The Walking Dead: Here’s Negan Board Game

Set in the world of The Walking Dead comic books by Skybound, Here’s Negan is a game of survival as you play as a group called The Survivors. They must work together or against each other to win the favour of Negan by clearing out and securing an abandoned factory from oncoming walkers.

Gameplay

Here’s Negan 1-5 player game and with narrative scenarios you can play as a one-off or as a campaign. Players must complete objectives and clear out the walkers in each level before the threat level reaches its maximum. Overseeing this task is Negan himself. Checking that all things are moving forward and rewarding those who please him and punishing those that don’t.

In the game, you don’t play as Negan (as everyone would want to play as him) instead of his like a game timer as he is always moving towards the exit so you need to clear out each area for him quickly or else. You will have to be careful not to make too much noise as this will attract walkers to you so running or using loud weapons may not be a good idea. Also, there will be event cards that could make things even more tricky.

Negan’s Gunna Get Ya!

if you don’t secure a room in time you will make Negan angry which means using his deck of cards which could mean a meeting with Lucile his baseball bat or worse. After this Negan will help you by swinging at the nearest walkers to him. As players progress their actions will grant them reputation points and in the end, the player with the highest reputation will be Negan’s Lieutenant. So you better have eyes at the back of your head as there could be a double-cross awaiting you from other players.

What’s In The Box?

Inside the box, you are greeted with two sheets of 116 tokens which include doors, loot tokens, walker tokens, terrain tokens and the important threat tracker.

To help keep things organised the box has a nice plastic insert and plastic bags which holds everything in place when packed away.

The rule book is in full colour with the art style of the comics with a quick reference to the rules on the back to help speed up play.

There are 12 scenarios that can be played as a one-off or as part of a campaign and even a survivor mode. The game also has rules where the difficulty level can be set depending on how many players are playing the game.

106 cards are included which consist of character cards that help track health and abilities as well as Negan’s card,  a walker ability card, supply and event cards and of course dice which are the same that are used in The Walking Dead miniatures game.

To track the reputation of your character there are 5 red clips that fit on the side of the character cards. These clips slide along the cards but the cards are a little thin so these could wear away the edges over time.

The game set up uses a combination of 16 cardboard floor tiles which are on thick card stock and are double-sided. For each scenario, you will place doors and walker tokens on specified squares as well as spawn point where the walkers will enter during play.

Each walker is represented by a token that is faced down and is only revealed when it’s in line of sight of a character. At this point, you will need to roll at the appropriate coloured dice to see how many walkers appear

I noticed at the bottom of each floor tile there are some numbers but looking through the rule book there’s no indication of what these mean. Maybe these were to help with set up but forgot to be added in the main rule book which is a shame as it takes longer to set up the game tiles due to this.

Miniatures You Can Shake A Stick At

Not forgetting in this box comes with 7 plastic miniatures representing The Survivors and a first player token which is Negan’s weapon of choice Lucille. There are also 12 unique walkers which are in green so easily identified for the game set up. Having these miniatures has the added bonus of being able to use them in The Walking Dead miniature game by Mantic Games.

My thoughts

This game is not only a great stand-alone survival game with lots of tension and suspense but also a great gateway into the world of The Walking Dead tabletop game. The miniatures being different colours helps with the set up of the game and look great even if there are a few bends here and there. These miniatures will also satisfy the painters out there too. The game components are very good quality with the tiles being nice and thick with each design fitting the world and ascetic.

I would have liked Mantic to have used the numbers at the bottom of the floor tiles in the main rule book to help set up the scenarios as this would have made it even easier for people to set up games. I like that this game can be played solo game as well as a coop game and how it scales down the difficulty of the game depending on the amount of players playing which adds to its re play ability.

It was a good call making Negan a non player character as everyone would have wanted to play him and instead used him as a timer makes him seem dangerous and adds to the tension of not only having to survive the walkers but Negan too. If you after a survival board game with some great miniatures or love the world of The Walking Dead then Here’s Negan is worth adding to your collection.