Zombies in space

Was a sceptic but...

OK when I saw the Kickstarter for Zombicide Invader I was actually wondering how this would work out as I did not think there could be zombies in space.

Well it turns out it was not zombies but xenos or aliens. Then I was like "OK no, you can't have a Zombicide game with aliens... I mean they pushed the limit when they had the orcs so I was not sure I even wanted to go near this game.

 Well a few months after the game came out in store, I found in on sale at a convention and said "Why not give it a chance?" and it turned out to be one of my favorite Zombicide games so far.

New Concentrated Fire makes all the difference

So they added this new rule that makes it so much easier to actually beat this game. You can actually concentrate your fire to add up the dice results to give you more chances of defeating an abomination. You don't need all the best weapons to survive, just a good roll of the dice.

Xenos instead of Zombies?

Like I mentioned above, they changed the zombies to aliens or Xenos. These aliens are awesome looking and I have spent the last 3 weeks painting all the miniatures.

So instead of walkers, runners and fatties there are workers, hunters and tanks. Also, the tanks DO NOT spawn with two workers like the fatties used to spawn with two walkers.

Is this version easier?
In short, YES... I had some friends come over and play a hard map and we actually won the game, that did not happen too often in the past with the other versions, we would easily get overrun by zombies because there would be abominations that would spawn and we could not get rid of them unless we have the weapons to do it. We also noticed that going up levels is not that bad since you get some really good powers to go along with the levels.

Spawning!
So another nice addition or removal, is the fact that there are NO actual doors to open in this version of Zombicide. You don't have to use an action to open a door and then like in previous versions, you don't have to spawn zombies in each room where you opened the door. So again less to deal with... however, the spawn cards do have a little more xenos on them to add to spawn zones.

Other additions:

Like I mentioned earlier, there are no doors; well in some maps there are locked doors that can be opened with an action but usually come with a price (like a new spawn zone). These doors can be a good way to stop Xenos in their tracks but it does not take them long to destroy the doors and keep on coming. Yep one action and the door is broken and if it is one that is locked by the map it triggers the effect.

You also start the game with 5 door tiles available to the players in order to close doors and divert, possibly, the incoming Xenos. You only get 5 so use them wisely. The Xenos then have to use their action to break the door.

They also added some nice new Bots and Sentry Guns for your heroes to use on the map. Once you gain control of these bots or guns, either by finding a specific objective or by having it as an ability on your survivor, you can use your actions to eliminate Xenos from a distance.

Good or bad changes:

Line of sight really changed in this version of the game. Inside of buildings you can only have line of sight to rooms adjacent to the room you are currently in and only if there is a door. That can make things get tricky if you are trying to take on many Xenos that are further away. There are some corridors in the buildings but they are rare. However, when mold forms it does destroy the walls and doors in that room and creates the line of sight for you (but make sure to mold spawn zones don't meet up or it's game over).

Outside you get your lines of sights, however, in Invader, you need oxygen tanks to survive outdoors and sometimes the rooms that provide these are either mold infested or far away so get there quickly (and these O2 tanks take up a spot on your inventory). In the Dark Side expansion you have dark zones and unless you have a flashlight, you cannot see past the area you are in.

Soldiers and Civilians:
So this new Zombicide introduces survivor types: Soldiers and Civilians. Soldiers start off with 3 armors points (or hit points, or health) and Civilians start with only 2. Some soldiers do start with 6 but I think there are only two that do that. Also, soldiers can only search in Security rooms (these rooms are red on the board) or if they have a search drone to allow them to search any room. Civilians, on the other hand, can search in any room on the board.

The Invader base game comes with soldiers that have white armor (I called them marines). The black Ops Expansion has six extra soldiers that have black armor and you can then play either Invader or Dark Side base games with up to 12 players by adding the Black Ops team. And in the dark side box, you get 6 soldiers that comprise the Green Squad and no civilians (I might add civilians as a choice for this game as it might vary the game a bit more I think).

However, there is one downfall of playing with the back ops, for every 2 players over 6 you have to add one new spawn zone.

Verdict:
Overall, I really enjoy this game and painting the actual miniatures has been so satisfying as well. The game is more fun and gives a chance at winning. I would recommend using the concentrated fire in the Black Plague / Greeen Horde versions of this game to help with the difficulty of that version.

The maps they give in the rule books are fun to play but I think it will be a real challenge to create my own and play them. I definitely recommend this game to anyone who has played the previous versions and were on the fence about this one like I was.

All in all I give this a 4.5 out o5.

Thanks for reading... Until next post.