The Walking Dead: All Out War

For a long time I have been a fan of The Walking Dead comics by Robert Kirkman.  I watch the TV show but have always preferred the comics.  Mantic Games have been making The Walking Dead Miniatures Game: All Out War for a while now and I have had it on my radar for a long time but never really looked into it much.  Well I decided to and I liked what I saw so I have picked up the core box and a couple of small boosters for some extra characters.

All Out War is a small skirmish game based off the Walking Dead comics.  What I think really sets it apart from other skirmish games is that it has so many types of play included.  It can be used as a normal skirmish game with two players fighting it out as rival groups trying to get supplies, it can be played co-op or solo against zombies or used as a campaign with each expansion wave letting you tell a different part of the comic book story.

The Core Box Contence

The core box comes with everything you need to play, enough survivors for two teams, plenty of zombies, dice, tokens, templates, 2D terrain and a play mat.  It is also really well priced for what you get, more like a cheap/mid range board game than a miniatures game.  This was another part of the appeal because it isn't a massive investment to get a game that you can get a lot of use out of.  All the miniatures are pre-assembled but unpainted which is fine for me since I am used to painting stuff up.

The game play looks easy enough with each player taking it in turns to activate one of their survivors and take their actions, once they do the zombies take their actions and engage anyone close enough for them to attack.  Unlike most skirmish games there are also event cards which will be drawn at random each zombie phase and can change the flow of the game, like adding more zombies to the board or causing them all to move towards the closest person even if they wouldn't normally.  That is another good thing about this game, it isn't just player vs player, it is player vs player vs zombies.  Doing actions that will draw the zombies attention is a risk and can cause them to move towards, and attack, your survivors instead of your opponents which I think makes action selection even more important than most games.

The Negan Booster

There are some other nice mechanics as well, for example there is a mayhem wheel that moves up as events happen, people fire guns or fight zombies.  As mayhem increases some survivors might start to panic and make it more and more difficult for lower leadership survivors to contribute to their team.  This can make the game a race against time to complete your objectives before mayhem gets too high or a way for survivors which don't panic easily to gain an advantage but creating mayhem and forcing survivors on the other team to roll a dice each time they want to take an action while they can walk around completing the objectives without being hassled.   Another thing I like is the loot mechanic.  In most skirmish games when you collect loot it is just a victory point, in All Out War it is more like a board game, when you collect a loot token it is a victory point but you also draw a card from an equipment deck and gain the equipment that you found which you can use for the rest of the game.  Actually The Walking Dead: All Out War is a bit of a cross between a skirmish wargame and a boardgame in quite a few ways.

There are lots of characters already out for the game and plenty of expansions and character packs.  You can easily make a team of your favourite characters from the comics or TV show.  The models aren't the best out there but still look pretty good and are a lot cheaper than most other miniatures games.  They also capture the look of the comics very well and I have seen some very nice paint jobs where people have done them in grey scale to match the black and white art of the comics.

The Prelude to Woodbury solo
starter set

I really think this is another miniatures game I could get non-wargaming friends to play with me.  The fact it has some elements that make it feel like a boardgame helps and also it is The Walking Dead, an IP that a lot of my friends are interested in, so that might encourage them to play.  If not the fact it has solo play means it wont just sit on the shelf until I find someone that wants to play, I do prefer playing with people but I have enjoyed a few solo games before.

I picked up the core box and Lori and Andrea boosters just to give me a few more characters.  I plan on playing through the core box campaign then picking up the next expansion to keep going.  That will also add to my pool of survivors that I can use.  The boosters are nice but I'd really only plan to pick up ones for characters that I actually wanted rather than trying to get them all because that could get expensive.  I went Andrea and Lori to start with because the core box is based off the 1st story arc from the comics at the Atlanta camp and the Shane and Glenn boosters was sold out so I got two others that were at the Atlanta camp.

Overall I am really looking forwards to this game and it does add a lot more models to my "to paint" pile.