Overview

This is a co-operative game

Zombiecide has a number of missions to pick from, the top right on BGA will show you the win conditions for your particular Mission

Setup

As part of setup, players choose characters, there are always 6 characters regardless of players so these may end up distributed unevenly

There are two types of characters to choose from: Adults or Children (Note that this does NOT reflect difficulty or type of player to pick them). Children are shown by having a yellow head in the top right.

Children have 2 Health and get the Slippery Skill from the start as a bonus

Adults have 3 Health and do not get the Slippery Skill unless they can unlock it as part of natural progression

On BGA, you can click the yellow triangle on the right of a character to give a definition of some of the skills they can unlock

The Map

The Map is divided into a number of Zones

An outside zone is displayed by crosswalk borders, in addition it may be bordered by the edge of the map or by buildings

An inside zone is displayed by walls and door breaks

From an outside zone, an individual can see in orthogonal lines to as many other outside zones. An individual can only see one zone into a directly adjacent inside zone connected via an open door.

From an inside zone, an individual can see a distance of one zone into adjacent connected inside zones by open doors. An individual can see in an orthogonal line as many outside zones as long as they are in a zone adjacent to an open door.

Equipment Cards

Cards can be either Melee, Ranged, or Skills

A character can hold 2 Hand cards and 3 Backpack Cards. Unless the card states otherwise, Backpack cards cannot actively be used.

Weapons will either show a knife for Melee or a gun for Ranged

Ranged cards may have a bullet or shell symbol, there is no ammo consumption, but these symbols will indicate how they might interact with Skill cards e.g. a Skill card may only affect Shell ranged weapons

If a weapon has the red Dual Wield symbol on the top left, having two identical of this item will let you use the dual wield rules during combat

If a weapon has the white door symbol on the top left, this can be used to open doors

Cards will contain a noise indicator, a blue noise indicator means it makes no noise, a yellow noise indicator means it makes noise. Some cards may have both symbols, depending on how it's used e.g. combat may be silent, but door opening may be noisy

6 Starting Equipment cards:

Pistol x 3

Baseball Bat x1

Crowbar x1

Fire Axe x1

45 Blue Equipment cards (Found in regular search):

Aaahh!! x4 (Zombie spawn/action card)

Bag of Rice x2 (Food) (Gain 3AP when used)

Canned Food x2 (Food) (Gain 3AP when used)

Water x2 (Gain 3AP when used)

Flashlight x2

Chainsaw x2

Crowbar x1

Fire Axe x1

Katana x2

Kukri x2

Machete x4

Molotov x4

Pistol x1

Plenty of Bullets x3

Plenty of Shells x3

Sawed-Off x4

Shotgun x2

Sniper Rifle x2

Sub-MG x2

11 Pimpweapons cards (Red cards found is grey boxes):

Aaahh! x2 (Zombie spawn/action card)

Army Sniper Rifle x1

Automatic Shotgun x1

Evil Twins x1

Golden AK-47 x1

Golden Kukri x1

Gunblade x1

Ma's Shotgun x1

Nailbat x1

Zantetsuken x1

Weapons in Combat

From left to right, each weapon has 6 icons

The first shows the type, Melee or Ranged

The second shows the distance, usually with a min and max value. 0 is the zone the character currently resides, whilst 1 is the zone adjacent to you and so on.

The third shows how many dice are rolled when using this weapon

The fourth shows what value or higher you want to roll on each dice in order to count it as a success

The fifth shows how much damage a success grants

The sixth shows whether this weapon is noisy or silent

If a weapon had the red dual wield symbol, and you have a duplicate of it in each hand, you can use both weapons with one action as long as the same zone (not zombie) is targeted

You do not get to choose which specific zombie you attack with a Ranged weapon, just the Zone you attack, there is a Priority Order for the Zombies - 1st Fattys or Abominations (player choice), 2nd Walkers, 3rd Runners. What this means is if you attack a zone with 4 Walkers and a Runner, the Walkers will be hit first and until they are defeated or move on, the Runner cannot be hit with Ranged. However, Melee weapons allow you to choose specific targets.

Friendly Fire - If a zone contain a mix of Zombies and Characters, any Misses on a Ranged attack hit a Character of the group's choice instead. However, a character cannot accidentally shoot themself. If there are multiple Misses, and multiple Characters in the target zone, the group can distribute the damage as desired, whether that be split evenly or not hitting one character whilst another takes more.

Point-blank – The Survivor can perform Ranged Actions in their own Zone, no matter the minimum Range. When resolving a Ranged Action at Range 0, the Survivor freely chooses the targets and can eliminate any type of Zombies (no matter the special abilities they may have). Their Ranged weapons still need to inflict enough Damage to eliminate the targets. Friendly Fire is ignored.

Adrenaline, Danger, and Character Leveling

Each time a character kills a monster, that character gains a number of AP (Adrenaline Points)

Gaining enough AP allows that character to level up (Blue - Yellow - Orange - Red)

Each level up gives 1 Ability, some levels only give one ability so it's automatic, whilst others give multiple options but you can only choose 1 to take and the others are lost

Be aware that character levels are linked to danger levels, the highest character level in the group when zombies spawn determine which and how many zombies spawn based on the same blue/yellow/orange/red level. As mentioned, it's the highest character level which counts, so if one character is a blue, four are yellows, and one is orange then the zombie spawn will be of Orange level. As such, it's advised to try to stay around the same level for everyone, lagging behind will make it difficult for you!

Zombies

Zombies spawn at the beginning of the game as part of setup, whenever a door of a building is opened for the first time, or during their phase determined by the zombie deck and the current danger level. When a card is drawn for a zombie, it could be a normal card which simply spawns it, or a Rush card which spawns it and allows it to take an action, or an Activation card which does NOT spawn but instead allows all zombies of that type to take an action.

Zombies have a damage, health, Actions, and AP reward, and may have special rules

The four zombie types are:

Walkers have Damage 1, Health 1, Actions 1, AP 1

Fattys have Damage 1, Health 2, Actions 1, AP 1, Special Rule: Only a Damage 2+ weapon or Molotov can have an impact on them.

Runners have Damage 1, Health 1, Actions 2, AP 1

Abominations have Damage 1, Health 3, Actions 1, AP 5, Special Rule: Only a Damage 3+ weapon or a Molotov can have an impact on them. No weapon has a natural 3, a Skill or similar is needed.

Abominations

If an Abomination card is drawn, what happens depends on whether there is an Abomination out or not

If there is no Abomination, an abomination spawns

If there is an Abomination, that abomination takes an action

In this way, there will only ever be 1 Abomination active at most

There are 4 unique Abominations with their own rules

Hobomination - No combat action can be taken if you share a zone with this abomination

Abominacop - This abomination takes first priority in targeting order

Abominawild - Molotovs used in this abomination's zone only affect the abomination, nothing else is destroyed

Patient 0 - None

Player Turn

If you are controlling multiple characters, fully complete one character's turn before taking a different character's turn, but you can choose the order in which your characters act

A character starts with 3 Actions per turn, but this can be increased as they level. The actions are as follows:

Move - 1 Action to move to an adjacent Zone +1 Action per zombie in current zone. This means with the base 3 actions, if a character has 3 zombies in their zone, they cannot move. If movement takes a character into a zone with zombies they cannot continue moving even if they have enough actions to progress.

Search - Whilst in an Inside Zone with no Zombies, 1 action to draw an equipment card and either put it in Hand, put it in Backpack, or Discard it. If they put it in Hand/Backpack, they get a free action to redistribute the cards they currently hold however they like. If they have no space for the new item, during the redistribution they can choose a different item to discard. A Character can only perform 1 Search per turn, if they have a skill which gives them a Free Search this also counts as their 1 Search per turn.

Open Door - If the character holds an item in hand which contains the door symbol on the top left, they can spend 1 action to open a door adjacent to the zone they are in. Abnormal doors may require a mission based objective to be met before they can be opened. If the door was the first door to be opened for that building, spawn zombies in each Dark Zone of that building. If a rush card was drawn, the zombie will both spawn and take an action, which may mean they move into a Light Zone.

Trade - For 1 action, you can either trade with one other character in the same zone or redistribute your items between your Backpack and Hand. A trade does not have to be equal, it can be 1-for-1 or it could be a full take or a full give or some other arrangement agreed upon between the controlling players. The other character in the trade gets a free redistribution.

Noise - For 1 action you can place a noise token in your zone

Interact with Objective - For 1 Action you can interact with or take an objective, this effect can vary based on the Mission, but typically gives 5AP unless the Mission states otherwise.

Combat - For 1 action, you can use a weapon against a zone with Zombies, if you satisfy the condition for Dual Wield you can use a single action to use both weapons.

Wait - You can pass on any actions you don't wish to take

Zombie Turn

After all characters and thus all players have taken their turns, the zombies activate

First, attacks happen. Each zombie attacks a character in its zone, if there are multiple characters then the players choose which character takes the hit.

Second, movement happens. Each zombie which did not attack, as such has no characters in its zone, moves 1 zone. Where they move will depend on a few things. First, they'd like to go towards a zone (note they may not actually reach it) that has the most combined characters and noise tokens in it which is within its line of sight and contains at least 1 character. If there are no characters in its Line of Sight, then it moves towards the noisiest zone regardless of distance. Remember, character tokens count towards the noise level. If the path to the destination is blocked at any point between the zombie and the target zone, the zombie does not move at all. If the target zone has multiple routes of equal distance, the zombies split up as evenly as possible and take all the equidistant routes.

For Runners, they do this check twice, their first priority is always attack, with second priority being move. This means they could, in priority order, attack-attack, attack-move, or move-move

After activation, Spawn happens. In ascending order, from each numbered spawn point, draw a card to see what arrives corresponding with the current danger level, remember this is equal to the highest character level in all the group. Some spawn locations may be special, these do not spawn until the Mission tells you to, after a special spawn location starts spawning it continues spawning on each subsequent Spawn Phase, unless the mission says otherwise. If there are not enough zombies of a type to spawn what is needed, the zombies of that type get an activation instead.

Special Modes and Missions

The rulebook contains further clarifications on special modes and the specific Missions

Game End

The game is won when the Mission Objectives are all complete

The game is lost if a character dies

The game is lost if a game state causes a Mission Objective to be impossible to complete

The game is lost if a Mission specific Loss criteria is met