GamesReport: TTN Zombie Nerdtopia

Today the two Gary's met up with Sarah, Jackie, Posty and Chris from tabletopnorth at Nerdtopia in Belfast. First thanks to Nerdtopia for hosting and TTN for organising the gamesday. We had an epic game of Zombies with a couple of the add-ons shuffled in to add a little spice to the occasion. I know I'm biased, as founder member of TTN but they are really friendly bunch of guys and very welcoming. If you get a chance to attend one of their events you should make the effort. You won't be disappointed.

The Zombies game started very well though with six players it tended to be a little slow between turns. Posty and I skipped our first turns due to automatic cards in our opening hands, though we didnt mind as it allowed the others to put some city tiles down and allowing us to decide which way we wanted to head. The time between our turns was admirably spent in banter and less so in playing event cards on each other. The pain of losing a turn in a six player game can be extreme and when Chris played an minor card on GaryG the favour was repaid in spades when Gary made Chris lose the next turn.

I continued the viciousness a few turns later by placing a hospital and then playing a card which sent Jackie there and right into the middle of nine zombies. To her credit she was over the space of the next few turns able to fight through the lot coming out amongst the strongest players. Sarah focused her city building efforts on graveyard tiles only to have her character die from a zombie swarm after getting surrounded. The graveyard tiles are interesting and can be played as a separate game in their own right. They are a challenge though as we found out when I drew a card which filled every legal graveyard space with a zombie. We had about forty zombies pop into the game in one turn.

 My game revolved around finding items only to have them stolen by GaryG. Grr! I had a skateboard which allowed faster movement around the city a pick axe which I intended to clear out the graveyard with. I had to send GaryG all the way cross the city in retribution and an attempt to keep him away from the graveyard where he could have used my gear to great effect.

In a fit of madness Chris placed the helipad at the far end of the graveyard meaning that to win we had to fight our way heroically through the graveyard tiles. Most of us tried and failed to this, though GaryG stayed at the other side of the city and made a fair attempt to get to twenty five zombie kills and win the game. It was Posty who grabbed that honour with a legendary charge to the helipad. Epic.

Afterwards GaryG and I played a few games of Zombie Dice, and I really enjoyed it. I definately would buy this little pick up game. It takes minutes to play and is full of character. Thumbs up. KoffeeKlub and Tabletopnorth will be ganging up again at QCON next week. Say hello if you are around the tabletopnorth booth on the gaming floor.