Pre Salute and Bullets and Brains part 3

As it comes out of the fridge in one solid mass
NO
that is not all for you.
A total of 500g of Chocolate in that!

Yes the day before Salute and all is well, I have made all the orders for pick up at the show that I need. Ok just 1 order! I have been to the bank to work out how much is worth taking. I have even washed the blog tee shirt so it should be easier to avoid me if that is your choice. My final preparation was yesterday when I checked and the fudge is now set! Not so very much as usual as I have different people asking for it at home in the form of neighbours, relatives and even some of the ladies who work in my local Tesco. Being honest the ladies in my local Tesco are better looking and much more fanciable than most wargamers. There are exceptions of course, but generally!

So generally I am ready. Well as ready as I need to be! (I hope)

So pressing on.

Part 3 of the Bullets and Brains games put on By East street games.

As Kev had to leave early to amass enough brownie points to go to Salute tomorrow, that left Ian, Dave and Myself to take on Paul and Christine from East Street Games. We were allowed to select some different US troops. I was in the loo when the choice was made and came back to find I had a flame thrower and a leader. They did give me the option to change them but what the heck I though might as well stick and see what the flame thrower does. The flamethrower rules were simple logical and straight forward.  Mostly flamethrowers work by using up all the oxygen and making it impossible to breathe, being set on fire is a secondary effect. I did not think zombies would be too worried about the fire or indeed the lack of oxygen but I did think that it would do them no good what so ever. The rules they just made sense on the table and I think worked very well indeed.

Dave had a sniper and a goffer carrying extra ammunition for everyone and Ian had a commando and a dog with handler. Our mission this time was generated randomly from a table in the rule book. The task was to kill 10 or more zombies in one of 2 separate areas (no not 5 zombies from each area) and to exit 1 figure from the opposite board corner. The board was set up, we had a minute deciding what to do and as per usual totally ignored the plan and changed it in the second turn! That really does sound like us.

Given that the flamethrower only had four shots but auto hit and a range of 12 inches I needed to get him up the board pretty quick! So Dave set up the sniper and the Ammo Carrier and I advanced the leader and the flamethrower. Ian moved as fast as he dared towards and into the pub! We did wonder if he would stay there! But he did not stop. Then the zombies started to arrive. Which infected my leader on the first turn as he was in move range of a spawning point. But I had very little choice if I was to move up the board.

The ammo guy did most of the heavy lifting and killed the zed. Dave's Sniper picked of a couple at long range and before long our kill total in the area was 2 and we needed 10. generating 1 a turn over 8 turns we knew we would have to get loud to generate more zombies. So by turn 2 I had my leader on 2 wounds and some sneaky zombie had taken a bite out of the flame thrower guy as well and had been dispatched in melee. But that left him wounded as well and with the infection they would get an extra wound each turn  and when on 5 wounds they would become zeds! The Ammo guy protected the sniper and the commando, dog handler and Fido all moved through the pub and climbed over the bar on the way to the rear entrance..

By fluke I had placed the leader just out of zombie reach when the spawned which resulted in some melee battles right on the edge of the killing zone. Which in turn resulted in the sniper getting so good shots in. Ian had now reached the back door and we were on 5 kills in the right zone. The Ammo guy had been luck in melee taking care of the two who had spawned behind the flamethrower. While the flamethrower would automatically hit it would only wound the zeds and while firing it as often as possible with only its 4 shots in the whole game my leader was able to keep the zombies clear of him.

meanwhile Christine had abandoned one of her zombie spawn points and was concentrating on another. So when Ian left the pub he had a wall of biting flesh ahead of him. And he needed to get a single figure over the yellow line. (top right in picture).

When the leader was down to a single wound I moved him into the kill zone. The result was his death and turn into a zombie. Dave took great delight in using the sniper to drill a shot into the back of my head and we suddenly became 2 zeds short of the total that needed to die in that sector. And my flamethrower guy was on his last wound. So I did the sensible thing and crossed the line into the killing zone and turned into a zombie. We had no medics or antibiotics so once infected I was always going to die. Again Dave Grinning  killed my other character the instant he turned and was still able to dispatch one other so in 8 turns we had managed to kill the required number of zombies in that sector.

Ian somehow managed to get past the wall of zombies, but taking damage as he did so and killing a couple in the process. We asked if the dog was acceptable as the figure to make it of the table or if it had to be a human. (The Dog can move faster). Casper who was refing looked it up in the rules and decided in our favour and on the last turn the dog made it to safety.

Thus we earned a human victory (of sorts) in the last game.

Conclusion:
We played 3 games in a single day with 2 zombie wins and one Human win. All games were very close and came down to the  wire. Which gave the games a great and exciting feel to them. The rules work very well and if you allow for the fact that the zeds can think tactically and know the human victory conditions were hard to fault.

While these rules work very well for one of games but the death rate among humans makes it hard to imagine continuing characters at this stage. Maybe this will change in the future as I know they are planning further PDF releases of rules updates. But if you want a fun game played in 8 or less turns with about 40 figures total I would recommend the rules.

No rules are perfect however and I would be looking for more than 1 off games. But as they stand they are pretty good. Simple and enjoyable. The mechanics are sound and work well, they are also fairly instinctive and other than zombies not acting very zombie like due to player involvement and the mortality rate being very high. Other than those things which I know I could tweak to suit what I want, these rules make a good set for "Outbreak" era zombie wargaming.

Thanks for reading and with Salute tomorrow I will no doubt do a loot post on Sunday. So until then have fun and don't get bitten.

Take care of yourself.