Last Days Seasons campaign: February

Having the week off of work (as Super Bowl and my daughter’s birthday fall in the same week), I’ve actually managed to get this month’s Last Days game in with a couple of weeks to spare!

Rolling up Rescue as the next scenario, I reasoned that narratively it went like this - it’s month two of the end of the world, and things don’t seem to be getting any better. The group of survivors banded together at the farm receive a radio signal from a prepper that people had previously thought paranoid, but in hindsight was actually right… He had himself a bunker in the depths of the woods, stuffed full of supplies, but had been overrun by zombies. He was keeping his head down, but would appreciate someone coming and giving him a hand. The group didn’t have to deliberate for long - helping out another human being was obviously the right thing to do. And anyway, if they didn’t make it in time, he’s probably got a bunch of supplies that he won’t be needing any more…

So, this is how I set up the board:

Rolling for weather, I got the freezing result - zombies being slower is a good thing, but given how I roll, being harder to kill was going to be a bit of a hurdle to overcome…

I also forgot to print out tokens (again!) so had to resort to my handmade ones:

Next time I’ll remember, I’m sure. Although I realise now that last night when I was printing out Rangers of Shadow Deep cards and couldn’t remember what the other thing I was meant to print was, it was these. 

First thing of note - when playing solo, boy howdy is that a lot of zombies that rock up on the opposite end of the board! If any of my survivors gain any more levels I’m not going to be able to physically fit them all on…

So, after a slow start where I attempted to stealthily advance on the bunker in the centre and the supply tokens in it’s immediate vicinity, including three of my survivors ganging up on the lone zombie in their half of the board to try (and fail) to stealth kill it, I manage to take out three zombies on turn 3, just as Kevin (my shotgun and cricket bat wielding Survivor) managed to reach the unconscious survivalist they had come to rescue. Unfortunately, that turn I rolled a result on the event table that caused 3 zombies to stumble out of the building, leaving him surrounded:

I let rip with everything I’ve got, but bar Cece successfully plinking the zombie sneaking up behind the group no one manages anything of note. More firearm training needed when we get back to the farm methinks…

To make matters worse, two zombies then shamble out of the outhouse (just what we’re they doing in there?), and when combined with the horde of zombies bearing down on the group from the north things are looking pretty dire.

Umlaut (my helper monkey) has spent the entire game so far trying to lure as many zombies away from the rest of the group as he can, and now heads back towards the centre to try and concentrate the zombies in one spot, before breaking free to lead them away:

Allowing Lynn to sneak round behind the outhouse to grab the bag of guns stashed there. Obviously, my luck being what it is a body on the ground next to it then stood up and attacked:

As things had dragged on somewhat, Umlaut then panicked and fled the board, which is unfortunate for the rest of the group as it left the horde of zombies he was luring away free to start wandering back towards them…

At this point, Jess has a supply token, Lynn is trying to brain the zombie with a bag of guns over its shoulder, and Devon and Cece are trying to sneak around the outside of the trees to snag the last supply token - unfortunately this runs into a snag when their largely ineffective gunfire draws another pair of zombies onto the board right by them.

And weirdly, three zombies then burst out of the Outhouse - just what was going on in there? I’m starting to suspect that this survivalist was hiding bodies of anyone that found his secret spot in there…

With Umlaut no longer pulling zombies away, Jess (in the pink) gets absolutely bundled as she and Kevin (having given rescuing the survivalist up as a lost cause) attempt a fighting retreat:

Gun empty, she was successfully managing to break away and flee a little more each turn - until the turn that Kevin escaped, at which point I imagine her saying ‘go, I’ll be right behind you!’ Which was the plan, until poor rolls meant she was unable to break away, and got pulled down by the mass of zombies, dropping her supply token.

At this point, everyone heads for the hills, knowing that the day is lost. Devon manages to make it off the table with some supplies, but Lynn is unable to rescue the bag of guns - having no firearm of her own, and seemingly unable to get a kill in close combat (thanks to the freezing weather making the zombies harder to kill), she cut her losses and got out of there. Dionne, after being a beast last game, managed zero kills this game, but this might have been mitigated had I remembered that she now had the Double Tap skill that could have allowed me to re-roll to kill a zombie. That would have needed her to hit them in the first place though…

On that front, I kept rolling double sixes to hit, but then atrociously low on my ‘Shoot them in the Head!’ roll…

Post-game, thanks to Lynn’s first aid training Jess is only shell-shocked rather than having a leg injury. Devon gets enough experience to advance another level, and gets +1 Endurance again, making him tough as nails. Our supply token turns out to be some salvage and a Magnum, which seems a little noisy to be using against zombies - what I wouldn’t give for a couple of knives though!

Jess being out of action is a nightmare, as she’s the primary source of food for the group with her farming knowledge. However, with everyone else putting their backs into it and using 1 Fuel from my stash, everyone is fed and the farmhouse is fully heated, so no one suffers any adverse effects. That is, except for Jess, who has started to show symptoms of a fever, so it looks like we’ll be heading into the city next month to try and find some medicine…

As well as getting in a game this week, the Tally has taken a couple of hits. First of all we have the free Guardsman from GW, that I hope to convert into a Necromundan Spider for an Inq28 warband (as a buddy has pointed me towards the Acolyte rules, which I’m looking to adapt to make funkier warbands):

And also two copies of the new Warhammer partwork, one to convert, and one to keep pristine on the off chance that I decide to get into AOS:

Which leaves the Tally at:

3 vs 7 = -4

What’s next? Well, I found the fake spiderweb my wife bought at Halloween (behind the microwave, of course) so I’ve got everything I need to play the second Rangers of Shadow Deep scenario…