4 Player Game

[Tolio]

Has anyone had difficulty in 4 player games?

I've played a couple 4 player games and when we get to yellow level and above it seems that the number of zombies that spawn can get down right impossible to deal with 4 players. I've always played with new players so it might just be that we're still not used to the game yet.

But it just seems like the zombies spawn for a 6 character game and we're being handicapped by only having 4. So in basically we're loosing out on 8 more actions (in yellow difficulty) a turn.

I've been tempted to give everyone the equivalent of the +2 actions per player and seeing how that works. But my initial impression is that would be too much power letting characters go 6 times a round.

 

[jacksonmills]

Yeah, its playing on Hardcore mode. I prefer just handing out extra survivors to experienced gamers, or rolling for them. It reminds me of Mansions of Madness in that if you play with three players (one Storyteller, two Players), its unbelievably difficult. Play with five, and it's pretty manageable.

I think another way to do it would be to cull the spawn deck. Take the most egregious cards - the ones that spawn ugly ass amounts of zombies - and just remove them from the game. Keep cards with Aboms in, but take the one with the blue Abom out. It would be nice though, if the game came with instructions as to which cards to remove to tamp the difficulty but still keep the game fun.

 

[Tolio]

hmm that might work. i'll have to give it a try too.

i've also toyed with the idea of making the rice, canned food, and water act like health potions restoring one wound. Would give the 4 players a better fighting chance if they try and stock up a little before triggering yellow level.

 

[Groundchuck]

My friends and I got wrecked playing with 4 players. For the time being while we get the hang of the game we removed the "All Walkers Take an Extra Turn" cards to prevent the unexpected insta-gib.

We also thought about removing the race/food/water when not needed since there are fewer searches available per turn.

A poster somewhere (boardgamegeek or here) mentioned that they increase the number of starting actions for survivors in the smaller game. I haven't tried that one.

 

[ozjohnd]

Isn't part of the (logical) enjoyment of a game based on the zombie apocalypse is that the majority of the time the non-zombies WILL be insta-gibbed anyway ... enjoy the loss and try again, don't look for ways to modify the rules to make the game easier to "win" ... guaranteed win = boredom

 

[Tolio]

The logical enjoyment of a game, is the challenge in beating it and the fun you had with your friends. I'm all for the challenge but when you play pandemic or any other co-op game and you loose you feel like the loss is caused because you didn't play well enough or that the luck was just terrible for you. But at the end of the day you felt the game was balanced.

In a 4 player zombicide you feel like you lost because there was never any chance to succeed. Yea if we had all played flawlessly and cheesed the system by staying in blue as long as possible to fully stock up and then kited the zombies perfectly it's possible, though still really hard, to beat a 4 player game. That's a fun mode when we want to have a challenge and are fine with dieing. However, it really shouldn't be the only way to play with 4 players.

Do i want a guaranteed victory no of course not, but i want it to be just as hard as a 3 or 6 player game. That way we don't get killed 20 min into every game because yellow level kills you over and over due to spawning more zombies then 4 players can actually deal with under the current rules.

 

[Groundchuck]

The logical enjoyment of a game, is the challenge in beating it and the fun you had with your friends.

Do i want a guaranteed victory no of course not, but i want it to be just as hard as a 3 or 6 player game. That way we don't get killed 20 min into every game because yellow level kills you over and over due to spawning more zombies then 4 players can actually deal with under the current rules.

This is pretty much how I feel. I'll be playing with 4 people most of the time and I want to enjoy it. Finding the balance between keeping it fun and still challenging will take a bit of time. We may just go with 6 survivors for 4 humans next time and rotate who controls extras.

 

[Fuji]

We just finished our first game of zombicide, and we found a rule for 4 players we might institute in each game. We actually started with 3, so each person got two characters, then when our friend arrived, one of us gave a character to him, so two people with 1 and two people with 2.

We also made a house rule that if the character of a person with only one character dies, one of the people with two characters will give them one, so they can keep playing.

We all had fun, and I think we are going to do that from now on.