So, as I prep to play May’s Last Days game, I realised that I apparently never posted about April’s! It was okayed the weekend before Salute, so we’re well over a month overdue at this point…
For April’s game, I decided to play a custom scenario, based on the escape vehicle scenario from the main book. Essentially, they’d have to get to a locked truck, break into it (using the same mechanics as hot wiring the escape vehicle in the original scenario), and if they did there would be two more loot tokens to grab (in addition to one already on the board in the back of the truck at the start of the game.
I also played on a smaller than usual board, so that I could use a mat that came with the Walking Dead miniatures game. Since the playing area was a lot smaller than usual, I had the survivors move into the board in the first turn rather than starting deployed on it, and also used slightly different set up rules for the zombies. Rather than having the full number of zombies start on the board (which at this point in the campaign would be 17, not leaving much space for anything else on their edge!), I set aside this many zombie miniatures at the start of the game. I set up five in the middle of the board (one centrally, then the remaining four out towards each corner of the board), four along the edge of the board, and then set the remainder up to the side of the board. To represent the high density of zombies in the area, until all of these zombies had been deployed to the board, new zombies would appear on a roll of a 6+ rather than the usual 7.
So at the start of the game the board looked like this:
While setting up, I realised that I’d been doing combat wrong in my previous game - if the defender wins, they don’t actually get to strike, so this game my survivors should go through zombies less like a knife through room temperature butter!
To begin, the survivors all rush onto the board, figuring that with the high concentration of zombies in this area they needed to get in and out as fast as they could. Devon lead a strike team towards the van with the loot, Cece clambers atop a parked car to get a better vantage point with her hunting rifle, Umlaut throws himself at the nearest zed, and Kevin moves forward to take up a position to block the way to Cece:
Everyone bar Dionne (who figures her assault rifle is too noisy to risk using yet) blasts away at the plentiful targets, but fail to take down any zombies. Except Cece, who fails to even hit, let alone take down a target. Umlaut, on the other hand, rips of a zombie’s head with his bare hands, wondering what everyone else is playing at…
Unfortunately, at this point a couple more zeds shamble into the area, one of which heads to the scrum around Dionne and Lynn:
While another reaches up to try and claw Cece down from her vantage point:
At this point, the dice abandon me completely, and Dionne, Kevin, Devon and Umlaut all get a level of sickness from contact with the undead, which is less than ideal given how it’s laid up poor Jess!
There is no shooting in the following turn, as everyone is embroiled in hand to hand combat. Dionne and Lynn both manage to take out a zombie each, leaving the central strike force free to resume their march up the centre to advance on the supplies.
Kevin and Cece are less lucky, and continue to struggle against their opponents.
Umlaut is a killing machine, taking out yet another zed - shame he doesn’t get any XP for it!
Despite not having fired her gun this turn, Cece mysteriously finds herself out of ammo. Presumably she dropped the bullets she had chambered fighting off the zombie still trying to clamber up on top of the car with her.
Kevin finds himself getting surrounded, with more on the way:
So Dionne dashes over to reinforce him, figuring that Devon will probably be fine breaking into the truck on his own. As Lynn makes a dash for the supplies in the back of the truck:
Umlaut hurls himself into danger once more to shield her from the advancing wave of zeds:
At this point in the game the only person that could possibly take a shot is Devon, but everywhere he looks there isn’t a shot he could take without potentially hitting one of his companions, so he holsters his pistol and gets back to the job at hand - breaking into the truck (yes, I know, realistically a survivor would just smash the window to get in rather than trying to pick the lock, but that would make for a much shorter game!)
Umlaut takes out yet another zombie, presumably thinking to himself ‘what are these humans complaining about, this is easy!’
Over to the right, Dionne and Kevin both take out a zed apiece (hoorah for Kev’s Headhunter skill!) and decide to form a perimeter to protect Devon from any encroaching undead.
Cece however continues to kick ineffectually at her zombies:
Having painted up the wrecked vehicles for this scenario, obviously thanks to a random event 2 have their alarms go off, drawing in even more zombies…
On the left, Umlaut finds himself starting to get swarmed (although given his performance so far this game at this point I’m honestly more concerned for the zombies)…
Another zombie shambles onto the board behind the group, and heads towards Cece, so Kevin (figuring that Dionne is probably fine managing things in her own) heads back to try and rescue her.
While all this is going on, Devon and Lynn continue their efforts to try to break into the truck, but success still seems to be just out of reach. Umlaut meanwhile destroys yet another zombie with his bare hands - why can I only roll a 5+ with a monkey?
Despite his best efforts, Kevin fails to save the day, but spurred on by his arrival Cece finally manages to stave in the zombies brains with the butt of her rifle. At this point in the game the weather changes, and it starts to rain, reducing the maximum range of any shooting to 18”, although on such a small board this doesn’t make the greatest difference.
Lynn and Devon finally manage to break into the truck, pulling out two additional supply tokens. When planning the scenario, I’d originally reduced the difficulty to a 12, but it didn’t matter in the end as their successful total was a 15 in the end anyway.
Seeing Cece has seemingly found her second wind, Kevin bundles back to help Dionne who is struggling against a pair of zombies. Devon finds himself the only person who could potentially take a shot, and again is unable to due to there not being a single zombie that isn’t grappling with someone!
Kevin manages to take out one of the zombies, but Dionne fails to take out the other, while elsewhere Umlaut fails to take down his opponent (for the first time all game!) - but that’s fine, at this point the most important thing is keeping the escape route to get the supplies off of the table clear.
Unlike the rest of the group, Cece has seemingly found her rhythm at this point and takes out another zombie in close combat - it’s just a shame that her vantage point for shooting hasn’t really been used for any shooting yet!
At this point it seems like time to head out, as it seems like a horde of zombies is now descending on their location, with two more heading towards Umlaut.
Lynn and Devon grab the remaining supplies and head East away from the swirling melee surround their monkey pal.
Buoyed by her recent successes in zombie elimination, Cece takes a shot at a zombie advancing on Umlaut, and promptly misses. Devon also takes a couple of pot shots at the same zombie as he makes his escape, but despite hitting once fails to put it down. Ahead of him Dionne jacks down the final zombie near her, making another viable route of escape.
Apparently that was Cece’s last remaining bullet, as she finds herself needing to reload again despite only having fired her gun maybe… twice? this whole game. I really need to get her a firearms skill increase, as my sniper isn’t having much success sniping! Then again, her precious increase in CQC whilst not what I’d hoped for was at least thematic, as I imagine it’s actually her just having a backpack full of shivs…
Lynn and Devon manage to book it off the table, supply tokens in tow, leaving Umlaut fully surrounded by the truck. Dionne and Kevin however bundle in to try and save their hirsute companion, as Cece stop her car (ineffectually) takes pot shots at the horde bearing down on them.
Despite their plucky charge, Kevin and Dionne unfortunately both fail to take down a zombie to make Umlaut a path to get clear. Umlaut, on the other hand, proves he would have been just fine on his own as he takes down a zombie to make a hole in the crowd!
Cece unfortunately loses her nerve at this point, and beats a hasty retreat off of the board. The zombies start to encircle the remaining survivors, but Dionne manages to hack one down, leaving four to go - but then Kevin is dragged down and taken out of action! The one silver lining to this chain of events, is that close combat is relatively quiet, so at least even more zombies haven’t been attracted by it…
As Kevin falls to the ground, Umlaut leaps over a zombie and makes a break for freedom, leaving a slightly perplexed Dionne staring down the maws of four zombies. Unfortunately, our luck being what it is, another zombie shambles onto the board directly between Umlaut and safety before he can make good his escape. Dionne manages to break free of her remaining foes, and runs in the opposite direction, as the game ends with her and Umlaut running for the hills…
Post game, the first thing to do is roll for Kevin’s injury. I initially rolled a Shellshocked result, which would have removed the additional AP he has from a previous advance. Lynn’s first aid skill met me Reroll one die - if I rolled 3-5, it would have been a Full Recovery instead, so of course I rolled a 1, which makes it an arm injury, meaning he can no longer use his shotgun. Nuts.
Lynn goes up a level and gains the Agriculturalist skill, which is handy given the fact that our primary food source is laid up sick in bed. She could have gone up a second level, but that would have left 0xp for affecting the rolls, and I didn’t fancy my luck that much, so she’ll save the rest for next time.
Dionne levelled up and gets an additional point of firearms, which is impressive considering the fact that she didn’t actually fire her gun all game! I really need to find her a quieter gun so that she can make use of her increasingly impressive skill set…
Kevin levels up, and spends some xp to change his advance CQC instead of firearms, as it looks like his shotgunning days are sadly over…
Cece, however, frustrated at never hitting anything, spends an evening shooting at the B-road side of a barn door, and emerges with an additional point of firearms.
With a lot of survivors needing to rest, it’s a bit harder to man all the jobs that we need, but between the supplies (the most exciting find of which was a knife, which I wish I’d taken more of when we first started out) and careful assigning of tasks, everyone eats, and everyone gets a little less sick. Except for Jess, who remains bedridden, of course, and now Lynn is starting to show symptoms too…
