Hello survivors, while I gather information for a series of reports on different locations across Canada (and two special locations outside of Canada) I have been tardy in my daily posting. I would like to share with you however, thanks to my favorite zombie forum two link to books you may enjoy.
I will be providing in depth studies of the survival advice and tactics provided in both of these books. So you may want to read them to have reference to what I'm saying or you may want to read my notes first before cementing any ideas in your mind. The advice in Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide will get many potential survivors killed. However some of the advice and information presented is quite useful.
Now and then I also like to play games. I believe they are a fundamental part of surviving in the world before or after the fall in order to keep sanity. To that end it is important to have a deck of cards or some dice in your survival kit and know a few games to play with them. Either on your own or if you run into others.
Here are a few online games I enjoy:
Zombie Lane
It's fun and easy and takes a long time. The routine of re-establishing one's house and family is an important one as is the regular upkeep of barricades, farming and slaying of zombies. All of these things the game instills while being light hearted and simple.
Zombie Slayer
A game a kin to Mafia Wars or any of those. Simply building a group of friends and killing zombies and zombie bosses around the world by clicking them to death.
Pandemic
Not necessarily a zombie game but this game does a surprisingly good job of depicting how a virus might spread. Through water and airports, infecting the entire world in a matter of days. Often wiping out entire countries before they have a chance to even start work on a cure.
Infectonator
This is a fun strategy game of sorts where you infect and destroy the world one city at a time. While the "game" aspects of it make everything more game-like and less real, some interesting parallels to real life can be made. Watching how the zombies naturally group together where there are more people. The people who hold up in a corner seem to last the longest but if they stay there too long they get over whelmed. The faster police and military are on the scene and recognize the threat the better chance of keeping the outbreak contained. The patterns of both the humans and zombies in this game can be watched and obvious mistakes leading to death or smart tactics leading to a single person surviving the horde can be observed.
Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.
Showing posts with label board games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label board games. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Zombiegeddon
This could be a post about the lesson of never blowing something off based on appearances.
Imagine this: a hobby shop, there are comics and manga and board games and action figures and character busts. Enter me. Looking for zombie books or board games. Looking through the board games I see a big box with the title Zombiegeddon. Looks lame. $25 (it's cheap) probably lame. I get something else. Repeat this scene a couple of times over a few weeks. Finally the scene changes, the game is now $10 and I have bought almost everything else is the store zombie related. So I buy the game.
In a new scene we see my home. My shelves of zombie games, books, films, weapons, survival guides etc. I am having some friends over, I go to the shelf and look at my pile of board games. I see Zombiegeddon, I shake my head and pick something else. Finally the scene changes, someone else goes to the pile and picks out Zombiegeddon. So the game finally makes it's way into my experiences and I wish I had not waited so long.
First off it's an entertaining, QUICK game. In a world of three hour complex games which might as well be RPGs and weekend long RISK tournaments, a nice 45-minute board game is a rare find.
Now I will get into the training that can be taken out of this game. The biggest thing of note is without weapons you basically have to let enemies walk all over you. Now obviously in real life this is not completely the case but if you are not a trained, experienced fighter when raiders or even aggressive looters come to take things from you and you are unarmed there isn't much you can do. So either train up or make sure you aren't without the proper gear. It can also be noted that there are a lot of barricades and this, while annoying, makes complete sense. Everyone who isn't dead is going to be putting up barricades every where they sleep. That means every night there will be almost as many new barricades as there are people living. Meaning after a while many areas will be literally covered in barricades to try to navigate through.
The main point of the game is to gather supplies which is also a very important lesson to be instilled in any survivor. Gathering supplies has become the goal of life and without food and water, you're "kill count" won't mean any more your empty canteen. The best way to win the game is actually not to focus on gathering supplies yourself but on cutting other people off from doing so. This reflects real life in how raiders, looters and even survivors will have to contend for supplies and be prepared that as things get worse that fight will become more and more brutal.
And I suppose I should talk a little about the strategy of the game. The first half of the game talks place after the zombies but before the nuclear bombs get dropped. The main thing here, get your supplies into the barricades while collecting new supplies and provisions. Having weapons and kills is the quickest way to get big points but the provisions multiply in the end so they are worth more. After the bombs drop the zombies aren't gone! They just mutated! So there are more enemies and less weapons but the main goal is still to get supplies, or more specifically to stop your fellow players from getting supplies. Try to cut off their markers while they are focusing on other areas and narrowing the options they have. Remember though, it's just a game, don't ruin any friendships over it.
Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.
Imagine this: a hobby shop, there are comics and manga and board games and action figures and character busts. Enter me. Looking for zombie books or board games. Looking through the board games I see a big box with the title Zombiegeddon. Looks lame. $25 (it's cheap) probably lame. I get something else. Repeat this scene a couple of times over a few weeks. Finally the scene changes, the game is now $10 and I have bought almost everything else is the store zombie related. So I buy the game.
In a new scene we see my home. My shelves of zombie games, books, films, weapons, survival guides etc. I am having some friends over, I go to the shelf and look at my pile of board games. I see Zombiegeddon, I shake my head and pick something else. Finally the scene changes, someone else goes to the pile and picks out Zombiegeddon. So the game finally makes it's way into my experiences and I wish I had not waited so long.
First off it's an entertaining, QUICK game. In a world of three hour complex games which might as well be RPGs and weekend long RISK tournaments, a nice 45-minute board game is a rare find.
Now I will get into the training that can be taken out of this game. The biggest thing of note is without weapons you basically have to let enemies walk all over you. Now obviously in real life this is not completely the case but if you are not a trained, experienced fighter when raiders or even aggressive looters come to take things from you and you are unarmed there isn't much you can do. So either train up or make sure you aren't without the proper gear. It can also be noted that there are a lot of barricades and this, while annoying, makes complete sense. Everyone who isn't dead is going to be putting up barricades every where they sleep. That means every night there will be almost as many new barricades as there are people living. Meaning after a while many areas will be literally covered in barricades to try to navigate through.
The main point of the game is to gather supplies which is also a very important lesson to be instilled in any survivor. Gathering supplies has become the goal of life and without food and water, you're "kill count" won't mean any more your empty canteen. The best way to win the game is actually not to focus on gathering supplies yourself but on cutting other people off from doing so. This reflects real life in how raiders, looters and even survivors will have to contend for supplies and be prepared that as things get worse that fight will become more and more brutal.
And I suppose I should talk a little about the strategy of the game. The first half of the game talks place after the zombies but before the nuclear bombs get dropped. The main thing here, get your supplies into the barricades while collecting new supplies and provisions. Having weapons and kills is the quickest way to get big points but the provisions multiply in the end so they are worth more. After the bombs drop the zombies aren't gone! They just mutated! So there are more enemies and less weapons but the main goal is still to get supplies, or more specifically to stop your fellow players from getting supplies. Try to cut off their markers while they are focusing on other areas and narrowing the options they have. Remember though, it's just a game, don't ruin any friendships over it.
Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)