Send in the ZEDs: Dawn of the ZEDs Designer Edition First Look

MarcM, 7 August 2026

If you’d told me a few months ago that I’d be playing a game about a zombie apocalypse instead of a historical wargame, I’d have viewed the idea with skepticism. But here we are. Cue Hermann Luttmann’s Dawn of the ZEDs Designer Edition from publisher Blue Panther and send in the undead.

How I Got Here

I was browsing the Blue Panther website for new games and the preorder for Dawn of the Zeds, Designer Edition (shipping in October) caught my interest. I’d heard of Dawn of the Zeds but didn’t know a lot about it except that it had a zombie theme. I filed it away for follow-up. A couple weeks later, by a serendipitous series of events, it followed me up, and I had a chance to try out a demo version provided by Blue Panther. It was too good to pass up.

This is a pre-production version, your components will look different, with die-cut counters, acrylic dice, and a mounted board.

click images to enlarge

What Is Dawn of the ZEDs Designer Edition?

This isn’t a reprint with corrected errata. There’s a fair bit of “new” in Dawn of the ZEDs Designer Edition that changes the characters and the gameplay.

With a new combat system, dedicated multiplayer rules, new art, new heroes and more, Dawn of the Zeds, Designer Edition is more of a relaunch than a reprint. For people like me it’s a new chance to dive into a game that’s been around since 2011. For fans, the Designer Edition is new life breathed into a favorite.

Bringing Out the Deadish

The ZEDs spawn on and move along four tracks toward the Town Center. The board also keeps track of Infection Level, Ammo Level, Supply Level and Research Level.

Hoards of ZEDs, individuals infected with Zombie Epidemic Disease (ZED) are bearing down on Farmingdale by every trail, street, country road, and highway available. Most are everyday, run-of-the-mill ZEDs, but there are faster, more powerful Alpha ZEDs too. Each turn they bring more death, destruction, and, of course, more ZEDs. Your job is to stop them from reaching the Town Center. Oh, and make sure the refuges from outlying villages make it to the Town Center.

Everyday Heroes

Heroes start in the Town Center. Other town spaces, like the Hospital, Laboratory, and downtown surround the Center. Side note, there are bases for the Hero standees…but they make pictures difficult.

Your small band of town heroes and militia need to save as many refugees as possible, minimize the destruction of the ZEDs’ rampage and keep the ZEDs out of the Town Center until the National Guard arrives to save the day.

Your supporting cast includes Town Guards, the Refugees you’re trying to save and the Civilian Watch units the Refugees generate when you save them. Depending on the Event cards, outlaw Raiders and courageous Army Rangers might enter play. Fate cards might bring good things or really bad things. And eventually (ideally), the National Guard rolls in to save the day. These secondary units are important – you need the National Guard to win – but for much of the game, the heroes do the work.

The “Historical” hero deployment includes Mayor Hernandez, Sheriff Hunt, Deputy Schmidt and Pickles. But there are a bunch to choose from.

Many of the heroes have strong combat factors and all have combat Special Abilities that help you fight the ZED menace. Also important are the hero’s Actions. More on those later.

Colonel Kingman has Entrench and Defensive Perimeter Skills. He’s also got a couple of decent Special Abilities for ranged and close combat.

Finally, heroes have unique Skills that make their combat and Actions even more effective, allow them to slip past enemies, sniff out supplies, boost research, lay a minefield, launch drones, whisk away a buddy in a golf cart, and more. I suspect it was fun coming up with these.

Dawn of the ZEDs, Designer Edition Gameplay

If you’re familiar with the States of Siege series (which includes ZEDs printings 1 to 3) you’re familiar with the game concept. If, like me, you’re not, I’ll give you a rundown of gameplay, but these are just the broad strokes to give you a flavor of the game. Take a look at the downloadable manual on the game product page to see the particulars I’m leaving out.

Movement

ZEDs move one space toward the Town Center each time they activate. Alpha ZEDs two. Your heroes have movement factors printed on their information cards and can move any direction along the tracks. Other player units…well, that got murky for me. Some, like the ZEDs, have their MF defined in the Appendix. Others have their MF printed on the counter. I’m pretty sure it’s the number in the green diamond. Green for go, right? I might have skipped right over it, but I never found that spelled out in the Rules or Appendix. I finally made some deductions and went with it.

Combat

First Team is wounded and just rolled two misses. They now face six hits, minus one for the Shield East Irek provides. That’s the end of First Team.

Combat is straightforward. No charts, ratios, or ciphering. ZED counters display the number of hits they dish out. Friendlies use close combat values (CCV) or ranged combat values (RCV) printed on the counters or Hero cards and rolls of custom dice. The number tells you how many dice and the number color tells you if you use the black regular combat dice or the yellow enhanced dice, which give you more chances of hits.

Combat is simultaneous. A ZEDs unit starts by increasing the Infection Level (no matter what happens, someone is getting infected with ZED). Then the ZEDs unit deals its hits, minus any shielding for defensive terrain, support from a friendly, and anything else the target’s Special Ability might generate. Player units roll their combat dice, dealing out misses, hits or triggering a Special Ability. It might mean multiple hits, an extra shield and sometimes a re-roll with potential for more hits. Units have two steps. Once hits surpass unit toughness, you flip to the wounded side. When the hits surpass toughness again, the unit is eliminated.

The Turns

The tutorial has a total of 13 Event cards, so 13 turns. The National Guard arrives Turn 10 or 11.

Each scenario is divided into four Acts, run by Event cards. The scenario tells you how to build the Event deck for each Act, including how many cards to use (how many game turns) and how many special Event cards (Brains, Nightmare, and Apocalypse) to add. Yes. Those are bad. There’s also the coveted National Guard card that activates your rescuers.

Going from the top, Raiders, Rangers, Refugees, and Rescue (National Guard) each get one action. An Outbreak occurs if the Infection Level is 10. Supplies are consumed if rolling two Fate Dice generate a total of 9 or more. ZEDs activate on all tracks. There are two bonus hero Actions. And we draw a Fate card and spawn a new ZEDs unit according to that card.

Event cards tell you how many secondary units activate, whether the Infection Level is high enough for an Outbreak (Yes. Bad.) whether supplies are consumed and which tracks activate to send ZEDs towards town or spawn new ZEDs. Depending on the space, they drop Chaos markers that slow down the good guys. If they enter a space with a Player unit, they initiate close combat.

The cards also tell you if you get any additional Player Actions that turn. Oh, and the actual Event occurs somewhere in that sequence. It can be good, bad, or draw a Fate card.

And here’s the Fate card we drew. By the icon at the top right, and a Fate die roll, the Fate card tells us the ZEDs unit spawns on space 5 of the Forest track. On the bright side, we can use this card later in combat.

Which can be good, bad or another Fate card. Feels a little complicated typing that out, but the cards make it pretty easy to keep track of.

Pickles uses the Forage Action and applies his Great Nose skill to roll an extra die. Two fives mean two supply points.

Now your heroes are up. They get one Action each unless you got bonus Actions. There are lots of Actions to choose from. Move is a key one, of course. Most heroes have decent movement factors so you can get them to trouble spots pretty quickly. Movement can result in combat, and many heroes have good combat factors, so you might be doing this a lot. Some don’t. Keep those out of trouble as much as you can. Movement can also require the hero to stop and clear a Chaos marker – cleaning up the mess the ZEDs made of the infrastructure. There are also Actions for ranged combat, foraging for supplies or ammo, and one that lets you give an Action to a non-hero unit. Healing or research is available if you’re in the Hospital or Lab. And there are more, picking up a super weapon, a cure, the guy that started all this and more.

Once all the Heroes act, you check to see if the National Guard has ended the madness. If not, the turn ends and the next begins with you replacing any heroes you lost (Pickles! Noooo!) Then on to the next Event card and so on.

The ZEDs are within a couple of turns of reaching the Town Center. And a group of Refugees is about to become Slow Food.

If a ZEDs unit gets to the Town Center first, you lose. If you hold them off long enough for the National Guard to make it to the Town Center, you win. If the game ends before either the ZEDs or the Guard enters the Town Center, you survived.

Incarcerated incompetent or the greatest hero of all time? The VP narratives are a nice touch.

And then you total victory points, based on things like whether you discovered a cure, how many refugees you saved, how much damage the ZEDs did to your city, and how many ZEDs were left to terrorize the surrounding area. You can also gain VP through optional rules, including tracking down the creator of ZED. The VP tally can turn a win into a you-won-but-you-were-so-incompetent-you’re-going-to-jail kind of win, or a loss into a you-all-died-but-did-so-heroically-and-get-a-national-holiday kind of loss. Even losing can be fun.

Final Thoughts

Alyssa’s close combat attack to screen refugees triggers her Tae Kwon Do Ability, generating two additional hits, an additional shield and a re-roll. She won’t need a re-roll.

My first playthrough of Dawn of the ZEDs was a bit rough. I was just trying to follow the rules, not strategize. I used my Heroes poorly and lost a couple. The second time I played the introductory scenario though, it was much smoother. I started taking advantage of player Skills, really paying attention to Special Abilities, getting heroes where they needed to be, and making the most of them. It all started to click, and it was fun. I enjoy games for different reasons, but this might be one of the first board games that gave me that, “just one more turn” feeling.

Sasha Brooks boosts research rolls by one. Doc Seaver scores a research point. Mayor Hernandez does not.

One unexpected feature I really appreciated was the research track. I love a good research track, and this was simple but effective. Investing Actions into research produces meaningful results, especially if you get an NPC boost from the Sasha Event.

There’s a ton of good knowledge, examples, and explanations in these. I’m still learning which information is in which booklet. Also, I like the cover art.

Where did I struggle? Well, the rulebook and the appendix. Don’t get me wrong. The rules are pretty clear and straightforward. There are numerous illustrated examples, a flow chart of a turn, explanations of optional rules and more. But when I had a question (like movement factors, or what happens when the Farmingdale Bridge comes falling down, falling down), I was never quite sure if the answer was in the rulebook or the appendix (or the Player Aides). There was a lot of flipping around. I think this would be a passing issue, but not being clear what was a rule and what was an appendix item slowed my ramp-up time.

The optional Event and Fate cards hint at gameplay twists.

There’s plenty I didn’t have time to cover. Optional rules, different gameplay modes and more. And I haven’t explored cooperative multiplayer (up to six players) at all, but I hope to try it on a family vacation soon. Our extended family is pretty competitive, so a cooperative game like this that lets you laugh, root for each other and just have fun is…less stressful, let’s say.

You can chat about this game in the RPG & Adventure Gaming section of our discussion forums

Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.
Rather than list a bunch of social media links, the easiest thing to do is to check out our LinkTree, which connects you to all of our various locales around the web.
You can also support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.