Zombie Dicing Zombicide Black Plague

Today I wanted to play a game with one of my ESL students. He has been learning English for only about a year so his ability is limited, to say the least. I have attempted to play D&D 5e with him in the past but it mostly turned into a translation session where I narrate the scene and my son, who is bilingual, translates the narration and then they discuss their plans and my son translates it back.

The plan usually is limited to “Fire sword!” And he runs in hacking. He is a fighter, after all, but it is very anticlimactic and unmotivating to have to narrate to a person that doesn’t understand me.

Now that you have a simple understanding of my handicap, I will describe what I improvised with him today. And after a short while, when my kids returned, I included them.

I combined the components of two games and made a makeshift war game. But before I lay out what I did, I will take this time to briefly explain how the games are intended to be played.

Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice is a push-your-luck style dice game by Steve Jackson. In this game, you randomly select 3 dice and roll them in an attempt to accumulate 13 brains.

Each die has 3 symbols, brains, BANGs, and footsteps. Each brain you roll you get to bank for the round. Each BANG you roll must be banked and each footstep you will be rerolling it on your roll.

If you ever have 3 BANGs then you lose everything you currently have banked this round.

After you have set aside your BANGs and Brains, you can choose to push your luck and roll again or not. If you choose to roll again, you pick up any footsteps, pull more dice from the can so you have 3 dice in hand again.

The push-you-luck element comes from decided to roll more to “eating your brains.” Remember you need 13 brains eaten to win. If you currently have 6 brains and 2 BANGs on the table, you might want to try to roll again, or you might want to just eat those brains. If you choose to roll again, you lose those 6 brains.

Whenever you stop, to eat or because of BANGs, you pass all the dice to the next player.

The first player to eat 13 brains wins.

Another consideration is the dice types. There are green, yellow, and red dice which have differing amounts of brains and Bangs.

• Green dice have 3 brains, 1 BANG, and 2 footsteps

• Yellow dice have 2 brains, 2 BANGs, and 2 footsteps

• Red dice have 1 brain, 3 BANGs, and 2 footsteps

So if you know there are several reds left in the can, this can help you choose to play it safe.

Perhaps, you have a clear understanding of how to play by now, or maybe I have completely lost you. If you want to know more, you can check Will Wheaton playing Zombie Dice with his friends here.

Zombicide Black Plague

Zombicide Black Plague is a dungeon crawler hack-and-slash game by Cool Mini or Not. In this game, you run heroes through stand-alone quests. The heroes, progress in abilities and gear within each quest, but there is no carryover from quest to quest. Each quest has you starting fresh.

It’s what I deem a gateway game as it is relatively easy to understand and not a burden to start playing, but it can take a fair amount of time to lay out all the tiles.

The extent of this game that I used allows me to say little more than “its a box full of plastic zombies and heroes”

Tools from the Desk

The last components I needed were some rulers. I found a long ruler (30cm) a short ruler (15cm) and a protractor (10cm along the flat edge)

These I planned on using to measure ranges.

Oh, and we needed a table to play on, but we could have played on the floor.

How We Played

I like the kids select 3 heroes and they placed them a short ruler from the table edge (war game style) and I selected 3 zombies per hero and placed them on my side.

Then, I handed them the braincase (zombie dice in the can) and asked them to roll 3 dice as if they were playing zombie dice.

Rule 1 - The heroes act first.

Depending on the dice that are rolled, the heroes and the zombies can act.

• Footsteps allow heroes to move 1 length of the short ruler.

• BANGS allow them to strike a zombie at a range of 1 long ruler.

• Brains allow the zombie player to move 1 zombie the distance of the protractor.

Rule 2 - A hero may only spend 1 footstep and 1 BANG on their turn in either order. If they have more than 1 they can grant an ally a respective action.

There are only 13 dice in the braincase, so the heroes are able to take turns 4 times and there is one dice leftover. The last player rolls that last die by itself.

After all the dice have been rolled and collected by the zombie player, the zombie player rolls them all in one big roll and acts accordingly.

Each brain allows him to move one zombie

Using 3 footsteps, he may reinforce his horde from the box with zombies one protracter from the edge.

Rule 3 - A zombie may only ever make 1 movement and therefore spend 1 brain.

If a zombie mini touches a hero, that hero is dead. The survivors are the winners; either the zombies or the heroes.

Rule 4 - Heros can’t leave the table

Expanding the rules

To make things a bit more interesting, I added some variant rules on the second time playing through.

• Runners (a time of variant zombie in the box) are allowed to spend 2 brains and move 2 times.

• Fatties (another type of variant zombie in the box) require 2 BANGs to kills.

But to reinforce these differing types required differing amounts of footsteps on the big zombie roll.

• Walkers need 2 footsteps

• Runners need 3 footsteps

• Fatties need 4 footsteps

Another rule I added was that by spending 3 BANGs on the big zombie roll, a dead hero is respawned as a zombie (walker).

Finally, I tossed a handful of juice boxes around the table to simulate structures that blocked line of sight.

Final Thoughts

Now this game certainly was not a valid method for language fluency practice, discounted the language used to explain the rules and mechanics of the game but it was a good use of extra time after class was finished.

It also lead to a better understanding of movement tactics that might about in other games like D&D.

There is also plenty of room for extending the rules to include concepts from D&D and other role-playing games.

For example, there was no concept of armor class (AC) and the heroes simply died when monsters made contact. This might also be addressed with hit points.

Also, all attacks were ranged attacks and there was no consideration of melee attacks. Perhaps some increased damage, with a reduction of damage done with ranged attacks, might make charging in more of a valid strategy. But as things stand moving in is simply a death wish. It is certainly a kiting game.

Another thing missing was the inclusion of the necromancer mini. I didn’t include him in the game yet. I thought about him a bit, but making this game on the fly, didn’t offer me much time to invoke an impromptu spell casting system. The game certainly could benefit from some AOE spells and an increase in zombies and their actions.

All in all, it was an enjoyable play session, even though the heroes lost every time. I played a hero in the final game and Amelia, my daughter, played the zombies. The kids seemed to like it. It was a nice respite from the complexity of D&D 5e.

It also led me to my next purchase. Rangers of Shadowdeep.