County Road Z (“CRZ”) is my favorite solo skirmish game right now. I was fortunate enough to get a demo from its creator, Jordan Heckman, during Tabletop Minions Expo (TMX) 2023.
In the months leading up to TMX, I had been feeling that something was missing in my solo and co-op wargame campaigns. Module-based campaigns were too linear. Systems with procedurally-generated campaigns had crunchier tactical layers (scenario rules) than I liked. And in almost all cases, the crew’s/warband’s motivation was just to get rich or powerful, which didn’t feel like enough.
CRZ solves all of these problems for me. Mostly, it does this by turning the traditional wargame campaign mechanic of base-building on its head: rather than improving a base as a reward for success in an unrelated scenario, the purpose of scenarios is to feed your survivors and stock your base so that it can be upgraded to repel zombie hordes and host a larger, more self-sustainable community. Players pick the missions to run based their community’s immediate needs and the player’s long-term plans for growing the community. Intriguingly, there usually isn’t an obvious choice for how to assign community members to base tasks or missions, or which mission is best to run next.
While the strategic layer is what hooked me, the tactical layer mechanic of passive zombies and Noise is something I haven’t seen in other games, and it adds a unique tension to the game.
During the demo, Jordan was upfront about the fact that CRZ continues to evolve, which is why the PDF is only $4. In particular, the tactical layer is very “swingy”: when things are going well the missions feel easy, but the situation can rapidly deteriorate with a few unlucky die rolls. Jordan and the CRZ community are tinkering with optional rules for the tactical layer to give it different flavors. On the strategic side, the game lacks a win condition — when is a community good enough that the player can declare victory? Also, in my campaign play, I’ve found that I’d like an occasional “while you were away” random event to impact the base or the survivors left at the base; this could create variability in a base’s resource output and make the base feel like part of a larger world. Finally, the rulebook is rough around the edges, but it’s perfectly serviceable for experienced wargamers.
Overall, I was so impressed with the game that I bought it on the spot and started playing it at the earliest opportunity. I’ve been playing it ever since.
My County Road Z campaigns: