Last weekend was pretty hot, so I figured what better to do than play the special Summer scenario from the Seasons book!
This is the board I laid out (yeah, I know, I should really crack on and build some more city terrain, but hey a wildfire in the forest is thematic right?)
I’ve been mulling over what to do about zombies currently. Now that people in the group have gained a couple of levels, I should be starting with 24 zombies on the board, which is so many that after two turns when they reach the middle there’s not a lot you can do, and while you can lure some away (RIP Umlaut, this is what you used to do) it’s slightly more hopeless than I want my leisure time to be. So for this scenario, I just laid out the zombies specified by the scenario, and figured that the oncoming wall of fire would probably do well enough to add a sense of peril to proceedings!
Supplies were randomly placed using an old scatter die, with 2d6 providing distance - and if that spot was an ‘illegal’ placement for the token, I’d roll to scatter from there again. This ensured some more interesting placement than just putting them all in a line halfway across the board.
As ever, the survivors divided themselves into groups to support each other as they advanced up the board - Devon with Cece and Dionne on the left, heading for the truck, while Kevin and Jess (who was mostly just glad to be out of bed and getting some fresh air) heading for the scattered supplies over to the right.
Then I rolled to see what direction the fire would be entering play, and unfortunately it was from right to left, where most of the supplies were!
Almost able to smell the oncoming fire, Kevin bundles forward to engage the nearest zombie, leaving Jess free to sprint ahead and grab the first stash of supplies:
No time for a stealthy advance here with a wall of flame on it’s way!
Devon’s group however advanced more cautiously, very aware of how noisy things are about to get. Devon levels his pistol, and thanks to his Sniper skill coolly plugs the nearest zombie. On the second try, admittedly.
Cece on the other hand needs a 2+ to hit her target, and so of course rolls a 1. At this point I wondered if I was remembering to give survivors the +1 bonus to hit for shooting at a zombie in previous games? It feels like Cece should have been hitting s lot more than she had if I did… Then again, when I do remember she still misses, so I’m not sure how much it would help…
Desperate to open a path, Dionne let’s loose with her surplus assault rifle - despite her double tap skill, she can’t seem to land a single headshot. On the one hand, that zombie won’t be able to do much other than pick themselves up off h to e ground next turn; but at the same time, it will take a lot of luck for that much noise to go unnoticed by other zombies!
Just behind her, Kev fumbles his cricket bat - but luckily the zombie he’s fighting doesn’t fare much better, and Kev turns his fumble into an impressive upswing that caves it’s skull in!
Then came the fire…
(Fire markers from Mantic’s Hellboy the board game)
In an unusual turn of luck, despite there only being a 1 in 6 chance of Dionne getting away without calling another zombie onto the board with how much noise she made last turn, the dice decide to cut me a break and it goes unnoticed.
Devon, however, despite having made nowhere near as much noise is not as lucky, and a zombie shambles up behind the group:
Cece manages to snap off a shot at it (as the only survivor that has really been going Locked & Loaded recently, Last Days’ version of overwatch for those that don’t own the game) but being taken by surprise isn’t able to land a fatal shot, and unfortunately the mild knockback of her hunting rifle isn’t powerful enough to stop the zombie from reaching her. She briefly considers trying to break free of its grasp in order to backpedal enough to shoot it in the face, but then remembers the knife that she was given a month or two back, and an evil gleam enters her eye…
While all this is going on, Dionne sprints up to grab some supplies, while Devon calmly walks up to try to shoot the zombie between him and some supplies at point blank range.
On the right, Jess secures the supplies and starts heading for the next stash (her sturdy farmer body making her best suited for lugging multiple heavy things around), as Kevin runs past her to engage a zombie that is sneaking up on her around a ruined wall.
Devon manages to take out the remaining zombie on his side of the field (again on the second shot), when I realised that the way things were going it was going to be too easy for the group, so I added 2D3 zombies to the board (rolling 3) to add a little pressure.
Brief diversion to muse some more - at this point, 20 odd zombies bearing down on them would have been too much to handle, but the 5 starting on the board from the scenario was definitely too few. Hmmmm, something to think about to try and find a happy medium. I’ve asked over on the Facebook group and gotten some suggestions, so I might have a play in future months - probably a mix of deploying them spread across the board as well as along their board edge (to avoid them ending up as a clumped up horde) and my adapted rules used on a smaller board where you allocate the correct number of zombies to come into play, and make it easier for them to get called on by noise until you’ve put on the number of zombies you allocated at the start, at which point you’d return to the usual ‘appears on a 7+’.
Jess cautiously opens fire with her assault rifle (is that possible?) and manages to take out a zombie with her first shot. ‘That’s technically more stealthy than going full auto I guess’ she mutters to herself…
Cece manages to win her fight with the zombie that snuck up on her, but isn’t able to get her shiv into it’s eye socket. Kevin on the other hand lives up to the name of his headhunter skill and caves in another skull.
In the end phase the fire continues it’s inexorable advance, and Kev and Jess find themselves on the wrong side of the fire line, engulfed in smoke and flames!
Even more unfortunately, in this scenario any unclaimed supply tokens caught on the wrong side of the fire line are destroyed each turn on a roll of 1, and… well, they say a picture speaks a thousand words:
That’s annoyingly statistically unlikely isn’t it! To add insult to injury, I then rolled a result on the event table that caused a body to stand up and start dragging along one of the (now very few!) remaining supply tokens.
In the next turn, it seemed that Dionne’s luck had run out. Firing full auto and probably whooping too? Fine, no one notices that. Running briefly for about 6 seconds? That’s far too much noise, definitely enough to draw the attention of another biter onto the board…
Jess, slowed by her wounds received in an earlier month and laden with supplies, decides discretion is the better part of valour and runs off the board while she still can.
Figuring that Kev (and his current kill streak) probably had things handled with the zombie carrying the last set of supplies, Devon ran back to where Cece was outnumbered, and promptly dispatched one of them.
Emboldened by Devon’s sudden appearance, Cece follows suit, and the pair find themselves briefly alone…
Over in the middle of the board, Kevin gets overconfident and fails to take out his opponent, as the fire creeps ever closer behind him, and the truck next to him’s alarm starts blaring, drawing even more zombies to the area…
At this point, Dionne agonised over whether to leap in and help Kevin or to make a run for it with the supplies tucked under her arm. ‘Go, I’ve got this, I’ll be right behind you!’ Shouts Kevin, deciding for her.
Devon and Cece cautiously reposition to stay ahead of the oncoming wall of flame and ash, whilst trying to stay near enough to Kevin to run in and assist if needed.
There’s no shooting at all this turn, as the air is so thick with ash at this point that no one has a clear shot, so it’s over to Kevin and his cricket bat - and while he wins the fight, he fails to land a killing blow, as the flames overtake him once more, setting ablaze the zombie he’s currently fighting and destroying the remaining supplies:
Yes, that’s 3 for 3 on rolling a 1 to see if supplies are destroyed by the flames…
And obviously, at this point the truck’s alarm goes off a second time.
Luckily this turn Kev is able to hold his breath (aka I roll high enough for him not to get hurt by the fire) in order to try and make his escape - he successfully manages to push the zombie back, and runs like hell!
Seeing that Kev is almost to safety, Dionne sprints off the board with her supplies, while Devon and Cece make a fighting retreat, but their snapped shots (me hoping for some bonus XP, mostly) unfortunately not amounting to anything, and that was the end of the game.
Post game:
Devon hit level 5, and spends some extra XP to ensure he gets the skill fire & manoeuvre, which should make him a little more nippy! I was tempted to take the gunfighter skill (for aesthetics as much as anything else) but not having a spare pistol in the group’s stash to give him it seemed like a bit of a waste…
Jess levels up easily (being a little behind the group having missed several games!) and gains the scavenger skill, hoping to be able to find medicine more easily at some point (and also bringing her one step closer to being able to learn the master skill that would just let her grow it on the farm!)
Dionne learns the skill sniper (presumably from having watched Devon shoot a fair amount over the last couple of months) which will make her bonkers good with a gun - I just need to find her something quieter than that noisy old surplus assault rifle!
Kevin and Cece alas didn’t level up this month. Which makes sense for Cece, given that she didn’t actually achieve anything this game…
Sorting through their supplies (only two, as everything else caught fire), the group gained 12 scavenge, 1 fuel, and thanks to Jess’s scavenger skill a hunting crossbow! It’s quiet, it’s extra good at killing zombies - do I stash it for if I gain a new survivor in the future, or do I give it to Dionne, limiting her to killing only a single zombie a turn, but on the other hand almost definitely killing it as opposed to now where killing multiple zombies a turn seems to be more theory than practice…
As a lot of the group are still a little sick (and Lynn is already bedridden), I’m torn between working and resting. On the other hand, winter is coming, so I set most of the group to gather food and water (with someone else working to can any excess food for future months), except Devon who takes a nap (as I figure that it would suck for him to be bedridden if I want him to try and recruit a new member of the group at some point). He doesn’t manage to shake the lurgy though, nor does Lynn’s condition show any signs of improvement. Everyone gets enough to eat and drink, and there is even an excess amount of food that gets turned into preserved meals for the future.
Unfortunately Kevin becomes sick from being in close proximity with everyone else that is already sniffly. One thing about Osprey rulebooks: the layout and organisation is sometimes a little funky - this rule (testing at the end of the game to see if survivors have become sick by fighting alongside someone that is already sick) is slightly buried at the start of the book in the description of the conditions that the Seasons book adds to the game, rather than appearing in the post-game sequence.
So, that could have gone a lot worse I guess, although Lynn is unfortunately still bedridden. Which is a shame, as I was hoping she’d be able to build us a heating system on the farm before winter comes…
Most importantly, I think this is the first game in which I managed to remember every rule. He says, having had to grab the book the morning after as I realised that I hadn’t rolled for the post game zombie attack as I forgot to do that, but luckily avoided rolling a double 1!
