Here's Negan Survivors

I present here the five survivor figures plus Negan from the Here's Negan board-game by Mantic Games. This stand-alone supplement from The Walking Dead franchise concentrates on the vicious Negan and five of his followers clearing out a large warehouse to make it safe for Negan to use as a headquarters. Although the survivors are working co-operatively, each one is hoping to impress Negan enough to earn the title, Top Dog. This is measured in Reputation levels, which can go up or down during the course of a game. The game can be played by 1-5 players. Negan and the Zombies are controlled by cards and the game's Artificial Intelligence. Making sure that Negan does not suffer from Rage will help to ensure victory. An enraged Negan can be more of a threat than the zombies.

At the far left is Negan, the brutal, foul-mouthed leader of this group. I was pleased to see a new sculpt of him. He is armed with "Lucille" his baseball bat, a sniper's rifle, a pistol and a knife. Next in line is Dwight, who is armed with a dagger and a crossbow. He is good at running. If a character runs they must roll to see if they make noise. Dwight can re-roll the noise dice. Also, his base move is 4 instead of 3. Third in line is John, the bruiser. He is really good at melee combat and can kill zombies even if he doesn't score a head shot - he just has to roll double or more than the zombie's defence roll. He is armed with a tyre iron, which allows him to automatically open locked doors.

The three females are made up from left to right of Tara, Laura and Sherry. Tara can not use ranged weapons but is very good at melee. She has the best defence dice and if her defence roll is more than twice a zombie's attack roll, she can make a free attack against that zombie. She is armed with a dagger. Laura is ranged combat expert. She is armed with an assault rifle and a dagger. Her special ability is that she can perform the same action twice in a turn. This is very useful as the default rule is that characters must perform two different actions when they activate. Finally, is Laura, who is armed with a pistol and a dagger. Stat-wise, she is the weakest but she does have a very useful ability - she can give up one of her actions to give another character an extra action, which does not affect their activation.
I have started to play the twelve scenarios that make up the campaign and I'm using all five survivors plus Negan. They are a good mix of characters who, so far, are working well together. The rules are similar to those used in The Walking Dead games but are not identical. Here's Negan is very much its own game and I have to say, it is a great deal of fun. I ordered the game shortly before it went on general release and as a bonus I received extra stat cards to use the five survivors in The Walking Dead games, which was something that pleased me immensely. The figures are all beautifully sculpted, very crisply detailed and an absolute joy to paint.