The Walking Dead Wave Five: Map Campaigns

You don’t have to play through the Walking Dead storyline to enjoy the experience of a narrative campaign. With the map campaign rules included in the Fear the Hunters expansion, you can create your own story. You select your fledgling group and make your way across the abandoned American landscape, scavenging for supplies and vying for territory and supremacy in a world ravaged by Walkers and rival groups. In today's blog we're highlighting some of the key elements in a map-based campaign.

The Survivors in your group cannot change (unless they die, as described later, or some other bonus allows it). So choose wisely when first creating your group. Equipment cannot be exchanged but can be freely swapped between Survivors between games. As your fortunes grow, new Survivors can be recruited, and new equipment purchased, as long as you don’t exceed your points limit.

The campaign map in Fear the Hunters features the area surrounding Washington DC, but once you’ve played a few times you may wish to create your own map. The map is divided into ten territories – nine of these represent the influence of a particular faction, while the tenth is the urban sprawl of Washington itself. Between these territories runs a swathe of neutral ground, containing several Special Locations. These locations will be vital to a group’s fortunes and will be hotly contested during the campaign. Here's a little look at the map...

There are 19 special locations to occupy during a campaign. We won’t spoil them all here but to give you an idea of what benefits they can bring, here are a few examples:

Campsites: You may recruit Custom Survivors to your group.

Farm: Models in your group reduce the cost of Hay Hooks, Horses, Lassos, Pitchforks, Scythes and Tranquilizer Guns by 4 points.

Gun Store: May purchase one weapon with the Handgun, Shotgun or Rifle keyword of more than 20 points. In addition, at the start of each game take an Ammo Reload from the Supply deck and give it to any member of your group.

Suburban Estate: Gain +10 points in each Supplies campaign phase. However, when playing a scenario that starts with Walkers in play, you must add extra Walkers.

The Fear the expansion also includes a new deck of cards called Campaign Events. These represent additional effects that apply to the game based on the location or changing situation of the post-apocalyptic world. In the first campaign turn, the games are played as normal, with no Campaign Events in play. From the second Campaign turn onwards, at the start of each game, one player must draw a Campaign Event card at random from the deck and apply it to the game.

These special event cards can totally change the way a game is played. Some cards affect specific characters, such as making them drunk(!), whereas others effect the group as a whole, such as dodgy ammunition. Below you can take a sneak peek at two of the campaign cards (there are 20 in the Fear the Hunters expansion).

Remember, you can pre-order Wave Five of The Walking Dead: All Out War from the Mantic website now! In tomorrow's blog we'll be previewing the Veteran Cards, which can give your survivors new abilities.