Courtyard Setup
- Place the courtyard in the center of the play area.
- Place a barricade token on space 2.
- Place survivor tokens in the pool area based on difficulty:
- 0 survivors - Epic
- 1 survivor - Hard
- 2 survivors - Normal
- 3 survivors - Easy
Mall Store Setup
- Randomly arrange 8 mall stores around the courtyard.
- Entrance symbol faces outward.
- Alternate horizontal and vertical orientations relative to the courtyard.
- Place one zombie in each store's entrance room.
- Find the "Arm a trap" space and place 2 trap tokens nearby, gray side up.
- Find supply crate icons and place crate tokens on them.
- Place the motorcycle or police car in its designated room.
Player Setup
Choose 2 to 4 heroes and colors. For each hero:
- Hero card
- Wound tracker set to 0
- Ammo tracker set to 9
- Meeple (place in courtyard's central room)
Place items and the melee die nearby.
Choose a Zombie (flipside of an unused hero card).
Objectives and Decks
- Draw or choose three objectives. Follow the setup rules for each. Use any player's marker cube if required.
- Prepare the Search Deck.
- Separate cards with a pickup (suitcase) icon or event (!) icon into Deck A and shuffle.
- Shuffle remaining cards, deal 12 into Deck B.
- Shuffle Decks A and B together to create the Search Deck.
- Remaining cards become the Supply Deck (used when returning supply tokens to the courtyard).
- Deal each player a facedown Search Card from the Search Deck.