Does Free League know how to assemble a solid starter set? Yes, they do.
My Christmas came a little early with this one, and I am enjoying this boxed set. This is the only way to get your hands on the official Walking Dead dice, so if you are interested in the game, start here and continue on to the whole game.
- Starter set rules?
- Starter adventure?
- 20 dice?
- Maps?
- Pre-generated characters?
- TV show characters?
- A threat tracker spinning wheel to put together?
- A game box?
Yes to all of the above!
This is a Year Zero engine game, so it is at an abstract level. You could put this on a shelf next to other traditional board games, and it could hold its own. This uses the stress dice system, which is familiar if you play the Alien RPG and works well again here in this survival horror game. Under stress, people mess up, and bad things happen.
This is an impressive game if you like the show, and if you don't and feel like you should dismiss this game out of hand, don't. Even if you don't like zombie games, don't dismiss this game. 90% of it is a competent survival game, which could be played without the zombies and used as a generic Year Zero post-apocalyptic survival game. You could play this as the base engine from War of the Worlds, 2012, The Day After, to a Pandemic-style scenario, and things would work fine.
You could replace zombies with hordes of killer rats, bees, birds, ants, cockroaches, snakes, spiders, grub worms, piranhas in a water park, killer robots, nanite swarms, flying skulls of the dead, holiday shoppers, or any other 'swarm monster' and be right at home. If you know the TV series or comic, the zombies fade into the background and are more of a narrative threat like a force of nature - people are the real enemy.
Overall, this is a unique, impressive package of Year Zero fun. Yes, it is wrapped up in shiny Walking Dead wrapping paper - but this is like any other Year Zero game and a toolkit best used to express your imagination and creativity.
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