After Days – Survival is Everything! Review

by | Jan 29, 2016 | Game Reviews

It’s almost February, a time for Love and……Zombies? Yes, Zombies! Walking Dead is coming off it’s mid season hiatus and Michael McCoy and Jason Leary of Dice Made Me Do It! are bringing their zombie themed game, After Days – Survival is Everything!, to Kickstarter.

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After Days – Survival is Everything! is a cooperative card and dice game set in a post apocalyptic world where survivors try to outlast vicious marauders, bad weather and the restless dead. Players take on the role of two survivors, each contributing their own unique abilities to the group’s survival. People don’t stay for very long though as they either wander away of shuffle off this mortal coil.

Set up:
Deal one survivor card to each player. Each survivor can sustain 3 wounds before they die. Survivors who die no longer draw dice but remove the threat with the lowest resource requirement each turn. Shuffle the Threat cards and deal face up in the play area for the survivors to face. The number of starting players determines the number of Threat cards. One per survivor plus one additional card for every two initial players. So a four-person game would have 6 Threat cards in total. The first player places the six-sided turn die in front of them with the one value on top and you’re ready to play.

Playing the game:

Starting with the first player each living survivor draws 3 random resource dice.

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You may rotate your survivor card to select between your 2 survivors capabilities as depending on the threats some are more useful than others. If, you have two wounds you may no longer rotate your card. (More on wounds in a minute)

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Roll the dice. You may apply your survivor’s special ability at any point during the round.

Apply resources to the Threat cards by placing the dice on the threats.  Any unused scrap can be used by the next player until the turn is over.

Threat cards that have their resources met are flipped face down. Watch out for those zombies though, they have a special Mob rule. All zombie threat cards must have all of their resources met or none flip causing them all to inflict damage! Any marauders that remain at the end of the turn linger into the subsequent turn due to their Lurk special rule.

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Each face up Threat card remaining with one or more resources left uncovered deals one wound to a survivor specified by the current player. Environmental threats have the Devastating special rule, they deal one damage for each resource left uncovered. Yikes! Make sure you don’t get stuck out in the rain.

Discard all remaining Threat cards unless their text says otherwise i.e.: Mob or Lurk special abilities.

Flip the six-sided turn die to the next number and pass it to the next living survivor to the left. They become the new current player. Starting on the second turn the current player discards their survivor card and draws a new one even if they have wounds. If you survive six turns you win!

Thoughts:

After Days is a fun beer and pretzels game for 1-4 players, ages 12 and up. Game play takes about 15 minutes to a half hour, right in the sweet spot for most busy gamers. The game is compact and portable requiring just a little space and a few good friends. Dark and brooding, the artwork by Alexandra Petruk is a perfect match to the games theme. After Days comes with custom dice that look cool and are easy to read. This is a great pick up for any gamer. It has all the things I like in a game, fun, easy to play, portable, and quick. So check out the Kickstarter and pick up a copy or 3 and tell ‘em Legends of Tabletop sent you!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1289569316/back-2-games-get-4-be-a-norse-god-survivor-cowboy?ref=nav_search