For Vampifan – ATZ - Faith meets the Hasslefree Girls

Another bleak part of downtown, Faith and Jane had made it here with out incident, but they were still hungry and looking for food and anything else that would help them survive this holocaust.

I’m not sure why Faith carries a gun because she is far better as a brawler and needs a baseball bat or something similar, Jane is the opposite, a crack shot but if she gets into a fight she is going to come out second best. Unless there are 2 of them in which case she will come out 3rd best.

There are 3 PEF’s (Possible Enemy Forces on the table and five zombies, these 3 zombies move towards Faith and Jane who are hiding in plain sight by the white car.

There’s another zed behind the fencing also moving towards them.

One of the PEF’s is resolved as 3 citizens, they win the meet and greet and go to the next stage but none of them pass their insight test and so do nothing.

Just a sexy little shot of 2 of the citizens and the zombie who is now closer to them than to Faith and Jane.

Frank it's only a figure of speech ;)

The zombies start to close in. Mumbling and grumbling about the lack of brains available, not to use but to eat.

Faith and Jane open fire on the 2 lads on the right, Faith misses but Jane hits and takes out both of them. Fortunately the noise doesn’t generate any more of them.

The citizens had ducked behind the blue lorry out of sight of Faith and Jane but have attracted a friend. Wang Mei fails her brains test big time and decides to do something stupid, like go and fight a zombie - single handed.

This turns out to be a good move and she kills the zombie.

The two girls fire at the last remaining zombie as it charged at them, Faith was rattled and missed but Jane was cool and hit it, then was appalled as it got back up. Wang Mei saw it and she again fails her brains test and attacked it single-handedly and again kills it.

This is looking to be pretty easy so far.

I did another meet and greet test and Faith lost but she decided to join Wang Mei’s group. Well after seeing how she deals with zombies you would, wouldn’t you.

The remaining two PEF’s were resolved at the same time, one is a group of smart looking citizens and the other.

Well they don’t look so smart.

This shows where everyone is located, it’s a bit like the showdown in the film The Good The Bad and The Ugly.

I think this shows the results of the insight test, I’m not sure how the official rules do it because it’s different in different sets and even different editions of the same set but in an instance like this I have rolled loads of dice and this is the number of passed dice by each character and so they activate in this sequence 3’s first, all the 2’s second and together, or even simultaneously, all the 1’s last.

The scruffy looking set of civilians came out the worst from the firing, maybe because they were the meat in the sandwich of the suits and Faiths mob who couldn’t see each other and so both fired on the bikers.

Wrong place wrong time.

Faith and Holly both missed their shots but Jane, true to form hit and killed Fat Willie and wounded Bubble, Keith at the back of the group hit and wounded Faith and she is on the floor rolling around, but he was shot twice by Lemon Moss one of the suits and is stunned but will get back up eventually and Donna was hit and killed by another of the suits.

The Suits were lucky and no one shot at them.

This shows Faith on the ground but luckily there are no zombies in the immediate vicinity.

Wang Mei and GoGo are hiding behind the bus. Well they don’t have shooters and so you would hide or even run away in this situation.

FOOD, I don’t know if zombies grin but this one must surly be grinning, three warm bodies to eat, it’s going to look like a bacon pig when it’s done.

Keith is still stunned but should have time to get up well before the zombie starts on him.

The noise from the shooting had generated a few more zombies.

And yet more, there were others as well but you get the idea, things were going down hill quite quickly in this game.

Wang Mei is attacked but with her fighting technique which I believe is called The Way of the Clawed Fist (also called hit em first and hit em hard) she dealt with it/him quickly.

The Suits were not having things their own way any more, one of the group has run away at the sight of the zombies approach, the remaining three of them laid down an effective fire for the moment.

More zeds arrive and there’s more on the way. Jane needs to look behind or she’s going to be in trouble.

She does turn in the end and shoots the poor chap in the bowler hat, but things are looking distinctly bleak.

The Suits are killing zombies but as with Wang Mei’s group there were more zeds on the way. The wee baldy chap in the grey suit was shot at and missed by Samantha the lass in the black coat, but Raymond and Lemon Moss were doing well with their shooting, knocking down zeds but the noise kept generating more.

Wang Mei can hear lots of shooting and I decided to do a Brains check to see how she would react. As you may remember if you were reading the text rather than looking at the pictures she is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and rather than continue to fight in the open she leads the other 3 girls into the bar, turning this into a defensive position. I would have to agree with that strategic thinking, except the Bar has no windows and no back door. She also failed to pick up Faith’s gun and Jane joined the other girls headed to the bar, leaving Faith outside wounded.

Well Jane never liked Faith anyway and much preferred her new best mates.

If only they had thought to barricade the front door as soon as they went in, rather than break into the liquor store. An easy mistake to make you would think, understandable under the circumstances, but it could be their last mistake.

You might remember in the opening introduction I mentioned that Jane wasn’t much of a fighter, well it looks like she’s not going to get a chance to improve her skills either because she’s dead.

The wee baldy man jumps the wall, in slow motion and heads straight at Samantha, her nerves fail her and she fails to fire as he attacks.

She kills him but he is replaced by 2 more.

Lemon Moss went to help Samantha fight off the 2 zeds but he lost his life in the attempt.

The zombie who was chewing on Bubble had moved on the Fat Willie and was now feasting on Donna. Keith who had seen the zombie eating his friends had understandably run away.

The Suits had also run away leaving poor Lemon Moss to be chewed on by a small zombie with a big appetite.

All in all a far cry from the previous game.

A small crowd was gathering outside the Bar and Wang Mei and her party had some hard choices to make.

They had found some food and drink in the Bar and maybe it was time to leave, they burst out and encountered the 3 zeds waiting for them.

This was the scene of carnage they left behind.

The fight was short but brutal and all of the girls survived and made their way out of the area.

A Zombie Horde, fortunately they appeared in dribs and drabs but even so they drove everyone away.

The Suites, Raymond and Samantha stayed to fight for a while before running, Lemon Moss is now a pile of bones, Elvis left the building almost immediately.

On the right, our original Heroine Faith was killed and eaten, Jane was killed and will be eaten and the Hasselfree Girls made it home free, this time.

The Bikers were all eaten by the same zombie except for Keith who ran away. The zombie is now suffering chronic indigestion and won’t need to eat for at least 3 weeks so it’s not all bad.

Well a completely different game from the last, very one sided one, there was much more going on than appears in this story but even then it’s another mammoth story line.

I didn’t realise there were 31 days in October Dohh so I get to complete the trilogy of games I wanted to post as my tribute to Bryan/Vampifan, I don’t think my flippant style suits the genre at all but I’ve had to rush these a bit as the past 4 days I’ve been running an internet game called the Virus. Part of that is posted on the Lead Adventurers Forum in the Cold War board and I’m really pleased how that’s coming on, but it’s going to be a long one.

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

Cheers and all the best.

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.