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| Zombicide Season 1 from CoolMiniOrNot & Guillotine Games |
Article updated: 2021.02.08
The Zombicide Season 1 is the base set for the Zombicide cooperative board game from Guillotine Games & CoolMiniOrNot, published in 2012. It has nice and easy to play mechanics and a lot of cool miniatures.
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Details - Zombicide Season 1 board game base set from Guillotine Games & CoolMiniOrNot
Board game set: Zombicide Season 1
Product name: Zombicide Season 1
Set type: Board game base set (Game base set)
Company: CoolMiniOrNot & Guillotine Games
Production: 2012-2019-
Series: Zombicide
Rules: Zombicide Season 1 system
Designer: Raphaël Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien, Nicolas Raoult
Players: 1-6
Style: Cooperative, Solo, Miniatures, AI controlled enemies, Modular board
Playtime: varies, based on scenario
Language dependency: Language dependent character cards
Miniatures
Range: Zombicide (Modern), Species: Various, Scale: 1:50 (35mm), Proportions: Realistic, Size: Various, Material: soft PVC (soft plastic), Priming: Primer is not necessary
Assembly: One-piece, Sprueless, Posing: Medium, Paintjob: Unpainted, Base: Integral flat base, Sculptor: Elfried Perochon & Rafal Zelazo
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Contents - Zombicide Season 1 board game base set from Guillotine Games & CoolMiniOrNot
 image © CoolMiniOrNot |
| Zombicide Season 1 from CoolMiniOrNot & Guillotine Games - Contents |
System
Rulebook - Zombicide Season 1
76 tokens: These include game tokens and 2D scenery.
110 mini-cards (42 Zombie cards, 62 Equipment cards, 6 Wounded cards)
6 6-sided dice
6 double-sided cardboard Survivor Identity Cards
6 experience trackers: These are little skulls that clip to the Survivor Cards
Miniatures
71 miniatures (realistic 1:50 scale, an average human is 35mm high):
6 Survivors
65 Zombies
40 Walkers, 8 x 5 sculpt of different zombies, 3 male, 2 female
16 Runners, 8 x 2 sculpt
8x Runner #1
8x Runner #2
8x Fattie
1x Abomination
Miniature scenery
9 cardboard game tiles, reversible and modular
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Review - Zombicide Season 1 board game base set from Guillotine Games & CoolMiniOrNot
Opening the package
The Zombicide Season 1 box has great product value. The box is nice, it has art and info even on the sides of the bottom box, and the box is practically stuffed with content.
It was a nice touch that the miniatures come inside their own little boxes. That should protect them during shipping and while you carry them around for games.
 image © CoolMiniOrNot |
| Zombicide Season 1 from CoolMiniOrNot & Guillotine Games - Miniatures |
There are a lot of nice minis in the box. Every player mini is different and all of them are very nice with lots of details. The common zombies have 5 variants, the runner has 2 variants, and that's great. Even though I enjoyed Twilight Creations Zombies!!! game, that came with a hundred zombies, they were all identical, and Zombicide zombies give you a lot of variety, so it's more interesting visually.
 image © CoolMiniOrNot |
| Zombicide Season 1 from CoolMiniOrNot & Guillotine Games - Game boards |
The two-sided, laminated gaming boards represent deserted and slightly damaged streets and houses. They are 30x30 cm large, one zone is around 10x10cm. The 9 boards provide a wide variety of possible layouts for your homebrew scenarios.
 image © CoolMiniOrNot |
| Zombicide Season 1 from CoolMiniOrNot & Guillotine Games - Player sheets |
The 6 player sheets give us a great selection of interesting characters, 2 of them female. The player sheets are double sided and on the backside you can create your own character, and there are already some skills provided in the rulebook you can use for them. It's an amazing feature. If you are still not content with these options, you can download Additional Survivors from the publisher's website.
The player sheets are not optimal - the experience tracker slides on the upper edge, but you have to place skill markers and equipment on the sheet itself. This means that the players often have to move the sheet, and this causes everything to fall off.
After punching out the tokens from the sheets, I couldn't really put them into the box any more. However the box for the player minis is too big for the minis themselves, and has extra space under them, so I just put everything into the box of player minis.
The only thing that would have maximized the content would have been some ziploc bags for the tokens and cards.
Reading the rules
Even if you didn't get the theme and goal of this game just by reading the cover and opening the box, it's clearly stated on the first pages - Zombicide is a cooperative survival game about killing zombies.
You get some pre-defined starting equipment, but you can search for more in buildings. The starting characters have 3 actions to spend on moving, attacking, searching or activating things. They generate noise, some actions generate more. Then the zombies try to attack the characters that are in the same zone, then advance towards the humans they see or the noisiest zone.
 image © CoolMiniOrNot |
| Zombicide Season 1 from CoolMiniOrNot & Guillotine Games - Zombie reinforcement cards |
The game uses four danger levels - blue / yellow / orange / red. It starts at blue, and the experience level of the characters are also blue, but every zombie killed adds up and after killing some it gives an experience level that gets bonus abilities for the character but raises the danger level of the game. At the end of every turn you have to draw zombie reinforcement cards for every spawn point. Depending on the current danger level you put the zombies indicated by that colour.
For example, drawing the sample card above - if the game is in the starting (blue) level, it generates one normal zombie. In the yellow and orange level, 2 normal zombies. In the max danger (red) level, it generates two runner zombies (that get twice the action a normal zombie does).
There are some special reinforcement cards too, that doesn't generate the zombies for the zone you draw them for, but in zones indicated by the card, or they don't generate zombies at all, but rather give bonus actions for an indicated zombie type. Both of these special cards cause unpredictability in the game and that's good.
The rulebook is good. It's easy to read, the rules seem easy to follow, and there are a lot of fun quotes around. There are lots of examples to make the player understand the rules. The editing is also good, it's a clear reading. It's the 5th print, so if there were any confusing parts, I suppose they had enough time to get rid of them.
I don't say every rule was clearly in my mind after one readthrough, but after one reading I was confident I were able to play the game and know where to look up the rules. (Sure, as I later realised, I missed some rules and misinterpreted others, but it didn't really cause any problems due to the cooperative nature of the game.)
First play
When we started the first game, it became apparent there are many questions that made me constantly reread the rulebook. Even though I thought I understand the rules, I was not sure of every situation. Even after finding the rule, I was never sure whether some other rule would modify the situation.
I've detailed the problems in their own article, it's probably a more interesting read for those who design games than for those who'd just like to get into Zombicide.
Feeling of the game
Even though these might look like they have caused a lot of problems during the games, and made the gameplay a bad experience, but actually it was not that much of a problem. As the game is cooperative, we just used rulings we agreed upon, and continued playing. Also, most of the participants were rpg players as well, so they already got used to situations like these.
It took a few games with every group to understand most of the rules, but after spending that time the games became fluid. Due to the cooperative nature of Zombicide there were no quarrels between players and we only started to argue about the rulings and house rules we implemented to change the game to better fit our style.
The only thing that probably detracts from the cooperative experience is that you practically play against the system, and while in the beginning it can feel very random with the extra activations, random reinforcements, sewer zombies and runners, after a while the players learn the probabilities and learn what to look for. If there were some random elements in the rules themselves, it would improve the game a lot.
Kadmon leads a game of Zombicide on the Makettfesztivál 2016 miniatures convention
Zombicide is a game that is very easy to get into if you have someone to lead your play. I've used Zombicide in conventions and new players could easily start or join in during games. After a few sentences about the basics of the game, a gamemaster can run it for novices. Being able to change the difficulty of the game is especially important during game demos to give a good experience to those who try it and Zombicide lends itself to tweaking easily without breaking the rules or being obvious about the cheating.
For demos and club games I prefer scenarios with 2x2 or 2x3 boards. Due to the flexible nature of the game you can modify scenerios that require larger game areas, and either make them harder with a yellow starting level or just try to divide the scenario into two smaller ones that the players need to solve one after the other. So after they finish the first one, they continue into the next using the same characters with the achieved levels and gathered weapons.
Features
Cooperative: The game is cooperative, the players have to work together to survive the missions.
Solo: It might sound strange at first, but there's not much difference between solo play and group play as the actions of your opposition is controlled by the rules system.
Miniatures: The minis that come with the set are nice, dynamic and easy to paint miniatures. The game itself doesn't need the miniatures, they could as well be tokens, but it enhances the look and doesn't take away from the experience.
AI controlled enemies: The rules that control the enemies (zombies) is sometimes a bit confusing, and it's easy to game the system to control their movement, but it didn't seem to cause problems for the players I've played with.
Modular board: The game is played on modular boards that offer a wide variety of playing areas.
Comparisons
Aliens from Leading Edge Games: Aliens was the first cooperative game I know of. The Zombicide experience reminded me of Aliens, but the whole thing was more streamlined and more random. Also, Zombicide lends itself to customization, and offers lots of material for that - a variety of board tiles, customization of equipment and zombie deck. Even if you just change the number of zombie minis you use can change the gameplay drastically. I like the theme of Aliens better though, so I'd really like to see some rules to combine these two games.
Zombies!!! from Twilight Creations: The comparison is obvious, as the look of the games are very similar - 6 character minis, lots of zombie minis, 3x3 tiles make up the gaming board - but it plays very differently. Zombicide is cooperative and it is played against the system. Zombies!!! can be more fun though, if you like competitive games or just like to be mean to your fellow gamers. Also, the Zombicide minis look way better than the Zombies!!! ones. If you have both, you can play Zombies!!! with the Zombicide minis, maybe even play on the Zombicide boards with some tweaking of the game.
Recommendation
I absolutely recommend Zombicide for anyone who is interested in gaming. It's a good game in itself, but the rules and components allow you to spice up your role-playing or miniatures games.
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Possible uses
- Miniatures:
- Characters: Modern civilian combatants.
- Zombies
- Sick, unarmed people.
- They could fit late medieval, modern or futuristic games.
- Gaming boards:
- Modular terrain board for modern board games.
- Rolling terrain for role-playing games with miniatures.
- Terrain for modern or futuristic wargames. The 10x10cm zones lend themselves to be used for 10cm movement rules.
Uses on the website
- Zombicide board game - That's a tower - Gameplay narrative by Ottó
- Zombicide board game - It's Halloween! - Gameplay narrative by Ottó
- Zombicide board game - Happy Meal for Christmas - Gameplay narrative by Ottó
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Similar games - Zombicide Season 1 board game base set from Guillotine Games & CoolMiniOrNot
Aliens from Leading Edge Games: Cooperative game, with stupid, AI controlled enemies. The gameplay is similar but Zombicide offers more variety as published. There's a lot of fan-made addition to the base Aliens game.
Aliens from Gale Force Nine: Cooperative game, with stupid, AI controlled enemies, similar miniature scale. The system is a lot more complicated than Zombicide or the Aliens from Leading Edge Games.
Dungeon & Dragons board games: Play area made out of board tiles, cooperative game, similar miniature scale. The system is more complicated than Zombicide.
Dead of Winter: Zombie-themed. The system is more complicated than Zombicide, and the experience is very different.
The Walking Dead: All Out War from Mantic Games: Zombie-themed, similar miniature scale. The system is a wargame, so it's not cooperative, and it's more complicated than Zombicide.
Zombies!!! series from Twilight Creations: Zombie-themed. Similarly easy system. Zombies!!! Ed2 feels like a competitive Zombicide. The Zombies!!! Ed3 box supposedly includes cooperative rules.
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Resources - Zombicide Season 1 board game base set from Guillotine Games & CoolMiniOrNot
Zombicide from Guillotine Games & CoolMiniOrNot - Resources: A collection of articles about Zombicide.
Official
Zombicide Season 1 Rulebook (updated)
Additional Missions (you have to click on the Season 1 cover to see the Season 1 Missions)
Additional Survivors (you have to click on the zombie face to get the Zombivore sheet)
Additional rules and utilities
Rules overview
CMON: Zombicide Gameplay Introduction: Rules overview video. Includes short sample gameplay with a custom scenario.
Rodney Smith (for Watch It Played): Zombicide - How To Play: Rules overview video. Includes short sample gameplay with Mission 10 Small Tawn.
Tech Geek Gamers: Let's Play Zombicide (Part 1) - Board Game Play Through: Gameplay video. Includes a rules overview.
Variant rules
Teri Litorco (for Geek & Sundry): Home Brew Rules: Some good addition to the original Zombicide rules.
Reviews - articles
BoardGaming.com: Zombicide: Review article. Includes tips about what kind of player would enjoy the game.
Crits Happen: Critical Review - Zombicide: Review article.
Crits Happen: Critical Review - Zombicide: Review video.
Sophie Brown (GeekMom)(from GeekDad.com): Zombicide: Can You Survive?: Review article.
T0rrES: Zombicide (Reseña) (in Spanish): Review article in Spanish.
Google Translate English version
Gameplay
CMON: Zombicide Gameplay Introduction: Rules overview video. Includes sample gameplay with a custom scenario.
Rodney Smith (for Watch It Played): Zombicide - Game Play: Gameplay videos. Scenario: Mission 10 Small Town
- Rodney Smith (for Watch It Played): Zombicide - Game Play 1: Gameplay video part 1.
- Rodney Smith (for Watch It Played): Zombicide - Game Play 2: Gameplay video part 2.
- Rodney Smith (for Watch It Played): Zombicide - Game Play 3: Gameplay video part 3.
- Rodney Smith (for Watch It Played): Zombicide - Game Play 4: Gameplay video part 4.
- Rodney Smith (for Watch It Played): Zombicide - Game Play 5: Gameplay video part 5.
- Rodney Smith (for Watch It Played): Zombicide - Game Play 6: Gameplay video part 6.
Spydah666 (for Spydah's Web): Games Night Video 10: Zombicide: Gameplay video. Scenario: Mission 01 City Blocks
Tech Geek Gamers: Let's Play Zombicide (Part 1) - Board Game Play Through: Gameplay video. Includes a rules overview.
Teri Litorco: Let's Play Zombicide With Nathan of Jaded Gamercast! (Raw & Uncut!): Gamplay video. Using probably a home-made scenario, similar to Mission 00 Tutorial.
Painting Zombicide miniatures
The Army Painter: Zombicide Painting Guide
FAST FATTY: Zombicide Painting Tutorial
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Buying the product - Zombicide Season 1 board game base set from Guillotine Games & CoolMiniOrNot
Price
Base price (Zombicide Season 1): 90 USD (81 Euro / 63 GBP), Price/model: @1,3 USD (1,2 Euro / 0,9 GBP) if you need the other components
| Company | Set price (2015) | Price/model (2015) |
| Guillotine Games |
Zombicide Season 1 (90 USD = 81 Euro / 63 GBP)
|
@1,3 USD = 1,2 Euro / 0,9 GBP if you also need all the other components |
Where can you buy it?
Buy the Zombicide Season 1 board game in the CoolMiniOrNot Webshop
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Do you have the Zombicide Season 1 board game base set from Guillotine Games & CoolMiniOrNot? How do you like it? Would you recommend them to others? Tell your opinion in the comments!
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