Bullets and Brains (Part 2)

Yes the second game. If you have yet to read about the first game just refer to the previous posting by me and you will get the low down.

Well this game was a bit different. Dave and myself had the zombies this time and Kev and Ian the humans. No they did not have US army, but a bunch of civilians including 2 criminals which had special powers and did not trigger encounter tokens. Normal civilians did. As a crew they were much lighter armed with no automatic weapons and no medic (Gulp) but they could scavenge from crates. A variety of items were to be found in the crates but I did not see the lists so I will only comment on what was pulled out. Those finds being weapons (Mostly knives) bandages and antibiotics. When they spent a turn and an action by a crate they could search and roll a d6 and take any single item of that value or lower from the list.

The civilian mission was to kill two random zombies which were identified when players entered that sector of the board and again if possible get one figure from the boards opposite corner. I will admit I may have gotten their Victory conditions wrong as I was at this stage in zombie mode and the brain had shut down. The zombies Victory condition was to stop them getting to the two designated zombies and that was enough for me to think about while in zombie-mode.

Kev and Ian split the civilians evenly and each set about entering each sector separately rather than working as a single team. But again the 8 turn limit was most likely to scupper any attempt at that from the outset.

When you play with a certain group for a while you can predict how they will react. I am sure they know how I will at times and play on that. Well typical for Ian in zombie games he wanted the most scavenged equipment as possible so he had a slight detour when approaching my sector and after dispatching the only zombie I sent to block him looted the crates till they were exhausted. There were still other crates though
and I could see that he wanted to arm all of the civilians before confronting a load of biters. Kev at the other side was doing just as well and killing and looting as he went. To be honest I suspect I would have done the same.

They were using a noisy and quiet alternative turn tactic to slow down the zombies arrival via the spawn points meaning that me and Dave would have less zombies on the board when it came to them reaching the sector and determining who the random zombie to be killed as part of the VP. A sound choice of tactic and much to be applauded.

Now Dave and myself did not play the spirit of zombies. Well I for one did not no matter what Dave may later say. Zombies should not be tactical and should behave in a mindless feeding frenzy manner. But having checked with Casper and Christine we decided to have the zombies runaway and hide in a very un-zombie like way. By doing so we were able to keep the zombie with the victory conditions out of any fight and put a meat shield of living dead between the civilians and the target. Yes unsporting and very un-zombie like which makes me think zombies have to be played via an automated system or by an "Impartial" ref! And not by other players who all want to win. And that is probably the only fault I can say about the rules at present. But the game is the game and you always play to the whistle and the whistle was not blown and that was not considered a fowl, so we protected the target zeds. As you can see by my positioning of the zombies in the building with the target zombie in the corner and a wall of biting flesh as an undead barricade.

When It reached this stage and with a spawning point directly outside Ian gave up trying to get to that zed and went to support Kev. I did feel bad about it as it was not a very zombie like thing to do. Runaway and Hide!

meanwhile at the other side of the board Kev was doing better and had actually got into hand to hand with his target, but had lost a couple of people along the way. But time was really against them now and in the last few turn while they did loot that zombies body they just ran out of time. I was exiting the building and giving chase to Ian's civilians and did manage to bite one who spawned from a different spawning point and not with my conga line exiting the building. But the bitten one was a sacrificial piece left there to slow us down.

So we had another zombie win.

While the game was fun having players control the zombies and having the zombie player know which zombie was the target did mean every player behaved in a different way. For example the Humans used the loud and noisy turn and the quiet and sneaky turns to limit the zombies moves and the number arriving on the board and the zombie players marshalled their troops to protect their asset. You can blame no players for doing so. And while it was a very fun and enjoyable scenario the turn limit of 8 turns always meant that there would be 8 zombies to fight to get the asset zombie.

If you buy these rules and I probably will I would make a few changes to this scenario. Firstly forget the turn limits. This will allow the humans to get enough resources to take on the zeds. As without the tools the job becomes so much harder. But if you choose you could start the humans with a pool of equipment already as opposed to the meagre supply they started with. Additionally I would change the zombies, if you cannot have them automated in some way (OH someone please make an app!). I would not have the zombie identified but simply say when they searched the totally dead (brain dead) zombie roll a d6 needing 5+ to find what they are looking for on it. needless to say it would need to be playtested a few times first but it might stop the zombies running and hiding!

But overall a very good scenario and well worth playing and I would be very happy to do so again.

I will do the final part of Saturday as we did play 1 more scenario in the day. But so far 2 zombie wins and no human wins.