Last Days Seasons campaign: November

Another month, another game of Last Days! This month I played the scenario ‘No One Left Behind’ from the Seasons book:

Leaving Jess behind to look after the bedridden members of the group and try to harvest some more medicinal herbs from the gardens, Dionne Kev and Cece once again venture into the city looking for useful supplies. Instead, they’ve found a lost member of another group who promises them a reward if they can escort her back home. While initially cautious (as she’s clearly carrying a severed head), the gang decide that it’s the right thing to do, and anyway, it might be good to establish good relations with Ella other group who might be a possible trading partner with winter ever looming…

The board I set up looked like this:

Two parallel streets with plenty of ruined buildings, rubble and fences. The weather result i rolled was light rain, which reduced the maximum visibility for survivors (but didn’t affect any zombies, as they have other ways of finding prey). 

As the group enter the area (new friend in tow), they see that it’s especially dense with zombies, so decide to go as quietly as possible. Due to their stealthy approach, only a handful of zombies actually noticed them and started to shuffle towards them.

Kev, actually getting to utilise his full skill set, silently sprints and parkours his way up the rubble strewn street towards a cache of supplies hiding in a ruined building’s fenced off yard.

Cece follows after him more cautiously, with Dionne bringing up the rear to try and quietly pick off any zombies that get too close with her crossbow, which she does as a zombie shambles around the corner of a collapsing fence.

Side note - I finally made some proper Last Days tokens! Shout out to the Files section of the Last Days Facebook group and my wife’s laminator:

Cece decides against firing just yet, feeling that stealth might still be a better option than her hugely noisy military sniper rifle.

More zombies pile into the area, but luckily very few can lay eyes on the survivors and so largely stand like rotting scarecrows. When I built the board for this game, I made a couple of streets that I envisioned having to fight across the width of, then decided to follow the rules of the scenario and randomly determined a starting edge, leaving the group with a relatively straight shot up one of the streets, trying to jump from cover to cover to avoid being spotted by the horde the next street over - especially  important as I was playing on a 2.5 by 2.5 rather than 3 foot playing area.

Kev grabs the supplies then pressed himself flat against the wall of a ruined building, steeling himself for a dash to freedom through the closing net of zombies.

Cece and Dionne follow after him, hoping to also take cover in Kev’s safe spot. Dionne reloads her crossbow and attempts to take out another zombie, but unfortunately the combination of intervening terrain and her eye injury mean that she just narrowly misses, the bolt clattering away uselessly.

Cece again abstains from firing, knowing that if she does she’ll bring an even bigger horde down on their heads.

The exhausted survivor trails after them, struggling to keep up despite Dionne’s frantic hand signals.

As more and more zombies wander onto the board. A critical mass seems to be forming behind the garages:

They seem fairly placid for now, but all it would take would be a single gunshot or car alarm to go off for them to surge out onto the adjacent streets…

Also, Kev’s hiding place was mostly solid, except for from the POV of one particular distant zombie who looked up and started to lurch towards him:

Kev continues his advance through the ruined building, his eyes nervously scanning the groups of zombies clumped together ahead of him, looking for a gap through which he could make his escape.

Cece and Dionne scrabbled after him, Dionne starting to look a bit worried at just how many zombies were bearing down on her as she clambered over a heap of rubble.

She then unloads another crossbow bolt at an advancing zombie, but despite getting a hit fails to make a kill. She rapidly double taps the zombie, taking it out, but as she does so dislodges a brick in the rubble pile she is standing on which noisily clatters away down the street. Uh-oh…

Hearing this (and realising that shit is about to hit the fan) Cece and Kev both open fire with their firearms. Cece blows the head off of a zombie that was closing on Dionne, as Kev blasts the closest zombie to him with his magnum. Again, I remember too late that I probably should have had my stealth team swap out their incredibly noisy hand cannons for something a little more suited to stealth missions… ah well, the cat’s well and truly out of the bag now!

Presumably summoned by this row, two more zombies emerge from the garages, only a short distance away from the survivors trying to make their escape…

In a rare turn of luck though, no other zombies seem to have heard this (beyond the handful that appear on the board every turn regardless due to the rules of the scenario). Speaking of which, every zombie on the board surged towards the sound of gunshots, as both Cece and Dionne found their weapons empty. While most of them were still a safe distance away, one actually managed to get within grabbing distance of Dionne!

Kev was torn - he could see a gap through which he could possibly sprint to freedom, but he didn’t want to abandon Cece and Dionne. “Go, get the supplies out of here, we’re right behind you!” called Cece, so Kev nodded, vaulted the low wall beside him, and ran off the table.

“Right behind you” said Cece again, as much to herself as anyone else.

Dionne reloaded her crossbow and strode round the corner to the street Kev had sprinted down, readying herself for a run of her own. Cece didn’t have time to reload her sniper rifle as she scrambled through a hole in the wall into the same street, almost into the arms of a waiting zombie - if not for the crossbow bolt that seemed to suddenly sprout from it’s forehead.

Although the group had returned to their previous method of stealthy maneuvering, enough zombies now had eyes on them that everyone (new survivor included) was swiftly engaged by the hungry dead. Although Dionne was able to duck out of reach, Cece and the survivor they were escorting were not so lucky, a d had to fight for their lives. As Dionne coolly took down the zombie she’d just ducked under the arms of, Cece hacked with her knife at the three zombies surrounding her, but wasn’t able to take any of them out.

In return, one of the zombies manages to catch Cece a glancing blow, and the escorted survivor fares similarly in her fight. Even as this happens, four more zombies pour out of the comic book store to join the fray.

Spurred on by her potential impending demise, the survivor manages to break away from the zombies grasping at her and stumbles up to join Dionne in the street.

Sucking under the swinging arm of a zombie in a hospital gown, Cece put her head down and sprinted towards the end of the street, no other thought but escape in her mind. Seeing this, Dionne had a decision to make - and she couldn’t just sprint after Cece, as her way was blocked by too many zombies. “Quick, follow me!” she hissed to the survivor, before cutting across into a side street and breaking into a run to try and get around the group of zombies blocking her path to freedom.

The survivor, however, was too exhausted to manage a run, and unable to keep pace with Dionne was surrounded by zombies once more.

As did Dionne and Cece, admittedly, but to a lesser extent. Dionne keeps pace ahead of her pursuers and continues to run down the street, all hope of protecting the survivor they were escorting lost in favour of self-preservation:

while Cece scrambles through a broken window to evade her attackers, before also losing her nerve and sprinting off the table.

The survivor, unable to escape the grasping claws of five zombies  is dragged down screaming as Cece and Dionne exit the board.

Post-game:

Not a lot of experience gained this month, but Kev learns The skill Sprinter (after having plenty of practice!). Cece learns the skill Agriculturalist, presumably where Jess is up and about again she’s been showing Cece the basics of running the farm. 

As the survivor didn’t make it (which seems to be a recurring theme whenever this group meets a new friend, despite their best efforts), they get no reward from the other group, and Kev’s supply cache only yields one unit of Fuel and one Scavenge.

(Brief aside - it’s really tricky to lead out the survivor in this scenario! It’s a bit like in a video game where you have to lead out an AI companion, and they walk very slowly and stupidly, and you have to stop in weird places to try and lure them after you)

Everyone bedridden Rests this month, and the group gives the leader Devon the last of their medicine in the hopes of getting him back on his feet, but alas it has no effect (slightly annoying, as there was a 5 in 6 chance he’d be able to get out of bed, but I rolled a 1!). The fireman also remains bedridden, but Lynn starts feeling a bit better and is able to get out of bed. Everyone else works on gathering supplies, with Jess harvesting medicine in the garden, Dionne and Cece gathering food, and Kev working on building up their stockpile of Fuel before winter hits.

I agonised over whether Kev should Guard the group (as there are so many people bedridden) instead of gathering fuel, but went with banking on the farm’s remote location being defence enough!

Once this was all done, there was enough food that no one had to go hungry (with one excess meal even wasted, as there was no one free to preserve it on the cold cellar). Luckily Kev and Dionne didn’t catch any sickness from Cece who had been feeling a bit under the weather during their excursion, but unfortunately both Jess and Lynn then fell bedridden again. Looks like it’s going to be a tricky winter - will the groups stockpile of supplies be enough to keep them alive with most of the group unable to get out of bed?

As well as playing a game, I’ve also been receiving some parcels:

CP Models had a Halloween discount code, so I grabbed a few bits there including a sprue of fungus faces for some conversions planned for the Ronin of Shadow Deep project.

My Heresy order placed over the summer arrived, with some Doctor Who adjacent bits that I’d been missing from my collection.

I ordered a box of cowboy bits from https://wynfordia.co.uk/, a website I’d never come across before but randomly stumbled over, which was handy as I was able to get some Dead Man’s Hand plastic gunfighters and Artizan sculpts (as well as a larger than my usual paint brush), all at a discounted price and with free shipping! 

Side note - I’ve had the urge for cowboys all of a sudden after years of the genre not really holding any appeal. I think it’s a combination of listening to Old Gods of Appalacia, then reading A War Transformed - originally I had visions of doing magical duelling cowboys (and wven bought a copy of the Dracula’s America rulebook!) but I think now I’m leaning towards doing vanilla cowboys using Legends of the Old West. I watched Tombstone too, which was grand - what’s not to love about Kurt Russell in a fancy moustache stomping around pistol whipping people while Val Kilmer had me googling Doc Holliday miniatures half way through the film?)

This does however mean that the Tally now stands at:

33 vs 150 = -117

So, yeah, probably not going to get back into the black before the New Year. 

Especially as it looks like we might now be moving house in three weeks, so some of these minis will have to go straight into a moving box…