The Walking Dead: All Out War

What is The Walking Dead: All Out War

The Walking Dead: All Out War is a miniatures skirmish game from Mantic Games, designed by Mark Latham. It’s based on the Walking Dead comics, not the TV show. Your group of survivors and a rival group both want the same scarce supplies, and the walkers want everyone. Mantic puts the goal as collecting “the meager resources from the barren landscape before anyone else does, or before your group is devoured.”

Latham wanted the walkers to have a mind of their own. In a 2017 interview with Mantic he said your opponent should never control them all the time, so “there’s a real element of unpredictability.” On their own they’re “quite harmless,” but the more of them there are, the faster the fight turns against you.

The game came out of a Kickstarter in 2016 and was released in waves that followed the comic, up through the Whisperers and the Kingdom. Mantic’s licence ran out in January 2022 and the game was discontinued. In December 2023 Mantic announced it had renewed the licence with Skybound, and the game came back in 2024 with a new starter set and a single Anthology rulebook. It’s on sale again from Mantic now.

How it plays

Small groups, lots of dead. Goonhammer’s review puts a typical game at 3 to 8 models a side, with around 15 walkers in the middle. Each survivor is a large character card with slots for weapons and gear.
Two actions each. Players alternate activating models. Each survivor gets two actions, and they can’t be the same type: move, shoot, search a supply counter, hold your nerve, make noise and a few more.
Noise draws the dead. Sneaking moves 4” quietly. Running moves 8” but makes noise, which pulls the nearest walker toward you. Gunfire usually causes Mayhem, which raises the Threat and draws every walker within 10”.
Threat and panic. Noise, fighting and event cards push the Threat up. Before a survivor activates, if the Threat is higher than its nerve, it takes a Panic check and may run, yell or lose actions. A Hold Nerve action can bring the Threat down by one. When it reaches 18, the game ends.
The event deck runs the walkers. Each turn an event card moves walkers, raises the Threat or brings more onto the board, and it gets nastier at higher Threat. The large Kill Zone template decides which walkers lunge at which survivors.
Melee comes last. All the fighting happens together at the end of the turn, with coloured custom dice. To put a walker down for good you need a headshot. A walker’s headshot on you is a bite, and a bitten survivor can come back as a walker.
Solo and co-op. Mantic says the event system “directs Walkers around the board,” so you can play solo. Goonhammer adds that the same engine handles co-op scenarios well, and the older Prelude to Woodbury expansion was built for solo play.

How to start

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All Out War Quick Start Guide (free)

Learn how to play before you buy. Needs a free Mantic webstore account.

Learn it for free. The Quick Start Guide is a free download from your Mantic account. Mantic also gives away blank survivor cards for making your own characters.
Get the full rules. The 2024 Anthology gathers the core rules, the expansions and the errata in one book. The digital edition is £20.
Buy the starter set. The Collector’s Edition Starter Set is £95 and was in stock when we checked. It has 11 survivors, among them Rick Grimes, Carl, Lee, Clementine and Peg Leg Dale, plus 19 walkers. It also has the Anthology rulebook, the event, equipment and supplies decks, dice, tokens, templates, 6 barricades, 2 trucks, 2 cars, scatter terrain and a paper play mat. Mantic’s cheaper Essentials Set (£40) was listed as unavailable.
Add the decks. The 2024 Events Deck and Supply and Item Deck are £12.50 each. The Prelude to Woodbury PDF, the solo expansion, is £10.

The miniatures come unpainted and need assembly.

Community & reviews

Goonhammer’s review is from 2020, before the relaunch, so its notes on what to buy cover the original boxes and expansions. The Anthology gathers those rules and expansions with the later errata.