August 27, 2015: I Love I Hate Zombies

Not long ago, BoardGameGeek released I Hate Zombies, a quick card game designed by Kevin Wilson. When I dropped by our temporary Orange office today, I Hate Zombies was on the table. So, duh, I played. And I love I Hate Zombies.

It's for 2 to 12 (!!) players. The components are big, easy-to-read cards illustrated by Robb Mommaerts. The mechanic is RPS, but as Sam said after we played, rock-paper-scissors was never so much fun. Each card represents a potential zombie survivor, and they all have special powers - most of them involving the RPS mechanic and sly references to the card's character, like the businesswoman who kills zombies by throwing paper at them.

In a nice twist, the zombies are the active players, deciding who to attack, while the human players just defend. But everybody gets decisions, constantly, since RPS is a mind game, and tweaked RPS with new symbols or changed values like the Businesswoman's, played rapidly, is . . . no longer trivial. But the whole thing is over in 10 or 15 minutes, and then you can start over and kill more zombies. Or eat more humans, as the case may be.

If you love to hate zombies, this is a great warmup game, and I look forward to trying it with a maxed-out 12 players.

-- Steve Jackson