28mm Zombie Apocalypse Game Report: The Trap

After the Cavalier show on Sunday 5 members of Posties Rejects (Ray, Postie, Lee, Richard and Ian)  came back to my man cave/shed to have a quick/small zombie game for a couple of hours. Lee  http://bigleesminipaintingblog.blogspot.com/ and Ray http://onelover-ray.blogspot.com/2011/03/angry-lurkers-zombie-game-no2.html had brought cameras aswell to take pictures for their blogs so I took just a few pictures from my GM point of view and a bit of eye candy and because I was keeping track of the game (in the last game everybody took shots from my camera to show the point of view from their vantage point and because I was hosting the game. Ray has already posted his report of the game and it's very good and I have posted the link to it at top of report and Lee will probably post later in the week.

To the game then, the scenario I played was of a radio broadcast been played about a town where there is safety and a pick up point to a zombie free zone, it did not mention military or goverment but it sounded professional. 4 groups took the bait, 2 less than savoury groups (King Willies Voodoo Posse and Sally's Sicko's) and 2 normal survivor groups (Shaun's Sheep and Max's Groupies). My initial plan was for the groups to clash (bad guys vs good guys especially with the players screwing each other over) with a little zombie action on the side, no chance, people immeadiately forget everything when the first zombie appears and 2 groups even started sharing resources ( I was stunned but not really there were a lot of zombie traps).

I had drawn a map of the area liberally scattered with items like fuel, ammo, medicine and food (food 4 points, ammo 3 points, meds 2 points and fuel 1 point) hidden in buildings, vehicles and body bags etc.... , this was discussed beforehand with the players as to what was the most valuable to them if they were ever in this situation for real? (Do you agree with the priority given to certain items?). Zombies were placed in cargo containers and other locations which were triggered when searched and for the first time ragers and dogs aswell.

Richard (Shaun) triggered the first two containers and fought for his life losing 3 members of his party before he could put distance between himself and the zombies, Stuart (Max) was lucky and made good progress but no kills until he triggered the diner and the dogs, Ray (Sally) triggered a rager cargo container and got Sally and one other member dead in minutes before he could disengage, Lee (King Willy) walked by his greatest danger an apartment full of goodies but also a zombie spawn paint and had a quiet time until he found the military compound and his doom ( from zombies initially but ultimately the parasol group maybe?).

The game lasted about two hours until Richard had to go and others were waning due to been knackered after the show, food and the game. Postie won by one point (31) over Richard (30). Lee (18) and Ray (14), the players were allowed to pick the group of their choice and come in where they wanted also while I was in the house doing something else. Some parts of the map were more dangerous than other parts, one of items to be found was my map of the town with all areas marked up and locations of all traps.

When Lee found the Parasol warehouse he triggered a message and was told to await rescue and safety which he would never have (cue maniacal laughter) as the men in hazmat suits would appear near his location.The zombie killers were Haley a foundry SWAT member with machine pistol , little Lucy a hasslefree child with baseball bat and dustbin lid and a Spalding figure from the Devils Rejects with a shotgun.

Pictures and captions below, the next game will probably be in the underground parasol facility.

Initial pictures of the city, a lot of roofs removed due to fire damage but to mainly help with the searching.

Another view of the city, moved a lot of buildings around for a different view and introduced some different stuff.

The gangs/groups start to appear.....

....and begin the search, poor old Richard about to have a bad day.

After searching two containers, zombies everywhere.

Ray after triggering the ragers, I put zombies on top of containers to signify container has more to give (cue mor maniacal laughter).

Postie with his easy trip to begin with but not for long.

Lee and his posse and non triggered apartment block behind him, I had no luck with that.

The parasol warehouse and CCTV monitors and computer equipment.

Lee heading and measuring to his ultimate doom.

Richard escaping the massacre.

Lee in the parasol warehouse after triggering the message with his posse following, the tokens represent items found items like fuel and ammo.

  

A spawn point discharges more zombies.

Zombies everywhere.

Ray's group in sight but they got away..........

Not a lot of pictures but it was the day of the 3 cameras and being a sick, tired and demented GM trying to kill off his friends.

Cavalier Wargames Show on Sunday, upcoming Zombie Game and 28mm Ford Transit

This Sunday I'm going to my first wargames show (I try to get to Salute and SELWG aswell, anything else is a bonus) of the year http://www.twws.org.uk/cavalier2011.htm , smallish show but it's not that far away from where I live, several of the rejects going and afterwards I've been convinced to put on a zombie game for the rejects and Lee from http://bigleesminipaintingblog.blogspot.com/ who we're meeting at the show. If you've never been to this show in it's newest location it's now infamous for it's terrible hall lighting but that won't stop me from taking pictures with my one good eye. If you're there and spot me speak up I'm quite pleasant but don't appear so especially with the ongoing trials of Bell's Palsy (massive strawberry blonde gentleman with short hair and glasses).

I know this probably only helps people who live near the monstrosity that is Bluewater in Kent but they have an expensive little shop called MODELZONE that I picked up a 1:43 scale white Ford Transit van for £6.99 now I don't know if it's a good deal or not but I went all mad and bought it, now my modern zombie gaming is set in the US and so I asked a fellow blogger Das Auto! Among other things... http://archatypical.blogspot.com/ for information on the make in Amerca and he said it's called the Ford Transit Connect and was named North American Truck of the year last year, there were a lot of these beauties left in the shop last week when I bought mine. Will post pictures from the zombie game next week aswell as the show. Have yourselves a good weekend people.

A few comparison and size pictures.

28mm Copplestone, Hasslefree and Foundry miniature for scale.

 

28mm Painted Hasslefree Miniature: Madge.

..........or where have those damn corgi's gone.

28mm painted Hasslefree Miniature listed as Madge but a stunning resemblance to a reigning british monarch and loaded for zombie. Very nice figure with some scale and size comparison pictures.
The tents I bought a long time ago from a company in Germany (whose name for the life of me I cannot remember), they come ready painted in the green but I painted one up to represent a hazmat tent .

L to R, 28mm Copplestone Castings and Hasslefree Miniatures.

28mm Painted EM4 Miniatures: Thugz

.....or King Lurker's Voodoo Fecking Posse.

These figures are from EM4 Miniatures and are listed and imported as Bobby Jackson's Thugz, the painting was started by Ray from  http://onelover-ray.blogspot.com/ but I had to finish them, basing, inking, drybrushing, varnishing etc........Very nice figures and will feature in my forthcoming zombie game, I have included some other figures to give you an idea of scale.

The Posse.

Magnificent finishing on Ray's initial paintjob.

King Lurker's first wife in the red top.

L to R, 28mm foundry and 28mm hasslefree.

King Lurker's second wife.

King Lurker himself after he discovered a fancy dress store after Z day.

Wife No.3 with baby and 28mm foundry figure for scale.

For those who didn't get the King Lurker reference........it's a slant on Predator 2.

28mm Painted Heresy Miniature: Doctor Who?

............or as Heresy say Dr Hugh McGrimmon.

This is the Dr Hugh McGrimmon figure from Heresy Miniatures  http://www.heresyminiatures.com/ who looks remarkably like a TV sci-fr hero who saves earth most weeks, to me he is that cocky git who knows everything and annoys the crap out of the locals before saving the day or as a health and safety enforcer.In my games he is a survivor or goverment advisor but he's a nice figure with a variety of gaming uses.

L to R, 28mm copplestone castings and 28mm hasslefree miniatures.for scale and size comparisons.

28mm Painted Zombie Spawn Points.

........or the zombies in barrels from Revenge of the Living Dead.

For the zombie rules I use you can have zombie spawn points that basically designate where more zombies will appear on the board in a random matter if you're feeling generous or right next to the player if you're not. They are generated on the roll of a D6 so I placed a headstone on these bases signifying the D6 number (the headstones I believe came from the Warhammer skeletons box from Games Workshop), the zombie figures come from Eureka Miniatures  http://www.eurekamin.com.au/  but can also be got from http://www.fighting15sshop.co.uk/ and to me remind me of the zombies in the barrels from Revenge of the Living Dead.

I painted them with that in mind and covered them in varying shades of red paint and red and brown ink, now the paintjob on these figures and bases was quick because these are gaming/scenery pieces and I didnt put as much effort in to them as I normally would for the reason that the the figures aren't greatly designed but they're perfect for what they are portraying and that was probably the point when they were made. The other numbers 1 and 6 will go on my zombie horde bases probably written on the bodybags with the zombies still in them.

The rules I use are Akula's AR:SE rules on two A4 pages http://akulasblog.blogspot.com/

Four of a kind.

Numbers 2 and 3.

Numbers 4 and 5.

Number 1 and 6.

28mm Painted Chronoscope Miniature: Father Thomas

....or losing my religion.

Have painted up this figure purely because of watching the movie REC 2 (with do a small review this week on the blog) and in the movie its now explaining the plague/virus in the building as demonic driven, so I now need this character with his faith and a .45 in his good book.

The miniature is from chronoscope http://www.reapermini.com/ and comes with the option of putting a gun or a cross in his hand, lovely figure and a nice easy paint and is ready to bring the word to the zombie hordes.

L to R, 28mm Copplestone Castings and 28mm Hasslefree Miniatures for comparison pictures.

28mm Painted Reaper Miniature: The Road Warrior.

........I'm scared, Fif. It's that rat circus out there, I'm beginning to enjoy it. Look, any longer out on that road and I'm one of them, a terminal psychotic, except that I've got this bronze badge that says that I'm one of the good guys.

This is a 28mm miniature from Reaper Miniatures called Rex, Dark Future Hero designed by Tim Prow but to me he's The Road Warrior and a zombie/apocalypse survivor, size and comparison pictures included.

L to R, 28mm Copplestones Castings and Wargames Foundry.

All he needs is one of the last V8s.

28mm Painted Hasslefree Zombie Surfer: Surf's Up.

.................smells like victory.

28mm painted zombie surfer from Hasslefree Miniatures with some size and comparison pictures, can you name the movie the quote above comes from with a famous surfing scene.

L to R, 28mm copplestone castings and 28mm foundry.

28mm Modern Zombie Game Report: Zombietown USA Batrep.

Put a zombie game on Sunday for 4 of Posties rejects, the game involved 4 small squads of national guardsmen entering the town to recover a phial of liquid hidden in the town plus 4 side missions.Find and locate a CIA operative (vital information), locate the local governor (political strings still being pulled), locate grandmother/grandson of a Leiutenant General (living in hope) and CBS camera crew with vital footage.

I used the Akula's AR:SE zombie rules which are generated on a playing card system (basically black moves zombies and red moves survivors and a joker ends the turn.

Squad A: Captain Richard plus 4 guardsmen
Squad B: Leuitenant Stuart (Postie) plus 4 guardsmen.
Squad C: Sergeant Surjit plus 4 guardsmen.
Squad D: Corporal Ray plus 4 guardsmen.
Everybody had a M16 plus a few guardsmen had grenade launchers and SAWs, I was in control of the zombies and umpiring, the zombies were generated on spawn points (4 static and the 2 mobile zombie hordes), if zombies were to be generated I threw that amount of dice (sometimes 25+) and placed them at that numbered spawn point.

Squad B and D enterd from the north with squad A and C entered from the south (all other points were blocked to them) and squad D went for it blazing away and attracting a lot of attention (there were about 20 zombies on the board to begin with and a lot of them headed towards the gunfire).Squad A and C were more cautious and started to sweep the buildings for survivors and phial of liquid (the survivors made contact when a guardsmen was within 3 inches and the phial was detected with a sensor each team had when within 3 inches).For the first few turns anything dead got a bullet between the eyes and the shooting of most squads was deadly and the spawn points were kept busy.

Within the first 4-5 turns most survivors had been located and placed among the squads and the general consensus was that things were good and finish things off by finding the phial and everybody would exit the town the way they had come in (by this stage I was having a fit as there had been one or two close shaves but no casualties and my zombies were getting slaughtered).Squad D needed to exit the town on the other side due to his rear been overrun with zombies.Then the phial was located in a container and things started to go wrong for the guardsmen (black cards started to come out together and allowed mass movement by the zombies to corner the guardsmen).

Squad B had its first infected guardsmen trying to remove the phial from a container (I roll a D6 to see how many turns before coma and reactivation), the CIA operative recived a infection injury aswell (Squad A got most of its kills through close combat in these turns?) but the other squads over 2 turns lost 4 guardsmen (including sergeant Surjit) to been zombie food while another 3 got infected by injury.The phial was not recovered as the game ended and the container became a zombie meeting area.Squad A, D and C left the area (South) with survivors but B had problems and would have to exit to the north.All survivors were found but the CIA operative never made it (ended up as zombie food metres from getting off table).

All in all the game lasted longer than we thought ( 6 hours but could have gone on longer) as I had another scenario ready to go.The guys actually liked the game even though zombies are not their thing, military forces are very strong and between the 20 guardsmen they put about 150+ zombies and tanks into the void and bad luck eventually lead to their casualties.The next game will be normal survivors without all the weapons and skills that the military have, the other thing is if a friend receives a bite should they be despatched there and then ( I will probably put in a dice rule to reflect this). Postie actually won among the players by killing an awful lot of zombie tanks. (P.S close combat with zombies is a bad thing!)

Some pictures from the game, hope you like and apologies for any mistakes but thats life ( any questions just leave a comment as I always respond).

Squad A and C pooling forces after entering the town.

A zombie horde spawns.

A choke point of zombies.

Another zombie horde spawns more zeds.

An aerial view of the fighting around squad A and C.

Numbers are starting to count against the guardsmen.

CIA operative receiving his first wound.

No respect for the dead, tough fighting at base camp.

Aerial veiw of the worsening zombie numbers.

A squad view of the container containing the phial.

Guardsmen Van Damme with a target rich enviroment developing but he is wounded already.