Zombie Dice, a new game from Steve Jackson Games, has us pretty excited here at Dice of Doom. The premise is pretty simple – you are a zombie, hungry and desperately attempting to eat brains whilst trying to avoid the natural enemy of the zombie – the shotgun. While we are all left waiting for the game to be released early next year some time, they have kindly created a Flash Demo of the game to further tease educate us on the way the game is played – and we have to admit – it looks pretty fun. The Flash Demo is worth watching for the pure amusement value – think ‘Zombie narrator’…

Continue reading Zombie Dice from Steve Jackson Games

Due to the enormous success of Zom-B-Gone by Geeky Clean in protecting me from the threat of daily zombie attack I have come up with a list of other repellent soaps that I would find quite useful.

Continue reading Zom-B-Gone Day 06 – Other repellents required

While I can safely report no zombies on day three (boring I know…) we did have an interesting discussion over lunch at work. Where are the Vampire Repellent soaps? I thought that that was a very good question. There was some earnest discussion for a while. What could be included in the soap to ward off the vampires?

Continue reading Zom-B-Gone Day 03 – Still no zombies

After the initial excitement of receiving my Geeky Clean order and wanting to try all of them at once I opened only the Zom-B-Gone soap and put it next to the shower so that I would not forget to use it.

The next day, in the shower at 5:50am, I was struck by how appropriate it was that there was a little skull in my soap smiling at me – it described how I felt perfectly that early in the morning.

Continue reading Zom-B-Gone Day 01 – No Zombies

My wife arrived home today, a box looking like those that I get models and books in from the US, under her arm. Ripping apart the label that said “Customs has opened this parcel for inspection” (I can only imagine what went through their minds…), I looked with great glee at the five bars of awesome, nerdy, geeky soap sitting nestled in packaging.

Continue reading Geeky Clean soaps have arrived!!!

Zombieville USA is one of those simple to play magical games that can distract you for hours doing the same repetitive thing over and over. It’s hard to say whether the charm stems from playing a trucker’s cap, flannelet shirt wearing redneck hillbilly shooting zombies with rocket launchers and flame throwers, or whether its the well designed control scheme or the simple but effective graphics. Whatever it is, it has deserved its place in the top of the game charts in the App Store for some time now.

Continue reading Zombieville USA beginner’s strategy guide

Ah, Zombies. A classic creature from various mythologies that, like many others, has been revived through modern film and literature, and is thus standard fare for roleplayer gamers such as us. Ironically, many of the aforementioned reviving pieces are set in modern times: the standard way of killing a Zombie seems to involve a shotgun. For this article, however, I will be focussing on the use of Zombies in 3.5E and 4E D&D, so you’ll have to use a crossbow.

Unlike previous Monster of the Week entries, I will attempt to address this creature from both DM and player perspective equally, rather than the DM focus in the past. Hopefully this will prove useful to everyone.

As a DM, the use of Zombies is simply a no brainer (pun intended). You’ve used goblins, orcs, kobolds, and skeletons… you need some other random minor monster to fling at them. Or perhaps they fit with the theme of some necromantic magics in your story. However you come to them, the purpose of Zombies is fairly simple: they’re a speed bump. Their only purpose in existance is either for XP, or to distract the Player Characters from attacking a more important target, at least for a few rounds. They’re not intelligent, they don’t have tactics, they aren’t particularly damaging: but enough of them can cause the players to notice. If you do use them as distractions, make them get in the face of the vulnerable members of the party, and try to draw the heavy melee characters away from the (probably vulnerable) master.

On the flip side, if you’re a player, you’ll encounter zombies in one of two situations: as random chunks of walking XP, or as minions of some necromancer. The first situation is fine: blow a Turn Undead or something and Cleave through. No worries. The more dangerous kind of zombie occurs when they are a distraction. You have to be rather careful in dealing with this kind of Zombie, because every round you spend killing mindless undead is one less round spent killing the master. Specific tactics follow in the edition specific sections below.

3.5 Edition

Zombies in 3.5 are really best at quite low level. I tried to use them at higher level, but they don’t scale well, and the Cleric just nuked them. Huh. They make decent encounters by themselves up to about level 5. Beyond that, various spells and abilities make them simply too weak. A single Fireball or Hasted Cleaving Fighter makes short work of any amount of weaker Zombies, and the more powerful ones are easily outmaneuver.  If the Wizard casts Fly and Haste on anyone with a decent range weapon, there’s basically nothing the zombies can do. With that in mind, the Wyvern Zombie scales better than the others: its flight really helps.

Be careful when flinging Zombies at a party. Consider the party make up: if the party is a Rogue, Druid, Beguiler, and Bard, all level 4 or less, then they will have serious problems due to the Zombies’ various resistances and immunities, combined with the lack of Turn Undead. Higher than that, and the Druid can Wild Shape, so it’s not a problem any more, but you don’t want to accidentally wipe them.

As a distraction, the tougher Zombies are feasible until, oh, at least level 9. After about level 9 the spells in the game become powerful enough to handle any form of distraction, as I explain below. Since the Zombies are fairly tough, and immune to quite a number of nasty spells, they can  physically get in the way of the enemy in addition to simply swarming the casters. Note that if the party has a Cleric, Zombies become redundant faster: more so if the Cleric has Sun Domain.

For the players, dealing with Zombies is mostly simple. Before level 5, your best bet is to use heavy melee to take them down. Throw in a Bull’s Strength and the occassional heal, and your Fighter/Barbarian/whatever can probably handle it. If you don’t have heavy melee, buff up the best melee fighter you’ve got, and hope for the best. Preference order: Cleric, Druid, Bard, Rogue. At level 5 and up, a Haste, Fly, or Fireball makes almost all the Zombies easy by themselves.

If the Zombies are being used as a distraction, try to put as few characters into handling them as possible. Ideally, you want to handle them with a single Standard Action from one character, and then concentrate on the Zombies’ master. Turn Undead is handy here, but other than that, you may need to get creative. As commented above, Zombies, and basically all minions, become a non-issue at around level 9. You can just fling a Wall of Force or something similar at them, and suddenly, the Zombies are no longer an issue. For weaker Zombies, the level 4 spell Wall of Fire is also alright, but is a short-term solution.

4th Edition

Zombies have had a bit of an overhaul. No longer are they immune to Critical Hits, and the weaker ones actually die straight away if you do Crit them. Like the 3.5 versions, however, 4E Zombies are only useful at fairly low levels, although they do scale better.

Most of the Zombies suffer the same scaling problem as the 3.5 ones: their lack of maneuverability hurts more and more as the player characters become more powerful. Even early on, the characters can outrun even the toughest Zombies… bar one. The Gravehound is a very interesting addition that provides many more options for Zombies. Moving faster than almost all player characters, they are the fast cavalry of Zombies. By engaging an enemy with Gravehounds, you can then move in slower and tougher Zombies to mop up. Very cool. Unfortunately, the flying Rotwing Zombies are nowhere near as useful as the 3.5 Wyvern Zombies due to a very low Fly speed. If you use Zombies, just make sure you bring enough: they do tend to die fairly easily, especially if the players get clever.

Players, however, will soon realise that even Gravehounds have a very strong weakness, and it’s not the Critical Hits one. They’re dumb. Completely mindless, if fact. Superior tactics will always defeat Zombies, and once you get some good area control spells (Wall of Fog, Wall of Fire, Wall of Ice… get the picture?) the Zombies simply aren’t smart enough to do anything about it. Zombies also lack any particularly special attacks: yeah, they can grab, and a couple can knock people prone, but the only real status condition any of them cause is the Chillborn Zombies’ Immobilization. Exploit this! Push them, Pull them, Slow them! A Slow non-Gravehound Zombie has a Speed of just 2! Split them up, flank them, and kill them separately. Remember, tactics and teamwork are the names of the game in 4E.

That about wraps up another Monster of the Week. Come back next week, or Subscribe to our RSS feed, to get all the latest updates and a new Monster next week!

Public service announcement: if you use Inkscape, you may know it crashes… not infrequently. As I found yesterday, the crash recovery doesn’t always work. Save your drawings often!

Zombie Attack! for the iPhone has kept me happily distracted protecting the beer shack vigorously against the zombie onslaught for more hours than I care to admit. The recent update has seen the game improved immensely with new ways of controlling the dude, cheaper building, a “secret” weapon in the beer shack and the dude and shack healing themselves.

With the upgrade of the game I have started getting to level 30 pretty frequently, and I assuming that that is not too bad seeing as a lot of my friends who play the game struggle to get to level 15. Being eager to help my fellow man during the zombie apocalypse (not a guarantee…) I am posting Rupert’s Guide to Killing Zombies for Zombie Attack!.

Step One – Hurt Zombies are Easier to Pick Off (or, Why the Cannons Don’t Suck)

Hurt zombies in Zombie Attack! suffer huge penalties. For lost limbs, they lose attack strength, for lost legs they start to wander in circles (taking longer to get to the shack) and if they lost their heads they wander aimlessly only attacking if they get to a target by accident.

Using this strategy we do two things. Firstly, use the Cannon to hit the groups of zombies as they arrive through the gate. The area of effect weapon is a good way of hitting lots of zombies with one hit. Flank the cannon with swinging axes as this will definitely remove a limb or two (see above).

If your cannons and axes are doing the job properly, then your zombies will be ready for step two.

Step Two – The Beer Shack Must Be Protected

Once you have your cannons and axes chopping up zombies, its time to clean them up. The Guns are not particularly good at taking out a healthy zombie before it gets to your shack, but they are very good at polishing them off if they are hurt badly.

I place one gun at the corner of the shack first so that it can hit the three areas you need to concentrate on – the direct line to your shack and the right and left flank. Build this gun up to its maximum and be prepared to man it bravely (see Step Three below). Follow this one up with a gun on each flank to protect the sides of the shack and to proved some crossfire (see Step Four below).

Step Three – Be Prepared To Die

One of the new additions to the game is that you get a 20% bonus to any gun that you man. This is extremely useful if you start to get swamped or just haven’t got the money to upgrade yet.

Zombies will also sort of chase your dude for a little while as well which can be very useful in distracting them from breaking into your beer shack.

If you are like me, the death of the dude is not important – he comes back and its not about points, its about killing zombies. Its not unusual for me to go through 3-4 dudes…

Step Four – Crossing Arcs of Fire

After the initial set up of your defences is complete, its time to make sure that your zombies are getting hit by at least 2 weapons at any given time. This is best done by making sure that your weapons at the back of the line are upgraded first so that they can reach the zombies at the front, and also adding new weapons around the central line as soon as is feasible.

If you aren’t playing the game, you probably should be, its not expensive and lots and lots of fun.

Zombie Attack! (iTunes link) USD 0.99 | AUD 1.19

If anyone is getting much past level 30 50, can you let me know how in the comments please?

Update: I am getting past level 45 almost every game now. I am posting the set up that I am using in the hopes that it will aid my fellow zombie hunters…

There has been a sudden rush of Tower Defence games released for the iPhone recently, and for the most part, they OK to play. What there hasn’t been is any real innovation in the genre as it is played on the iPhone – and this is what makes Zombie Attack! absolutely brilliant…

First of all, the setting – you control a ’survivor’ who runs around a fenced off area protecting the shack. The shack has a health score, so it can get hit once or twice and it’ll be alright, but if it gets hit too much, you lose the shack (and the game). You also have as many ’survivors’ as you need (just in case they don’t live up to their name…). You control the survivor by tilting the device (you can change the calibration in the options…) and he can build/upgrade various defences around the paddock.

Zombies come charging in pretty quickly so you need to build swinging axes, mounted machine guns, flame throwers and canons as quickly as possible. You can also get the zombies to follow your little dude into traps as well, or distract them from attacking the shack (remember, the beer is in the shack, so you have to look after it…).

How the game is different, and true to its setting (something that can be surprisingly rare) is that you don’t really build mazes. You have to concentrate on setting up crossfire, funnelling the attackers and distracting (engaging in hand to hand combat at times…) the zombies. In this way it is not a typical Tower Defence game, and some people might be thrown by that at the beginning. But believe me, this is better.

There are little details as well that I love. Zombies that lose a limb, lose 25% of their combat efficiency with each one. Zombies without a head wander around aimlessly until they get to something they can attack. This gives an incredible feeling of actually being there and panicking trying to save the beer shack from the hordes and hordes of mindless shack hating zombies that come rolling in.

Overall its an incredible game from IUGO and the best part? Its only a dollar to buy…

• iTunes Link USD 0.99 / AUD 1.19)

We around here are big believers in being prepared. The Zombie Apocalypse is not a matter of ‘if’, but of ‘when’, and as such, we should all put some thought into being ready for the day (or more probably night…).

To help with your preparation, the guys over at Zombie Tools can help fit you out. These guys make customised ‘tools’ for taking out zombies quietly and effectively. In their words:

How much ammo do you have for your gun? Under a worst-case scenario, probably enough to last a few days. We’re thinking in terms of months and years. Furthermore, ammo is heavy and thus not terribly portable. While most people we’ve talked to imagine holing up somewhere and fighting a stationary, defensive battles against zombies, we’ve imagined scenarios where mobility would be your best chance of survival, and so would like to remain as manoeuvrable as possible. To that end, our basic survival package includes a solid mountain bike, a sidearm, and a Zombie Tools blade.

Each blade they make is custom done and is made from high quality steel and made to do the job and last. You can read about their development process in their FAQ.

The Zombie Tools site also has a really high quality Zombie Gallery that is well worth checking out as well.