Zombicide: Black Plague Review

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Rue Morgue is better. It scales zombie spawns by player number, has a competitive teams mode and more interesting zombies. Combined with Toxic City Mall it brings way more variety and tactical challenge than Black Plague with Wulfsburg.

Funny you mention that. Since CMON has won me over with Black Plague I started looking at all the extra stuff that wasn't Season 1 vanilla Zombicide. Of all the content I've looked at Rue Morgue looks to be the best...and I'll probably snatch up a copy. Though I'm hoping that they add some stuff from that game into Black Plague, like the competitive mode, scaling spawn locations, team tactics cards etc... It seems like they really went through the rules with a fine tooth comb for Black Plague and decided to deliver the most refined/streamlined version of the game. With that in place, I'm eager to see where they go from here.

Great review!

I freaking love this game, it has been the big surprise of 2016. People I play with love it too, so it sees pretty regular play. It is dead simple, not much fancy business going on. Total hack and slash, but you get into tactical situations that sort of organically create depth. I'm sure some folks get ill about it, but I like that he game will drop a functionally unkillable monster on you. And then another one. So you have to run around to find one of the very few things that will kill it, while hiding from the abominations AND dealing with her other spawns AND working toward the objective.

The expansions add on some good stuff. Wulfsburg is essential. Murder of Crowz is well worth getting, those birds are a PITA because they ignore walls- it is totally like The Birds, you'll be holed up in a building and they come busting in. NPC-1 adds three new much-needed vault items, but two are bows (really?) and a new set collection thing- collect five of the unique zombies and get a vault item. It's fun. I also have the first non-artist hero pack, the heroes really do add a lot to the game without brining in a bunch of extra rules and so forth. Looking forward to the Deadeye Archers next month.

Versus the other Zombicide games...I have little interest in them. The medieval setting makes a big difference to me, I'm sick of the gritty, urban zombie thing.

Vanilla Zombicide turned me off for years, and then I realized that the guy I played with never used sound tokens. I didn't know they existed until I played 6 months ago after buying it.

I found vanilla (real vanilla) to be OK but not shit hot. Then I played with the full Monty through S3 and fell in love because all the shit I hated went away. Like losing weapons...that's stupid.

So, Black Plague reskins it and now it's kind of like Zombies!!! fantasy edition. Good stuff. I like how simple and fast it is, makes it easy to get to the table. Love the variety of baddies and the NPC stuff makes the game a little more interesting.

Nice write up!

Yeah I need to get those Crowz and as well as the archers when the become available. I've got my eye on the Neil Adams guest artist hero pack because I like his style. Also, if/when they hit retail I kind of want to get the plastic doors.

Another thing I really love about the game that I totally failed to mention in the review is the lack of a million tokens. Unlike FFG or many other big box games with minis, there is a refreshing lack of tokens. Just a small handful used for practical things. You don't need a storage tray to organize them for ease of use or anything. Once the game actually starts I think the only tokens you use are the first player marker, the noise tokens, spawn tokens, and potentially the "rotten" token.

Also, for anyone concerned, I only reviewed the game with the base content. I have all the expansions and Kickstarter goodies, but I made sure to play the game a bunch of times with just the retail components.

SuperflyTNT wrote: I found vanilla (real vanilla) to be OK but not shit hot. Then I played with the full Monty through S3 and fell in love because all the shit I hated went away. Like losing weapons...that's stupid.

Yeah the losing weapons rule and the way targeting of ranged weapons worked in regular Zombicide really just made my blood boil. Automatically hitting a friendly survivor when aiming/shooting zombies was silly. I can understand that they were going for more realism or things that might happen...but sometimes realism doesn't always equal fun. In a game where you're constantly mowing down zombies anything that detracts from the fun, should have been removed. Thankfully that seems to be the case with Black Plague.

Well, in Black Plague, you're still going to hit survivors because you rarely hit with every die and misses will wound them. you can play the earlier games by the same rules anyway. Nobody is going to call the Rules Police.

Oh I get that you still can hit survivors in Black Plague. Just the fact that its not an automatic hit makes all the difference. It actually adds something to think about when targeting a zombie in a space with a friendly survivor. If they are swarmed and might die anyways, you might try a hail mary and cast an inferno spell in hopes that you don't burn them too badly. Or maybe you have the elf archer with "plenty of arrows" who will only miss on the roll of a 1...but you'd have a reroll. So you could in theory pick off 2-3 zombies with little fear of wounding a friend.

And yeah, that is how I'll play it in the modern day settings too.

Great review! Black Plague was a Kickstarter I was going back and forth on and eventually decided to back at the last minute because the amount of extra stuff was crazy. It's great fun, but I don't feel the need to pick up any of the other versions.I do like that the Massive Darkness kickstarter has a Black Plague crossover pack to use heroes/monsters from Z:BP with Massive Darkness, and heroes from Massive Darkness with Z:BP.

Also there are two bonus campaigns that were unlocked as part of the kickstarter if anyone didn't see them - pdf links below (I haven't tried them out yet):

Places of Interest for the base game, and

The Fire God for Wulfsburg.

Excellent review. You told me everything that I need to know about this game. I'm still somewhat burned out on zombies in general, so I'm going to pass on Black Plague, but I would still play it if given a chance.

I still have Season 1 and Season 2 Kickstarters of Zombicide (all the extra figures, etc.) -- shit ton of stuff -- that I am trying to unload. Would rather sell it here than anywhere else.

Any interest?



*seemed like the thread to put it in

I played Black Plague at Origins and thought it was pretty cool. I'm glad I pledged for Massive Darkness, which is the next evolution of the system.

hotseatgames wrote: I played Black Plague at Origins and thought it was pretty cool. I'm glad I pledged for Massive Darkness, which is the next evolution of the system.

Actually, I've been so impressed by Black Plague that I started thinking...yeah I want to late pledge that Massive Darkness game. I like how Z:BP is just one shot adventures where you level up, finish, and start over again next time. My understanding is that Massive Darkness is designed the same way (until backers bitched about wanting a campaign mode added). Well, it looks like I waffled too long because you can't late pledge for the game any longer. I've sent emails to CMON support in hopes that they'll let me toss money at them.