You read that right folks, The Walking Dead now has a game based on the All Out War story arc.
The All Out War story arc follows Rick and his new family in Alexandria, Maggie and her town of Hilltop and finally Ezekiel and his Kingdom against Negan and the Saviors. This is the same story arc featured in this season of the television series AND issues 115-126 of Robert Kirkman’s hit comic series. That brings us back to the game. Mantic Games faithfully created All Out War to be a game that can be played solo (most easily with the Road To Woodbury Expansion ruleset) or with a small group of friends. You can play out virtually any storyline from the comic (specifically because the characters are all from the comic- with one exception we will discuss later) using the various expansion and add ons to collect your band of survivors.
Recently the Popnerd team got their hands on a copy of the game, watch the following video to see our immediate thoughts as we unbox the game:
Even more recently I was able to play the game with my son (Merrick) and it was an intense learning experience. Don’t misunderstand. By intense I was not referring to the rules, or learning said rules but the battle itself WHILE we learned them.
The typical game starts with each player selecting 100 points worth of survivors and gear but like most (if not all) table top games allow for some house rules if all of the players agree. Using some of the booster sets (allows you to get more characters to select) we chose our heroes, Rick and Carl Grimes along with Morgan and Duane Jones, selected their gear and placed our terrain. As we filled the double sized map (we combined two maps from the core game and the Days Gone By expansion) Merrick decided that we needed to have enemies that weren’t zombies as well racing for the prizes. I let him pick the enemies and his first choice- Negan. *Cue dramatic music* Making the points even among the teams, Negan had two saviors with him along with Lucille and a leather jacket for armor. He was given the option to control Negan or control his two Saviors. The kid chose Negan, after all, he is his father’s son.
Both factions slowly advanced to keep the zombie threat as low as possible as they worked their way through various walkers on their path to loot. Right away the Saviors had the upper hand and looted almost half of the board before having to venture towards Rick and his survivors. Rick’s team was slowly and systematically removing every zombie from the board as they inched forward, refusing to leave and walker “alive”. Quickly things turned bad as a walker set off a car alarm near Rick’s team and drew every walker towards them. Thinks looked grim for our heroes. Thanks to consecutive lucky dice throws from Merrick, the two boys on the team surged forward and showed their parents how to really kill the zombies. The two parents just couldn’t get a successful kill shot to save their lives, and a few times it looked like they might need to.
Out of supplies on their portion of the board the Saviors made some truly evil moves while Negan just watched and laughed from the distance. His two lackeys decided to try to kill Duane before he could reach a batch of supplies and possibly remove the zombie his father was struggling with. Liam had other ideas and immediately jumped into close quarter combat against the kid, his knife against Duane’s shovel. You’d think that the shovel would prove the better weapon but after a couple failed blocks he was getting cut. Luckily for him Rick was nearby and wasn’t going to stand for this treatment of children and together the two were able to kill the assailant. Luckily for them, Rick was able to kill the zombie in the next turn and steal all of the supplies the man had looted previously. In terms of supplies (which is how you determine a winner if both teams are alive by the end) Rick’s team was now in the lead. Only 2 turned remained as Rick decided to try to kill Negan from a distance. That’s when things turned horribly for Rick’s team. Merrick didn’t like that Negan was under fire and charge Rick, more of an attempt to scare him away or just stop him from drawing zombies towards the group, but the dice rolls were most definitely in Negan’s favor as he was able to kill Rick in a single combat turn, steal his loot and secure essentially a 2 to 1 victory against Rick and his team. While this was happening all Carl could do was watch as his father was killed because he was already under attack from a new walker threat without the support of his friends.
Final Verdict:
We both had an excellent time, the game was easy to learn and kept us both on edge. The fact that the Saviors won was a highlight for multiple reasons, they were outnumbered from the start and were able to allow Merrick to see just how awesome the character is. The biggest downside to the game, for now, is that Negan is currently only available through purchasing the game through Kickstarter when the campaign was active and also now available using Mantic Points in their store. Many shops on eBay and throughout the internet are selling copies they had purchased but you will be paying a premium. Negan is worth it though, especially if you are a major fan of the comic or show. My son says his favorite parts were killing Rick and the fact that we could tell a narrative with our gameplay.
My Negan after being painted and customized.
The post All Out War: The Walking Dead Game from Mantic appeared first on PopNerdTV.