Asmodee HZR01 HZR01ASM Hit Z Road

Product Information

Zombies remain one of the big icons of horror - especially action horror - but that doesn't mean they have to be limited to just films and TV. In fact, there's plenty of zombie board games out there to bring the ravenous horde to your tabletop, either with you trying to survive, escape, bring down or even control the undead themselves. With that in mind, we've outlined the best zombie board games below, to bring a little more mortality to your games night. Best zombie board games

The game ends after eight rounds of Auctions and Encounters. If there is ever only one player remaining at any point in the game, then they win immediately. However, if two or more players survive all of their encounters, then they’ll receive bonus points based most resources and most remaining survivors. Players then add the VPs from their encounter cards and the most points among the living wins the game. A Slice of Fried Gold or Brainless Distraction? While this first gripe may fall in the ‘personal preference’ camp, my second gripe is about the game play itself. And it’s this balance of risk and reward on a light scale that brings enjoyment to the game. The Events on some cards can really hurt. Hit Z Road made its debut at Gen Con 2016, and it was one of my favorite games of the convention. Don’t let the theme and emphasis on dice rolling fool you: there are some strong elements of a Martin Wallace-style Eurogame here. City of Horror is a survival game where players desperately negotiate to save their survivors and gather the precious vaccines scattered around the map. Each player is dealt several survivors and, unlike the typical zombie-killing heroes of other zombie games, these are just everyday people. And they'll get eaten. A lot.

Of course, if a player doesn’t survive until the end of the game, the cards they’ve gained won’t matter at all.

Despite the scary artwork (my daughters are too frightened of it to play this game), the whole game takes a slightly amusing and ironic look at the situation with most of the location cards containing humorous comments scribbled onto the pictures. The auction only ends once all players pass in a row. Then each player pays for their bid using any combination of their resources. (A player can’t bid on a higher amount than they have resources to pay.) There are plenty of cards that do have abstract art of devastation or people on a road trip. But unfortunately, there are also many that don’t stay in that realm. Players start with 1 colored lead survivor as well as 4 grey survivors and place the bidding marker of their color on the auction board. They also get 4 of each resource token: ammo, gas, and adrenaline. If the player manages to kill all the zombies, they take the adventure card and place it face down in front of them. At the end of the game they will score the points listed in the top right of each card they’ve claimed.

CONCLUSION

Earlier this week we posted our first zombie game review – Dead of Winter. In that review, we made it clear we’re not zombie fans. Yet, here we are a few days later reviewing another zombie-themed board game. Martin Wallace came out with two games at Gen Con 2016: Via Nebula and Hit Z Road. Both are excellent, and they show of the breadth of Wallace’s game-design genius. I didn’t expect to like Hit Z Road more than Via Nebula, but I think I do. Hit Z Road is a simple-but-effective resource management game with a clever and unique use of the Zombie theme. The Walking Dead: All Out War: The infamous characters of Robert Kirkman's comic book series wage miniature war across an undead-filled battlefield.

Name a popular gaming theme, and chances are there's a Tiny Epic version of it. Tiny Epic Zombies recreate the classic mall survival scenario, with locations, weapons, heroes and meeples squeezed into the series’ signature tiny box. If more than one player survives, the points will be tallied to determine the winner. Players add up the points from their cards, plus they hand out the “epilogue” cards, which are worth three points each. The epilogue cards go to the player with (1) the most adrenaline, (2) the most ammo, (3) the most gas, and (4) the most survivors. Hit Z Road skilfully mixes elements of both the Euro and Ameritrash genres, with the more Euro elements (the auctions and resource management) working well alongside the Ameritrash dice rolling and player elimination.I liked Hit Z Road. I was originally concerned about the theme; however, this game, while dripping with theme in terms of the components, it is really an auction game with dice rolling used to resolve encounters. The game is best with four players: it makes the auction more interesting, and it is fun when somebody must go down each of those four paths. At that player count the game takes about 45 minutes. Sure, Hit Z Road has player elimination, but for such a short and simple game, I don’t see that as much of a problem.