Zombicide: Black Plague

Setting up Zombicide: Black Plague involves assembling the modular game tiles according to the chosen scenario map layout. Players select survivor miniatures and receive their corresponding dashboard, tracking pegs, and starting equipment cards. Objective tokens, noise tokens, and door tokens are placed on specific map spaces, and the zombie deck is shuffled and readied near the spawn zones.

The main objective in Zombicide: Black Plague is cooperative survival and mission accomplishment. Players must work together as a team to fulfill specific scenario goals defined in the rulebook, which often include rescuing characters, collecting important items, clearing out zombie infestations, or escaping through designated exit zones before time runs out.

The game plays in structured rounds divided into a Survivor Phase and a Zombie Phase. During the Survivor Phase, each player performs a set number of actions with their characters, such as moving across tiles, opening doors, searching rooms, trading items, or attacking enemies. Once all survivors have acted, the Zombie Phase begins, where existing zombies activate to attack adjacent targets or move toward noise, followed by new zombies spawning on the board.

Survivors earn experience points (XP) for every zombie they eliminate during encounters. Accumulating XP increases a character's danger level from blue to yellow, orange, and red, unlocking powerful new combat skills and extra actions that make them significantly more effective against tougher threats.

The session concludes when the group successfully achieves all victory conditions specified by the current scenario, resulting in a win. Conversely, failure occurs instantly if all surviving heroes perish or if specific scenario-defined loss triggers are met, such as the destruction of vital objectives.