Last Days Seasons campaign: September

So, I just managed to squeeze in this month’s game on the very last day of the month. I decided to play the Fall special scenario ‘The Reaping’ - news that another group of survivors has succumbed to the zombie menace reaches our group, who pragmatically set out to liberate them of the supplies they no longer need!

I set up a wilderness board, that looked something like this:

I set up 14 zombies along the middle strip as per the scenario instructions, then 7 more on the opposite edge to the one my survivors started on, and then had an additional 12 zombies held ‘in reserve’ to make the total number of zombies match the total group level of the survivors. As I’ve previously done, I had the ‘reserve’ zombies come on as if survivors had made an additional noise each turn to represent the denser spread of zombies in the local area until all of the ‘reserve’ zombies are deployed, at which point I’d revert back to the usual rules.

I rolled for weather, and got moderate - no special rules. With that, the group split into two teams as per usual - team ‘guns blazing’ on the left consisting of Devon, Cece, Dionne and Lynn (although Lynn is mostly there to watch everyone else’s backs), and team sneaky on the right consisting of Kev, Jess, and the still as yet unnamed fireman.

A few of the clustered zombies start to notice the group and begin to shamble towards them, and Kev brass as bold marches straight up to the nearest one carrying supplies, ready to hopefully make short work of her with his knife. Keen to make a good first impression, the fireman easily outpaces Jess and wades in to lend Kev a hand. 

Team guns blazing on the other hand already has a steady stream of zombies heading towards them, so elects to hold their ground:

Devon opens fire first, eager to show off his new skills with a pistol in each hand - and misses about half of the shots he fires. The first hit does little more than stagger the advancing biter, but the second is a headshot that takes her out - that’s more like it! As impressive as that is though, it turns out that firing a pair of semi-automatic pistols is pretty noisy…

Cece then follows suit, taking out a zombie that has a crate tucked under one arm - looks like all that shooting practice is finally paying off! Dionne on the other hand seems to be having an off day, and despite sending a couple of bolts at an advancing zed fails to take it out! (In game terms, using all of her skills there was only a 1 in 36 chance of failing to take that zombie out, but I managed to roll a 1 and then another 1 on the reroll…)

Over on the other side of the field, the fireman swings his fire axe at a zombie, but fails to make a satisfying connection. Kev, however, has no such trouble, and buries his knife into the zombies brains, at which point her fingers relax on the case that she had been carrying:

Unfortunately for them, another previously motionless body then stands up holding the case again, so it looks like it’s a case of one down, plenty more to go…

The horde of zombies continues to amble towards the survivors, joined by a pair of naked zombies that enter the board to the left of team guns blazing, drawn by the noise of all of their gunfire in the previous turn.  Cece takes a potshot at one of them, but only manages to wing them. Devon however has more luck, managing to take out an advancing zombie wearing a police uniform.

Team guns blazing then again elects to largely stay out and reload their guns, whereas over on the right stealth has largely gone out of the window for team sneaky as everything degenerates into a swirling melee.

With an explosion of shooting, once the smoke clears there are far fewer zombies facing down the aptly names team guns blazing - although Lynn failed to take anything out with her shotgun, everyone else managed to take out at least one zombie, with Devon even bagging two! Now it’s just a case of dashing in and scooping up the supplies, right?

In close quarters combat, Jess easily smashes her opponent to the ground with her fire axe, but the fireman isn’t so successful, and even gets scratched by the zombie in return!

Unfortunately for team guns blazing, another body stands up holding onto the previously dropped supplies, so gathering them all up isn’t going to be quite as simple as previously supposed. 

Things then continued in much the same pattern for a few turns - with waves of zombies pouring towards team guns blazing, being largely shot to pieces and then replace by more zombies, occasionally interspersed with moments of comedy like Devon blasting away with his pair of pistols only to moss with all but one shot, while over on the right it was largely the same situation but with axes and knives rather than guns and crossbows. Jess and Kev were smashing apart zombies with grim abandon, only for the fireman to continuously struggle with his opponent and need his bacon pulling out of the fire, with more zombies appearing within arms reach all the time…

Once again I also managed to roll the end phase event that I’d rolled several times already this game, and the lone unclaimed supply token suddenly found itself on the move again:

So, brief analytical interlude. Team guns blazing - pros: the zombies are bringing all of the supply tokens right to us!

Cons: that’s a lot of zombies coming right to us…

Not much else to report at this point in the game - the survivors would look like they were going to get overwhelmed, before turning the tide and defying the odds (with team guns blazing also putting in a commendable showing when things got up close and personal). Deciding that it was probably time to stop attracting so many additional zombies to the board, team guns blazing holstered their weapons and set about their grim harvest, blades in hand.

Most of the survivors make short work of the opposition, but Devon’s opponent gets a lucky blow on him - thankfully due to all of his Endurance increases at previous level ups he’s so tough that he simply shrugs it off with no ill effects! He’s not so lucky the next turn though, when he finds himself outnumbered and and a zombie bites down on his shirt-clad arm. Flannel protects a little bit from the teeth, but it’s certainly going to leave a bruise!

5 more zombies appear on the opposite edge of the board to our survivors, 3 of whom are carrying supplies, but at this point it’s unlikely this will be be anywhere near the survivors by the time they’d made their escape. At this point it’s about 11pm and my best friend messages me to tell me that he’s about to enter a back to back screening of every Evil Dead Movie. If I’d remembered that was today I could have dug out my not-Ash min!

Back to the game- the fireman finally takes out the zombie that struggling with all game. Determined to make up for this poor showing, he then sprints over to team guns blazing to give them a hand extricating supplies from mangled corpses. As he did so, Cece managed to take out the last zombie that was close enough to be any danger, and then it was just a case of getting everyone off the board with supplies and then making their way home! 

Post-game, plenty of experience gained means lots of advancements:

Fireman gains a level, and hopes for a point of CQC (as with his fire axe and general lack of fighting skills, he’s just about equal to a zombie at the moment). Unfortunately he doesn’t have enough extra XP banked to turn the point of firearms skill he rolls into CQC, so it looks like he’s going to have to start trying to shoot things at some point in the future!

Cece learns the gunsmith skill - she’s less fussed about the actual skill itself, but more interested in the fact that learning that means she’ll be able to utilise the military sniper rifle that’s currently sitting in the group’s stash…

Kev learns the stalker skill, so is even better suited to just running up and starting to mirser zombies from the word go.

Dionne learns the master shooting skill never misses, making her officially the deadliest survivor on the planet.

Jess also gains an additional point of firearms skill - we just need to find her a quieter gun to try and make best use of it!

Lynn learns the master skill street surgeon - while supply seeker might have been the more optimal choice, street surgeon was the more thematically appropriate choice for the group’s medic!

Devon learnt the master shooting skill overwatch. I was tempted to take never misses on him too, given how often he… well, misses, but on the other hand a free Locked&Loaded token every turn is definitely something he can use (and also frees up a few AP every turn so he could potentially reload both of his pistols at once rather than having to cycle through them in rotation!)

Then it came time to see what we’d found in all of the supply tokens - and at this point I realised that I’d accidentally cheated on getting 8 supply tokens off the board with only 7 survivors, as it turns out survivors can only carry a single supply token unless they have the expedition backpack equipment, so Dionne shouldn’t have been able to drag 2 off the board - something to remember for next time!

Being that winter is coming and finding a kerosene heater would be really handy, I rolled four times on the winter table, once on the summer table, and three times on the standard tables - and due to some boringly average rolls, literally only found fuel and scavenge on the seasonal tables, so it looks like all of those zombified survivors had mostly been carrying planks of wood around with them! On the standard tables I managed to roll even greater amounts of scavenge, but also turned up a firebomb and a surplus SMG, which Jess quickly took ownership of (having not fired her noisy rifle in a couple of months for fear of attracting more zombies).

Allocating jobs after the game, Devon decided against trying to recruit a new member of the group this month, and instead decided to build a wood burning stove for the farm house. I know, it would be cheaper for Lynn to build it with her engineer skill, but her time is mich better spent in the garden harvesting food! As much as I’d like to let everyone rest to try and shake the niggling sickness that’s been with the group for months now, Devon knows that the weather is turning and winter is on the way, so sets the group to building up a stockpile of supplies, with what little medicine they already have distributed to the most productive members of the group in the hopes of staving off anyone becoming bedridden… so everyone else set about harvesting medicine, fuel, or food, with Cece working the cold cellar in the hopes of being able to preserve any excess meals to help the group last through the winter. Unfortunately again the dice seemed to be against me, as while nobody went hungry, there was only enough food left over to make 2 preserved meals.

Of the three survivors that were given medicine (Jess, Dionne and Cece), only Cece started feeling any better. Unfortunately, the fireman became sick from spending time out in the field in close quarters with other sick survivors (and definitely not from getting clawed by a zombie, honest), and then Devon, Lynn, Jess and the fireman all fell bedridden! Maybe they should have all rested this month rather than pushing themselves so hard…

So, next month - looks like it’s up to just Dionne, Cece and Kev to try and find some medicine! On the other hand, that’s 18 levels worth of survivor, so a force to be reckoned with. I kind of wish I’d had Devon recruit a new member rather than building a wood burning stove in the early autumn, in hindsight…