one thing I like about this game is the simplicity, setup time and ease to adapt to your tastes. how? it's simple:
The setup, as long as is a 4-player game with no changes to the base game, is less than a minute.
Shuffle the big deck, place it in the middle of the table, shuffle the zb deck and put it next to the main deck.
give each player the starting deck and 1 base. there is no trouble in this. Of course, if u want to draft the starting base
or survivors, that's another story. but that ain't taking more than a minute as well.
The game itself, component wise, it's pretty simple. There is only cards and are only in 5 different categories: Zombies, survivors, bases, resources, items.
so there ain't much to worry about. Of course, the gameplay is deep enough with just this.
And what about the adapting thing? simple, you don't like 'super' zombies? pick them off the deck and set them aside, they
don't make any problem in the gameplay, they are just extra flavor/more challenges. Don't like fantasy survivors? mutated guys? also take them out, just extra flavor.
Did you buy an expansion? just put them in the deck and shuffle. Unless I create another kind of card later, everything is easily put together or set apart.
Is It just a 2-p game? you can play the same way, with the same deck, it'll just be a little easier as there ain't so much
struggle for supplies, but I would suggest you to take out some bases just so it gets a little more hard.
Anyway, taking this back a little to the subject.
The main part of this game is to survive. If there ain't a surviving feeling, that ain't my game. So how do I do that?
I'll create a constant struggle for resources and everything on the game. Everything will be limited...except for zombies.
How? let's do the math.
there are 2 ways of winning, by being the last one alive, or by conquering and defending 5 bases. Being the last one
already creates this feeling, and the struggle for bases so you can conquer 5 also help this constant 'attack' feeling as well.
for the conquering part, it's easy if you have to have 5, and you already started with 1, everyone needs at least 4 more bases,
but only 1 will have 5 bases, so most will sit at 4. so in the late game, everyone having 4 bases just trying to get that one more base, makes it
3(4-1 that is the initial one) bases x 4 players = 12 bases needed in the big deck. plus 1 so that one person can have 5 without mandatorily having
to steal 1 base from someone, and +2 just to create a round number and a little breathing room. That makes 15.
there are 15 bases where 4 players will constantly fight over, and some of those bases will even be overtaken by zombies, so at some point of the game
you will end up having like 11 bases for 4 players, or even less.
but I don't want this bases to be so easily found out, so I want bases draw rate to be around 5%.
if 15=5%, the deck size will be 300 cards.
So now let's make some numbers around this.
from 300 cards, I want 100 to be zombie cards, so you can't just go around exploring freely.
that leave us with 185 cards to share between survivors, resources and items.
let's make a brief survivor calculation.
If everyone has 4 bases, and each base has around 4 survivors cap and is a 4 players game:
4x4x4=64 survivors are needed. But you will also have some on your hand so you can explore or re-deploy, and some
will eventually die, so let's put it, 85 survivors. that's a small breathing room of 21 survivors.
now we have 100 cards left.
50 resources, from 4 different kinds for a variety of purposes. that's about 12 for each player and they as well, may be
lost/used/stolen.
50 items made from this same limited resources, that have the same danger of being lost/used/stolen.
What do I mean with this numbers? is that everything, your chances of winning as well, is limited. If you keep waiting too much
everything will be harvested, if you go too deep, you may be to defenseless. If you have only 13 survivors so far, will you have a
4 base and be left with not enough man to full defend everything? will you pick that survivor that you don't need, that
may just clog your deck or kill it so others can't have? if I pick this base, but it's close to most of my enemies area, will I be
giving him a free base or can I defend it?
Soon you will find out that nothing of this matters, as survivors are almost dead, resources are almost none, and a
giant horde of zombies is right behind you.
This is surviving.
The setup, as long as is a 4-player game with no changes to the base game, is less than a minute.
Shuffle the big deck, place it in the middle of the table, shuffle the zb deck and put it next to the main deck.
give each player the starting deck and 1 base. there is no trouble in this. Of course, if u want to draft the starting base
or survivors, that's another story. but that ain't taking more than a minute as well.
The game itself, component wise, it's pretty simple. There is only cards and are only in 5 different categories: Zombies, survivors, bases, resources, items.
so there ain't much to worry about. Of course, the gameplay is deep enough with just this.
And what about the adapting thing? simple, you don't like 'super' zombies? pick them off the deck and set them aside, they
don't make any problem in the gameplay, they are just extra flavor/more challenges. Don't like fantasy survivors? mutated guys? also take them out, just extra flavor.
Did you buy an expansion? just put them in the deck and shuffle. Unless I create another kind of card later, everything is easily put together or set apart.
Is It just a 2-p game? you can play the same way, with the same deck, it'll just be a little easier as there ain't so much
struggle for supplies, but I would suggest you to take out some bases just so it gets a little more hard.
Anyway, taking this back a little to the subject.
The main part of this game is to survive. If there ain't a surviving feeling, that ain't my game. So how do I do that?
I'll create a constant struggle for resources and everything on the game. Everything will be limited...except for zombies.
How? let's do the math.
there are 2 ways of winning, by being the last one alive, or by conquering and defending 5 bases. Being the last one
already creates this feeling, and the struggle for bases so you can conquer 5 also help this constant 'attack' feeling as well.
for the conquering part, it's easy if you have to have 5, and you already started with 1, everyone needs at least 4 more bases,
but only 1 will have 5 bases, so most will sit at 4. so in the late game, everyone having 4 bases just trying to get that one more base, makes it
3(4-1 that is the initial one) bases x 4 players = 12 bases needed in the big deck. plus 1 so that one person can have 5 without mandatorily having
to steal 1 base from someone, and +2 just to create a round number and a little breathing room. That makes 15.
there are 15 bases where 4 players will constantly fight over, and some of those bases will even be overtaken by zombies, so at some point of the game
you will end up having like 11 bases for 4 players, or even less.
but I don't want this bases to be so easily found out, so I want bases draw rate to be around 5%.
if 15=5%, the deck size will be 300 cards.
So now let's make some numbers around this.
from 300 cards, I want 100 to be zombie cards, so you can't just go around exploring freely.
that leave us with 185 cards to share between survivors, resources and items.
let's make a brief survivor calculation.
If everyone has 4 bases, and each base has around 4 survivors cap and is a 4 players game:
4x4x4=64 survivors are needed. But you will also have some on your hand so you can explore or re-deploy, and some
will eventually die, so let's put it, 85 survivors. that's a small breathing room of 21 survivors.
now we have 100 cards left.
50 resources, from 4 different kinds for a variety of purposes. that's about 12 for each player and they as well, may be
lost/used/stolen.
50 items made from this same limited resources, that have the same danger of being lost/used/stolen.
What do I mean with this numbers? is that everything, your chances of winning as well, is limited. If you keep waiting too much
everything will be harvested, if you go too deep, you may be to defenseless. If you have only 13 survivors so far, will you have a
4 base and be left with not enough man to full defend everything? will you pick that survivor that you don't need, that
may just clog your deck or kill it so others can't have? if I pick this base, but it's close to most of my enemies area, will I be
giving him a free base or can I defend it?
Soon you will find out that nothing of this matters, as survivors are almost dead, resources are almost none, and a
giant horde of zombies is right behind you.
This is surviving.