The dead travel fast.

Hi,

After something of a hectic week, I managed to get down to Dueling Grounds last night for a biggish game of Zombicide.  While there have been a pile of appealing Kickstarters that have come and gone without my participation, this is, I think, the one I regret not jumping on.  The game is crazy fun, I like the genre, and the figures are nice enough to be worth painting.

Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Campbell, Wand the Roller-waitress, Sheldon, Angela Landsbury, and Jason Stathem.  The Zombies don't stand a chance.

ChrisB, one of our group's resident painters, bought into the game in a big way, and has done a tremendous job painting up his figures.  For starters, each of the zombies is unique, and there's a couple hundred of them.  He was kind enough to cart down his stuff last night for a big multiplayer game, and brought along some of the newer survivor models from the second "season" of the game, including the one on which I'd claimed dibs, namely Angela Landsbury . . . with a flamethrower.

We played a fairly straightforward scenario, in which we had to a) survive, and b) pick up 5 objectives scattered across the map.  Things got interesting early when we spawned an Abomination (gigantic super-zombie, the biggest threat in the game) in the first building we entered.  The really fun part is at this point, none of us had access to a weapon that could kill it (Angela needed gas to fuel her thrower).

No worries, they said.  There's only one card in the deck that'll pop an Abomination, they said.

This lead to fairly entertaining game of "taunt the giant beastie" through the rooms of the abandoned building we were searching.

Run away, they said.

Keep running.

Each turn, zombies on the table move towards the nearest target, either the closest player in line of sight, or the largest concentration of noise (which players generate, you guessed it, by doing noisy things).  This actually allows for some tactical cooperation, as players draw threats away from team-members.

Get around behind him.

Lacking either the means to fight, or a means of opening an entry way, Angela spent the early stages of the game staying the hell out of the way until her team-mates could open things up a little.  Of course, the big zombie's little friends were drawing closer all the time (each turn, new zombies spawn semi-randomly on pre-determined points around the table).

Angela's in the street, waiting for a door to open.

A-bomb is getting close!

At which point, she ran inside, and started looking for gas.

In we go, my dearies.

This, unfortunately, meant that she ended up split off from the majority of the group.  You know that bit in the zombie movie, where one character wanders off, and isn't seem for most of the rest of the movie?  And all the rest of the characters figure the wanderer's dead?  Yeah, pretty much exactly like that.

On the plus side, the bunch of yahoos now out in the street made more than enough ruckus to draw the Abomination out of the building, along with several friends, leaving Angela free to search through the post-Apocalyptic wreckage for a bit of gasoline.

No gasoline in here.

While there was little in the way of combustibles to be found, Angela did turn up a shotgun (probably the best generic shooting weapon in the game), a katana (ditto, but for melee), and plenty of ammo for the shotgun (i.e., re-rolls), which would play an entertaining role later in the game.  Meanwhile, having cleared the second building, her erstwhile companions were preparing to press on.

Slow, but scary.

Unfortunately, Angela's path to her friends was blocked by an encroaching wave of zombies.  Whatever was out intrepid investigator going to do?

Bother!

Why, unload with her shotgun, of course!

Maybe not . . . 

While Angela enjoyed the scavenging process, punctuated by the occasional bit of brisk target practice, the gang were having problems of their own.

The scooby gang and friends.

More Scooby-friends.

While the gang continued to run from the Abomination, Angela kept running into friends of her own.

It's always nice to talk to young people.

Lots of young people.

Lots and lots of young people.  The newly undead can be considered "young", right?

As it turns out, however, she's a dab hand with a scattergun.  As you kill zombies, and gain objectives, character experience grows through multiple levels.  Each level adds new abilities (over the course of the game, Angela gained an extra action, the ability to heal herself or other characters, and the ability to use ranged weapons in melee).  However, the highest level achieved by any player also determines the threat level of the game; the higher the level, the more zombies spawn, and the more threatening the zombies that spawn.  Angela was becoming  a one-woman wrecking crew, but also raising the stakes for the entire game.

The reason for the sudden surge of friends was that in the process of the turn's spawn, we drew a card giving all walker zombies a free move.  This both crowded the zombies into the game's first swarms, it also spelled the end of Chuck Norris, who'd boldly scouted ahead of the main group.  The scenario went something like:

"Are you sure he'll be okay on his own?"

"Sure, he's Chuck Norris!"

30 seconds later . . . .

"Oh, my God!  Chuck Norris is dead!"

Wanda, the roller-skating waitress, got caught by the Abomination, and it didn't end well for her, either.

He's also a bad tipper.

All was not lost, however.  Invoking the sacred principle of "my game, my rules", ChrisB decreed that all players with dead characters could reincarnate, and the Scooby gang discovered Steven Seagal and Machete in a back room.

Have sharp things, will travel.

Meanwhile, Bruce Campbell and Sheldon Cooper both found gasoline, and the latter quickly made himself a pair of molotov cocktails.  Angela Landbury continued to blow the (un)living hell out the zombie pack, while working her way through the first building.

Is this what the young people call "a rave"?

Lovely day for a walk.

The Scoobies regrouped, and prepared for the somewhat dangerous task of "crossing the street".

Look both ways . . . 

Sheldon stepped out in the street, facing down a swarm . . .

 . . . watch for on-coming threats.

 . . . and one molotov cocktail later, cleared the road.

Sheldon.  Killing with science.

Not that there weren't more where they came from.

The scenic view.

It was at this point that Angela caught up to the group, shotgun in hand, strapped with bandoliers, and toting a katana, caked in the blood of the living dead.

Hello boys, did you miss me?

Not past time, either, as the boys were going to need all the help they could get.

Still a long way to go.

We were well into the 3rd, "orange" threat level at this point, and everyone was pretty well tooled.  While there were plenty of "Z"'s on the table, we were also pretty adept at clearing them out.

ChrisB has had George Romero, and some of the other early Zombie masters, autograph one of the game's tiles for him.

The risk at this stage of the game is drawing one of the Zombie "extra turn" cards, or running out of a particular type when they spawn (which has the same effect), particularly when they swarm in large numbers.  This put an end to Sheldon, when he decided to abandon the group to their fate (we were surrounded by swarms of zombies) and skip out to an empty square.  On the zombie's turn, an extra move card was drawn, and Sheldon went down under a pile of gnawing revenants.   Another problem is when multiples of the larger class of zombies (fatties, abominations) gather into a group.

Do you like camping?

Unless, of course, Bruce Campbell has given Angela Landsbury some gasoline, and a clear shot.

Because I enjoy a good cook-out.

Arson, she wrote.

Even with the second abomination out of the way, things got a little hairy for a while.

More friends.

Still more friends.

But multiple shotguns plus multiple chainsaws can do wonders, and soon we were down to one objective to go.  All we had to do was fight our way through the entire board.  On a red threat level.

Thinning the herd.

Which we proceeded to do.

Progress was slow, but steady.

Almost there . . . 

It was Steven Seagal who took the final objective.

And Steven Seagal gets his first hit in years.

We can't really claim to have won this one, given the player recycling, but it sure was fun.  One of the things I love about the game it that it does a terrific job of rewarding smart play, while still leaving an element of unpredictability; you can influence events, but not control them.  We had some terrific cinematic moments, some moments of absolute hilarity, and a grand time overall; something I've yet to not have when playing the game.

Angela approves.

Season 3 is slated to launch soonish, presumably on Kickstarter.  I suspect I'll be hard-pressed to pass on it this time.  Big thanks to Cbag for bringing his toys.  You should check out his Zombicide and other stuff at his blog.  Some gorgeous work.

FMB

The Madness, part the second. Also, good works.

Hi all,

To start off, I want to announce something of a THMG club project for the upcoming Remembrance Day.

The plan is, each of us puts together a single figure or small vignette, between now and Nov. 11th, and then we sell them after Remembrance Day, with proceeds going to the Wounded Warrior fund.  I'm planning on doing a French Napoleonic command stand with 1/72 figures, suitable for Black Powder or something similar.  Blog posts for the next week or so will probably include WiP stuff along with whatever else is going on.  We'll be selling off the various miniatures individually, via a dedicated account.  Stay tuned for details.  There are some really excellent painters in the club, so we're hoping to raise a decent sum.

On a less serious note, I'm still sorting through the various pictures from last weekend.  When we last left off, I'd retired on Friday a happy, if somewhat inebriated man.  Saturday morning wasn't as rough as I probably deserved, but I was definitely searching around for first gear longer than normal.  The fierce competition for bacon, along with prodigious amounts of coffee, managed to rouse me however, and we set out to play a bit of Blood Bowl.



The plan was to play a very limited sort of league over the weekend, starting at a team rating of 1100, which would account for both players and any skill upgrades.  Although I had planned on trying out a couple of new teams, in the end, I opted to stick with humans (I can use all the practice I can get).  I did, however, take the opportunity of the higher team value and "reboot" to include an Ogre on the team, something that turned out to be quite fun.

My first game was against Jack1080, who is notorious in the club for his capacity to steamroller opponents in the game.  He was running a Lizardmen team, the first time I've had a chance to play against them.



While Jack1080 is terrifically good company, and and excellent sportsman, he is also an experienced, savage ,and ruthless opponent on the pitch.  I went into the game expecting to have him clean my clock.

Need

As it happened, Nuffle smiled upon me (perhaps because I had a fully painted 11 for the first time?), and my usual approach of "do crazy crap a more experienced player would never try, trusting to a ridiculous number of re-rolls to see me though" worked surprising well.



In the end, I manged to beat him 2 or 3 to 1.  It was mostly dumb luck, as Jack1080's hands down the better player, but I did my best to put into practice what I've learned playing the game to date.  The ogre was a blast to play, giving me some serious beef on the line for the first time.  While he mainly served to help counter the Kroxigor Jack1080 ran, there were a couple of satisfying moments where he hammered a Saurus into the ground like a 10-penny nail.  Big guy's due a paint job, first chance I get.



Game 2 was against marke's circus goblins (more pics here and here).  Sadly, Nuffle was not as pleased this game as last.  The first half was pretty entertaining, as marke revealed a series of goblin tricks, and I pushed my luck a wee bit too far.  Twice.  Resulting in turn-overs and a goblin goal each time.



For all that the goblins lack a passing game and are stunty, they're surprising effective.  They can gang up on bigger opponents (like I do with humans), and the double trolls plus special rules that they bring to the table gives them not-insignificant situational power.





If the first half was amusing, the second half took the wind right out of my sails.  marke set up for the second half with both trolls, a chainsaw, and a fanatic (the whirlagig thing).  The sheer concentration of force completely overwhelmed my hapless humans, who ended up with half the team in the KO box.





When my ogre went down to the fanatic, there wasn't much left with which I could counter, and I watched in mounting horror as my plucky players were swarmed by a horde of smelly green ankle-biters.






Final score was something like 3:0 for the goblins.  Oh, the shame ;)

While a few of us napped, and Jack1080 and marke played their semi-final game for the regular league (Jack1080 won, his Skaven will face off against DaveB's orks), I got in a game of C&C Napoleonics.  I've been eager to try these for a while, they seem well represented on the blog-o-sphere.  I didn't get any pictures, sadly, but my main impression was surprise at how quickly the game resolved.  I played against ernieR, in I think the Rollica scenario.  Attacked on the left, got my cavalry in behind his right, but he pushed hard in the centre and broke me.  Fun, light, and I can see the appeal for a conversion to miniatures.

In the evening, we broke out Zombicide again, and once again, I took up the role of the Law.  After one game that resolved rather quickly (and successfully), ernieR had the notion of playing one of the larger scenarios that require the use of a car, only without the car.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but once we hit yellow (which we did a little more quickly than anticipated, thanks marke ;) ), things got a little out of hand.

Ash went down fighting, surrounded by a horde . .



 . . . and there was nothing that Machete and I could do to stem the tide.



Machete and I then went down, fighting back to back; the outlaw and the cop who arrested him, dying together.



And in the end, even our most resourceful players couldn't hold them off.





I was pretty bushed by that point, and hit the sack.  In the morning, between clean-up and packing, we squeezed in a few rounds of Lunch Money, Magic, and Zombie Flux.  The former will, I suspect, take on a "schedule-spackling" role at the club.  Magic is a game I've somehow managed to not play over the years, but I enjoyed it enough to join into the limited league some of the guys are playing.  Zombie Flux I brought from home; I've played it before with the Beloved, but it's a much better game with 7 players looking to cause problems ;)

Many, many thanks to marke for a terrific weekend.  We managed to stick to the "no stains, no fires" rule, and hopefully, we'll be able to do something similar again.

FMB