Plenty of Zombie ... a little lack of MoshIt came time to do my monthly review of a game for our Product Meeting which meant time to come home with a new game to play with Steff and Mike. As I have mentioned before Steff and Mike are not quite what one would call board game geeks but are certainly fans of board games, they love games like Boggle and Scrabble and word games of the like. Mike is a little more geeky adding to the mix an enjoyment of games like Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, and Munchkin. It gives me a pretty good spread of gamers from which to draw a reaction. 

Bucephalus has been a pretty big winner for me so far with games like Toboggans of Doom!, and Rorschach. I was kind of looking forward to playing Zombie Mosh! with my friends as they haven't yet played a game from Bucephalus and I was excited to see their reaction to the kind of sense of humor and incorporated gameplay that I had become used to with their games. 

Sadly I think that Zombie Mosh! sort of falters. I think that the "Basic" setting is a little too basic and borders on painfully simple. Gone is the sense of humor as well, a game called Zombie Mosh! should have been rife with humor but aside from the names of the characters on the card (which in the basic game are all identical and thus seem pretty inconsequential) there was nothing that really stood out.

The game is played in rounds where each player is dealt a hand of 4 cards, each of which is two different body parts (Head, Left Leg, Left Arm, Right Leg, Right Arm) and can be used as an attack against another mosher or in defense of your own fragile decaying body. Also each player is dealt two cards against their mosher as attacks (which is to indicate the chaos of the pit). The first player uses two cards to attack or defend and then passes to the next player, the next player does the same until you reach the final player in clockwise order and that player uses all 4 cards and then each player takes turns in counter-clockwise order.

In the "Basic" version of the game each body part can take 3 points of damage before falling off. Players are eliminated when they lose three of their 5 body parts. Play continues until only one mosher remains. Ties are broken by fewest points of damage received. 

The "Advanced" version of the game plays exactly the same but each zombie has 2 body parts with 4 damage capacity, 2 body parts with 3 damage capacity, and 1 body part with 2 damage capacity.

As per usual with Bucephalus the game pieces are rather good quality and everything feels sturdy and well put together. I certainly wouldn't say that based on the contents of the box that the price tag feels inappropriate.

The game plays relatively quickly and is not boring or complicated but it's just terribly simple. Plenty of simple games can be fun but it the ones that are usually bring something new to the table and unfortunately I just didn't really feel like Zombie Mosh! really didn't bring all that much to the table.