Things that make you go “Boom” Pt1

A small post today, with a rather hastily taken photo too.

When making my Spawn Points recently I took the opportunity to put together a few other smaller terrain/scenario items, all of which fill the roles of the exploding barrel trope (is that the right use of that word?)  popularised in computer games.

Butane tanks (coloured for local distributors rather than the white from L4D) and Fuel drums.

All of the above came from Fenris games and featured in the Zombie Apocalypse game covered over the last few posts here and here.

I was short a handful of gas cans, the sort that feature in L4D that are visible here.  I have ordered a few from Ebay and they will feature in a follow up post.  I bet that you cant wait.

Zombie of the Week #48: James

James

James fell foul of the same neurone plague that beset the ship that André served upon.  James had to be forced to follow Andre off the plank out of the airlock and into the depths.   Spacegoing pirate or not he and his cursed kind would not be tolerated on any vessel o’ that type.

Scurvy

More or less everything that was said about André last week could be said about about James this time around, so I will direct you there for further details.

Deadlines: Hostile Corporate Takeover of the Living Dead Pt 2

This report follows on from last Wednesdays post, visible here.

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In advance of the Regenerator the zombies lurched forward, wounding Anderson and Symes with their filthy clawing hands.  With the hissing Regenerator twitching forward on its palsied limbs things are looking bleak for Sigma Squad.

The Regenerator moved suddenly and with a spasm spikes erupted from its body, eviscerating Jerabeck.  With cold efficiency Anderson riddled the body of the Regenerator with rounds from her MP5 killing one of the Regenerators parasites, while weaving between the zombies all around her.

With skills honed by years of training Symes broke right, in the opposite direction to Anderson while putting three rounds into the nearby butane cylinder.  The cylinder burst sending zombie and Regenerator offal flying in all directions.  “Hasta la muerte” she uttered pithily as chunks of bloody, rotten flesh rain down around her.

(When setting up the table for the game some cinematically minded player decided that the best place for a butane cylinder was next to a Spawn Point, and he was probably right.  On this occasion it likely kept the wounded remnants of Sigma Squad in the game).

On the street between the Cinema and the rear of the Police station, USS Squad Gamma crossed paths with USFU Squad Sigma, the first living things that they had encountered since deployment.  Under strict orders to keep their noses out of each others highly sensitive business, a curt nod between fully masked sergeants was the sum of their exchange.  Gamma proceeded North while Sgt White went South.  Squad Epsilons  Ingram climbed the extendable ladder to the roof of the Police station to give covering fire over the vehicle holding the vault keycard.

Squad Gamma proceeded towards the milling throng of confused corpses that was trying to locate its last target, Squad Epsilon.

As Epsilon Sgt White rounds the South side of the police station, Ingram gives cover from the rooftop by detonating a fuel barrel, turning a handful of zeds into sub-human torches.  This cleared the way for Sgt White to get the vault keycard in the blue Porche.

Kaplan pauses from the rhythmic headshots and dismemberments to reload, and is caught unexpectedly.  Although he dies quickly from arterial blood loss, Gamma has no time to grieve as the Squad struggles to keep the mounting horde at bay.

Eerie wailing is heard as a Witch shows up near squad Epsilons keycard objective location.  Luckily, the Witch is inclined to keep itself to itself.  As it spawns a distance away from the main routes travelled by the forces, it remains undisturbed for now.

Squad Gamma, rattled by the loss of Kaplan get some payback on the large mob that has congealed near their objective, the Umbrella Corp local HQ.  After some unnecessary risks, some touch and go hand to hand where they were kept alive only by their kevlar, they get their heads back in the game…

…and tactically withdraw around the rear of their target building.

Meanwhile the wounded Sgt Anderson has procured the incriminating documents.  Now Symes (at the front of the fire truck) has the unenviable task of drawing the zombies away from the Sarge.

At this point the unmistakable howl of a Hunter is heard not far from the Police Station and the Umbrella building…

… and the pressure builds as a Licker shows up even closer to both buildings than the Hunter, next to the still crying Witch.

That doesnt bother Anderson and Symes of Sigma Squad. After reaching the chopper Anderson covers Symes sprint from where she had been heroically drawing the cannibal corpses away from the access point.

With a whine the helicopter begins to lift off, which is enough to agitate the Witch into action.  It also satisfies Sigma Squads mission objective.

Meanwhile Squad Gamma has procured Dr Braga and the vital information that he has.  The hordes are getting nearer however and the extraction chopper has to execute some fancy manoeuvring to get close enough for them to board (the Hunter can be seen approaching on the right, next to the game card).

At this point disaster struck.  Pvt Ocampo had been delayed while punching a couple of zeds tickets at ground level, where she has already seen the approach of the Hunter and Licker plus the large encroaching horde. “Get out of here!” she cried, “Don’t wait for me!”

As the chopper delayed the vital extra seconds for Pvt Rain Ocampo to get up the ladder, the brain dead hordes struggled out of the stairwell onto the roof, dragging the pilot and Pvt Symes of Squad Sigma from the vehicle.

The helicopter tilts, rotors spinning in slow motion, Michael Bay sty-lee.  Across the slow motion image of the chopper crashing into the roof the Hunter leaps screaming onto Pvt Symes, who is subsequently torn apart  while his limbs are used to beat the pilot to a mushy pulp.

The only survivor of Squads Sigma and Gamma is Rain Ocampo, and she is surrounded by zombies on a rooftop with her back to a flaming helicopter wreck.

Sgt White, the lone survivor of squad Epsilon has fought his way through the hordes to his objective, despite losing two good men en route, the last of them only moments ago.  Shoving the final zombies in his path aside he uses the key card to enter the bank and to lock himself into the vault.  There he must locate “the package” in the pitch dark before being extracted.  The vault lights dim and the power cut out.  An inhuman voice screams in the room that Sgt White is locked into behind inches of steel.

Credits roll.

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I was very pleased with how the game worked out.  The revised elements of the system functioned better than I could have hoped.  While a handful of minor issues were quickly recorded during the game for inclusion in future drafts the game trundled along quickly and cinematically.  Importantly the other players were able to work out the rules and mechanics of the game from the cards and rules document without the author (me) having to translate.  I have hopes that this system will regularly get played at Sho3box Castle.  Which will help me to justify my compulsion to paint even more zombies.

Zombie of the Week #47: André

André

André was happy to leave the dull agri-world that he grew up on and to become an amoral space pirate when the opportunity presented itself.  He spent many a cycle lootin’ an’ pillagin an’ drinkin an’ fightin’ until he picked a fight with a carrier of the Gargleflarkian Neurone Plague.

Soon after he lost his leg he lost his mind and attacked his fellow swabs until the bilge rats subsequently threw him overboard.  Arrr!

Bandana

André is another one of the zombies that I put together essentially from leftover parts in 2003.  It was an attempt to pad out the ranks of my zombies so that sufficient number would be avilable to stress a large number of Heroclix players trying to rescue a scientist from the middle of a mall.  I ran the scenario about ten times in total over a few years and it got better as I tweaked it.

Anyway, at the time I was spectacularly broke so there wasnt a hope that I would be able to buy any new zombie figures.  While making big piles of plastic components and simply sticking them together was kinda fun, it did mean that some… unconvincing zombies emerged, like André.  Who is of course only unconvincing when it isnt International Talk Like a Pirate day.  Which is a relief, because its International Talk Like a Pirate Day today.

Deadlines: Hostile Corporate Takeover of the Living Dead Pt 1

Preamble

After last weeks diatribe regarding the build up and preparatory work for the zombie apocalypse segment of a recent gaming weekend, the report of the game itself follows as promised.

For info regarding the terrain and why it looks the way it does check out the previous zombie game report as I want to avoid repeating all of that stuff here.  All of the Survivors, Special Infected and Spawn Points plus many of the individual zombies themselves are pictured throughout this blog.  Use the tags to the right of the post if you want to see something in particular close up.

Objectives and Deployment

“Day 9.  Infection has not progressed further than 8km beyond the original release site, due to Umbrella containment at principal choke points.  Manipulation of political, media and other information sources has provided enough time for the virus to be tested in non-laboratory conditions and without interference from the authorities.

Final data must be gathered before Governmental intrusion becomes inevitable.  Your squad will be deployed directly into the hot zone.  Objective is priority.  All other considerations are secondary.  As a result all non Umbrella personnel are to be terminated with extreme prejudice.  Any contact with other Umbrella personnel is prohibited without express permission from your CO, due to the sensitivity of individual objectives.

Squad size is reduced to three to accommodate easy extraction and to minimise disruption to the test site”.

MT, PB and I picked a small force of Umbrella Security Service or Umbrella Special Forces Unit each.  PB picked USFU Squad Epsilon while MT and I each picked three members of USS Squads Sigma and Gamma respectively.

We had access to many more survivor figures, often with more esoteric equipment and or characteristics.  As this was a playtest game we deliberately choose not to use those and to each field very similar three man teams.  This was deliberate and intended to keep our focus a little more on the basic game mechanics.

Shade, Kaplan and Ocampo of USS Gamma Squad deployed on the roof of the bank…

…with orders to locate and evacuate Dr Braga from the roof of the Umbrella local HQ building.  The information that Dr Braga holds regarding the development of his ZG620 (zombie repellent) formula is of incalculable value.

White, Ingram and Hoffman of USFU Squad Epsilon are deployed on the roof of a local retail outlet (“Strangerous Liaisons”, a sex shop).  From this point Squad Epsilon must acquire the code key from the corpse of a deep cover Umbrella agent…

…in his blue porche (lovingly offset here by the wandering flesh eating remains of Michael Jackson).  The Umbrella agent used to work undercover in the bank where he concealed a sensitive package in the vault before being dismembered by Whiskey Deltas.  After acquiring the code from the car Epsilon has to progress to the bank vault to secure the package without destroying it (even if it bites).  Once there they need only wait for extraction.

Anderson, Symes and Jerabeck of Squad Sigma were airlifted to the Police Station roof in a locally acquired helo.

Similarly to the Gamma mission, Squad Sigma must reacquire potentially incriminating documents from the police vehicle shown (again being modelled by Michael Jackson) and return to the extraction vehicle.

Resistance is factored at Level Orange (that’s eighty zeds plonked down at random plus nine reinforcements per turn, plus a handful of randomly determined Special Infected showing up throughout the game, on a 6 x 4’ table, in case you were wondering).

The centre of the target area, just before the action begins

The Action

Squad Gamma proceeds with covering fire, by the numbers.  They encounter a still armoured ex-USS colleague.  The Sergeant puts a shotgun round through its head without a second thought.  “If necessary I expect each one of you to do the same for me” he rasps through internal comms (tough guys always rasp, they never just “say”).

Squad Sigma proceeds slowly and efficiently, clearing a path through the dispersed undead.

In stark, bloody contrast to the advance of the other Umbrella units, the overconfident Hoffman of Squad Epsilon gets too close to a mob of ex-police as he rounds the first corner.  Although he takes a few shamblers with him, he is torn limb from limb in moments, his screams of agony being heard through each Epsilon earpiece.

Squad Epsilon continued to advance.  The longer they stayed the more biters were going to be drawn to the area, so they grimly pressed on.

(This was an alarmingly sudden and early demise for one third of PBs forces, much to our amusement.  Despite being 100% lethal upon contact with Survivors, Zombie mobs move rarely and are very unlikely to move rapidly in succession before Survivors get to react.  At least that’s what Hoffman thought anyway.  This unpredictability is part of the appeal of card driven miniature games for me, even if this is an extreme example of things going not so well for a player.  Don’t feel sorry for Hoffman (or PB): they knew the odds)

Squad Sigma rounded the abandoned cinema, taking out the closest threats all the while.  Their gunfire had drawn zombies in the area towards them however and their firepower was not proving to be sufficient to clear a path…

Squad Gamma gave the horde nearby a wide berth, but still ran into to some opponents that could not be dropped at range.  Kaplan and Ocampo dealt with their targets, while the Sergeant dropped a zombie with the butt of his shotgun and blew its brain remnants out on the ground.  Having become separated from his squad by a small distance by a number of hostiles he confirmed rendezvous at the far side of the park.

Even while Hoffmans remains were being devoured Epsilon came under more pressure from the encroaching dead.

After a struggle that was touch and go for a while they blasted their way through the throng and proceeded towards their objective.

Sigma was finally making some headway when the first of the less common undead threats appeared alarmingly close to them.  While not especially fast, the Regenerator (square base, standing next to Spawn Point) is very dangerous up close and very resistant to gunfire, as the combination of T-virus and Las Plagas parasites work to knit its dead flesh beck together after trauma.

Will the Regenerator tear squad Sigma limb from limb?

Will Dr Braga be rescued?

Who will live?

Who will die?

What will explode?

Tune in next week for the thrilling (well somewhat amusing and entertaining in a well-you-had-to-be-there kind of way) conclusion of…

Deadlines: Hostile Corporate Takeover of the Living Dead!

Zombie of the Week #46: Webb

Webb

Webb just ate an Escher ganger.  What little is left of the emotional centre of his brain still managed to register some disappointment as the Escher was just as tough as the Goliath that he ate last week (Toughness 3 in fact).

Club Wielding Undead Techno-Savage

Webb is one of the handful of zombie miniatures designed for the GW Necromunda game like Phelan, Jonah, Páidí and Steve.  Although (and perhaps because of the fact that) they have some sci-fi trappings that make them less versatile than generic figures, I am quite fond of them.  Nice crisp sculpts all.

Preparing for the Zompocalypse

Special Infected Cards for my AR:SE Rewrite

MT, PB and I all got together recently for a gaming weekend at my place.  As is usual these days, the emphasis was mainly on board games.

In addition to those games I decided to set up a Zombie Apocalypse miniatures game, largely due to the success of a game of AR:SE that MT and I played a few months ago.

While I planned to use the AR:SE rule set again I felt that some modifications to the rules as written (available here) were required.  So I set about trying to sort those out in advance of the big day.

AR:SE is a game that provides a cinematic way to use your toy soldiers with friends against a system that plays the zombies for you.  It is not a competitive game or even a test of skill.  It is a type of game that my group often calls a “funny voice generator” which basically means that it is an excuse to muck about with toy soldiers with your buddies and have a few laughs, rather than a contest.

The card driven AR:SE rules provided for a cinematic and very entertaining game the first time that MT and I played it some months ago, but we did feel that we had to make a lot of the supplementary rules up on the fly.  That session, while very entertaining did feel a little woolly, a little more like a RPG jamming session than a delineated boardgame or wargame.

That’s fine if that’s what you are into and I think that it was definitely part of the intention and design philosophy of AR:SEs original author.  Horses for courses and all that.  For our needs however I wanted to add a few elements that suit our play style, such as a more concrete process for spawning new zombies, specific rules for the arrival and behaviour of “special” boss zombies and a standardising of the somewhat eclectic ranges used for movement and shooting.

That process turned into a full blown re-write of the rules that included the following:

• Revised/streamlined weapon and movement ranges and rules
• A full glossary of very simple special effects/rules that are applied to create different types of Special Infected, weapon effects, character abilities etc with the minimum of duplication
• Expanded simple Spawning Rules that dictate the quantity and frequency of zombie reinforcements and that do not require a GM
• A very simple points/character generation system which was then applied to many of the Survivor models in my miniatures collection (and which could obviously be easily applied to anyone’s miniatures).  These rules were then added to cards along with a photo of the relevant figure.  This allows for a very easy way to field those figures either at random via a deal from the Survivor Deck or with ballpark values assigned that will mean that all players have roughly the same level of forces, should that be deemed necessary for some reason
• Another set of cards (the Event deck) was made for the various special zombie types plus other things that might crop up in the game like Extra Ammo, First-Aid, Pipe Bombs etc.  Basically the sort of power-ups that occur in Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil, that sort of thing.  These cards are inserted into the standard AR:SE Activation Deck at certain points to govern the appearance of Special Infected or Power Ups for Survivors.  Additionally in some circumstances these Event Cards are used to generate the circumstances when and where Scenario Specific items show up (like a briefcase containing the zombie virus antidote or keys required to enter the underground lab complex or whatever).

Survivor Cards

The Goal: The rewrite process had to pay particular heed to one main criteria: it was absolutely crucial not to bog down the simple, fast and entertaining core of the card driven AR:SE system with needless extra rules that would slow things down more than entertain.

The aim was to add a series of modular and clean extra rules without cluttering the system, while simultaneously streamlining the original system.

Ranges/Movement.  A major part of the re-write process was to rationalise the ranges and modifiers from the original AR:SE.

I felt that the weapon stats were quite varied but without much gain, that some distinctions were made unnecessarily and that overall they were a little counter-intuitive.

After a couple of different attempts I decided to convert the movement and weapon ranges to an approximation of those from Song of Blades and Heroes.

I feel that the movement and range measurement system in SoBH is far and away the best thing about it, so I happily transplanted a version of that into my AR:SE rewrite.

In addition to that I also reworked how the modifiers to hit at range apply to the various range bands when shooting.  I did this by reassigning the target number and then removing nearly all negative modifiers to hit (negative modifiers to hit are a slightly odd pet peeve of mine).

This was easier to organise than it probably sounds and was worth the little bit of effort.

Add to that that the fact that all of the information (including modifiers to hit) for each and every Survivor in play is written down on a card in front of each player and the potentially irritating effects of modifiers overall are minimised.  I hope.

More Survivor Cards, Yakuza this time.

Glossary/Special Rules.  The largest part of the rewrite was the generation of a large glossary of terms.  While quite a large number of terms were eventually settled on, very few of those are at play at any one time or even in any one game.  The few that are in play are always summarised on the cards used for each survivor miniature and for each of the more esoteric zombie types.

I did my best to standardise most of the special rules so that the same rule for a leaping Hunter was applied to a leaping Jockey for example.  Similarly a particularly dangerous weapon uses the same damaging rule as a particularly dangerous Special Infected for another example.  Of course it has to be ensured that this streamlining doesn’t render the game too generic and homogenised too.  This is all pretty fundamental stuff but it is essential to enable a game to run satisfactorily. It’s a balancing act that many systems trip up on that I hope my rewrite has handled adequately.

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So, after all of that time consuming work my as yet un-named rewrite was ready to go.  Anyone who is still reading at this point might be interested to know that the after action report for the inaugural game that MT, PB and I played will be posted next week.

Zombie of the Week #45: Finch

Finch

Drenched in gore Finch staggers through the wastes, desiccated tree branch in hand ready to batter its next meal into submission.

Gender and Era Indeterminate

Finch is made from some of the more medieval parts that I had left over from zombie kits in 2002 or so.  The figure was subsequently rather heavy handedly drenched in gore in 2009.

Far from anything special and nothing more than a figure to make up the numbers really. Thats what you get when you make a feature of gradually showing every single zombie miniature that you own online I suppose

Flashing Steel Playtest #2

I recently played a couple of playtest games of Flashing Steel. The first part of the Flashing Steel playtest has more info regarding the figures used and a couple of other things, so I wont repeat that here.

What follows below is a brief account of the second game, in which our heroes leap astride tauntauns, kaadus and speeders and escort the princess on the journey to the spaceport.  En route they are attacked by Geonosians and a lizardman bounty hunter riding on a giant cat.

The scenario specified the use of mounted figures and a carriage if they were available.  MT has a lot of Star Wars figures and they included tauntaun riders and Gungan kaadus so the good guy force consisted of those figures.  We didnt have enough speeder or swoop bikes so we settled on a bad guy force of Geonosians.  As they are essentially human sized flying beetles we figured that that was a reasonable compromise for a cavalry figure.

We also added Bossk the bounty hunter mainly because he was one of my favourite characters from ESB as a kid.

A brief indulgent aside here. I accidentally let the Bossk toy fall out of my pocket while I fell asleep on the dentists chair some time in 1982 or so and the dentist was nice enough to post him back to me.  This only added to the well travelled mystique of the character as far as this then seven year old was concerned.

The Bossk figure isnt mounted, so we stood him next to a nexu to remind us that he counted as mounted for this game.

The good guys.

The battlefield (note the rather cheap blue roll “river”.  Ahem.  Not the pride of my terrain collection…)

The  good guys advance.

The Geonosians mans the road block (which is zombie infested, but we will pretend that they are not there for now).

The sides close.  Note Bossk and his nexu in the bottom left of the shot, waiting to pounce.

The gungans race ahead.  ”How wude!”   etc.

In classic SoBH fashion the Gungans become separated from the rest of their force.  ”Theesa peepol gonna die?” etc

The Geonosians plug a Gungan.  Star Wars fans over 25 years of age cheer.

Lando chooses to grieve the gungans demise at a later date and coaxes his tauntaun into vaulting the barrier, crashing into the geonosians… I have a bad feeling about this etc.

The Geonosians kill Lando and make a lot of clicking and whooping sounds of celebration.

Bossk then decides to commit.

In a flurry of activity (brought on by some unlikely activation rolls and some swashbuckling) Chewbacca (noticeably smaller than in the previous battle and wearing a Luke Skywalker outfit while riding his tauntaun) leaps over the barrier, attacks a geonosian unconvincingly, leaps back over the barrier, over the side of the bridge and attacks another geonosian.

The green arrows show a pretty chaotic turns movement.

Bossk is taken out and the nexu flees.

Hand to hand fighting rages.

Melee chaos continues, with a Geonosian attempting to wrestle control of the Princess speeder from the driver.

The plucky geonosian managed to hold on to the speeder long enugh to get it off the table, with the princess intact, ready for offworld transfer.