table 4
6 – Humans, roll on Table 5

Table 2 – Which Version of Zombies?
1-5 – Zombies, roll on Table 6
6 – Zombies 4, start playing!

Table 3 – MidEvil and Which Expansions?
1 – Just MidEvil, start playing!
2-3 – MidEvil with MidEvil 2, start playing!
4-5 – MidEvil with MidEvil 3, start playing!
6 – MidEvil with MidEvil 2 and MidEvil 3, start playing!

Table 4 – Which Mode of Martians?
1-3 – Competitive Martians, start playing!
4-6 – Cooperative Martians, start playing!

Table 5 – Combine with Zombies/Expansion?
1-2 – Just Humans, start playing!
3-4 – Humans with Humans 2, start playing!
5-6 – Humans with Zombies, start playing!

Table 6 – Where do Players Start?
1-4 – Town Square (Zombies), roll on Table 7
5 – The Fun House (Zombies 7), roll on Table 7
6 – The Mental Ward (Zombies 8), roll on Table 7

Table 7 – What Happens in the Middle?
1 – Just Zombies, roll on Table 8
2 – Zombies with Zombies 9, roll on Table 8
3 – Zombies with Zombies 3.5, roll on Table 8
4 – Zombies with Zombies 6, roll on Table 8
5 – Zombies with Zombies 3.5 and Zombies 6, roll on Table 8
6 – Zombies with Zombies 3.5, Zombies 6, and Zombies 9, roll on Table 8

Table 8 – Where Does it End?
1 – The City (Zombies), start playing!
2 – The Army Base (Zombies 2), start playing!
3 – The Mall (Zombies 3), start playing!
4 – The Forest (Zombies 4), start playing!
5 – The University (Zombies 5), start playing!
6 – The Graveyard (Zombies 9), start playing!

Game Report: MARTIANS!!!

I’m sick, sick, sick and tired of using all-caps and writing ‘!!!’ when talking about these games. I mean:  ZOMBIES!!! – HUMANS!!! – MARTIANS!!! It’s exhausting. From now on, I will refer to ZOMBIES!!! as Zombies — and MARTIANS!!! as Martians. Much more relaxed. And, let’s be honest here, these games are fucking frustrating enough as it is.

So Martians. It plays a lot like Zombies with some subtle but key mechanical differences that make it a slightly better game.

The Tiles: These are probably my favourite tiles of the entire series. The theme is suburban/rural and the art is well done and very consistent. They also changed the grid system to help distinguish which squares are accessible and which are not. This design choice isn’t the most intuitive at first glance but at least you don’t have to look on the internet for the official faq to figure out where you can and cannot go.

Movement: Like Zombies, you roll a 6 sided die and that’s how many squares you can move. Unlike Zombies you add your current life points to that number. This gives you a possible range of two to eleven with an average of about six or seven rather then a range of one to six with and average of three or four. Somewhat eliminating those frustrating turns where all you do is move your guy a few squares and wait for your next roll.

Exploration: There isn’t much reason to go exploring around the city in Zombies. In fact, as the rules are written, it’s better to sit on your ass in one spot and do nothing until the helicopter is pulled (at which point, since you didn’t do anything and thus have the least amount of kills, you get to place it as close to your pawn as possible.) In Martians you need to collect three items to make a bomb. These items are hidden randomly throughout the map, essentially forcing you to get your hands dirty. Instead of getting to the helicopter, your goal is to blow up the mothership. This appears in four possible farms that are in the game. So even after you collected your three items, you’re still going out and trying to find the correct farm.

Cooperative/Competitive: You can play Martians as a competitive game (like Zombies.) But there’s also a cooperative version. In coop mode, you divide the deck into help-myself cards and screw-you-over cards. All the screw-you-over cards have two descriptions. One will be for competitive play (“place a martian on all other players’ squares”) and one for coop (“place a martian on all players’ squares, including yours”). In coop certain squares trigger these cards when a player moves through them. This also adds a bit of strategy by placing map tiles to best avoid triggering these cards.

Now my buddy and I played the coop mode. It seemed very easy and we managed to collect our fuel, fertilizer, and dynamite and blow up the mothership well before we ran out martians to place on the board (the losing condition for coop) despite the lack of cooperation.

Right from the get-go we had to add a houserule. At the end of your turn, you roll the die and move that many martians. In competitive play, you’d use those martians to block/slowdown your opponents. In cooperative play, it’d be beneficial to move them away from players, making the game far too easy. We basically had to say that all martian movement needed to be somewhat disruptive to either or both of us. This worked “well enough” but I would have liked a much clearer ruling on that.

Martians is the first standalone game in the series that doesn’t tie-in directly with the other games. Zombies 4: The End can be played as a standalone game or as a standard expansion to Zombies. Humans can be played on it’s own or as a team-based game with Zombies. And MidEvil, while it can’t be combined with Zombies, it does follow the over-arching narrative of the series. The only thing that can be easily brought from Martians into the Zombies Series is the movement rule which can be found in just about every houseruled version out there.

I like these games for the bits more then the games itself. I like playing with the map tiles and the littles plastic dudes. And while this is a better game then Zombies, killing the undead is still way more fun.

Martians and the Zombies Series is by Twilight Creations.

PICTURES!!!