The Walking Dead - Days Gone Bye - Expansion Review

Following on from my recent review of the core box set for Mantics Walking Dead, All Out War game I have, through enjoyment of the game decided to expand my collection.

My first choice for my next addition was this expansion "Days Gone Bye" which focuses on the early part of the story when the group of Survivors are camped outside Atlanta, this is a true expansion and you need the starter set to use its contents.

Of all the current expansions available this one provides the most extra kit for the player who is looking to game in a group (there is a similar sized Solo expansion available).

You get another gaming mat, which is quality gloss paper and very cleverly it has a small section of road which fits with the game mat from the initial game to give a double sized playing area.

Added to that is a booklet explaining the Days Gone Bye set, it has some new rules and explanations along with a narrative Campaign of 6 linked scenarios. Here is my one quibble with this set, the scenarios in the booklet use figures outside the basic set and this edition meaning you need to buy more booster packs to get the figures. Agreed it's a good marketing tool but we were looking forward to having a go at the Campaign when this box arrived and both my and YG Jnr were disappointed.

You get 6 more character cards covering the 4 miniatures in the box plus upgrade "Veteran" cards for Patrick and Sandra from the starter set.

Then you have more Event, Supply and Equipment cards. Fire is a new addition to the game with this set and the event cards cover that and the addition of woodland to the gaming area.

The equipment includes a lovely Gory clothing card for those of you who wish to add Stale Zombie to your Cologne collection. There is however a nice Rain Storm event card to wash away the smell.

Most useful game wise (I think, haven't tried it yet) is the Remington Rifle which gives you a decent ranged weapon, my set is one of the early misprints where the Rifle range is 10", it should be 30" (or 36" can't remember).

Apart from the miniatures the last items in the box are these two thick card game and terrain counter sets. They include trees, tents, fire and woodland themed supply tokens. The art work is great and quality superb.

On to the minis next, they come in the dark grey hard plastic that the starter set comes in, however I forgot to photograph mine before I put primer on them. Here we have Dale on the left in his lookout pose, you can just imagine him like some Chief Meerkat stood atop the RV looking for danger. Next to him is Allen.

Then we have Jim and Donna.

Before we have the two exclusive Walker Miniatures for this game, a guy with a fetching Mohawk hair style and an undead female Police Officer, nice character on these Figs and something that stands out from your general Walker horde.

Hope that's been helpful to some, this really is a great game, the quality of the kit is lovely and I would recommend it it to anyone with a passing interest in the comics or TV show and that's from a dyed in the wool historical Gamer.

The Walking Dead (Mantic) Review

The Starter Set

I have been a massive fan of The Walking Dead TV show from the beginning, drawn to it initially by Andrew Lincoln, whose acting I have always enjoyed since seeing him in Teachers years ago. The programme has grown and grown in popularity so a Miniatures game was inevitable.

I found this little treasure at the recent Recon show near my home in Leeds. I had only gone to the show at the last minute as the guy who was putting on our display game had fallen ill and I was filling in a with a spot of ad hoc SCW. The game had been on Kickstarter but but I don't pay that much attention to that and seeing the game at the show was the first time I was aware of it.

I bought the set for 30 of your English Pounds from Mighty Lancer Games. The box contains everything you need to get going with the game. Mantic have secured the licence for the game (thank God it wasn't Mongoose) and have some cool plans for the future. It looks like a great game to play with YG Jnr.

Rick and Carl

The box has 18 miniatures contained therein, 6 Survivors and 12 Walkers or undead / zombies if you like. The figures are best described as a "heroic" 32mm and are made from hard plastic. The sculpts / renders are good with plenty of detail and the Figs have been well cast with only minimal flash / mold lines on a couple of the minis. The painted examples in the rule book and on Mantics website look great and I am quite looking forward to getting the brushes on them myself.

They are based on the comic book version of the Walking Dead story rather than the TV series, so Rick looks like Rick Grimes from the comics and not Andrew Lincoln.

The Terrain 

Everything is catered for in the box including a glossy paper play mat and some card terrain, Including cars, barriers and supply dumps. The art work on the pieces is great and it allows you to get playing straight out of the box.

Survivor Cards (top) and Event Cards

Equipment and Supply Cards

The box contains a large selection of game cards to get you going. There are stat cards for each of the Survivor models giving you all the info that you need to play those characters. Next you have Event Cards which drive the walkers in the game. Finally there are Supply and Equipment cards to upgrade your Survivors as you play the game.

Dice and Counters

The game uses its own unique set of dice, which are also included along with various game counters to aid play. I like the dice system, each different colour has an increased chance of a hit so different characters have different die for shooting etc and better weapons add better dice to your rolls.

The above various templates are included, a handy "ruler" for movement and measurement, a Kill Zone template used to determine if a Walker attacks and a threat dial to keep track of the danger level.

3 more Survivors Sandra, Patrick and the Walker fodder.

I have managed to get a couple of games in with my lad and very enjoyable they were too. The turn is broken down into 4 phases and the game play is quite interesting as you are playing one group of Survivors vs another with the Walkers being a hindrance (or Weapon if you use them correctly). The Walkers are quite useful too especially in numbers, I have played a few Zombie type games in the past and found them too easy to kill with very little or no threat and got bored as a result, with this you need to plan out your moves more carefully. We managed to get the hero Rick bitten in one of our games !

The last Survivor fig and 4 Walkers

The first phase in a turn allows the players to activate and do two actions with their characters, standard fare, move, shoot, pick up stuff etc. You then draw an event cards and depending on the threat level you move the Walkers, as the threat gets higher the Walkers get more aggressive,  if they end up within the Kill Zone of a Survivor they will attack.

The last 8 Walkers

You then have a melee phase followed by an end turn administration type phase. The game flowed well for us, very enjoyable and highly recommended.

There are a number of expansions in the first batch of releases, I  have already got the Days Gone By set and will do a post on that after I have had a good look.