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For decades, Zombies have been a pillar of the horror genre, bringing gore, terror, and occasionally humour to our screens. After all, what could be more terrifying than a mindless reanimated corpse? Zombicide: Green Horde has found a way to one up the classic human zombie menace: zombie orcs. Green Horde brings all the savagery of zombies and mixes it with the terrifying raw power of orcs to bring zombie-horror straight to your table. Now, the Friends and Foes expansion compounds this further, bringing new infected zombies, fresh characters, and even animal companions to the mix.
The Dead Will Walk The Earth
Friends and Foes adds some new mechanics to Green Horde’s base gameplay. The first major addition is the zombies. The new ‘Tainted’ Walkers and Abomination pose an interesting threat. Tainted orcs have acidic blood (think Alien) and put up more of a fight when killed. Therefore, when dealing with these contaminated combatants, you’ll want to keep your distance or risk being caught in the infected zombie ‘splash zone’, landing you a hefty two wounds.
This new mechanic forces you to use methods other than brute force to succeed, changing up gameplay and encouraging you to use some different offensive weapons. If the tainted blood spray wasn’t bad enough, these orcs pack more of a punch than their basic counterparts, dealing two damage per hit, so you’ll want to keep your distance when battling.
It's not just the orcs that are new. Friends and Foes also introduces four new playable survivors with new skills to help fight the tainted menace. These new characters are nice to have as a break from the same old six survivors and provide some fun new abilities. For example, ‘Brother in Arms: +1 die’ grants each survivor in that character’s space an extra die when attacking.
These new survivors can be mixed in with the six from Green Horde and add another changeable element to keep games feeling fresh. While these new survivors aren’t a huge change for the game, especially if you have the stretch goals from the Green Horde Kickstarter, it’s a nice way to go back and shake up the original ten scenarios from the base game.
The new survivors are joined by a selection of new equipment, including new spells and weapons. These new tools help add a little more to the story element of the game as you aren’t finding the same items again and again and come in handy in your fight against the Tainted Horde. That being said, even with the thematic items it would’ve been nice if there was a little more cohesion between the quests to create a greater sense of story.
Also, although the expansion is compatible with Green Horde and Black Plague, only four of the ten scenarios are playable with only Black Plague. It's a little disappointing that there aren’t more scenarios to bring it up to ten scenarios for each, especially given the price point of the base games. Therefore, this scenario count is something you should be aware of when thinking of which expansion to buy.
Dog Fight
Friends and Foes also introduces three familiars: dogs, wolves, and flying cats. These can either be chosen at the start of the game or found during the quest. The familiars are a type of equipment card and count as survivors. This means they can be found using a standard search action, going straight to that players backpack, or traded to another survivor. However, these furry friends are more than just a cute addition to your party.
They can grant extra abilities both in and out of combat, such as enhanced movement or extra dice. Familiars can also follow instructions, allowing you to spend actions to move them around to attack, search, or just make noise. These new companions provide new ways to tackle zombie hordes, letting you distract them to sneak past or by helping throw in some extra hits.
The passive abilities the familiars grant can also totally change how you play. For example, the wolves can allow you to avoid friendly fire or slip away from zombies without spending extra actions. However, before sending your familiar off into the Horde you should know that they can only take one wound, and if they’re killed then their survivor suffers a wound as well.
Fear The Walking Dead
Zombicide: Friends and Foes is a frightening yet fantastic addition to the Zombicide franchise. The Tainted orcs provide a meaty new challenge, and the familiars encourage you to play in new ways, effectively introducing up to six new controllable characters to the board. The scenarios are engaging, although it would’ve been nice to have more of them for both Green Horde and Black Plague. With only four scenarios requiring Black Plague, this expansion could be a pricey investment.
However, I can recommend Friends and Foes as a great way to mix up standard play and introduce new mechanics to expand your experience.
