Collins tells the tale of the walking dead

Pre-Game Blah

Remember to go view my other project to see me make and paint all this cool stuff.

In this episode Rick has befriended Morgan and his shovel-happy son Duane and convinced them to go to the local police station to recover some clothes and all important firearms to help them through these trying times.

Objectives

• collect as many supplies as possible
• don’t die
• get into the police station and interact with the lockers
• do all of this before reaching threat level 18 (end game)

Intro

Having made friends and been brought up to speed with the world by Morgan and Duane, Rick offers to help them out by taking them to the local police station and recovering whatever is left. Grabbing the keys for the station and gun lockers the trio head out bringing with them the limited gear they found recently.

As they arrive the trio find the police station mostly intact with 6 walkers shambling outside and a couple of shadows moving around inside.

Taking the lead Rick fires on the walker immediately to their front. Needing to fire a few rounds to get that all important headshot empties the old revolver. The loud report of the old firearm attracts and the walkers in the immediate area and Rick quickly has to switch to the screwdriver he picked up earlier to defend himself.

Duane sees a pile of supplies at the barricades and runs off to rummage through it which leaves Morgan to intercept the walkers that Duane is clearly oblivious to, he is a child still after all… ‘ooo shiny’

Rick finds that a screwdriver doesn’t make for the best weapon, sure it works but it is harder! As Morgan runs around putting walkers out of their misery he taunts Rick and his stupidity or inexperience.

As such Rick switches to searching for useful items whilst Morgan continues to battle to undead. Morgan starts to struggle with one particularly toughie who must have had a thick skull or something.

The outside of the station seems to be littered with useless junk so Rick moves out of the streets towards the entrance of the station…

…and is immediately ambushed by a walker by the door.

As Rick deals with that little surprise Morgan makes it inside the station which as it turns out was unlocked and finds it’s new inhabitants blocking the way to the gun lockers.

Clearing out the small local police station doesn’t take too long but what the group doesn’t realise that a huge herd has been roused by careless firefights and is making its way unstoppably towards them. They’ll soon realise that leaving the door wide open door could be a fatal mistake…

Grabbing the guns and ammunition the trio complete their primary objectives and make it out the back door avoiding the horde that was drawn to Rick’s shooting earlier in the day….

Wrap-up

This was a nice standard solo play ‘grab all the supplies’ mission. Even though the points to walker ratio was about right and the threat ranked up quickly it seemed like this game was too easy for the survivors, no HP was lost and mostly the walkers were a simple inconvenience. When the survivors couldn’t do anything fancy they opted to try and reduce the threat on a 50:50 roll. it worked alright to elongate it.

Event Cards

• Fire!
• The Hunger
• Won’t Stay Down
• Shooting At Shadows
• The Walking Dead
• No Hope

Casualties

4 walkers dead

4 knocked down

Upgrades

All 7 of the supply tokens were gathered up and they managed to interact with the gun lockers too. In the next mission Rick will be able to go into battle tooled to fuck, with or without friends

Pre-Game blah

Remember to go view my other project to see me make and paint all this cool stuff. This match is the first we time we will see our hero (Rick) out of his coma and trying to find his family. The setting is the sub-urban conurbation that he and his family settled down in 5 years previously.

This is also the first game of TWD I’ve played in about 4 years so I’ll be using it as a learning experience and playing a little fast and loose with the rules. my game, my toys, my fun, my way.

Objectives:

• Collect as many supplies as possible
• Reach/search the house top/left of the map
• Join two factions in an aggressive way
• Not die on turn 1 (ideally)

Intro

Rick has managed to escape the horrors of the hospital unscathed and already scrounged up a glass bottle of water which he has been using to satisfy his thirst. Still yet to see another living being Rick is hoping that he will find his family holed up in their family home. When he arrives he sees a group of 5 walkers between him and his house, he should be able to bypass them and maybe scrounge up some more gear in the debris on the way past them…

In the first few of turns, Rick sneaks forward using an empty water bottle to distract a walker and grabs the nearest loot token finding some bandages. He As that happens a herd of walkers appears but thankfully they are the wrong side of a wooden fence. it looks like it will hold… for now.

Event Cards

• Mega Herd
• Theres a storm a coming
• Shooting at shadows

Threat level = 2

Being spooked by the herd appearing out of nowhere Rick runs towards his neighbour’s house. There he runs into a walker and fights them over a barricade managing to knock them down. Taking a breather he rummages through the bag at his feet and pulls out an old knackered revolver. What luck! it has a few rounds left in it. Hopping the barrier and stamping on the downed walkers head to finish her off he turns his new weapon on the walkers outside his house downing the nearest.

The mayhem this causes increases the threat and draws all the walkers in the area towards him. Rick tries sneaking round the corner and only just manages to get past the one heading for his old position at the barricade when two new ones burst out of his neighbour’s house! Rick guesses that he won’t be dining with the Thompsons any time soon.

Sneaking away further Rick makes it onto his drive and searches the boxes piled up. He’s attacked by a lurker and is injured as he is taken by surprise. Rick is fast learning that this world will never be the same again.

Event Cards

• Rouse Lurkers
• Surrounded

Threat Level = 8

Rick continues to search his front garden as there is so much junk knocking about. He finds half a box of ammo before he is set upon by another walker.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Rick, Morgan and his son Duane who have been holed up in his house, appear out of the garage door that’s slightly ajar. Thinking that the new body sneaking around is just another walker the young boy runs headlong at Rick and smacks him as hard as he can with his shovel knocking him down. Morgan moves to intercept the walkers that would have been drawn to the noise Duane made running and incapacitates them.

Event Cards

• Pandemonium

Threat Level = 11

Realising that Rick is still a member of the living (just) Morgan stops Duane dispatching Rick and rushes to kill the walkers bearing down on the young boy.

Meanwhile Duane opens the front door and helps Rick crawl inside to safety.

Event Cards

• Grim Recognition

Threat Level = 14

Wrap Up

I played a little fast and loose with the rules this game and might not have recorded everything on this post at the right time/stage (turns out play, photographing and editing at the same time is hard). It is the first time I’ve played in a little while and I did have some objectives I wanted to hit. The hardest part was forcing the two groups together at the right time and without breaking too much of the fun of gameplay (relearning the basics).

the game was clearly split into two. run around and collect supplies AND have two factions meet and fight.

When Duane clobbered Rick with the shovel he was making use of the bonus dice awarded by Rick being in contact with other walkers that had thankfully appeared and moved due to the pandemonium event card. that made it a lot easier for Duane to strike and knockdown Rick who arguably should have easily bounced the surprise attack in defence (base of 2 red vs 1 white). the 50:50 of bludgeon worked well for the story, had it gone the other way I feel that Rick would have smacked Duane hard if the walkers weren’t there.

Morgan with his 2 white dice in melee was just chopping walkers to bits in every fight, he wasn’t ‘killing’ many but was taking them down with ease (you need to score ! on the dice to kill a walker outright)

Casualties

3 walkers killed

6 walkers knocked down

1 Rick with a big headache (1 HP left)

Upgrades

Rick recovered 4 supply tokens, in the campaign rules that allows for 40 points to be added to his groups roster… if we gloss over the 64 points that Duane and Morgan cost and try and story this, Rick did find an old gun, so perhaps he found a handgun, he also found bandages and ammo. It is reasonable for me to add a few items along those lines to his listing for the next game.