Drew, 01 March 2013

ATZ in a phone booth again – I like working with the small maps, they’re very convenient for me. Having escaped from Capt. Flack’s team, Drew’s crew need to tool up again. That means it’s back into town… A Discover encounter (p. 41) in daylight. There are 3d6+3 = 14 zombies (p. 29) who are placed 12” away as follows (p. 30): 6 towards the top of the table, 5 towards the left, 3 towards the bottom.

As the table is so small, many of the zombies have to be moved around clockwise until they fit (p. 30). This puts inside a building with no way out, but Our Heroes have to get lucky sometimes.

Drew: Star, Rep 5, Star Power 5, Born Leader, Brawler.

Vince: Officer, Rep 4, Runt.

Sylvia: Veteran, Rep 5, Brawler.

 

The weather is starting to improve a little, and not before time for our heroes, who have been living rough most of the winter and are feeling somewhat the worse for wear. Hungry and weaponless, they decide to try their luck in a nearby city.

Start of Turn 1

Turn 1

Activation: Humans 3, zombies 5. Zombies fail to activate.

Walking up the main drag into town brings Drew & Co. to an abandoned car, which they ignore, knowing how zombies are attracted by noise. Passing it, they see that the building on their left has no doors on-map (probably rubbled) so they turn right towards the nearest door and prepare to stack up for entry. No reason to fast move yet.

Turn 2

Activation: Humans 6, zombies 5. Nobody moves.

Turn 3

Activation: Humans 5, zombies 4. Both activate, but none of the zombies on the map can get to the humans.

While Sylvia scans the area behind the team for unseen threats, Drew and Vince get ready to break in the door.

“On three. One… two…”

Turn 4

Activation: Humans 4, zombies 1. Both activate.

Drew and Vince kick down the door and barge inside, improvised melee weapons at the ready.

I now roll 2d6 on the table on p. 43 to see what’s in the building. 7 + 2 (urban area) –1 (daytime) = 8; 1/2d6 zombies, which turns out to be three. I now roll for surprise; 1d6+3 (one per zombie) = 8, 1d6+Rep for the humans; both roll a 6 so Drew gets 11, Vince gets 10. I also roll for Sylvia just in case, she gets 8.

“Crap! Zombies! Kill ‘em!” shouts Drew.

“Aren’t they already dead?” Sylvia mutters; but no-one can hear her over the screams and hacking.

Drew rolls 6d6 in melee, 1d6 per Rep and an extra one for being a Brawler. Vince rolls 4d6. The zeds get 1d6 each, so getting up close and personal is an acceptable risk with three of them. Drew takes on two zombies and splits his dice evenly between them rolls 3, 3, 4 and gets one success against the one on the left, which rolls 4 and gets one success; that zombie is Out Of the Fight, but ass per p. 35 this escalates to Obviously Dead for a zombie. Drew gets 5, 5, 6 and 3 successes against the one on the right, which 2 and gets no successes – scratch one zombie. Vince rolls 1, 1, 4, 6 and gets two successes, his opponent rolls 1 and gets none – another zed down.

“I can hear some screams and hacking – a definite struggle…”

I decide the building is a small shop, and roll 2d6 + 2 (urban area) for loot. A 9 means we found some food, not unreasonable for a shop.

Turns 5-10

We move up to the next building. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This took five turns because of some really sucky activation dice. Lucky none of the surviving zombies can get at us.

“Two more zombies!” warns Vince, but these are quickly smashed down by the experienced detectives, who find more food inside.

“That one must have been here a while, it’s gone green!”

Turns 11-13

We break into the third building, but it is vacant. Searching it, we find medical supplies – must be a pharmacist.

Turn 14

We move off the board, richer than before.

Campaign Book-Keeping

The team started with nothing; it now has 2 units of food and 1 unit of medical supplies, leaving 58 and 19 respectively in the urban area they are now scavenging in. The total cargo value is 2.5, which is quite a bit less than the team can carry – fortunate, as we have no base in which to store it. The team consumes one unit of food each per month, so we don’t have enough – luckily there are 4 encounters per month in an urban area, so we can go shopping again before hunger starts to reduce our Rep.

Drew and Vince have now met all the requirements to choose a class – see at least 3 zombies, kill one, and fight an armed human (p. 5). Sylvia still has to kill a zombie. Drew and Vince decide they will be Survivors rather than Gangers, and will use those reaction tables rather than the Civilian ones in future.

Drew and Vince both succeeded in this encounter, and roll for improvement (p. 61); no change for either of them. Sylvia failed (didn’t kill any zombies) and rolled a 1 for improvement, so her Rep is now 4. The team is now:

Drew: Star, Rep 5, Star Power 5, Born Leader, Brawler.

Vince: Rep 4, Runt.

Sylvia: Rep 4, Brawler.

Lessons Learned

• The yellow Cry Havoc! maps work a lot better for batrep photos than the more naturally-coloured Wydraz ones. I should switch back to those.
• The decision that I could place zombies somewhere they couldn’t get out meant that the team could deal with those they encountered piecemeal, and made it a lot easier for them to clear the board.
• To avoid characters losing Rep after an encounter, I should have them take it in turns to look for resources and fight – everybody has to find one to avoid the chance of losing Rep. I forgot to let Sylvia do that this game.
• This session took a couple of minutes to set up and knock down, and about half an hour to play. I’m content with easing back into the game slowly as I haven’t played for a while. It used three human figures and 21 zombie pawns. (This last statistic because a common question on the boards is “How many zombie figures do I need?”)

One lesson I hope readers are learning is that you don’t need beautiful figures and terrain to have fun, nice though they look. As Ed says, just play the game!

Credits

Figures and pawns by eM4. Map by Wydraz. Rules by Two Hour Wargames.