When Mantic announced last December that The Walking Dead:All Out War (TWD) was coming back I was all excited. It was up for pre-order until the 29th of February, but you can order really anytime. TWD came back online as a separate site to order from. Considering that it is one of my favorite games of the last 20 years or so and to see it return with all the old stuff and huge amounts of new makes me, well, happy. So happy in fact I need t0 write about it. Go look at the site and it is still fairly inexpensive to get into. Yes, order the special dice and the revised rule book and you’re in the tall cotton. All you need is there in the book and you can make cards for your survivor characters, I will be making some myself, at will. It is also something that can be found online if you look. Course, most everything that you could need for the game can be found online.
After collecting the comics for a few years to see that, in 2016, someone developed a tabletop skirmish game which was pretty much what I wanted. The minis LOOK like the characters in the comic and that is a pretty good start. You got enough in the original box of minis and support to start playing right off and the rules are laid out in a logical progression to make the players confident in the gameplay. Now, jump to 2024 and the ‘Collectors edition’ is $120, you get the book, and all the supporting equipment AND a ton of minis. Just keep in mind that the game is based on the comic. What? You’ve only watched the TV show and don’t know anything about the comics? So? Get some minis that look like Darryl and Co. and have fun. This game can be played as a full fledged skirmish game, as a cooperative game, and, gasp, solo. It is not a huge play area, a normal sized kitchen table is adequate, and it comes with heavy paper maps, heavy card terrain.
I did something that I rarely have done in the past and that is to pre-order the new rulebook along with more dice along with all of the supply, equipment, and event cards. The dice in particular will be a nice thing as there just didn’t seem enough of them when the game was first released. One of the few criticisms I had. When will my order arrive? Sometime between now and June. Do I think that is too long? Yeah, but then I think that the book needs to be printed, as do the cards, and there are minis (though I have most of them up to Alexandria) to be molded and packaging to be done. Not sure about what they may have had in the warehouse from the original issue of the game but it seems like they are starting almost from scratch.
I have already pulled all the stuff I have out of storage for the game. Die cast cars and trucks, some loot markers to replace the pog like markers from the original game. Some fences and barriers that had not made it to the table top yet. Of course, those minis that I hadn’t gotten around to painting. I have gone on about how easy it is to get ‘modern’ minis painted. So that is on the painting schedule. There were other games that are in the Walking Dead Universe, like ‘Here’s Negan!’ and they are going to put that out again. Yes they are reprinting that game also. ‘Negan’ is a sort of dungeon crawl with the Main Man himself ‘motivating’ his minions to clear out what would become the ‘Sanctuary’ for the saviors. He is carrying Lucille, and she is a dirty girl.
So, a game thought to be gone has returned. You can be Rick & Co. struggling to keep family and friends together while fighting the good fight against the Hunter’s, the Saviors, or the Whisperers. You can put your own group of survivors to battle across the country, and anywhere else in the world, and perhaps live another day. This isn’t the Fallout Universe or some other game set a hundred or so years after the END but one that is in our era. There is no relent from the Walkers, the others out there trying to survive, just you and your mates trying to keep it all together. There were no bombs that fell, no invading armies, but one creeping horror of being bit and then dying only to come back as a mindless eating machine. It’s not always a happy story but it is one that can be quite fun.
joehough1960 