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My copy just arrived. The minis are great quality, no flash etc, pretty impressed with them. Its well packaged, too.

Brilliant stuff!

Looking forward to seeing some pics of the minis and initial thoughts on the game..

Sure. I took a few pics, the quality and lighting isn't amazing, but yea.

Anyway, this is what the box looks like:





The survivor minis:



Size comparison between survivor and Chaos marine:


Plus an abomination:


In terms of the game, I've never played a Zombicide game before, so I came into it as a totally new player. I found the instruction book to be pretty clear, and it answered my nooby questions well enough. The other half and I played through the tutorial scenario, which took us about the 45 minutes that the book suggested it would.

This was us part way in:


And the board as it was at the end of the game:


First thoughts on the game; we've played through the tutorial scenario, and the first mission. The game was simple enough to pick up, even for two Zombicide rookies, but I felt it still had a depth of strategy. Unlike some other board games, and despite die rolling, I didn't feel like the game came down to luck.

The minis are better than I'd actually expected, even though they looks great in the images we'd had beforehand. There was only a really minor amount of flash on one of the zombie's hands, and I did notice that one of the survivor's swords is a little curved; but the plastic is softer than your wargame model's material, so I'm impressed that those were the only flaws we found. The attention to detail on them is above what I'm used to for a board game and is more comparable to wargame miniatures. The way that they sit so well in the plastic tray inside the box is really neat and it sure makes storage a lot easier. The box inside a box idea is a cool way to store them, and having a pic of which mini goes in which tray slot is a good idea, too.

Having the dashboard to store cards really helped us to stay organised and made the game feel a lot less cluttered than most, which is something that we've found to be an issue in other boardgames in the past. Plus, having it record experience, wounds and your skills just makes it all the better.

All in all, it's a fun game, and I look forward to playing the rest of the scenarios

i got 1 of my 2 ordered on saturday morning

big surpise

My copy just arrived today, delivered by the little old lady next door who struggled with the box.

Have a day off work tomorrow so quite tempted to give it a go.

 rockgod2304 wrote:
i got 1 of my 2 ordered on saturday morning

big surpise

They said if you ordered multiples you'll only get one this year.

cheers
i hadnt seen that

Many thanks for the pics & comments Akragth

Have you had a chance to play any further missions yet?

(To the completely zombicide uninitiated, is it a complete co-op game or does one player control the zombies?)

Those certainly look like some fantastic figs, glad to see that I have just had my delivery notice actually. Can't wait!

 Pacific wrote:
Many thanks for the pics & comments Akragth

Have you had a chance to play any further missions yet?

(To the completely zombicide uninitiated, is it a complete co-op game or does one player control the zombies?)

Those certainly look like some fantastic figs, glad to see that I have just had my delivery notice actually. Can't wait!

No problem!

Yea, we've played four or five of the scenarios now. Had a crack at mission 7 last night, which has four spawners and some pretty big buildings. It got very messy, very quickly. We actually ended up with everything on the board at one point. Thankfully, a couple of the characters are pretty fantastic at cutting down massed enemies - especially with better equipment and at higher levels. Silas, the elf guy, must have killed 50-60 on his own in that game. Thankfully, after almost three hours of play (though, we did stop to eat) and with just three survivors remaining, we managed to grab the objective and escape the mission.

To answer your question, the zombies are 'controlled' by the game, and moved by whoever (we generally move them on a half the board each basis, to make it quicker and less confusing). But where the enemies go is decided based first on what they can see, then on what they can hear, with them taking the shortest possible route to their destination. Zombie spawning is then decided by card draws. So yea, it's completely co-op, with nobody having to talk a sort of GM/banker role on.

Having not seen the Black Plague rules, I'm assuming they're somewhat similar to normal Zombicide. Zombies move towards the loudest noise source. This does three things - one, remove the need for a player to be the zombies (so you can play by yourself if you really wanted to), two, introduce a level of strategy in 'herding' them, and three, essentially mimicking the behaviour they have in popular culture.

In normal Zombicide, player models count as a noise token. Firing a gun or using a noisy melee weapon generates noise tokens in that area, as does hacking down a door, and you can purposely generate additional noise without doing anything else.

This means that zombies generally congregate on where the players are. The more players in a single zone, the louder it is and the zombies go there. Split up, start shooting and taunting and breaking doors to get to objectives and you start herding them around.

I'm assuming that firing weapons doesn't generate noise in Black Plague unless there's blackpowder weapons, but I'm guessing they've thought of other ways to do it.

Throwing fireballs makes noise, and some of the weapons are loud, too.
I'm sure some of the characters will get a bit excited when smiting the undead. Everyone else gets to leave them to it.

The Plague Arrives in Saint Louis, MO on friday

I'll be eagerly waiting for the 2nd container to arrive in Europe on the 19th. :(

 Skinnereal wrote:
I'll be eagerly waiting for the 2nd container to arrive in Europe on the 19th. :(

It could always be worse. For example Paypal could've screwed your transaction up, meaning your PM was never actually finished and you'd be waiting for their support staff if you'll get anyhing at all shipped from Germany during wave two or everything from the US now that you finally paid

My stuff arrived yesterday!

Had a quick look through the minis, have to say they are fantastic. I would place the sculpting detail at slightly above Dungeon Saga level, certainly A+ standard for a board game and quite a lot of this I would have no trouble using in a tabletop wargame to be honest.

What stands out most for me is the character and design style of the miniatures. They're absolutely brilliant, whoever they got to design the design aesthetic for this game is extremely talented, it all works really well.

Mine arrived yesterday too, I'm really happy with it.

All of the minis seem well detailed, on a par with the season 3 stuff, except for the heroes which are better. I dunno if it's just the brown colour compared to the grey of the zombies, but the detail looks amazing for PVC figures. The hero figures are less bendy than the earlier stuff too, I expected the swords to be quite soft but they hold their shape very well.

Just recieved mine here in the middle of the USA . Happy Christmas to me .

Have my copy of Gaming Night #5 box coming tomorrow and stock seems very limited so anyone who is after a copy might need to track one down sooner rather then later.

It appears to have had a limited release like #4 (except most copies have gone to Brazil rather than France) and is again based upon games journalists / bloggers / podcasters.

It changes the format this time slightly by offering 2 different characters in both human and zombie forms. Some pictures can be seen -

http://zombicide.eren-histarion.fr/zombicide-gaming-night-5/

I am not sure if the dashboards come with an English Language version (I don't believe they did with #4?) but shouldn't be too hard to translate.

Do to the format change I am not sure how many copies of the characters are in the box so small chance I may end up with a spare set free to a UK based member and will post here if I do.

Just painting up the miniatures for this game. Once again, have to say they are absolutely fantastic, probably some of the best board game miniatures I have ever seen. Just finished painting 'Clover' and there is a crazy amount of detail on him, was hoping for a quick 30min job on him and its taken hours!

Out of interest, does anyone know what a good number of heroes/zombies/fatties/runners would be to get started? As lovely as the zombies are I don't want to spend too much time painting tons of them if they aren't used in the game.

We often found ourselves with all the walkers and fatties on the board. Only had all the runners on the board once, though.

Yeah, the Zombicide games give you enough zombies that you'll likely end up with on the table in a normal game. Less than needed sometimes as well, which is why there's the rule that if you can't spawn anything, zombies get additional activations.

There's a reason the Walk of the Dead #1 and #2, and Angry Zombies and Toxic Crowd expansions sold so well for the main Zombicide games - more zombies means less additional activations if you run out. Additional activations for zombies can be really lethal.

Ah thanks for the info guys. Best get back to painting those zombies then!

 Pacific wrote:
Just painting up the miniatures for this game. Once again, have to say they are absolutely fantastic, probably some of the best board game miniatures I have ever seen. Just finished painting 'Clover' and there is a crazy amount of detail on him, was hoping for a quick 30min job on him and its taken hours!

How're the mold lines? Or how did you deal with them? Mold lines on pre-assembled plastic drives me nuts!

Might as well repost Army Painter's Z bundle deal from BGG...

Z:BP backers have already seen the update with these videos, but I thought I'd post these videos for others following the campaign. The base game is shipping to backers now, and Z:BP is available pre-order.

fyi, For the painters, AP is currently offering until 1/31 two bundle of paints, Necrotic Flesh color primer, and spray-on varnish, one bundle for Z:BP, and another for both Z:BP and Zombicide. Pick up an engraving pen on Amazon for $10 to help remove mold lines. http://shop.thearmypainter.com/bundledeal.php

AP paint tutorials of Zombies, Ann the Nun, Nelly the Barmaid, and Clovis the Knight:

That makes me sick how good those AP zombies look

ced1106 wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Just painting up the miniatures for this game. Once again, have to say they are absolutely fantastic, probably some of the best board game miniatures I have ever seen. Just finished painting 'Clover' and there is a crazy amount of detail on him, was hoping for a quick 30min job on him and its taken hours!

How're the mold lines? Or how did you deal with them? Mold lines on pre-assembled plastic drives me nuts!

Not too bad! Couple of minutes just going over them with a sharp craft knife can remove the worst of it, and there isn't much there to begin with.

The plastic is pretty hard so I found it somewhat easier than some other boardgames where the more pliable/softer material is used.