Rio Z Janeiro: Zombicide Exp

If someone mentions Rio De Janeiro I’m instantly thinking of a carnival environment, the parades running through the streets and the Samba dancing parties. I guess you could say the Rio Z Janeiro expansion sort of brings some of that, but the streets are lined with Zombie hordes and the party is very much your killing spree in your desperate will to survive.

Carnival Of The DEAD

This Zombicide expansion, like Fort Hendrix and Washington Z.C, brings another campaign to your table top with 10 new missions to work your way through. If you have played the other campaigns you will already have some idea of the challenges you are in for.

Again, each of your characters utilises a campaign score pad and can pick up CXP each mission, which enables them to pick up bonus actions or bonus skills to operate in the latter missions. This, coupled with the opportunity to hang on to gear from the mission completed are all potentially very useful for the challenges ahead.

Survivors do not die outright if they lose all their wounds in open play. The survivors will have the next turn to try and revive them. If they manage this, the survivor is placed back on their dashboard, they play no further part in this game, lose all of their kit but will be able to start the next mission if the team completes the current mission. If the team do not revive then the survivor is out, all CXP lost and if the team completes the mission they must pick a new character to replace them with. Good luck in your quest.

The Road To Rio

As well as all our classic Zombicide 2nd edition rules that come in to play. Rio Z Janeiro introduces a few more of their own and other things for consideration during the game.

· 6 new survivor characters with unique new skills to this expansion set. All these survivors capturing a little bit of a Brazilian theme which is awesome, particularly Eliete, the Capoeira street fighter.

· “All out.” Those who have played either of the previous expansions will be very familiar with the “All out” feature. It’s the same. Every weapon has the option for “all out”: additional dice that can result in additional hits against the hordes. However, roll a single break on any of the dice, the weapon breaks and is discarded from play. Huge risk versus huge reward. These are also the dice you roll to determine if you hold a weapon between missions.

· Additional board tiles. All geared up around Rio. You can combine with original tiles creating new gaming locations, there are some new features on these areas also. Within this there are Narrow Zones. These zones on the tiles have limitation to the number of survivors that can enter them. This is defined by circles, one survivor/Zombie per circle. My interpretation is Zombies are also limited. Vehicles are also not allowed.

· Zombie Pull. Because Zombies cannot get into the narrow zones, they simply pull the survivor out (for free, no action) to them. Then strike. Each Zombie can pull one survivor their way. If there is a choice, the survivor can pick which Zombie they move towards. This has the possibility of being brutal if badly timed.

· Thin Walls. You’re in the shanty town favelas of Rio. These are not robust buildings. So, you can knock through thin walls as though they were a door. However only 1 thin wall on a tile can be destroyed, or the building collapses, so you are limited to the walls you can take out.

· Wound cards. This is a novel addition to the game. When you take that wound and move the pin down, now you also draw a wound card and apply this to your survivor. These cards have an additional impact to the survivor, some positive and some negative, some are both. I really like these injury additions, of course a wound would have an impact on a survivors ability.

· Surprise Spawns. As if there are not enough Zombies already to deal with. Now some of these missions have “surprise spawns”. These counters are on the board as part of the set up. The weapon set cards in this expansion include a little surprise spawn token marker printed on. So, should you search for an item and draw one with this image on, all surprise spawn markers spawn a walker. Generally, the item draws are supposed to help and this is just not ok!

Samba Time

What’s cool with 2nd edition Zombicide is that you can interchange the rules as you see fit. You might also want to introduce the day and night rules to this set. You may want to take those wound cards away and put into the standard set missions. You can take your favourite characters on to this campaign quest and see if they have what it takes to conquer Rio. You just agree the conditions with your fellow survivors at the start so everyone knows what is happening.

Final Thoughts

It is important to note this is an expansion to Zombicide 2nd edition and you will need the base game in order to use this set. The team at CMON have successfully done it again with enhancing Zombicide, adding greater depth and opportunity to the already brilliant game. It’s a new challenge to face which, for me, is awesome.