I've been planning on doing a horror based game for ages. I've kicked around various ideas, vampires, werewolves, Cthulhu but decided a zombie game best suited the multi-player style club games that we play.

It was originally just going to be a generic zombie vs. human game until I watched Resident Evil: Apocalypse. The idea of being able to add genetic weaponry as well was just too tempting ...

A full game report including photos can be found here

So, as I usually do with new projects, the first thing I do is hunt around for what figures are available. Recently, modern horror figures have become more popular (luckily for me) and there are numerous manufacturers of zombies and armed civilians.

Zombies

For zombies, I chose a mixture from Cold War, West Wind, Copplestone and Hasslefree. They vary a bit in style and size but I can live with that. Working on a ratio of 4:1 for zombies to humans and with up to eight human players with two figures each, I need at least 70 zombies to allow for any extras making an appearance. The bulk came from Cold War, West Wind rage zombies, Copplestone plague zombies plus a few odd ones. There were also some military zombies that were added by Captain General, fellow Blockbuster gamer

Specials

The genetic weapons in the film includes Nemesis (the main test subject) and the church based creatures (I'll call them lurkers). The figure for Nemesis comes from Hasslefree (Jotun) with a slight modification to his gattling arm (left photo below). The lurkers come straight from Heresy , leaping lurkers in their demon line (right photo below).

Humans

Who doesn't make suitable figures? Their are cops & SWAT from Foundry, TV crew from EM-4, zombie hunters from West Wind, the list goes on. For non combatants, the civilians from the West Wind Super System line work well. As it was, in the end I didn't bother with the civilains in the game but some of them became player figures instead

Modern buildings aren't quite so easy to find as the figures. It seems that ruins are more common. In the end I had a mixture of Litko, Bachmann O scale railway plus various buildings I have accumulated over time. Needing a few tower blocks proved a problem, none seemed to be available and what might have done was very expensive for what I wanted. The answer? Make my own, some empty toner boxes from work with some sheets of labels stuck on the faces with windows printed on them. Very cheap and they do the job nicely.

Lastly I made a fast food place using the design that Matakishi has on his website. Check it out, very inspiring!

Obviously I would need lots of 'bits' to scatter about as well. There are phone boxes, trash cans & skips from Black Cat Bases, wooden fences from Hovels and Pardulon, barricades from Old Crow amongst others, street lights from Bachmann and the roads are WorldWorks. Cars come from diecast ones off eBay, resin pickups from Britannia and the crashed one is from Black Cat again. The helicopter is a Forces of Valor Blackhawk that I happen to have.

A club game generally means around ten players to cater for. Not easy if you want a game that lasts no more than 3 hours with any sort of result. I thought about using a commercial set of rules but wasn't happy that any of them would do what I wanted. Then I remembered a free boardgame called Zombie Plague (check it out!) With some alterations to allow for a tabletop game it should do the job. I would also need some item cards that the characters can find during the game.

If anyone wants to try a similar game, here are the rules I created plus the cards for the pickups. They are in PDF format.