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.

For Vampifan – ATZ - Faith Hope and Charity just hit town.

For Vampifan – ATZ - Faith Hope and Charity just hit town.

Faith Hope and Charity just hit town. Looking like survivors from the lost and found.

A gold star and 5 house points if you can name the singer/guitarist whose song that quotes taken from.

Before you read any further I substituted Sophie Maclure for Hope who was dressed in a torn T shirt that didn’t cover very much, it looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, forwards and then upside down. That’s the trouble with these cheap T-shirts, they’re no good for a zombie apocalypse.

Or being dragged through a hedge.

These are the girls, and this is the Zombie Apocalypse and this is my homage to Bryan, or Vampifan as he’s known wherever Zombie games are being played. Bryan passed away earlier this year and left a big hole in the Bloggosphere for many of us, and I know that it’s Zomtober and some of the Bloggers are painting figures in honour of Bryan this year, something in the Zombie or Undead line.

I’ve never taken part in this painting fest but I thought I might do for this particular occasion and then I realized “I have a few zombie games I played early on when I returned to playing games with little lead men and women. Anyway they were written but only in a rough form and I never got round to finishing or posting them and so I’ve decided to post as many of these games as I can during the rest of October as my homage to Bryan.

I’ve reworked my original story a bit and re-photographed it to ensure it looks as good as I can make it in his memory. If you’re interested, my opening post relates to Bryan’s influence on this decision to return to War Gaming and the debt I owe him because of that.

They will not be sombre stories, that is unless your favourite character gets eaten by the zombies but will be written in the style that Bryan enjoyed, well at least that’s what he said on the many comments he made here in the past.

OK back to the game, this is the standard fare of a zombie game, the girls are looking for food and any other movable commodities they can lay their little hands on and will try and avoid contact with Zombies if at all possible.

They are quite average characters, above are their statistic cards. Sophie is the leader rep 4, Brains 4 Guts 5 shooting 5 and Hand to hand combat 4. Faith is rep 3, Brains 3 Guts 4 shooting 3 but H to H 5, Charity is rep 5, Brains 3, Guts 5, shooting 2 and H to H 2 and she is obviously the liability in the group, no brains but immensely brave, so is bound to attack the nearest target and then realize that she can’t shoot or fight.

I am using 2Hour Wargame rules the free download of Chain Reaction with various additional rules and some sections completely re-written. I have taken ideas from other peoples games, mainly Bryan’s early games with his character Vampifan and instead of using Rep to check everything against I have various attributes for intelligence, morale etc as you can see, I have used some terms that come from .45 Rules because they are short and fit into my cards better. I didn't buy ATZ until much later and even now only extracted a small amount from it to incorporate into my modified rules.

There are a number of things that I find too simplistic about the rules but in my opinion they give a fast, exciting game that is ideal for solo gaming, especially with zombies as opponents, because their reactions are so simple, “can I see humans, then I will attack them by the most direct route and eat them” simple.

The girls enter the area cautiously and start to move down the street.

There were 3 zombies or Zeds placed randomly on the board and I’m using 3 PEF’s (Possible Enemy Forces) These tokens move around the board according to various dictates and are only resolved once they come into sight. They could be a number of different things, gangsters, other survivors or more likely ZOMBIES!

A general overview of the board, the girls are in the top right hand corner hidden by the large building covered in graffiti. In the lower left hand corner of the board was 1 Zed, this triggered the 1st PEF which turned out to be 4 Zeds.

The PEF in the top left of the board is seen by the girls and resolved as nothing, but there are 2 zeds along the road and they see the girls and start shambling in their direction.

Meanwhile the big group of Zeds mill around, mumbling, admiring the chain link fencing, the poster on the wall of the pizza place, chatting as zombies will, about how they like their brains, the general consensus is raw and still warm.

Zombies will move towards sounds or sight of people but otherwise just mill about on the spot. Once they are activated by something that then disappears I tend to send them in a random direction and at a random speed.

These are the 2 zeds who can see the girls at the far end of the street they are shambling in their direction, mumbling and moaning as Zombies do.

Just a random close up photo as they approach the big truck.

Turn 2 the girls fast move to Guns R Us, Charity tries the door on the Range Rover, it is open but empty. They see the Zombies coming up the road and all open fire, which because they fast moved is not such a good idea.

Bullets spray all over the place and they knock down one zed but the noise generates 2 more, it also attract the group by the Pizza place who start to head towards the noise, not a good start.

The Zeds head off in the direction of the gunfire, still discussing sautéed brains, devilled brains but the favourite still seems to be raw and warm, they are also getting hungry with all this talk about food.

Turn 3 the girls fail to activate, that’s the trouble with rep 4 leaders, to activate the group needs to roll 4 or less on a D6 and I’m using Rep to represent initiative or speed of action. For activation Zombies are also Rep 4.

The zeds started to close on the girls. The last PEF is checked and turns out to be another false alarm.

On turn 4 the Zeds activate 1st and move closer, Faith and Hope both fire, hitting 1 Zed but attracting another, the door to Guns R Us is unlocked and they enter but the ground floor is empty, Charity can only get to the doorway and remains outside.

Turn 5 Sophie and Faith are in the building searching but the Zombies win the initiative again and charge forward, Charity as predicted passes her Guts test and she stands to receive the charging Zeds, firing twice as they shamble in towards her. Of course with shooting 2 she misses both shots.

And with Hand to Hand 2 she gets knocked to the floor by the Zeds and is the 1st of the girls to become Zombie Chow.

Turn 6 Faith and Sophie are stunned (fail to activate) Charity is only a small girl, but a 6 on the dice mean that she will make a 6 turn meal, good news for Faith and Hope if you take the pragmatic view. Drawn by the sounds and probably the smell of fresh blood more zeds start to move towards Guns R Us

Turn 7 The Zeds continue to munch on Charity, as the 2 remaining girls find the back door to Guns R Us is locked but shoot the lock, attracting 1 more zed to the party.

Turn 8 The Zeds must have a bone in the throat (fail to activate) and spend the turn discussing who gets the juicy parts of Charity. Sophie and Faith leave by the back door, and climb over the wall, fortunately the Zeds are so busy eating that they fail to notice them leaving.

Charity is providing a meal for quite a few of the grey faced zombies as the 2 girls continue to make their getaway.

Turn 9 Faith and Sophie hide behind the corrugated iron shed. More zombies converge on the feast.

Turn 10 to 13 F and H either don’t activate or when they do they remain in hiding, Zombies finally consume Charity.

Turn 14 – the Zombies finish supper and move in a random direction, this happens to be along the road and who is there hiding behind the tin shed, yes you can see them and so can the zombies.

I’m not sure why you can still see Charity she should be just a pile of bones. Zombies don’t eat bones do they? I need to have a word with the Continuity Dept.

Oh that’s me!

Just to give an overview of where everyone is and their place in the area, indeed at this point there is just 1 milling group of Survivors (for now) and Zombies.

The Zeds charge, and Faith and Hope have a poor dice roll and so don’t run away but don’t fire either, they are flanked by the Tin shed and the wall so it’s a bit like the Pass at Thermopylae, Faith kills the Zed she is fighting but there is enough room for 2 Zeds to fight Hope, she kills 1 of them but falls to the other. Oh dear 10 zeds 1 Faith.

Turn 15 Faith passes her leader down guts test and then shoots the zombie who had taken down Sophie killing it before it can start to eat her, OK looking a bit better.

Turn 16 Faith looks at all the Zombies and thinks - ‘s**t’, all the zombies look at Sophie and think ‘FOOD’ (both are inactive).

Turn 17 Faith takes a deliberate aim and opens fire on zombies, ‘click, click’ she is out of ammo Zeds start to chew on Sophie.

Turn 18 Zombies finish their Sophie snack while Faith stares aghast at what is happening in front of her. (She is inactive and still out of ammo)

Turn 19 The zombies finished feasting on Sophie but Faith kept failing to activate, must be due to the horror of seeing your friend being eaten in front of you. The fighting starts again and Faith has killed 2 Zeds but now she is surrounded.

Turn 20 Remember Thermopylae, it was good while the Persians were in front of the Greeks but distinctly worrying when they were behind them.

Turn 21 to Turn 24 I was going to try and explain the action but it’s complicated and Faith is doing amazingly well with some stonkingly good dice rolls, I’m not sure how long that can last but she is down to the last 3 zeds.

In the actual game she was flanked tightly by the walls and so only 2 zeds were able to fight her each turn, one in front and one in the rear. As she’s a good fighter and as I interpreted Bryans games wrongly the zeds are very poor fighters so she fared better than if she had been more in the open as these pictures suggest.

Blimey she kills all 3 of them.

This is the situation at the end of turn 24, lots of dead zeds and what should be the bones of Sophie.

Turn 25 The last woman standing loads her gun, and picks up Sophies 2 guns and holsters and prepares to leave the blood bath.

Turn 26 Faith moves towards the large corrugated building on our left. All the zombies are dead and so unless she starts to make noise she should be OK.

Turn 27 Faith is poised outside the building.

She enters the building and finds 1 zed, surprised she halts and thinks about the situation, failed to react. I forgot to mention the check to see if there was anything or anyone in a building.

Turn 28 The zed does not think about the situation he thinks FOOOOOD and attacks. Faith shouts “bring it on” and waits for the zed to get close enough for her to turn it into mince meat. After killing 10 zeds in single combat she is feeling very confident. She does kill the zed and then searches the building but finds nothing else.

Turn 29 to 31 She goes to the Deli, enters and finds nothing, the building has been looted and there is no food, looks like being a bad day.

Turn 32 She enters the fish and chip shop and finds Jane a low grade looter with a pistol, they both go for their guns, Faith gets there 1st and fires twice, but misses with the 1st shot and runs out of ammo on the 2nd shot.

Jane fails the being shot at test and surrenders, too confused to realize that Faith is out of ammo, she failed both Brains and Guts tests.

Turn 33 Jane hands her gun over to Faith, there is nothing else in the dingy lock up food shop.

Turn 34 Faith leaves Jane in the chip shop and moves on to the next building in the town, muttering under her breath about bad luck and zombies and being hungry.

Turn 35 Pay dirt, well not really, she finds enough food for 1 meal and eats it there and then, this has been a total failure so far.

Turn 36 She decides to go back and enlist the aid of Jane Delmont the looter because Faith is going to need help if she is to survive the holocaust, and some gun or zombie fodder in the shape of Jane will help her achieve that.

Synopsis

The game started off badly when Charity was killed and eaten early on, she was never going to be too much help against any strong opponent but the zombie just chewed her up so easily. When Hope went down and Faith was left surrounded by 10 zombies I thought this was going to be a very short game but then with some amazing dice throwing she survived and moved on and the game lasted twice as long as I expected, it was a bit of an anticlimax after the blood bath with the zombies but recruiting Jane means that she has some chance next time around.

This game was played nearly 8 years ago and the salient text was written around then and re-reading and re-writing it now I’ve noticed how influenced I was by the style of writing of Whiteface the other Blogger who got me back into gaming. I retook the photos for this write up because my previous table was pretty sparse, and just for interest this is what it looked like back then.

The figures are still the same but the scenery has come on a bit.

The mysterious Hope with the torn T shirt.

This was the actual situation in the fight, Hope/Sophie was in front of Faith and 2 zeds could get to her. Faith was further back and so only 1 could get at her initially.

Until this happened.

I’ve not played games like this for a few years but re-writing this has reminded me how much I enjoyed them.

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

Cheers and all the best.