Skybound Games’ The Walking Dead: Something to Fear is a card game in which you have to win by having the most points after 9 rounds. You have to endure walkers and the other players around you on your journey to victory. Is this game worth the money, or would you have wasted your money on a game that is not fun. Here is my review of the game.
Before I get to the gameplay, I would like to say that I love the design of the cards. The artwork is inspired by the comic book series with a twist as the characters look like it was drawn to kids and teenagers than late teens to early adults. The rulebook is straight forward as it tells you all of the rules of the game provided with artwork of the characters as well. On the character cards, it is the artwork of the character, a number on the top left corner, and a description of the ability. On the encounter cards, Some of the cards have a red marked number on the top lright of the card, a yellow shaded area with numbers on the bottom, and some of them has either a yellow or red shaded number on the bottom with a description of an effect. I will explain what those do during my full review.
The object of the game is to be the first to score the most points after the final round of the game and to do that, you will have to go through the phases of the game. This game can be played from between 2-6 players and each player gets a set of 12 cards to play with. There are zones on the field that you have to mark and they are, the row, the mob, the discarded pile, and your pile. After each player gets their set of character cards, you place the encounter cards on the left of the playing field. Each player draws cards until they are holding three cards in their hand. You then place two cards from the encounter deck on to the row plus one more for each player that is playing. For example, if there are two players playing, you place three cards from the encounter deck to the row. After the cards are placed on the row, each player picks one card from their hand and place it face-down. Then, each player flips their cards face-up and the players go by number order to take cards from the row. Whatever cards are not taken out of the row goes to the mob pile and then you pick up more encounter cards from the deck and place two plus the number of players on the row again on the row. This repeats until everyone runs out of cards in their hands. When you flip your card to the face-up position, many of them have special effects that alters the round of play. For instance, Eugene’s effect allows you to switch his card with a character in your discard pile at random. When this happens for his effect, it happens first since it has a flash symbol next to his number. Any card that has a flash symbol next to their number, their effect happens on reveal and not during the turn. At the end of the turn, each player draws another card from their deck.
The row cards can range from Saviors, Negan, The Governor, Supplies, Walkers, etc. Negan has the most point range of all of the characters on the row. If you get The Governor, you also get the tiebreaker card and that allows you to go first during the turn if the reveal numbers match. The encounter cards has many effects that can either damage you, or benefit you. For Negan and Saviors, you can score more points depending on how many of the same copies of the card that you have. The Wound card is given to another player when you select it from the row and that does damage to their final score. There are many cards with different effects that could lead to interesting situations during the gameplay and it will keep you engaged from round to round.
The game ends after the final round and when that happens, one player must count the red marked numbers on the mob pile. If the number exceeds 20, then everyone loses the game. If it does not, then each player counts the red marked numbers (and also the yellow shaded number depending on the amount of the same cards that you have. Meaning if you see “8/16/32”, you score 8 points for one copy, 16 for two copies, and 32 for 3 copies) and count them. Whoever has the most points, wins the game.
This card game is very fun and it took me and a few of my friends a few games to adjust to the rules. Skybound knocks it out the park with this game and I am hopeful that we see an expansion pack with more characters such as Alpha, Beta, Magna, Yumiko, The Princess, Pamela, Mercer, Aaron, or even The Hunters from the Fear The Hunters story arc. Maybe even more encounter card types as well. You will have a lot of fun with this game and you will trully not be disappointed!
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