Zpocalypse

[StayPuft]

One of my gaming group buddies got it and he brought it in as soon as it came in. We gave it a play, and....


I left at the end of the day with a headache. We all had the same general feeling. Upon first play it was.... okay. But, it was a little bit too much. It was just a little too complicated. There is complicated like LNOE, where it is still easy to pick up and play right away while being complicated enough to have tons of re-playability...

Then there is complicated like this game, where most of us spent a good portion of the time discussing the rules with one common comment... "HUH?!" LOL!

I will say this.... it was the type of game that I have a feeling could be fun once you get the hang of the rules...

Problem is I have always personally felt that this is not the mark of a good game. If the best thing I can say after playing it the first time is "I bet this will be a lot of fun once I get the hang of it" that doesn't exactly leave me wanting to bother.

A game like LNOE is one that is complicated enough that you probably got a bunch of things wrong on your first play, and probably learn something new almost every time you play. But, it doesn't ruin the play of the game, and it still leaves you having a lot of fun. You have fun on your very first time playing it, even if you didn't fully understand the game yet.

Zpocalypse, we did not enjoy the first time. Makes it kind of hard to want to give a game a second chance... though we do hope to bring it back to the table at some point and give it another try.

[friskers96]

I played my first game the other night, I really enjoyed it and it was easy to teach. Now I did go into this after having poured over the rules and tutorial videos for a week while I was waiting for it to arrive.

I don't think its fair to compare this to LNOE or Zombicide. When I play LNOE, as a Hero, I expect to triumph over evil and squash some zombie butt. Zombicide I have enjoyed but I find absolutely no depth to the game, standard hack and slash button masher for today's ADHD fans (My son is ADHD so I completely understand the insta-gratification this game offers). They are both great games, in their own ways, just as Zpocalypse is. Zpocalypse as far as theme goes would fall after Zombicide, but game play seems to be in the middle ground. I went into Zpocalypse with a different mindset, I knew I was dead meat, question was how I'd go down and how fast.

I think a first experience with Zpocalypse should be with 2 players just to cut down on the mass question and debate problem. The rules seemed to be pretty simple and I loved the Squad board and how it had the break down of phases on it. Dice rules are great, any test you roll on is pass on a 5 or 6, pretty simple. Fighting dice 1D6 per survivor for attack unless the weapon skill is over 5 then refer to the weapons rules on the card. Be mindful of the board and your surroundings, zombie hunger is effective up to 4 squares so get your kiting tactics on ( I kited 6 zombies to my wifes squad and then bounced like a bad check, hella funny). Im eager to see what the other expansions add to this, I think the Zmaster expansion will add a lot of flavor that LNOE fans feel this game is lacking. I'm planning on playing through this a little more and see what I can do to spruce up the scavenge phase a bit, it could use a little more.

So as far as my first game, I got hosed. I ended up with 2 survivors with 0 smarts.. That makes things really tuff, plus add the fact that my ranged chick ran out of ammo Sheriff Anderson style (first shot). We went two days, and it was brutal. Or day one something happening card was the "rescue" card. We lost a barricade to gain two survivors instead of letting them die and loosing a squad member to our inhumane decision. This also popped out 6 more zombies on the two new tiles. Overall we had 20 plus zombies on the board on day one. Searching yielded more zombies, and health dropped fast. Got lucky that the zombies never rolled double sixes. It was tense trying to keep my squad alive, kill zombies, and gather the supplies needed to team build the next day.

We goofed a lot of rules, I think the tutorial videos helped a lot. This game has a lot of potential, be it by expansion, house rule, or custom work. It took us 2.5 hours for our first 2 day play through. Our first LNOE play through was close to 3-4 hours and that was for Die Zombie Die. First impression upon one game 3.5 out of 5. Great potential, game components are high quality, simple to set up and play. Will post more once I play more, still have to have my LNOE time too!!

Also sorry this post is a little outa sorts, I have a lot going through my head that I want to express and its getting jumbled and hard to express.

[Lythaeum]

Awesome that you liked it.

I think it needs event cards to spice up the situations a little

When you get the expansions the encounters cards and the zmaster make it pretty neat.

Zombicide as ADHD is pretty accurate. More like a twitch shooter like Left 4 Dead. Zombicide figures sure are pretty though. I do not like the splitting the zombies rule for when there are two paths. It just doesn't "feel" right. Zombicide does have noise tokens which I love. I love the idea of setting off a car alarm, or Glenn driving a car with the alarm going off to attract and draw away the zombies.

Zpocalypse has too few zombies and I don't like the doubling them up rule. Add in a few Zombies of your own or bring in zmaster and it is good.

I like the stuff cards split into different groups. Scrap, Food, weapons, survivors and items. It is a good idea when there is another mechanism to control how many of them are drawn. Like if you go to a grocery store there would be much in weapons but there would be more food. Home Depot might have some weapons and scrap but very little food.

There is another game, zombie survival.or something like that, where you have one house and you spend your days going out to get supplies. They handled the supplies by using a different deck for each locale you visit.

[friskers96]

A few have tooled around with that idea in LNOE, splitting the hero deck per building on the board. Not really gearing the the new fashioned deck to tailor to the buildings theme but more to decrease deck size and possibly get some better draws. It was either per building or per L-Board.

I played another game today and it was much smoother and had fewer problems. One issue I have is bottlenecking. I seem to be able to coral the zombies into a pinch point and force them through an opening in a wall. I can sit on the other side and acquire LOS, and I'm on the easiest path to the bunker so LOS is only needed to get them on my scent.

I'm going to re-read the instructions again tonight for the umpteenth time as well as the errata and see if Im still making some mistakes.

[Wasteland Jack]

Sad thing is I have owned and had this game for about 3 months now and still have not played. Now from what it sounds like, I shouldn't bother.

I'll give it a whirl whence I have some time, that is after I move, paint, repair, modify the new place.

[Thraxas]

I tried it with my friends and again I didn't really enjoy it. I really like the idea of the game but in practice it bores me. The first three phases which set up the combat, which I feel is the actual meat of the game, are not very interesting to me.

There are so many ideas that I like but once they all come together it doesn't seem to work. I love the evolving board, I love the daily challenge, I love the I love the scavenging idea and the fortifying idea but put it all together and I feel it loses something. It's a shame.

I like that your squad can grow but felt no attachment to them. I think that's a missed opportunity, I want to have some incentive to keep them alive beyond just trying to survive.

I'm not sure how I feel about the combat, it has some nice ideas but I think in some ways it's overly complicated. I really don't like the double zombie mechanic. I would have preferred more zombie models. Using the Zmaster expansion didn't really improve things I felt.

I was really disappointed with the quality of the miniatures. A lot of my zombies arms were not attached and I had to glue them in. I'm pretty sure this wasn't meant to be the case. The heroes don't have a great amount of detail, although they have some great poses.

The rulebook is awful. I hate that they use symbols throughout the book, it makes it near unreadable for me. I want a copy written without any of the symbols. Some things that came up in play are just not covered at all in the rulebook. Particularly with regards to the daily challenge.

My friends weren't that fussed either. They like LNoE and they love Zombicide. We must just prefer brainless fun over the thinking mans game.

[skolo]

well, I think Zombie game is to eat/kill brainz. Not to spend hours on developing strategy

[Lythaeum]

I like the tactical strategy elements of zpocalypse. I do admit to only running though it in solo to try it out.

I hated risk and other games that were just tactical map movements.

But for some reason I love the ideas of this game as an after-the-apocalypse, to survive we need to go out and collect pieces to fortify out hone bases.

It's almost like each scenario in LNOE or Zombicide could be what happens during the day and zpocalypse handles being back at home base. Almost.

As I said elsewhere I feel that zpocalypse benefits for the concept of event cards modifying gameplay but that could be the Zombies!!! And Magic: the Gathering in me.

I do like the game for its own merits but I turn all of my games into d20-like just to make life difficult.
Really I do that so I can mix the games together.