Hit Z Road is a Push Your Luck, Auction game.

Year Published: 2016

Designer: Martin Wallace

Publisher: Space Cowboys

Players: 1-4

Game Time: 30-60 mins

Set-up Time: ~1 min

Ages: 12+

Theme: Zombie Apocalypse

Mechanic: Auction, Push Your Luck

How to win: Survive! (or get the most points)

Game Description

You and your fellow players embark on a road trip going south from Chicago along America’s famous Route 66 — now infested by zombies.

Set-Up

Each player gets a Leader Meeple and a voting counter of their colour. They also get 4 Survivor Meeples and 4 of each Adrenaline, Gas and Ammo token.

Players put the voting counter on 0 on the board and the initiative cards are dealt randomly.

The setup of the main decks of cards is different for all player counts, but we’ll look at a 4 player game here. Shuffle each of the 3 decks, remove 4 cards from each pile and return them to the box without looking. Stack the rest with set 3 on the bottom and set 1 on top.

Hit Z Road Game Play

The game is played over 3 phases – Planning, Auction, Encounter

Planning

Create 4 pairs of cards from the top of the deck, and pair the cards up from top to bottom.

Auction

This is where players bid for the initiative. Starting with the first player, and in turn order, either increase your current bid or pass. Only 1 token is allowed per space and when players pass they are still in the round, but if everyone passes in order this phase ends.

Now players pay any combination of Ammo, Gas or Adrenaline tokens equal to the value of their bid.

Then reorder initiative based on the amount bid but if a player bids 0 they stay in the same relative order. Move all auction markers back to 0 ready for the next round.

Encounter

Starting with the new turn order, players will complete this phase in full.

Firstly, the active player will pick one of the 4 pairs of cards and will go through the Encounter phase which itself is divided into 3 phases – Scavenge, Event, Fight

To start you need to Scavenge, you take tokens shown in the top left of the card.

If the card has one, read the Event on the card. If it has Black Text, resolve it now. But if the text is Red, it will affect the upcoming Zombie fight.

Some cards give tokens which will affect the player later in the game.

To Fight, take a number of Zombies meeples matching the number shown.

To start a round of combat, players use an optional ranged attack. Spend 1 ammo for each die you wish to roll. For each ‘target’ rolled, kill a zombie.

Now a player can spend 2 Gas tokens to avoid the fight altogether, returning the card to the box.

Fights

If a player decides to fight, they go into Melee combat. To do this, roll a die for each Meeple you control (including the Leader and Survivors) and resolve. What you roll depends on what happens…

Skull with Lightning – The survivor was bit! Spend an Adrenaline or lose a Survivor
Lightning Bolt – Opportunity Attack – Spend Adrenaline to kill a zombie
Target – Straight forward, kill 1 Zombie
Target with Lightning – Bonus Kill – Kill 1 Zombie, then you may pay 1 Adrenaline to kill another!

If you kill all the Zombies, keep the card face down for the points showing on the card in the star.

If the Zombie’s hand is Red, it’s a Horde! Replace a black die with a red die equal to its strength up to the number of dice you’re going to roll.

If a player rolls the Red Skull, you insta-kill a Survivor.

If all of a player’s survivors have died, that has been defeated and is eliminated from the game.

They discard their cards and tokens. When 1 player is eliminated, put the +2 key next to path 4… You now need to pay 2 extra resources to take this path. After 2 Eliminations, put the +4 key next to path 4 and the +2 on path 3.

Game End

If at the end of a round only 1 player is left, they win!
If everyone dies, everyone loses…

But if 2 or more players are left, give the epilogue cards to the player with most of the resources shown on the card left over. No one gets it in a tie…

The player with the most points wins.

Round-Up

This is an interesting way to do an auction game.

Resources = Survival, you need them. But they also help you choose your path through the round which can be INVALUABLE.

A route may allow you to avoid fighting many Zombies which means easy points, and easy resource pickup… sit back and relax.

Another route might have Zombies, a Horde or a token you don’t want.

So how many resources do you bid on? How many will you get? How many will you need to survive? Also, how many will you have left moving forward?…

Using resources for auctions is better than money for me, you’re essentially exchanging long-term survival for short-term peace and quiet 🙂

The tokens the cards give you are weird, sometimes bad, sometimes good but you never really know. Not every card is in every game so what effect will they have? Wait and see. But you do know which of the Tokens are not worth taking…

Also, I felt this needs to be played with people hoping to get to the end of the game. All too often people go a bit gung-ho, get eliminated then complain about player elimination in games. Play to the theme people! Survive!

It’s tense and VERY difficult to make it to the end…

Rating

Does what it does very well.

I give it 6/10

First Impressions August 2016

First up, the look of the game is great. It’s supposed to be cobbled together from pieces someone found on the road during a zombie apocalypse… The turn order markers are all different colours and shapes and are made up of a credit card, ‘My name is…’ badge etc

All the tokens are made to look like bottle tops and even the box is an edited version of an (I assume made up) family game ‘ Hit the Road’ and the back of the box shows you how to play it! (There is a sheet in the shrink wrap showing the game for display purposes…)

I’ve played it twice, with 8 players, and 1 survivor… I think you need to put survival first and just try and get to the end, then either hope you have the most points, most luck or be alone 🙂

Using the resources you need to survive in order to bid for which route you’re going to take leads to painful auction rounds.

Spend your bullets and adrenaline and you can use gas to escape… but you won’t get any points.

Use gas and adrenaline and hope your bullets get you out of trouble… but a bad roll puts you in a lot of trouble.

Spend bullets and gas to have plenty of choices in combat… always seems the best option for me but I’ve never survived so… make of that what you will!

It’s a very nice game, easy to play and teach, great theme and fun with the right amount of stress. It’s a cheap one too so well worth picking up if it sounds like your kind of thing.

Jesta ThaRogue