So Far, So Good!

After posting up my recent homebrew crossover for Castle Panic and ZOMBIES!!! I have had chance to give it a quick test and can happily report that for all intents and purposes, it seems to work.

Admittedly, so far  I have only had one chance to play it through (on the Standard difficulty setting) but, the game I played was neither too easy nor a dire struggle. It had it's moments, such as when I spawned two hordes of six zombies in a row but, with just about half of my walls and towers remaining at the games end, I feel it was a fair match-up.

Since that test though, I have also picked up some more ZOMBIES!!! goodies that were on sale at my FLGS (ZOMBIES!!! 2: CORPS(E), ZOMBIES!!! 3: MALL WALKERS, and a Bag O' 100 Glow in the Dark Zombies) for a grand total of £20 (absolute bargain) and, my creative juices have been flowing again.

The sculpt for both the original zombies and the glow in the dark zombies is identical, so I quickly realised that if put in a bag and mixed, they'd be indistinguishable from one another until drawn. I could, if I wanted, have two different types of zombie assault the castle without the need to draw up and print tokens. Awesome!

So here we have it, Zombie Panic 1.5!!! Now with added Uberness!

Zombie Panic 1.5

All the rules are the same as Zombie Panic!!! with the addition of uber zombies and, the following optional difficulty settings.

Uber zombies

 Uber zombies vary from game to game, where they are either very tough or, very fast (but you get to choose which). If you choose very tough, uber zombies have 2HP instead of the standard one (lay it down when it is first hit, removing it from play on the second hit).

Very fast uber zombies move forward two sections at a time, instead of the standard one.

For added challenge, you may choose to flip a coin (or roll a dice) before play to randomly determine which of these abilities all of the uber zombies will be granted this game.

Standard Game .5: Spawn 1D6 zombies each turn. 40 regular zombies and, 10 uber zombies in the spawning pool.

A Hard Game .5: Spawn 1D6+1 zombies each turn. 60 standard zombies and, 15 uber zombies in the spawning pool.

A Virtually Impossible Game .5: Spawn >2D6 (roll 2D6 and spawn zombies equal to the highest number shown) each turn. 80 standard zombies and, 20 uber zombies in the spawning pool.

A Hell Froze Over Game .5: As a Virtually Impossible game with the following additional rule:

Return Of The Living Dead

 Whenever a double is rolled for zombie spawning return that many zombies from the scrap heap (pile of defeated zombies) to the spawn pool. No zombies spawn this turn.

 

If there are both standard and uber zombies in the scrap heap, uber zombies are returned first.

Alchemy's Workbench #12: Panic Stations!

Given how much our little group both loves zombies and Castle Panic, I was delighted to come across this news snippet.

We were pretty sure that there was never going to be an undead expansion released for the original game as it is very much a family affair and, I agree. The wide appeal of the game is a big part of what's made it a success. That said, there has been a great cry out across the Internet that this is what gamers where looking for. So the release of a zombie themed game that expands the mechanics, creating more of a gamers game is a dream come true.

But this doesn't mean that you can't add zombies to your Castle Panic. Just that you'll have to homebrew it!

Now I could sit down and design counters, print counters and, use counters but with what I have at hand, there is an easier route. Because I have ZOMBIES!!!

Now, these rules are still very much at the draft stage but if you have a copy of Castle Panic and want to give them a try, I'd love to hear how well they worked for you. You don't even need ZOMBIES!!! Any counters will work as all monsters in this game are identical (until I get creative anyhow) ;0).

Zombie Panic Homebrew

Play is pretty standard with a couple of alterations:

• The monster tokens are not used in this variant.

• At set-up, place 1 zombie in the forest section of each numbered ring (6 in all).

• All zombies have 1HP.

• All zombies move 1 in the monster movement phase.

• Instead of drawing monster tokens you roll D6 based on the difficulty (see below) to spawn zombies and then roll 1D6 for each zombie spawned, placing it in the appropriate forest section (as if you had drawn it as a monster token).

• You win the game when all zombies are destroyed.

 In order to keep the game fresh you can alter the difficulty of the game with the following adjustments:

Standard Game: Spawn 1D6 zombies each turn. 50 zombies in the spawning pool.

A Hard Game: Spawn 1D6+1 zombies each turn. 75 zombies in the spawning pool.

A Virtually Impossible Game: Spawn >2D6 (roll 2D6 and spawn zombies equal to the highest number shown) each turn. 100 zombies in the spawning pool.

A Hell Froze Over Game: As a Virtually Impossible game with the following additional rule:

Return Of The Living Dead: Whenever a double is rolled for zombie spawning return that many zombies from the scrap heap (pile of defeated zombies) to the spawn pool. No zombies spawn this turn.

Calm Before The Storm

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There's no two ways about it. Blogging wise, the past couple of months have been pretty slow ones.

By and large this is down to real life commitments, but I am hoping that I can start to turn that around. Fast. In the next 72 hours in fact! The thing is that, just because I haven't been able to update here as often as I would have liked, the ideas have still been coming thick and fast. REALLY fast.

I now have a new abstract game on the workbench, along with an independent survival-horror roleplaying game, heavily spurred on by the sterling work that Jerry Teleha has been doing with Stay Alive! On top of that there have been the usual gaming musings, a solo conversion for the Munchkin card game that I think's pretty dapper, my old solo rules for ZOMBIES!!! that I have re-discovered in a pile of print-outs, new plunder for the cave, new thrift store finds. There is a LOT to blog about, and I finally have the time to sit down and do it all justice. :0).

So sit back and relax, there's a storm coming. ;0)