Zombie Carnivale –

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Board Games – Venice is usually a great location for an interesting style of game. Zombie Carnivale is a unique game that was nominated for several awards with the first edition of the game and with the Kickstarted Second Edition new scenarios and miniatures were added to the game to improve the experience.

From the Publisher:

The ancient manuscripts talk about a Leviathan, a huge creature lying on the silt bed of the lagoon on whose back the city has its foundations. All manuscripts agree on its eternal sleep and they all tell that the beast will wake up one day, shaking the city from its muddy roots, smashing the vitrified stilts on which the city stands, and crashing it into the seething sea where the monster will rise. The ancients say, however, that there will be signs; it is written that the Venetians will feel the tremors, that they would therefore save themselves from the monster, who will recover his freedom by plunging into the waves a deserted city.

But there were no signs. What ancients did not know is that the Leviathan is not alive. For centuries, the city lived and prospered on the back of a corpse. That corpse, though, is now awakening – and with it the dead arise from the lagoon...

In the cooperative game Carnival Zombie, players lead a group of characters who are fleeing on terra firma from the terror that has emerged from the lagoon of Venice. This group of characters must make its way through hordes of rotting "Infected" to leave the city, and players need to rush as the Leviathan upon which the foundations of Venice were built is awakening. Thus, it's only a matter of time before the city sinks in the dark waters of the lagoon.

Each game is divided into several nights and days. During the nights, players hide in trenches behind the barricades to resist the attacks of the Infected. During the day, players move through the city, which is shaken by tremors. The Infected are drawn by the groans of the Leviathan in the abyss to help their master free itself from the rotting stilts that nail it to the silt bed.

Players have several ways to get out of town, but little time to do it – and their path is hindered by the bosses, the most implacable servants of the Leviathan. If the players do make it out, they can assess their skills – and set a goal for next time – by counting the points scored during the game.

MERCs-like Halloween

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MERCS? – Our annual Halloween zombie fest happened again this year. Ben took the iniative to create a Left 4 Dead variation using the Zombie rules I came up with a while back and generic survivors. Basically the table was set up as a 3'x6' board covered with terrain. The survivors have to run across the board to grab and objective and then run back to trigger the escape button. Easy right?

To start the survivors have no weapons. Throughout the board are random tokens that allow you to either heal or draw an item card. This is how your character levels up during the game. Essentially going from a sneak-theif to a bad ass zombie killer. The rules set is based on MERCS with movement cards and firing numbers. It worked really well and fit the bill for what we were trying to do.

Zombies are loosely controlled by a GM spawing a random number each turn and moving toward what ever they can see. If the survivors fire a gun or kill something it generates noise which overrides the LOS movement.

Once the survivors reach a set point on the board an event triggers which essentially changed the rules of the game. The instance we had was a flash flood. Which reduced movement and increased firing numbers.

The surviors died several times while moving across the board and had to be respawned by a teamate to continue the game. We made it to the objective and then had to call the game because the store was closing.

Overall it was really fun, in our post game parking lot discussion we had some tweaks we would make to the game to make it move a little faster and smoother.

• Reduce the size of the map – 6' is really far to cross when your model moves and average of 6" per turn. I think with a 4' map we'd be golden and have a shot.

• Give survivors a basic weapon – Having to run a grab items was fun, but it seriously slowed down the first part of the game and forced the survivors to make some "bad" moves.

•  Allow models to "fire and move" or "melee and move"– some spots where we had to choose to kill a zombie or run made it impossible to get away. Thematic for sure but it's more fun for players to be able to smash skulls then to run and hide.