ZRV - Zombie Splatting

I was excited to see that Dave Bezio - creator of Shootin Iron - has released ZRV, a simple yet fun set of rules that positions you as a group of survivors in an RV driving from place to place to splatter zombies, looking for useful stuff and maybe even coming back alive! Your four suvivors can be played either solo or co-op and are pitted against a simple yet very effective AI system for the ravenous zombie hoards. Each turn, survivors activate taking 1-3 actions (moving, melee, shooting, searching) and most of these create noise which attracts zombies during their turn (which occurs after the Survivor turn).

The survivors are randomly allocated simple profiles that add some special skills and die roll modifiers. These are pretty simple as written but could easily be added to. Some Zombies are classified as fast (increased movement) or nasty (toughter in a fight). More Zs spawn each turn so you have to keep splatting them while you search for supplies or meet scenario goals.

Overall, a great game with very clearly written rules that work - and no grey areas despite the company name! And that's rare in this price range. Downloadable from Wargames Vault, the pdf includes a QRG, weapon effect templates and printable game tokens. Dave has just recently released a campaing suppliment with four linked scenarios - A Place to Chillax. So, with loads of Z splatting fun to be had, it's encouraged me to expand on my miniatures - I've got ten more Eureka Zombies (making 30 in total - which I think is enough for most circumstances in ZRV) and a bunch of Shadowforge Blow Up Doll Zombies (BUDZ) on the painting table. It's useful to have some Z's that stand out from the usual grizzly mob so you can differentiate the 'fast' and 'nasty' Z types that can spawn on certain die rolls - also the BUDZ can be used as the 'nasty' Zs that replace my Shadowforge survivors collection when they are killed.

I'm a few games in now and starting to get a feel for these rules. At first I felt the rates that new zombies spawn, in comparrison with my survivor's 'splatting' capacity, made the game almost unwinnable for the survivors. In an early game (searching a zombie infested compound) the last two survivors had to climb the compound fence (Z's can't climb) and make a run for it back to the RV with little more than their lives!

More recently, I've learned to take advantage of terrain more and have a stealthy group of survivors searching while those with the ranged weapons keep the numbers of shambling horrors down. A benefit of this approach is the noise of gunfire also attracts them - drawing them into kill zones.

Overall, I find ZRV delivers a fast moving, fun and challenging game all from 6 pages of tightly written rules! Inbuilt are all the mechanics needed for campaigns with the possibilty of filling empty seats of your RV when you lose crew members. NPCs you pick up (called liabilities) can eventually upgrage to full blown survivors with special abilities. You can even find your own loyal Z-munching dog! I think there is great potential to expand on player special abilities and pre-scenario events. I'd have to say this is the first set of rules in a long time that inspire me to game - an absolute success!