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Friday 30 October 2020

For Vampifan – ATZ - The Disturbed

It was late afternoon when the Hasselfree girls hit the industrial area of town, it looked quiet enough and there were still a couple of hours of daylight left before the darkness. They had heard a few rumours of a gang that resided down here, they could be named The Disturbed, they weren’t sure if that was their name or just what they were. The two characters who had passed the information on were in a bad way, they could hardly speak, let alone enunciate their words correctly through broken teeth and bloody lips.

The main street through the area was empty, with no sight or sound of life.

It was just another semi derelict area, cleaner than some after the Apocalypse, it wouldn’t be a bad place to make their base if circumstances allowed.

Unnaturally quiet though.

The obligatory overview of the board.

Just a sexy little wide angle view to set the scene.

In the far distance there are more wire mesh fencing panels, drying on the newspaper.

One from the drone, showing – NOTHING.

Finally the opening title sequence has played through and the Hasslefree Gang enter the set. They are unsure of the situation, will they meet up with the notorious Disturbed gang or, as is more likely would they meet up with ZOMBIES who are just Disturbing.

As they make their way down the street, they finally see some movement, jerky, disjointed movement. The area is broken up into enclosed sections that will make it difficult for the Zombies to move about. It will also make it difficult for the girls to move about as well.

Off to their right is a Zed with a yellow Mohican hair style, he sees them and starts to shamble their way, but at that slow pace it’s going to be a while before they have to worry about him.

In front down a side street are 2 more, slowly getting closer.

One of the PEF’s has resolved itself to be a conga line of dead zeds.

The lead one arrives at the low wall and leans over, toppling forward looking stunned before getting slowly to its feet.

Holly Hunter attacks it with the sharpened stake she carries to deter Vampires.

It’s working well because there are no Vampires and so she sticks it into the Zeds heart or head or wherever kills Zombies and it’s killed.

The other two zeds shuffle over the wall and are immediately attacked by Holly and Susan Black.

Just rounding the corner is the Zed with the haircut, followed by one of its mates.

Three of the creatures are behind the wire mesh, pushing and shoving but the posts hold firm. They are too fixated on their prey to realise they need to move back to the gate to get out of the compound.

The fight was short and both Zeds fall to the superior fighting skills of the girls, but there are other Zeds drawing close.

The girls are well armed for hand to hand combat and good at it. Keeping things silent, well fairly silent means that there are no new zombies drawn to the fight.

And taking them on in small numbers means they can make sure the odds are on their side.

It's a continual drip drip of zeds arriving and the girls are easily able to hold their own. The 3 behind the fence are still pushing and shoving but not getting through, although it’s only a matter of time.

Another two are corralled on the other side of the cross road. Snarling and chomping at the wire mesh.

As the girls are making their way along the street the inevitable happens and the fence gives way, on both sides of the road and at the same time.

But it’s going to need a horde of the creatures to worry the Hasselfree girls and one by one they kill the zombies.

I don’t think 4 or 5 constitute a horde.

You will have noticed the skull counters indicating dead zeds, I only have about 30 zombies and I was going through them fast at this point, so recycling is important as Mrs V keeps telling me.

I’d realised by now that I had too many survivors or not enough zombies to create a truly tense game. Of course you never know when things will go pear shaped, but for now it’s under control.

Sure enough they killed all the zombies and that was game over.

Not a particularly good or exciting game so I'm sorry to put this on anyone reading it but I was really pleased with the board layout at the time. This game was not re-photographed for this post and I think it’s the first time I created a table that I though – I like that.

I always wanted to post the opening pictures but never really thought the game was very noteworthy, maybe because it was such an easy win. In retrospect The Disturbed never turned up and that would have changed the whole complexion of the game, I can't now remember what happened to them, maybe another game.

Anyway this is my last post for Zomtober, I was hoping to finish 3 game write ups, the last is only half done and it’s a much more complex game, I might have to do it for Zomvember.

Well if you are still here I’ll propose another toast, - To Bryan and Zombie Gamers everywhere.

Cheers and all the best.

11 comments:

  1. Enjoyed this game John, it may not of been the most nailbiting adventure, but that's what happens with games, you never know what your going to get. Great report and long may they keep coming ( Gaming reports not Zombies ! LOL)

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    1. Thanks Dave, I was rea;;y pleased with the board layout, not so much the game but as you say you never really know how these things will go unless you carefully balance the forces and then you know it's going to be boring.

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  2. In the real world the critic's would label this movie as a damp squib, but as it happens its not the real world John & its only viewed by fellow gamers who can admire the wonderful looking set up & totally understand how some games can go like this :)

    I'd like to ask a couple of question if I may mate, I know your using ATZ as the basic's for the game but you don't play as per the book, so ?
    1) I know you've cards made with different stats on them, do you feel that while playing out games that you get to use enough of the stats ?
    2) I take it the the Z's just move directly towards the girls, so when they came up against the fence, did you use some kind of stat for them to bash their way through or did you just roll a dice & with the result been the number of turns it would take them to get through ?
    3) As someone who's never watched a zombie movie (that you btw not me) how do you feel these games play out ? I know Z's are great for solo gaming because their in game mechanics are simple but do you find them challenging enough or do you prefer smarter AI's ?

    Anyway thanks for the post & it real is a sign of our age when a photo of a model town is sexy lol

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    1. Hi Frank Question 1 In my core game I will use 6 of them all the time, Rep, Shoot, Brawl, Brains, Guts, Constitution. They are the ones that I use for the Reaction Tests, shooting and fighting.

      Stealth, Awareness, Affinity, Dexterity & Charisma for specific scenarios. Dodge almost never but I included it along with Dexterity because I thought I might use Pulp Alley rules and they were for that.
      The attack and defend I only use for skilled fighting with weapons. So Brawl is what the vast majority do, I think of it as an unsophisticated bar room fight but if the characters are equipped with swords, fighting knives or something like that I use attack and defend, my idea is that one person attacks, trying to strike his opponent and the other defends trying to hold him off, if the defender is able to beat the attacker's attack then he becomes the attacker. I'm trying to simulate the ebb and flow of a sword fight. So these stats are only used by certain characters but as I have the same card layout for everyone they are on there.

      Question 2 The Zeds and the fence. I treat this like a brawl. In my brawls, it's the same as the core rules I think, a category 3 brawler rolls 3D6 aiming to pass dice as the rules. I continue to roll until one of the combatants passes 0 dice and the other one has passed 1 or more dice, they win and depending on how many dice they won by, I deduct that from the constitution of the loser, when the loser is down to 0 Constitution they are knocked out. So I give the fence, doors or anything similar a Brawl factor and a constitution and work out the fight as if they were a human opponent except they don't do any damage to their attacker. This way I don't know when the fence will fall but it will fall eventually.

      Zeds move towards anyone they can see, anything they can hear or mill about on the spot, although depending on how I feel I might roll a direction dice and they go that way.

      Question 3 When I started back wargaming I thought Zombies were great but quickly realized once I got the real rules that for each zombie I shot another 1 would take it's place. I can't remember the rules but lets say you have 33% chance of shooting and killing one then depending in which area and threat level there was a 33% chance of generating a new one. I tended to get stuck in a static position shooting and generating new opponents and it got a bit repetitive. However with a bit more thought or a different location this would be different. The other thing was that I gave zombies a brawl factor of 1 because that's what I thought they had. It turns out that they have a higher brawl factor and so are much more dangerous than this particular game implies. In my games it usually took 2 or 3 zeds to defeat a Survivor, having said that I'm happy with that, but just need to ensure that there are more of the buggers on the table.

      I've not played an ATZ style game for quite a few years but writing these reports many years after I played the games I've an inkling to go back and have another go and include all the things I've learned about solo gaming over that time.

      You speak for yourself about the sexy photo. ;)

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  3. I too am very rusty when it comes to zombie games, having changed the rules so much I doubt I could easily put one on now, so well done getting this scenario together and playing it through. Sometimes the games were a walk in the park, whilst at other times they're desperate struggles to survive, relying on that 'ome' die roll to enable the surviours to run!
    I like the simplicuty of your set-up, they have all the features necessary for a good looking game without having the unwelcome (imo) detail of a model railway enthusiasts set-up.

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    1. Thanks Joe, I think it was the stark simplicity of the table that I liked so much, the game was a bit of a wash out but that's the way it goes sometimes.
      Cheers

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  4. What? No killed survivors! (I guess that is why they are called survivors...)
    You're going to easy on them :-)

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    1. Yes it was an easy game but come on - be fair, the table looked pretty good, nice and stark?

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    2. It is a very pretty table, I must say!
      Got to make myself some fences. I think I have everything needed (somewhere in a box...)

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    3. The problem is that you can never find the box when you want it.

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