Anyone run this or play it yet?  It's a large campaign that takes a group through the Zombie Apocalypse.  Since the campaign has a start and an end, I don't think you'll run into the lack of progression issues you normally have in SW. I think my players would enjoy this as a little side campaign, but none of us play Savage Worlds, normally, it's too cinematic and pulpy for us.

The reason I was thinking of doing SW was the merging of RPG/mini rules so you could have a group of 5 people fighting 30 zombies on the deck of a cruise ship and have it take just a few minutes.  A system that can handle a large scale fight between two opposing survivor towns sounds like it would fit the bill.

There are other options I guess, perhaps using the real Hell on Earth rules and then moving to the SW version if things get unweildy.  Or maybe Deathwatch or Only War rules, dropping down to Necromunda or 40k itself if things get too big.

So, what do you guys think?  Weigh in on
1. War of the Dead campaign itself regardless of system
2. Best way to get an RPG/minis experience choppin' up, mowin' down zombies, biker warlords, etc...

I can speak about the campaign itself.  My group played 41 of the 52 chapters, and we stayed mostly on track with the plot.  There's a lot to recommend it.  If you want a zombie apocalypse and don't mind cribbing off the best of the genre tropes, there's a lot to like.  We got a lot of mileage out of it.

The problems actually came about as we dragged to the end.  It's been over a year now, but let me see if I can summarize:
1) Not enough combat variety, which in SW became boring.  There's only so many ways to describe hacking a zombie's head off.
2) Little room for specialization.  Combat is frequent enough that by the final parts of the campaign (when PCs are expected to be close to Legendary), if you are not combat-focused, you will die.
3) The train tracks keep getting tighter and tighter: because the author is bringing you toward a conclusion, plot contrivances get more and more heavy-handed.  Major dramatic moments are basically scripted for you.
4) The ending blows.  [No spoilers here] I was reading it in advance to play, read the ending, and decided that we wouldn't finish the campaign (they were getting a little burnt out on it anyway).  When I told my players the ending that was written, they all said that they would have been angry if I did that to them.

I know it sounds like I'm ragging on the campaign; I'm trying not to.  For about a year, we felt excited to be playing in our own Walking Dead series and it felt that way too.  The great parts were great.  But for us, the magic wore off towards the end; a combination of the SW rules, heavy-handed storytelling, and players' desire to move onto other games.

Hope this helps.

I own the first book for WotD (haven't played it yet), but I wanted to comment on using HOE rules instead.  

Namely, if making that switch (assuming you are equally competent in both systems) you should expect combat playtime to roughly triple, and will see a significant increase in lethality.  

I'm a big fan of Deadlands & HOE, but using that rule-set for battling a whole hoard of zombies will be pretty slow (like that fight could take 2+ hours slow).