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- Verified Buyer
OVERVIEW: Marvel Zombies is a 1-4 player cooperative minatures skirmish retail game by Spinmaster Games, based on the Marvel Zombies Kickstarter game by CMON Games. Games generally take about an hour, adjusted for higher player count and familiarity with the Zombicide system. Gameplay involves players controlling a group of four of the six included heroes (Spiderman, Black Panther, Winter Soldier, the Wasp, the Vision, and the Hulk) against a horde of zombies led by four zombie heroes (Captain America, Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange, and Iron Man). It includes a tutorial mission and eight replayable missions, plus instructions towards a website with at least one more official mission available as of this posting. The game is relatively simple to set up and learn, providing an intuitive AI system that is aggressive and challenging to overcome. Although limited character and opponent selection restricts gameplay variety compared to the CMON Kickstarter version, there is still quite a lot of game in this box for the cost, accessible to any players that can handle the mature theme of zombies eating people.COMPONENTS: This version includes four double sided map tiles the size of the box, as opposed to six in the Kickstarter version. The character cards are the size of tarrot cards while the rest are the mini European sized cards. While the CMON Kickstarter includes plastic player dashboards that hold Pandemic style cubes to track character statistics, this Spinmaster version includes plastic slides that attach to the character cards and serviceable experience dials, which are easy to assemble. As the CMON miniatures were exclusive to the Kickstarter version, this Spinmaster edition has alternative miniature sculpts and character abilities from the Kickstarter version. The heroes and zombie heroes are represented by miniatures, while the remaining zombies and bystaders are represented by standees. The game includes four plastic colored bases that snap onto the bottom of the miniatures and six six-sided Zombicide dice, with biting zombie teeth in place of the number one. The zombies and bystaders are all thick cardboard standees with small clear base clips.There are also sturdy cardboard character status tokens, spawn location tokens, objective tokens, door tokens, an exit token, and an Avengers sign token which can be thrown by characters like a weapon. Everything fits back into the included plastic insert, although haphazard placement of assembled standees may keep the lid from being secure, and the character cards tend to slide out of their intended position.SCALABILITY: Spinmaster's Marvel Zombies Hero's Resistance is designed to use a group of four heroes on every mission, so it scaled oddly for three players. While a single player can run all four characters, and they can be divided equally among two and four players, three player games require one of the players to run an extra character. Standard four player teams balance the mechanics to provide the tension of closely won or lost missions. Turns proceed relatively quickly at higher player counts, and the need to cooperate in order to suceed keeps everyone involved in each other's turns. The A.I. controlling the zombies scales with the character's experience, becoming progressively worse as the characters become stronger. By adjusting the number of characters on a mission or the cards in the spawn deck the difficulty can be easily modified to different tastes.CHARACTER MECHANICS: Every character has the same basic actions to move, attack, pick up objectives, build up power, and aquire a heroic trait. Each character gains a power point at the beginning of each turn, or by spending an action to gain two points. These can be spent to trigger abilities or add dice towards a combat roll. Characters can also use an action to draw a trait card, most of which offer one time abilities to improve movement or combat actions, although a select few offer rare healing and even a surprise zombie ambush. Characters also each have special abilities that make them feel unique and help achieve the mission objectives. Spiderman starts out with the ability to pull characters and bystanders towards him with his web. Black Panther has improved chances of taking town tougher opponents with his vibranium claws.Winter Soldier can take town multiple waker opponents quickly.The Wasp has a ranged attack, and can slip past opponents easier to reach bystanders and objectives.The Vision also has a ranged attack, and can choose from one of two drawn trait cards.Hulk starts with two more health than anyone else, and he gets one extra power for every wound each turn. As they level up, each character gains new abilities that they can immediately use. However, the difficulty of the spawn deck increases with the highest character level, so you need to try to get them to level up at the same time. Since the mission fails if any character dies, it is impractical to focus on leveling up one character in an attept to achieve the mission objectives faster. This promotes thoughtful team combinations using cooperative strategies and a fair amount of replayability for an introductory skirmish game.BYSTANDER MECHANIC: Unique to Marvel Zombies is the bystander mechanic, replacing the abily to search for items in previous versions of Zombicide. This involves random individuals from the Marvel Universe who need to be rescued, although a few of them can defend themselves to a degree. These bystanders fully power up any character that rescues them and grants a unique ability to the rescuer that can be used toward character actions. However, the bystanders can also be devoured by the zombies, causing every character to loose a power and a trait. These bystanders are often tied directly into the mission objectives and must be rescued to succeed.ZOMBIE MECHANIC: The heart of the A.I. controlling the zombies is the spawn deck, which triggers specific types of zombies in each spawn zone on the board in accordance with the highest character level. The cards specify the type of enemies involved (Walkers, Brutes, Runners, and Zombie Heroes) and extra actions awarded to those enemies. Each enemy type has different stratigic toughness and action considerations concerning the best ways to dispatch them. Brutes are harder to take down, while runners can move in and attack quickly. Zombie Heroes have both of those abilities, plus another deadly ability unique to each of the charatcters. Captain America can block attacks with his sheild and Scarlet Witch can make you miss with her hex magic. Doctor Strange can ambush characters with his magic portals and Irom Man can launch repulsor attacks from a distance.Any one of these enemies is manageable for a group of four with full health, but they multiply fast, and they protect each other under the targeting rules allowing for certain enemies to dodge and counter attack. The fact that the zombies always hit, makes them deadly and easy to anticipate during the enemy phase. The presence of bystanders also provides the opportunity for the A.I. to drain the characters of power and traits.PROS: Up front, I already pledged for everything in the Kickstarter except the Galactus and Silver Surfer set. I decided to pick up the Spinmaster version for the four extra tiles, extra dice, extra Avengers sign token, and alternative miniature sculpts. In other words, I have a certain amount of bias towards this game. With this in mind, this Spinmaster version of the game is easy to set up and tear down, easy to learn and teach, and has good quality components with a great table presence. The game length is ideal, neither ending too abruptly or overstaying it's welcome. The game is incredibly relatable with familiar characters with unique abilities.CONS: Aside from the balance issues in a three player game, the only real drawback are the experience dials. These dials are identical and can be confused by disorganized players running more than one player. The dial itself can easily be bumped, inadvertently altering the experience level, and the numbers are very small, causing issues for players with poor eyesight. The limited number of characters make it less replayable than the Kickstarter version, and the limited abilities can make the heroes feel weaker than their popular counterparts. The Zombie Heroes are formidable enough that they must be taken down quickly before they overwhelm the players, so they generally do not remain in play for very long.CONCLUSION: This Spinmaster version is an incredible deal for what is provided. It's relatability, ease of play, and quick set up means that it gets to the table more often than other games. Gameplay is highly tactical and challenging, creating incredibly close wins and losses. The cooperative nature is fundamental, requiring smart teamwork to achieve success. I highly recommend this version as it is a much more streamlined game than any of the previous Zombicide iterations.
