Zombies!!!
Quite some time ago, I bought this game, Zombies!!! – yep, that’s three exclamation marks. To say it with Terry Pratchett, “Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign for a diseased mind!”
Considering we’re talking about zombies, that makes sense, too. Particularly if the game has the slogan, “This one’s a no-brainer!”
If you wonder what this post is about and why it isn’t a review – I wrote a little ruleset that allows you to play the game with all its expansions, all at once, and with some improvements. I present to you…
Zombie!!! Dogs
Anyway, back to the game. It is, as I guess you can tell, about zombies. Many zombies, in particular. And I’m not talking about dozens, but hundreds. And it doesn’t just have regular zombies, but also government enhanced zombies (with minis that glow in the dark), zombie dogs, and zombie clowns.
So we established that the game is awesome now.
Dark Humour
The game isn’t for everyone, however. It is mostly based on luck, as such quite the opposite of Starcraft (where not even combat is rolled with dice) and still quite far away from Twilight Imperium, on a strategy-to-luck scale, and closer to Munchkin and the likes. It’s really important to draw good event cards, and to roll well for combat – although drawing good event cards allows you to slack when rolling. It also has quite simple rules, of the “can be explained in under five minutes” kind, where unexplained stuff at the start can easily fit in later. Finally, the art (particularly on the event cards) is pretty graphic, involving intestines and the likes.
Hundreds of Zombies
Even for people who like it (like me, obviously, I can’t resist hundreds of zombies), it has some frustrating things. Like too slow movement at times, death setting people back too much in the long run yet not being punishing enough in the short run. Or the expansion bits not being tempting enough, and, when multiple expansions are used, rather unbalanced (some too tough, some too easy). And the end game rewards the player who had the least action until then, too.
So I went and looked far and wide, and found plenty of tweaks and house rules that make the thing better. What I didn’t find though was one rule set that allowed to play all expansions together, using those tweaks and then some more to glue the whole thing into one game. So I went and wrote one.
This extended rules set is what I call Totally Zombies!!!, and its version 1.3 is available for download right here. Or on Board Game Geek, too.
Please comment if you like the rules, or if you’d change something else as well 
