Sources Say: Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse: Seasons

Name: Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse: Seasons

Produced By: Osprey Games

System: Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse

Genre(s): Zombies

Since I've already reviewed Last Days:Zombie Apocalypse, let's take a look at this first expansion. But, before we get to that, I need to go over some stuff I forgot in my review. So, I guess you can think of this as an expansion of my review.

The big one is the Refuge. I was going to talk about it but it totally slipped my mind as I was finishing up the review. As I mentioned, you have a refuge. This limits how many models you can have in a group. They also have some innate special abilities and others the group can build later. Picking a Refuge is really important when you get started, but you can move to a new one if you want during a campaign. However, you'll leave all of your expansions behind. Another thing that I forgot to mention is that your group will be attacked in between games. It's a simple dice roll, modified by the amount of people you have injured, how many are on guard, and some of the stuff the Refuge has in it. Fail the roll and you're forced to move to another, leaving everything behind.

I also forgot some stuff about the missions and the campaign. As I mentioned, the goal of the missions is to get as many of the Salvage Tokens as you can. When you get back to the Refuge after the mission, you convert these Tokens into Scavenge Points as well as equipment, based yet again on a random roll. You use the points to get more characters, expand and improved your Refuge, and whatever else.

So, let's get to what Seasons does:

The first thing is that it gives you a bunch of new status effects you're going to need to keep track of during the four seasons of the year. Things like Hunger, Thirst, and Sickness. As the seasons change, you'll need to keep track of different ones, and roll to see what ones might come up during the transitional periods. How your group deals shortages of the supplies they need depends on what alignment the leader is. Selfish leaders are going to look over themselves and their cronies, Selfless leaders are going to look after everyone else first, and Trained leaders can do... Well, whatever they feel like.

One of the more interesting things is now you can roll for the weather during a mission. There's also a new mission for each of the seasons, which is really nice to see. They don't do a whole lot but they are a welcome addition.

With these new missions and status effects, there's some new Scavenge tables for the few new bits of equipment and other stuff you need to manage those status effects.

After all of that, there's finally a new update and additions to the basic rules. The first big thing is that there's new characters to add to your groups. There's one Selfish, one Selfless, and one Trained. There's also two new Neutral characters, one of which is horses. And they do make sense.

There's some new equipment, including motorcycles and bicycles. You can also give your leader one piece of “rare” equipment, including the aforementioned cycles. And a chainsaw. Now, you can finally have a group led by Ash from the Evil Dead. Because you know you want to.

And now we get the real good stuff: Rules for solo and co-op play. First, I want to talk about solo play.

The execution is... Off, I feel. I feel this way because your characters aren't completely under your control. Everything else is fine but, this doesn't sit well with me. It all depends on what alignment the character is. Selfish look out for themselves, shooting and attacking zombie closest to them and always shooting. Selfless characters are going to look out for everyone else first and themselves last. Trained are going to... Do whatever works best. Honestly, this book makes the case that you should play with a Trained group to be successful. And given the limitations on weapons and the expensive characters, this really sucks. Unlike a normal game, where more numbers are a mixed bag, having a smaller number of characters can be a very big liability in solo play. They say you should have 30-40 zombies ready to go, instead of the normal 20. Sure, you can argue that it should be okay with a smaller group, but there's this new table to roll on during the End Phase. One of the effects is you get a D3 zombies instead of one when you roll for noise. I'd like to see a small force survive that. One series of bad rolls and your entire group gets wiped out.

Co-op play introduces three new missions you can use. And they're complex. One of them has both zombies and bandits to deal with. Both of which activate during the Menace Phase. How's that for complicated? If I ever run that one, they'll be controlled by a third player. Because fuck that noise.

While I have complained about this stuff, it is really good to see and I do think it's a good idea. Since we're still dealing with a pandemic here, I can't really play this game with anyone else. But, I can play the all of this with by myself. I'll be able to go through a campaign and really get a good feel for the game. I'm also looking forward to playing with some people are being able to have a game where we don't try to kill each other. I do with there were more co-op missions, but I'll take what I can get.

As much as it might seem like I don't like this book, I really do. The stuff they've added is great, especially for keeping people playing. I look forward to seeing what else will come out for this game.