The Walking Dead Board Game at The Nerd Cave

Sunday 20th October 2013 at 8pm

The Nerd Cave has upgraded their boardgame stock to now include The Walking Dead Board Game, which is based on the comic book series rather than the television show.  As per the gamemakers description, the objective of the game is to 'with only one companion at the start of the game, each player must struggle together resources, find other survivors and eventually find a refuge'.  At the start of the game, each player selects between 6 characters (Rick, Andrea, Dale, Glenn, Shane and Tyreese) each of which has a different special ability.  In addition to the six main characters, there is an additional 23 potential followers, each which also has a special ability, you start with one of these and as you progress around the game board you may come across more who will also follow you.

Each turn, each player moves up to three places in any direction on the game board, from which they may collect three types of resources, ammunition, gas or food.  Each time a player lands on a game board tile with this resource present, they then draw an encounter card.  An encounter card will involve performing some sort of challenge, which most commonly involve either fighting a zombie attack, rolling a specific dice roll or using up a specific type of resource.  The benefits of an encounter card include the acquisition of additional followers, extra resources, inventory items and the opportunity to improve the health of your current survivors.  Each time a board tile is passed through by one of the six players, this tile then becomes a zombie tile, which if landed on again by a player will immediately involve flipping this tile to see how many zombies will then have to be fought.

The zombie attack is played out with dice, with one being rolled by each survivor (main character and any followers present).  These dice have different potential rolls of which some directly kill a certain number of zombies present.  There is three different colour dices present; the blue (representing heroic attributes), the red (representing fighter aspects) and the green (representing scavenger aspects).  Each character may have one or more of each type of dice to roll per attack.  For example, Shane rolls one blue and two reds per attack, whilst Carl rolls a single red.  All the dice listed on each of the characters and followers cards within a group are rolled at the same time, and then the results are used to fight off the zombie attack (if possible).  If a zombie is not killed, then this attacks the character who then takes a fatigue token of which each character can take a maximum of three prior to dying.


Setting Up a New Game

1. Each player receives a resource sheet which is used to record resources held, write a 1 beside each resource type to represent the single piece of resource each player starts with.  
2. Randomly draw a character card for each player involved.  
3. Randomly draw a follower card for each character. 
4. Place the character on the allotted space related to that character on the gameboard and follow any steps (eg. extra resources) listed on the followers card.  
5. Three locations cards are drawn for everyone and placed on the gameboard, and an additional one location card is drawn by each player and kept secretly as this is a location of a safehaven that only there character is able to get to.  
6. The dice pool is determined for each character and his follower, the corresponding dice roll is then rolled by each player with the person who has rolled the most action going first. Play then continues clockwise.  

Turn Order

1. Use food to remove any fatigue from your characters.  
2. Move up to three places in any direction, placing a zombie token in each spot that is moved through.
3. If you move onto a zombie token spot, movement is paused whilst a zombie attack occurs.  Once this has been resolved, you may continue moving afterwards.  
4. Once either a location or a resource tile has been landed on, movement is then ceased for the turn and an encounter card is drawn for each resource or alternativately the location scouting instructions are followed for that location. 

The full game rules are listed here - http://zmangames.com/rulebooks/Walking_Dead.pdf