Zombicide Question - Running out of Zombies

[diehard]

Hi, a question for any of you Zombicide players out there. I got Zombicide as sort of a gateway game if you will, hopefully to find someone to move on to tabletop gaming. Recently I found a couple people who like the game and want to play regularly. Now I have all three seasons of the first edition and also picked up the second edition.  So I have a TON of zombies and highly unlikely that I would run out during game play.

However for the campaign games I decided to just use the zombies in the base box to see how it played out. The rules state if you run out of zombies during a Spawn then all zombies of that type get a free activation. It also states that multiple extra activations may occur in a row.

Now the one player sees it that every zombie of that type gets their free move and that's it. But say you Spawn 7 Walkers but only have 4 left. That second line about multiple extra activations makes me wonder if they mean all the Walkers would get three activations, one for each zombie you are missing. So my question to any Zombicide players out there is how do you play it? Thanks!

[James Mahdeep Bond V]

From my experience, players have to kill zombies as much as they can, every turn. If you don't keep the zombie numbers down, with the extra moves they get when there are no zombies left in the pool, it's bad. You get et.  Experience is the best teacher.  Don't take my advice. The major existential issue with multiple players whose survivors operate in one group: the ONE player who tells everyone what to do. Hey at least one person was having fun.

[Daeothar]

I don't know if this is 'the correct' way of playing it, but this is how The Voivod and myself do it:

When you run out of (for instance) Walkers, no matter how many you're short, all Walkers get one free move that turn. Same goes for each zombie type.

But if you run out of more than one type, you're probably being swamped anyway

[Thargor]

If you had 3 spawn points and during the spawn for the first point you ran out of walkers, existing walkers would all get an activation.  Move on to spawn point 2 and if you get walkers again, then all existing walkers get an activation and so on until all spawn points are done.

[Daeothar]

Per spawnpoint, yes. Forgot to mention that, although we've never actually experienced drawing the same type twice after running out of them.

Then; we don't play it all too much TBH... 

[KD47]

For my Zombietown Massacre (http://skankgame.com/zombietown.html) we painted up 120 zombies of various types.   Once they were put down, they went back into the pool and were recycled endlessly until the players won, died, or the game was called due to time.

And then occasionally a personality would show up on a whim.   Carrie, Jason, Pinhead, even Freddy Kreuger found his way into the waking world just for spice.

Pretty much an endless cascade of the undead.

[mellis1644]

If you had 3 spawn points and during the spawn for the first point you ran out of walkers, existing walkers would all get an activation.  Move on to spawn point 2 and if you get walkers again, then all existing walkers get an activation and so on until all spawn points are done.

This is what we do. One extra activation for not having thew right number to spawn per zone/card.

As others have commented on - once you start getting multiple extra activations things get tough quickly. Of course if you really want a hard game throw in lots of the extra abominations.

I play Black Plague with walkers, fatties, runners, notorious characters, crows, wolves and Necromancers - but it's when I add too many of the abominations that the difficulty starts to get too much. Still part of the fun is a game where you may win only 1 in every 3 or so games IMO. We always have a laugh even if we loose.
 

[Duncan McDane]

I see it as one activation for all Zombies of that type ( for that spawning point, regardless how many zombies you lack ).
Then, if you have to spawn from the next spawning point and there are ( of course ) no zombies left from that same type you activate all zombies of that type again, but only one time.
etc. etc.
If you would do it for each lacking zombie you might end up with all zombies of hat board having 5+ activations each and that would effectively mean the end of the game.
But yeah, better avoid that situation all together  .
Disclaimer: I played mainly Black Plague and Green Horde so the rule might have changed...