Defending the outpost!

Hey guys,


let me start with saying I simply DO NOT GET IT. I got this shiny sony ericsson something phone...no big deal, I like them plain and simple. This one is even recylced or something. Anyways, what the F-word? Seriously, we're in frikin 2012 and I can't simply plug the phone, copy the pics and be done with it. It took me AGES to get those pictures on the computer. Rant over, heres the blog post:



I've finally got around to playing a game again.  I've set up a table using my new sandbags and fences, I think I looks pretty okay, but there is still something missing...maybe some kind of foliage or something, I am simply not satisfied.

Well, to scenario. I've picked my probaby favorite scenario, pretty straight forward. Phantom group 47 was on a recon mission. They've barricaded themselves in two small buildings in suburbs. They are so called "Forward observation" post, protecting the flanks of much bigger opperation. The "Humanity restored" emergency government is running a cleaning operations in city centre, reclaiming the city and with it, a civilisation in this part of Unnamed State (US :P). The team has spotted a large horde of undead (a horde so large, I had to build extra zeds for this scenario!), approaching their way. They were ordered to hold their position AT ALL COSTS. They sure pack a lot of firepower, but experienced veteran of zombie war, grizzled lieutenant Ian "Shell" Drake has a second thoughts about the experience of their team.

Here is the team's composition (I've made Shell a shot caller so he can lead his team, everything else, except for primary weapons was rolled for. So, sheeple was just rolled badly :P):

The explanation of the team is below. They follow from left to right:


Lt. Ian "Shell" Drake - shot caller
GUTS - 10
GUNS - 8
FISTS - 7

Had to have 1 drawback skill. I've rolled 3 times in a row for a "fat bastard", which can only be taken for campaign play. I've then rolled a loner, which prevents him from joining any group, or lending his guts score to them. Which, of course, are the best you can get. Only for him now.

He is armed with an assault rifle and I've rollef for a second weapon - a club :D

pvt. Simonsky - sheeple

A sheeple represents the unnamed heroes, okay "heroes", in Phantom group 47, Simonsky is a greenhorn. It is his first mission and now that the problems are approaching, it might as well be his last. I've made his name up, nobody cares anyways.

GUTS - 7
GUNS - 5
FISTS - 5

His skill was decided by me,a weapons specialist, because he carries a light machine gun.

sgt. Johnny "Lord" Siwoc - back up

Lord has seen some action with Shell. His ancestors were fearsome Wikings, but he tends to hide that.

GUTS - 8
GUNS - 6
FISTS - 5

His previous experience granted him nerves of steel, so he won't be troubled if his mates die too much. Orders are orders!
Armed with an assault rifle, just as his BFF, Drake. Oh, and a spear. He is a wiking after all! HUZZAH!

pvt. Fan - sheeple

Fan is another greenhorn. He was recruited as the team went on their positions, so his fighting spirit is a bit low. He talks a lot and he told the team that he loves, what slovenians call "vampi" (tripe, the dish), so Simonsky calls him "Vampifan" now and then. I've really rolled high for his stats, which made him really bad.
GUTS - 4
GUNS - 5
FISTS - 3

Armed with an assault rifle (and underbarrel grenade launcher that I don't count as I don't have rules for it yet :P).


Here is the preview of the battlefield. It is 3x3 table and I think 3x4 would do better. Then again,  if zombies would be placed further back, noone would have a range to them, except a LMG, so if we rethink it, size might be just fine. Our heores are ready to defend themselves in barricaded green and blue buildings. Please do not ask me about tactical benefits of positioning an OP on the low ground. Lets say they just ran back here, and their main spotting post was on top of the minimart (half black building on north)

So, this is their little sandbaged outpost that they have to defend. Attacking are 41 zeds (I had to build 4 more, which equals 1 sprue of Mantics and 1 headless zombie that I had on used sprue. I don't like those, but well, I need 1 fast and I don't want to build 2 sprues of zeds :P)

We got Fan - Lord - Simonsky and Shell, from left to right.

 Above, you can see how splendid Fan shot his rifle on first round. To translate it to people, who don't know the NMRIH system, its a miss, and two jams. Or ran-out-of-ammo tests. The thing is, you'd have to do hard survive check (roll 5 or less on 2 dice) or your gun rans out of ammo. Sheeples only have 1 die for survive rolls, so they can't make it. That, according to rules, is because they're here to die. Sorry Fan.

 Above, you can see zeds moving forward, closing in on our desperate team.

 Below, you can see a horde forming. 8 zeds or more in a group makes a horde. Hordes are bad for your health.

 

 Not much happens in a "Defend the.." scenario. You defend, they come. You can't call in more zeds, so you just fire away all you got. Or do you?

Here is the result of second round of shooting. Blue for Lord, red for Simonsky. With 2 dice for survive! tests, Lord had a chance to fix his weapon. He didn't. Simonsky was out of his ammo, too. Looks like someone forgot to pack their 5.56x45!

 So, we got 3 guys out of 4 with no more ammunition on second turn. Could it get worse, you aks yourselves? Of course. It was "something" in the air for zeds, a roll of:

 (thats 10, not 0), made them extra hungry and allowed them an 8" move. This got them here:

 You can see they're closing in pretty fast. We got a group of 7 (not a horde, hah!), closing in on blue building and two hordes running around the fence to get to Shell the destructor. On top of the minimart, you can see the casualties. Yes, the guys killed something before they ran out of ammo. Except for Fan. He seems to dislike firearms.

Next activation comes and zeds engaged our brave heroes in melee:

At this point, team of 3 brave soldiers got scared. They failed their GUTS check, which means the lowest GUTS member had to roll on fear reaction table. It can get you anywhere, from frenzy to suicide. Fan, however, got fast legs and backed away from the attackers.

There was a bloody fight between Lord and some zeds. I am not sure how rules for melee work, so I just went 3 zeds in contact with the window where Lord was, against him. He won the fight. After all 3 were dead, I started next turn.
This time, zeds launched another attack, bringing Simonsky in. I left Fan behind, as if they didn't charge  him, because he ran awa...err...tactically withdrawn. GUTS check was failed again and it was Simonsky's turn to roll. He got frenzied, he saw all red and squeezed the trigger. DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA! DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA! Zeds fell in group...it was a bloody massacre! - Oh! No, wait. That would be, if he'd had any ammo. So nothing happened. Except they both died eventually. Zeds are cruel.

 And so did Shell, right after the two brave heroes. The zeds from blue house then attacked Fan. He failed the GUTS check, rolled on the table and ran away again. This time of table and probably all the way back to friendly forces.

 Well, this concludes the game. I still forget few things, so I just left the table set and I'll play again tomorrow. A different scenario next time. I am not sure I understand how melee works, and I think I should gave everyone another turn of shooting, because they should probably carry 1 pack of ammo. But I figured this might as well be for campaign play only, so I just went with the worst case scenario. It makes a bit more interesting play, hehe. Another problem with the melee is, I am not sure if Fan should get charged or not, but if he ran away, it made more sense to leave him behind. The rules are not written the best, or thats just me being a bimbo, but well, common sense works best for me.



There is some extra for you, Mantic zeds I've painted last week:

 The first 3, I spent hours working on their skin and ruined it with a wash. But they look better this way. A bit rotten.

 And crawlers. Oh, and that weird body-less thing. I really dislike that. But I love crawlers, so...here we have the walking legs :P

 A back shot of my conversion. The reason for unnatural pose of his legs is, that he has fallen from somewhere high. It might not look as good as I've planned, but I figured its funny.

 Thats it for today. I've also took pictures of the bodies and body bags and the things I was talking about last time, but I will show those next time. Can't give you all, can I?


Thanks for reading,
Mathyoo

Playing the game!

Hello, after I had my roads built, I obviously had to play the game!

First, I picked supply run scenario, set it all up and quit playing it quite soon, way too complicated for my tired brains, lol. Then I went for "defend" scenario. Pretty basic, zombies came close to your stronghold, you have to kill them. Seems easy. I rolled to see how many zeds will attack the stronghold. Got 37 (no new would be generated), counted my zombies = 25. Yikes! I need to build more...badly. I just played with 25 then. I rolled random weapons for survivors, had a sniper, a rifle and two large caliber (Bad ass, whatever you want to call them) pistols.

Here is their last stand:
You can see surivors on top of the store and behind silver car on the parking lot:

 "Snipers" view...undead! So many! Oh my...

 Zacks closing in. You can see them clustering on the right, under the "rifle" girl...poor lost souls, unable to reach our heroes!

 Zombies reaching two survivors taking cover behind a car:

The horde, stretching arms towards some fresh braaaaains:

 

 The group two - only 1 zombie made it to the melee, sniper on the rooftop was of great assistance:

Got no more pictures, but the group on the ground ran around behind the store, climbed on truck and helped group on the rooftop kill the rest of the zeds - Mathyoo survived and won, yay!

I am slowly getting used to rules, acutally really simple once you get in. I need more survivors, here I rolled for weapons because all pistols becomes boring fast. REALLY need more zombies. So bad, I've ran and assembled some just after I've finished the game. And I need peace. I played on our dining table, which mean family members kept coming here mocking me about being a child...unaware of the fact, I am just training for the future, lol!

I will also leave my 6 zeds sculpts aside for now and will try to sculpt a fat and a strong guy from Mantic "left overs" (when you make a crawler you're left with legs and spine, which is much "meh", so I can use legs to build something else. Or something, considering my skills lol.

And I have to check Shelldrake's home rules again, twist them a bit and start using them to make zeds act as I think they should, being relentless and dumb....oh and attracted by gunfire, thats just too good to pass :P

Oh, talking about Shelldrake (I've written upper part of the post before I left this week)  - I found out I got unfollowed on your blog again...I am not sure what's the point, but I am following again now, lol.

I've also been to Vienna on "school trip" - I don't know how to call it to sound more mature, but we went to UN HQ Vienna and OSCE HQ...so that was all professional. Those were both okay, but the trip has payed itself back as I went checking the surroundings of hotel and found GK (or something) shop - I was hoping for some cheap cars (saw none...no cars at all), but I did got myself a shinny nice, big-potted X-27, or, the holy Tamiya Clear red. This big pot should last me for a while, so I've only picked one. Got to fix my zombie sextet tomorrow and should've paint moooooar! :D

Iron Ivan Games - No More Room in Hell review

Hello guys,

today I got my copy of Iron Ivan Games' No more room in hell book. For those that don't know, it is a rulebook that (I copy) "allows you to create a group of characters amidst the end of the living world...and the start of the living-dead world."

Before I start anything, I would like to stat that I have never posted review of the rulebooks before, and I hope I won't mess anything up, regarding the copyrights.

The rulebook is 80 pages long soft-back book, A4 size, which I, guess, is pretty common. The pages are stapled together, so the book won't fall apart as easily as some of the other rulebooks I own. I will dress it in plastic "shirt", just to add to its protection.

To play the game, you'll need D10s (it says at least 20, which means I'd need more, hehe), some colured tokens, a scatter dice and, being a miniatures game, miniatures and some terrain.

I haven't read trough it all yet, but there are two thing that I've learned from start: a) it has some minor typing mistakes, like some parts not being bold that should, I found price for 1 weapon missing on one chart (but you can look it up in other, so there is nothing really wrong with it)...so general little mistakes that appear after someone has printed the book. Nothing too dramatic. The second thing is extensive use of humour. And I love it! Apart from random jokes, they have a funny way of naming phases. So, movement phase becomes Fearful footing and, for example, shooting phase is named "Gruesome gunplay".

Rulebook is somewhat short, as I said, it only has 80 pages, but it covers pretty much everything you'd come up with. It covers:

- Survivors
There are 3 kinds of them, the badass guys, the badass' friends guys and the walking diner types. The first type has the most wounds (called Survive! points, to keep up with the phases namings), can carry the best weapons and the most equipment. The latter, the poorest are there just to provide Zeds with someone else to eat but your hero!

-Weapons and equipment
There are rules for various melee and range weapons and equipment, ranging from pistols, shotguns, heavy machineguns  to rocket launchers, flamethrowers and molotovs. Melee ranges from "throwing starts" (shurikens if you're a ninja!), to brass knuckles and riot shield. Equipment ranges from walkie talkies, radios and such to ballistic armour and "anti bite" armour.

- Zombies
There are MANY varieties of zombies in the book. There are (using mostly my namings to keep it simple :P):
* The (I quote) "slow moving re-animated dead (what us diehards refer to as Romero Zombies, the one true Zombies if you aks me)" - so, ordinary shamblers that die only by destroying the brains.
* The fast zombies (that aren't really zombies, Ragers, or, in this game, Runners) - they move much faster, driven by hunger, but you can kill them as any other human, so they die faster. Like really die, not die-to-live-some-more die.
*The tongue zombie, that uses his tongue to pull poor souls to him. I can imagine myself converting this one right now! Those are such a badass zombies that they're uber rare.
*The fat zombies, whose only purpose is to get close, burst, cover you in their putrescine, efectively putting a spot light on the survivor for any other undead lurkers.
*The loud zombies, who's purpose is to call in more of his friends.
*The strong zombie, being just that - strong. A Hulk, you get the point.
*Crawler! My favorite since I bought Mantic zombies. Not because they'd be particulary interesting or anything, just because I have some, hehe.
*The brains guy. That is a specially smart zombie...hmm...think of him as of a student. Someone who act like he is the smartest guy around, but hes still just a zombie. He has some special rules, making other zombies get smarter and even use weapons.

-Psychology
 As we can all imagine, seeing a walking corpse is bad. Seeing walking corpse of a friend or loved ones, is even worse. The sight of your friend being a meal for the Zeds can get you to jump right in and let 'em have it or run away. Oh, your hero could alternatively wet himself...but that doesn't make him a hero anymore, does it?

-Vehicles
The book covers rules for vehicles, starting vehicles, using vehicles, shooting from vehicles, improving vehicles and so on. You can acutally use the book to play Mad Max games with leaving zombie part out.

-Campaign
My favorite part. It has various scenarios, tips and tables for story telling, limited ammo, limited food, limited nerves and so on. Campaign is written with 2 players versus zombies in mind, but you can just as well play alone.

I must say I am really happy I got this. Sure the book with its 80 pages doesn't cover all the thing that, for example, Two hour wargames' ATZ trilogy with around 300 does, but it still has pretty much everything. The positive side oh being shorter is price, I've got mine a bit cheaper from Maelstrom games store. Not that I am paid to advertise or anything, but they send the book with free shipping anywhere on the globe.

_____
Now that I got the rules, you can definately expect a post about getting all those various zombie types, by either conversion or buying particular models. And I will play some games shortly, to learn the rules. I will post one or two report in few days. If nothing else, so someone can check If I understand the rules correctly, hehe. And, last but not least, I can work with preparations for my campaign!

Hope you found informations helpful,
Mathyoo