Campaign Game 1 - The First Night part 3

Despite all the zombies surrounding him, Jack regains a bit of colour.

A bit blurry, but a photo of Jack back in place once painted

Both John Walker and Celina Croise search the last areas of the cabin and come up trumps: John finds two lots of food supplies, and Celina finds two fuel cans.

Jack fires into the zombies killing two of them.

Behind the cabin, one of the zombies starts to pound on the back door, while other zombies else where shamble towards their chosen targets.

 Celina gets into business mode and delivers head shots to four zombies near the cabin, averting the immediate threat they posed.

 Jack, while in a bad situation, is rather calm and composed knowing the dead can not climb up to get him. Taking advantage of the situation he fires killing another zombie.

All the shots fired are starting to attract a bit of unwanted attention.

 Figuring he is in for a penny in for a pound Jack shoots another zombie. At least it is one less to eat him.

 All the shots fired previously by Celina are starting to attract a bit of attention as well:

 Years of weapon handling experience allows Celina to take out all but one zombie nearing the cabin door.

 Jack starts to get his mojo working and 'slots' another two zombies.

 The gun fire has attracted the largest number of zombies so far - 12 turn up in two different areas near the back of the farm house.
 This is fortunate for those in the cabin, but not so rosy for Jack.

Celina goes a bit lighter on the trigger and only fires enough rounds to kill the zombie at the door. The rear of the cabin is now out of immediate danger.

As I have technically won the scenario I decide to end the game here. I had to either get the survivors into the car behind the farm shed and off the table, or secure the cabin, which I did.

 According the the NMRIH rule book, the next scenario I need to roll on a chart to determine what the next scenario is.

 Rather than do this, I intend to play the "Save the..." mission and have Celina and Co. rescue Jack from the boxes.

 I was lucky with one of the finds in the cabin - I found a tunnel, and a scatter dice I rolled to see it's direction took it to the shed at the farm, and it was within the allowable range for the tunnel. This was purely random and unintentional.

 With this in mind, I intend to start a new game with the zombies in place around Jack and the others coming out of the shed.

Game Talk:

                 I used my initiative card system for this game and it worked well. The 'shot callers' usually had at least one or two actions per turn, and the lesser beings not so many actions which, I feel, reflects their lack of training for such situations. If you can train for the zombie apocalypse that is.

 For zombie spawning I only started using the method described here for the turns on this page. It worked well, and to compensate for the fact zombies wont appear all over the table they do appear in small hoards, which is to their benefit when it comes to barricades as well as making them a bit nastier.

 As it happened, all but one group of zombies spawned near Jack and not near the cabin. This would have allowed those in the cabin to flee the table, but it would have meant not winning the scenario.

 Despite it being hard to kill zombies in the game (well, based on the dice rolls I was having) with thoughtful placing of scenery you can survive a lot of zombies on the table provided you can keep the zombies out of hands melee.

You do need a lot of zombies to play NMRIH, but that should be the same for any zombie game worth its salt.

 What I do need is some unarmed 'sheeple' for the game. At the moment I have two sheeple I found in the cabin, so I need to come up with some figures for them.  I think I have a paper boy from the Pulp Figures range somewhere that I can use for the kid I found, and I hope I have a figure for the woman that was hiding in the cupboard.

 The fuel and the safari rifle I found will be very handy for the next scenario.

Campaign Game 1 - The First Night part 2

John Walker attempts to barricade the front door and does so with blinding success.

 Inspired by John's actions, Ned tries the same thing to a rear window and gets no where.

Celina and John barricade two more windows, making up for Ned's panicked state.

Over at the farm, Jack Berton sensing things will go bad for him is he stays where he is makes a tactical move towards the stacked boxes, making sure to keep the wall between him and any zombies close at hand.

Collecting himself, Ned barricades a window, and John works on another window while Celina keeps watch.

 Checking that he coast is clear, Jack scrambles up on to the boxes out of harms way. He might now be safe from clawing hands and snapping jaws, but the action has attracted a lot of zombies to his plight.

Jack fires an undisciplined burst from his smg into a group of zombies and fails to do anything except attract more zombies. Plus he has to reload his smg due to wasting precious ammunition.

Celina barricades the second last window

John fixes up the last window, securing the building from the outside, but they still need to clear inside in order to be safe.

 Searching inside Celina finds a supply of food - enough for one person for two days, or two people for one day.

 Ned fires out the window at a zombie getting close to the cabin, but to no evail.

 As Celina and John continue to search, finding a woman hiding in the closet in one of the rooms.

 Ned shoots at the zombie again, but his bullet thuds harmlessly into the zombie.

Continuing to search the cabin for supplies, a young child is found hiding in a bed room. Thinking the room clear, a legless zombie crawls out from under the bed and attacks Ned.

 Fortunately Ned's bad day doesn't get any worse - the zombie grabs at him but doesn't cause a wound.

 Using his SMG as a club, Ned caves the zombie's head in, ending it's animated life once and for all.

 John uncovers a secret tunnel in one of the rooms. The direction heads towards the shed at the farm, but at this stage they choose not to use the tunnel. Maybe later when things calm down a bit.

Jack fires more shots in to the mass of zombies collecting at the foot of his crate tower, but it really isn't his day when it comes to knocking a few off.

Things are looking a bit bleak for our survivors as more zombies close in for a feed. Things aren't too bad at the cabin - a zombie is knocking at the back door, but a it is unable to get in.

 The few shots taken at that zombie have attracted a few friends, so the barricade will soon be put to the test.

 As for Jack, well he is getting a bit nervous.

Game Talk:

 I had a few turns where the turn ended due to the luck of the draw on the cards. All this did was add more zombies to the mass gathering.

My dice seem to like rolling high when I least need it. Out of all the zombies on the table I have only killed one. It was a good one to kill, as it posed a huge threat to the survivors in the cabin, but I would have liked to kill a lot more off.

Zombies: 

             Turn 7: 6

             Turn 8: 1

             Turn 9: 3

             Turn 10: 3

             Turn 11: 2

             Turn 12: 8 +1

Total Zombies: 52 -1 = 51

Oh how words can come back to bite - I mentioned I shouldn't need more than 60 zombies for my games. I had better start getting some good dice rolls so I can recycle my zombie figures or buy another 30 zombies!

To win/end the scenario I only need to search two more Survive! Locations to ensure the cabin is secure, but it will leave the survivors in an interesting situation.

 I might play the game out to see if I can rescue Jack and get every one into a car and out of the area.

to be continued...

Campaign Game 1 - The First Night part 1

I started my campaign game tonight, and played a few turns.

Background story:

 "International Gun for Hire" Celina Croise and her body guard/ assistant John Walker are travelling through the boondocks on the way to an important meeting in the city.
 As luck would have it, their car breaks down right outside a farm.

 The farm is inhabited by Ned Seagun and his cousin Jack Berton.

 It was at that moment everyone noticed something was wrong - the local hicks came shambling towards them... and they looked a bit dead. "This must be related to that news story we heard on the radio just before we broke down" mused Celina.

Ned Seagun heads for the shed looking for something important he stashed there a while ago.

His cousin jack heads for the safety of the farm house.

 Always quick witted, Celina dashed for the log cabin across the road, some how sensing it is easier to defend than the farm house... besides, the zombies are closer to the farm house than the log cabin.

After a pause, John moves to the log cabin with Celina, who struggles to open the door.

Meanwhile Ned can't find the right key to get into his shed, and Jack, who has no keys to his cousins house, pounds desparately on the door.

Ned, realising that he hasn't got the right keys, dashes towards the log cabin himself, leaving Jack trying to get into the farm house.

Inside the log cabin, Celina manages to barricade the real door.

Game Talk:

Zombies: starting: 4
               Turn 2: 3
               Turn 3: 2
               Turn 4: 6
               Turn 5: 3
               Turn 6: 5

Total zombies: 28

Due to bad dice rolls I have only managed to barricade one door in the log cabin - leaving me 7 more to set to win the game.
I was able to pass two of the six Survive! Building search rolls to find: one "reason for it all" (which counts towards the campaign story) and a Safari rifle with ammo - I might need this very soon.

Not only have I had some bad dice rolls, but the initiative card deck I am using has gone the way of the zombies too - they had two turns where only they were able to move, leaving the characters standing like stunned mullets.

So far I haven't fired a shot, but that is going to change very soon, as the zombies are now starting to hoard together.

 I need to get Jack activated so I can move him to the boxes near the farm for safety. Being a good shot, he should be able to take down a lot of zombies and attract them to him instead of the house... or so the plan goes.

To be continued...

Edit: for some reason I used a different name for Celina's bodyguard that what I had written on the character sheet. I have amended the post to show the first name he was given - that of John Walker.