Coming Black Plague Expansion?

[Old Dwarf]

Looks like COMON is probably launching a big box expansion
for BP Zombicide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRhm-GfNn8s

The Teaser doesn't say it's for Black Plague just
mentions a Medieval Fantasy & surviving the Plague & the Horde.

I've sworn off COMON KS money pits , BUT I'll be
keeping my eye on this

OD

[Raynor]

Somehow I managed to miss this post.

I'll be keeping an eye on it too. Can't swear off one of the best thematic game companies on the market. I still get excited to see FFP games show up, but it used to be a yearly event to see what they'd been up to. Now CMON fills that spot. I really like Shadows of Brimstone, but my wife actively hates it... not because it's a bad game, but because it tanked all the other projects FFP had going, of which we used to be such big fans.

As much nostalgia and love as I had for Last Night on Earth, Zombicide is my go-to Zombie game at this point. It wasn't originally that much better a game imho, but after 10 years of steady subtle improvements, recent Zombicides are really a lot more fun than the originals. Meanwhile, LNoE has remained pretty static in the face of evolving game design.

Being such a Zombie game fan, I have all some of all the Zombicide settings at this point and I think Black Plague/Fantasy is simultaneously the most robust setting and also the oldest one that's still good and thus in pretty desperate need for some tightening in the rules. I played Black Plague and then Undead or Alive back to back this week, and UoA just kicks BP's butt in terms of how optimized the game play is.

Undead or Alive has a really great class system, which feels like a much clearer version of the special item each character can hold in Fantasy. There's a singular noise token with two modes, making the noise infinitely easier to keep track of. There are no doors to roll misses while trying to open. Best of all, there's a functional zombie spawn deck out of the box with enough tweaks in the design so it scales well with expansions and doesn't require sorting 450 cards or house rules to allow a variety of abominations or zombies during a single game.

Fantasy has (in my opinion) a superior theme and way better variety, so I really hope they roll forward some of the improvements to the gameplay they've made since it was released. If nothing else, I'll probably just continue to try to find the right balance of design to roll back the great changes they've made myself, so they apply in my own games of Fantasy. I just really appreciate when this all spelled out for you in the actual game rules rather than having to house rule everything.

Either way, even while I'll be paying attention to this one, I really have too much Zombicide at this point, so unless it's extraordinarily compelling or does in fact update the ruleset, I'll probably be passing. I said the same thing about the most recent Marvel United campaign though, and by the end of that campaign I was so impressed by the new stuff I ended up backing all in. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what they have in store for us.

[Old Dwarf]

I agree with your wife on Sob. I've checked out what little info COMON has on White Death & I
think it's a pass for me, From the Designers Notes:

"Far, far away from the western, sunny towns we saw in Black Plague and Green Horde, we reach the cold, besieged city of Wintergrad. In this faraway land live many creatures that the survivors on the western border would think are only legend. White Death introduces intelligent humanoid-animal-hybrid species. Meet Lorna from the mystical canine people called Kenshan, and Ogon, one of the Khanra, the cat people. They don’t have any sort of special rules players have to remember. They are just cool."

Human-Hybrid animals is a bridge to far for me.

OD

[Raynor]

(03-16-2023 02:21 PM)Old Dwarf Wrote:  I agree with your wife on Sob. I've checked out what little info COMON has on White Death & I
think it's a pass for me, From the Designers Notes:

"Far, far away from the western, sunny towns we saw in Black Plague and Green Horde, we reach the cold, besieged city of Wintergrad. In this faraway land live many creatures that the survivors on the western border would think are only legend. White Death introduces intelligent humanoid-animal-hybrid species. Meet Lorna from the mystical canine people called Kenshan, and Ogon, one of the Khanra, the cat people. They don’t have any sort of special rules players have to remember. They are just cool."

Human-Hybrid animals is a bridge to far for me.

OD

What!? No Thundercats for you? hahaha. Honestly, that isn't a positive for me either. I won't care if it's a handful, but if it's a major theme that'd be off putting for me too.

[Old Dwarf]

Here's the Desiner Dairy Link:

https://www.cmon.com/news/zombicide-whit...wintergrad

It does have some new elements but probably not enough to entice me to pledge.

OD

[Raynor]

Thanks for sharing!
They recently announced some 2nd Edition expansions direct to retail. The fact this is being hosted on KS gives me hope they have more planned than just a new core set, and we get some modernizations to update the system. The news has me playing with my spawn deck, trying to get a combination modeled off Undead or Alive that works well. The fact that every card changes what spawns based on the threat level makes it a gigantic pain in the butt though. I haven't paid for the CMON comics yet. Been waffling on whether to include the Black Plague and Invader comics. The shipping drops way down when you buy more than 1 book, but then cost starts adding up anyway.

[Old Dwarf]

Here's the latest info:

https://cmon.com/news/zombicide-white-de...-new-folks

This is more like it,I especially like the "home guard" mechanic.
Still the Human-Hybrid animals remains a turn off for me & the cost of a pledge
just use the non-hybrid stuff probably is not cost effective.

OD

[Raynor]

They did a livestream and showed off a modernized new spawn deck where the abominations and necromancies are split off into their own decks. This is pretty huge as it really lets you maintain the integrity of the spawn deck in a relatively painless way while adding in variety. They all but verified they would be making this compatible with old abominations and necromancers.

I’ve been trying to determine which Zombicide is my least favorite to slim down the collection and was almost resigned to letting fantasy go due the improvements made in undead or Alive. With the variety available in this line tho, if they perfect the spawn deck it might leap frog to top of the pack for me.

They also noted doors are out in this version, which is great. Was always a bit of a meh mechanic and I didn’t realize how much it annoyed me until it was gone in Undead or Alive.

https://www.youtube.com/live/lzfVkfTgWIU?feature=share

[Raynor]

This absolutely did not go the way I expected lol!

[Old Dwarf]

The KS is up & as usual is well over a million in pledges. The Core is $110
& then $150 worth of Add Ons.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmo...ite-death.

I'm passing as it doesn't fit into my BP Game world ( I based my Game on the
Midnight RPG) plus I just got hit with a big AC repair expense.

OD