The game mostly functions in its base format but once you bloat the game up with expansions it quickly breaks and lets be honest NEEDS fixing. I have a few house rules to fix some of the most glaring issues: 1. I divide the item decks into 4 decks - mage, warrior, archer, and special. I have managed to make all 4 decks roughly comparable in quantity of cards. The armours as they increase in defence appear in the mage > archer > warrior decks in that order. The special deck is the food, magic items from Wulfsburg etc such as the chaos longbow, torches, dragon bile, pets and all the AHH!!! cards. Any AHHHS!!! drawn get reshuffled into this deck to make it more volatile as you play. This fixes many issues - like camping a room for items, getting items from a character you aren't playing and makes dual wielding lower grade weapons more common and appealing. When you go OOO OOO! I wanna be Gandalf! And proceed to spend your one search action that turn getting water, daggers or short bows for the first 30 minutes you aren't really feeling all that magical.... Or a warrior that just pulled plenty of bolts 3 times in a row.... Like yes trade actions exist. But that sure is a whole lot of NOT KILLING ZOMBIES in a ZOMBIE KILLING GAME. We found ever game devolved into passing the the most broken weapon around all the characters over the course of the round got the most mileage even with all the trade actions. Inferno in vanilla BP for example. Any actions not moving or attacking zombies is a waste of time IMHO in any game - and is much more unforgivable in whats meant to be an action packed dice chucker. 2. Extra activations don't include attacks just movement. We found after far too many games and being extra cautious extra activations added no depth or strategy or tension, but simply ruin the game as a player or 2 are knocked out and just have to sit there bored whilst we finish the game due to no fault of their own. I had a game once when we got really unlucky and drew 4 rats cards in one round. Every time you draw a rats card they get to go and move 2 squares. In one round these rats essentially teleported across the entire board and instant killed a character. This isn't good game design, sorry its not. I shuffled the deck, but sometimes similar cards will pop up all in a row. Its extraordinarily anti-climactic and just not fun. (they already do this for Crowz since they're so fast so I extend this to all zombies) Having a panic turn of digging your way out of a horde is much more thematic and fun anyways, give a player a last stand at least, give them a train to Busan moment.) 3. Tweaks to some enemies - for example Orc Fatties. Their is no reason why these should instant kill you at DMG 3. The vanilla Abomination only does 1 DMG. Sure ABOMS are unblockable but that level of lethality is unnecessary from semi standard enemies. Instead they do 2 DMG because that's reasonable. 4. This is a dice chucker game. Zombies are slow lumbering and clumsy. I make zombies roll for their attacks. They hit on a 3+. This makes melee not completely suicidal to play and encourages players to play more aggressively and leads to pushing your luck more. Now if a melee character gets up to their neck in the undead and doesn't 100% clear a square they committed to its not insta death. (yes armour and shields exist, not good enough) This also helps keep player engaged as you can get players to roll those dice when it isn't their turn giving them something to do. Wanting to roll poorly is also a neat experience. 5. I should point out I use, Black Plague, Wulfsburg, Green Horde, No Rest for the Wicked, Friends and Foes, Deadeye Walkers, Crowz, NPC walkers 1 and the kickstarter "Horde Box" extra Abominations and Necromancers. The game is literally completely unplayable without these house rules. I spent a small fortune on these sets and I want to play with as much content as I can cram onto a table at once (throwing playable balance to the winds) - to make it playable and fun I need a way to make the draw deck not a jenga tower and let people "play their class", make 'random chance of a bagillion unpredictable activation's not instantly ruin a game, and make it so having 5+ necromancers roaming the board, 6+ abominations and then the Enter the Horde card dumps an army on the table whilst we get ran down by wolves and crowz actually fun and playable without just cheesing it with Chaos Longbow Spam which immediately sucks out all the fun and variety. Silas-Iron Rain-Chaos longbow gets boring faaaaaaaaaast I have kicked around other house rule ideas: There's a great resource online for making Abominations far more exciting with health bars. Making it so standard walkers don't give XP and just clog the board (as zombies do best) But starting the board flooded with them to get the action going ASAP. I have so many other zombies that give XP it's fine if the chaff doesn't. (I'll need to playtest it) Perhaps NPC walkers still do as would spectral walkers, deadeye walkers, basically anything above the standard variant. Making it so you can't manipulate the position of Necromancer spawn squares when you defeat one and simply remove the one they themselves added. Drawing 5 cards for one tile late game and squeezing 40 miniatures on one tile is a mess and it looks bad and makes melee more impossible unless you're red level Thrudd or a similarly complete broken character.
Depends on my players. Here's some options I've come up with depending on my groups. 1. Campaign - keep your experience and gear through every quest unless you die. Next quest starts at your experience level. 2. Revive - some of the teens wouldn't play if they died right away. If they get 3 wounds the get knocked down, if you can clear their zone, give them food or water, and use 1 action, then you "bandage" them and they get 1 health back. This keeps them from going on a lone mission while allowing them to have a chance to get back in the game. This can only be done once. 3. Low players extra help - if it's just 2 players and the mission objectives are survivors, then when you find one you can use the token like an extra action if you give them an item. Examples are we gave a collected survivor the torch, since they are with that character who found them then every time they search is a if they were holding the torch but without having to use their own character slot. Another is i gave a token a bow and i could use one a extra action for that token survivor to shoot but with none of my skills, weapon only stats. 4. Torch for all - only in 2 player games for us but if you are in the same room with someone then the torch becomes like brothers in arms skill. 5. Weapon deterioration - it's up to you but if you have better groups than me, you could spice the game up with weapons breaking down over time. If you can keep up with how many zombies each weapon took down. I have more ideas but no more time on my break to write them. ❤
We deffinatly use these house rules. Our HR is not everyone needs to make it to the exit as a condition to win. However all survivors need to try and those that fail do not get used in subsequent missions. The kids and I got so frustrated with the all survivors win condition that we had to come up with this HR.
First rule makes sense. You wouldn’t be able to swap items with another character if they’re halfway across the board, so why would everybody else be able to use the key, which I would consider to be part of that character’s inventory, of said character is the one who picked it up?
Umbrella.corporation. Exactly! The ability to teleport keys across the board seems like a weird rule to throw in there. My guess is the test groups found the game too hard so they allowed the teleporting key. That all said, I’m a huge fan of this game :)
Absolutely! I am a firm believer in house rules if it makes the game more fun. The first that comes to mind for me is that in Alien Frontiers we house ruled that when using the Raiders Outpost you can still a combination of four resources from other players (as per the normal rules) and/or from the supply in any combination you choose. This reduces the one area of negative interaction in the game and makes that spot even more valuable during the game
Depends on you style of game preference. It is a pretty accessible worker placement game which was one of the first to use dice as workers. The theme is a loving through back to classic sci-fi and it has a great solo/cooperative variant on BBG if that is something you enjoy in the Board Game Coffee house. My wife, who is not a gamer, shocked me when she declared she enjoyed this game. We only play the base game but ai have been informed that the big Factions expansion box adds a lot to the game for those who are more experienced with modern board games as well. It is also good to know that it plays best (insert word quickest here) with 2-3
Depends on you style of game preference. It is a pretty accessible worker placement game which was one of the first to use dice as workers. The theme is a loving through back to classic sci-fi and it has a great solo/cooperative variant on BBG if that is something you enjoy in the Board Game Coffee house. My wife, who is not a gamer, shocked me when she declared she enjoyed this game. We only play the base game but ai have been informed that the big Factions expansion box adds a lot to the game for those who are more experienced with modern board games as well. It is also good to know that it plays best (insert word quickest here) with 2-3
while the very idea of house rules makes my skin crawl, I do not have an issue with what you have here. Making the game tougher, by establishing a sort of in-house protocol doesn't seem as bad to me. Well done!
Hengst 2404 Thanks. And I totally understand. I am a stickler for rules. Nothing gets my goat 🐐 more than playing something “not as intended”. But by this point I had played Zombicide a lot, and the idea of someone across the level from me getting a key so I can open a door where I am currently standing, felt like cheating. And everything else didn’t only make it harder, it also seemed to fit the theme better. I don’t mind losing as long as if it feels like I have a fight chance, and I don’t like winning unless I’ve earned it :)
Plus, there is the fact that you are simply putting restrictions on yourself, you're not necessarily changing the rules so much is enforcing restrictions on the way that you guys play. It's a grey area but I think I like it
why would the idea of house rules make your skin crawl? that is the exact reason why their called "house" rules. just to note, i dont see house rules as a way of making the game easier for you, more as a way of giving you a better experience.
I love cooperative games and struggle when a player dies and they just sit there while all their friends play. I am all for the dead player playing his character as a zombie with all his stats/equipment or to give the living the players a chance to revive the dead character. Love the channel, you two make the best videos!
Awe thx :) and I agree with not liking character sitting out. When I used to play a lot of magic the gathering with five or six players at once… Like a big magic battle… We made a rule that you could not attack the same player twice in a row. That way somebody wouldn’t get blown out of the water instantly and then sit out for the rest of the game.
I play the modern zombicide with SEVERAL house rules. That not counting the fact that I only play custom missions I create, and most of then have custom rules specific to then hehe
I’d love to go to somebody’s house and find a custom Zombicide Mission set up. I would totally be down for that. I have the extra boards to create custom levels but I never have the time to make custom levels LOL
@@BoardGameCoffee I have created 26 missions for the modern zombicide, each VERRY diferent then the others (as oposed from the ones from the rule book who mostly feel the same). Plus one mini campaing I created with a friend using my modern zombicide and his medieval one, involving the survivor Troy, that's basically Ash from the Evil Dead hehe
@@BoardGameCoffee Troy was an exclusive character from the first KS, but got released later as Ultimate Troy. He was also an exclusive KS character in black plague, alongside Evil Troy that could be used as a necromancer. Basically our mini campaign consists in him (untilmate version) + 5 other survivors in a mostly regular mission at modern zombicide. Then, at the end of the mission, Troy is sent back in time. On the second mission, it's a mostly regular mission with Troy + 5 other survivors, and he starts with the Boomstick card. He also benefits from the ultimate campaign rules between the too missions. Then on the third and last mission, he and the other 5 survirvors (all benefiting from the ultimate campaing rules) have to face Evil Ash hehe
Have to admit, we have amended the running out of miniatures rule. Zombies may still move from the resulting extra activation, but they will not attack - so if they are already on a zone with survivors and OMG I didn't buy enough runners minis, zombies will snarl and hiss but no attacking. I understand the intent is to force you to be aggressive in dealing with numbers on the board, but after Green Horde it doesn't even matter. You can literally have the board cleared in the red zone but if you draw 2 or 3 goblin spawns you end up with 20+ minis but only have 16-18 available I think. We still adhere to all other extra activation triggers however.
Kevin Gillatt Ah, Yes. I had that come up more often playing prison break... I don’t really remember it happening in Black Plague. Now I don’t know if they changed the rule and I just forgot, but I do remember that particular rule being a pain to deal with in season 2. Haha. It almost always signalled the end of our play 😜
@@BoardGameCoffee Yeah I remember they lock parts of the map in season 2 so even if you wanted to thin out some numbers to avoid that issue it'd be a challenge.
I like to use the house rule of taking the food items they can be stored and instead of granting Xp they grant one health point.
Ooooh. That fits nice into the thematics of the game
The game mostly functions in its base format but once you bloat the game up with expansions it quickly breaks and lets be honest NEEDS fixing.
I have a few house rules to fix some of the most glaring issues:
1. I divide the item decks into 4 decks - mage, warrior, archer, and special. I have managed to make all 4 decks roughly comparable in quantity of cards. The armours as they increase in defence appear in the mage > archer > warrior decks in that order.
The special deck is the food, magic items from Wulfsburg etc such as the chaos longbow, torches, dragon bile, pets and all the AHH!!! cards. Any AHHHS!!! drawn get reshuffled into this deck to make it more volatile as you play.
This fixes many issues - like camping a room for items, getting items from a character you aren't playing and makes dual wielding lower grade weapons more common and appealing. When you go OOO OOO! I wanna be Gandalf! And proceed to spend your one search action that turn getting water, daggers or short bows for the first 30 minutes you aren't really feeling all that magical.... Or a warrior that just pulled plenty of bolts 3 times in a row.... Like yes trade actions exist. But that sure is a whole lot of NOT KILLING ZOMBIES in a ZOMBIE KILLING GAME. We found ever game devolved into passing the the most broken weapon around all the characters over the course of the round got the most mileage even with all the trade actions. Inferno in vanilla BP for example. Any actions not moving or attacking zombies is a waste of time IMHO in any game - and is much more unforgivable in whats meant to be an action packed dice chucker.
2. Extra activations don't include attacks just movement. We found after far too many games and being extra cautious extra activations added no depth or strategy or tension, but simply ruin the game as a player or 2 are knocked out and just have to sit there bored whilst we finish the game due to no fault of their own. I had a game once when we got really unlucky and drew 4 rats cards in one round. Every time you draw a rats card they get to go and move 2 squares. In one round these rats essentially teleported across the entire board and instant killed a character. This isn't good game design, sorry its not. I shuffled the deck, but sometimes similar cards will pop up all in a row. Its extraordinarily anti-climactic and just not fun. (they already do this for Crowz since they're so fast so I extend this to all zombies) Having a panic turn of digging your way out of a horde is much more thematic and fun anyways, give a player a last stand at least, give them a train to Busan moment.)
3. Tweaks to some enemies - for example Orc Fatties. Their is no reason why these should instant kill you at DMG 3. The vanilla Abomination only does 1 DMG. Sure ABOMS are unblockable but that level of lethality is unnecessary from semi standard enemies. Instead they do 2 DMG because that's reasonable.
4. This is a dice chucker game. Zombies are slow lumbering and clumsy. I make zombies roll for their attacks. They hit on a 3+. This makes melee not completely suicidal to play and encourages players to play more aggressively and leads to pushing your luck more. Now if a melee character gets up to their neck in the undead and doesn't 100% clear a square they committed to its not insta death. (yes armour and shields exist, not good enough)
This also helps keep player engaged as you can get players to roll those dice when it isn't their turn giving them something to do. Wanting to roll poorly is also a neat experience.
5. I should point out I use, Black Plague, Wulfsburg, Green Horde, No Rest for the Wicked, Friends and Foes, Deadeye Walkers, Crowz, NPC walkers 1 and the kickstarter "Horde Box" extra Abominations and Necromancers. The game is literally completely unplayable without these house rules. I spent a small fortune on these sets and I want to play with as much content as I can cram onto a table at once (throwing playable balance to the winds) - to make it playable and fun I need a way to make the draw deck not a jenga tower and let people "play their class", make 'random chance of a bagillion unpredictable activation's not instantly ruin a game, and make it so having 5+ necromancers roaming the board, 6+ abominations and then the Enter the Horde card dumps an army on the table whilst we get ran down by wolves and crowz actually fun and playable without just cheesing it with Chaos Longbow Spam which immediately sucks out all the fun and variety.
Silas-Iron Rain-Chaos longbow gets boring faaaaaaaaaast
I have kicked around other house rule ideas:
There's a great resource online for making Abominations far more exciting with health bars.
Making it so standard walkers don't give XP and just clog the board (as zombies do best) But starting the board flooded with them to get the action going ASAP. I have so many other zombies that give XP it's fine if the chaff doesn't. (I'll need to playtest it) Perhaps NPC walkers still do as would spectral walkers, deadeye walkers, basically anything above the standard variant.
Making it so you can't manipulate the position of Necromancer spawn squares when you defeat one and simply remove the one they themselves added. Drawing 5 cards for one tile late game and squeezing 40 miniatures on one tile is a mess and it looks bad and makes melee more impossible unless you're red level Thrudd or a similarly complete broken character.
I live the effort that you put into this. Going to continue reading once I get my coffee ☕️ and have my morning read. Thanks for this :)
Depends on my players. Here's some options I've come up with depending on my groups.
1. Campaign - keep your experience and gear through every quest unless you die. Next quest starts at your experience level.
2. Revive - some of the teens wouldn't play if they died right away. If they get 3 wounds the get knocked down, if you can clear their zone, give them food or water, and use 1 action, then you "bandage" them and they get 1 health back. This keeps them from going on a lone mission while allowing them to have a chance to get back in the game. This can only be done once.
3. Low players extra help - if it's just 2 players and the mission objectives are survivors, then when you find one you can use the token like an extra action if you give them an item. Examples are we gave a collected survivor the torch, since they are with that character who found them then every time they search is a if they were holding the torch but without having to use their own character slot. Another is i gave a token a bow and i could use one a extra action for that token survivor to shoot but with none of my skills, weapon only stats.
4. Torch for all - only in 2 player games for us but if you are in the same room with someone then the torch becomes like brothers in arms skill.
5. Weapon deterioration - it's up to you but if you have better groups than me, you could spice the game up with weapons breaking down over time. If you can keep up with how many zombies each weapon took down.
I have more ideas but no more time on my break to write them. ❤
We deffinatly use these house rules. Our HR is not everyone needs to make it to the exit as a condition to win. However all survivors need to try and those that fail do not get used in subsequent missions. The kids and I got so frustrated with the all survivors win condition that we had to come up with this HR.
The point is to have fun with these games so I think if it helps you guys have a good time then who is it hurting?
First rule makes sense. You wouldn’t be able to swap items with another character if they’re halfway across the board, so why would everybody else be able to use the key, which I would consider to be part of that character’s inventory, of said character is the one who picked it up?
Umbrella.corporation. Exactly! The ability to teleport keys across the board seems like a weird rule to throw in there. My guess is the test groups found the game too hard so they allowed the teleporting key. That all said, I’m a huge fan of this game :)
Absolutely! I am a firm believer in house rules if it makes the game more fun.
The first that comes to mind for me is that in Alien Frontiers we house ruled that when using the Raiders Outpost you can still a combination of four resources from other players (as per the normal rules) and/or from the supply in any combination you choose. This reduces the one area of negative interaction in the game and makes that spot even more valuable during the game
Erik Jordheim Thx for sharing :) I’ve only seen people play Alien Frontier. Would you recommend it?
Depends on you style of game preference. It is a pretty accessible worker placement game which was one of the first to use dice as workers. The theme is a loving through back to classic sci-fi and it has a great solo/cooperative variant on BBG if that is something you enjoy in the Board Game Coffee house.
My wife, who is not a gamer, shocked me when she declared she enjoyed this game. We only play the base game but ai have been informed that the big Factions expansion box adds a lot to the game for those who are more experienced with modern board games as well. It is also good to know that it plays best (insert word quickest here) with 2-3
Depends on you style of game preference. It is a pretty accessible worker placement game which was one of the first to use dice as workers. The theme is a loving through back to classic sci-fi and it has a great solo/cooperative variant on BBG if that is something you enjoy in the Board Game Coffee house.
My wife, who is not a gamer, shocked me when she declared she enjoyed this game. We only play the base game but ai have been informed that the big Factions expansion box adds a lot to the game for those who are more experienced with modern board games as well. It is also good to know that it plays best (insert word quickest here) with 2-3
Erik Jordheim Oh I’m into sci-fi and cooperative gaming... I’ll ask around my group see if anyone has a copy I can try. And ideally they can teach
while the very idea of house rules makes my skin crawl, I do not have an issue with what you have here. Making the game tougher, by establishing a sort of in-house protocol doesn't seem as bad to me. Well done!
Hengst 2404 Thanks. And I totally understand. I am a stickler for rules. Nothing gets my goat 🐐 more than playing something “not as intended”. But by this point I had played Zombicide a lot, and the idea of someone across the level from me getting a key so I can open a door where I am currently standing, felt like cheating. And everything else didn’t only make it harder, it also seemed to fit the theme better. I don’t mind losing as long as if it feels like I have a fight chance, and I don’t like winning unless I’ve earned it :)
Plus, there is the fact that you are simply putting restrictions on yourself, you're not necessarily changing the rules so much is enforcing restrictions on the way that you guys play. It's a grey area but I think I like it
why would the idea of house rules make your skin crawl? that is the exact reason why their called "house" rules. just to note, i dont see house rules as a way of making the game easier for you, more as a way of giving you a better experience.
I love cooperative games and struggle when a player dies and they just sit there while all their friends play. I am all for the dead player playing his character as a zombie with all his stats/equipment or to give the living the players a chance to revive the dead character.
Love the channel, you two make the best videos!
Awe thx :) and I agree with not liking character sitting out. When I used to play a lot of magic the gathering with five or six players at once… Like a big magic battle… We made a rule that you could not attack the same player twice in a row. That way somebody wouldn’t get blown out of the water instantly and then sit out for the rest of the game.
Great house rules Mark...
Will definitely use next time...
Mic James They make the game seem more authentic zombie :)
I play the modern zombicide with SEVERAL house rules. That not counting the fact that I only play custom missions I create, and most of then have custom rules specific to then hehe
I’d love to go to somebody’s house and find a custom Zombicide Mission set up. I would totally be down for that. I have the extra boards to create custom levels but I never have the time to make custom levels LOL
@@BoardGameCoffee I have created 26 missions for the modern zombicide, each VERRY diferent then the others (as oposed from the ones from the rule book who mostly feel the same).
Plus one mini campaing I created with a friend using my modern zombicide and his medieval one, involving the survivor Troy, that's basically Ash from the Evil Dead hehe
That sounds awesome! And now I want an evil dead Zombicide lol
@@BoardGameCoffee Troy was an exclusive character from the first KS, but got released later as Ultimate Troy.
He was also an exclusive KS character in black plague, alongside Evil Troy that could be used as a necromancer.
Basically our mini campaign consists in him (untilmate version) + 5 other survivors in a mostly regular mission at modern zombicide. Then, at the end of the mission, Troy is sent back in time.
On the second mission, it's a mostly regular mission with Troy + 5 other survivors, and he starts with the Boomstick card. He also benefits from the ultimate campaign rules between the too missions.
Then on the third and last mission, he and the other 5 survirvors (all benefiting from the ultimate campaing rules) have to face Evil Ash hehe
Have to admit, we have amended the running out of miniatures rule. Zombies may still move from the resulting extra activation, but they will not attack - so if they are already on a zone with survivors and OMG I didn't buy enough runners minis, zombies will snarl and hiss but no attacking. I understand the intent is to force you to be aggressive in dealing with numbers on the board, but after Green Horde it doesn't even matter. You can literally have the board cleared in the red zone but if you draw 2 or 3 goblin spawns you end up with 20+ minis but only have 16-18 available I think. We still adhere to all other extra activation triggers however.
Kevin Gillatt Ah, Yes. I had that come up more often playing prison break... I don’t really remember it happening in Black Plague. Now I don’t know if they changed the rule and I just forgot, but I do remember that particular rule being a pain to deal with in season 2. Haha. It almost always signalled the end of our play 😜
@@BoardGameCoffee Yeah I remember they lock parts of the map in season 2 so even if you wanted to thin out some numbers to avoid that issue it'd be a challenge.
Targeted Strike from Invader
What made you add that?
@@BoardGameCoffee Yesterday, when Lion-O defeated Gloom.