Monday, March 14, 2011

Grey City ep. 2 - Heavy Metal

In the second game of the Grey City campaign, the zombie survivors try to find the car parts they need to fix a short bus that they will use to escape.

Rules for the scenario
Mission Objective: the Auto Repair Shop
The survivors need to find and carry away the parts to fix the short bus in an abandoned car repair shop. The door to the shop is locked. To break in, a character needs to stand adjacent to it, spend one action and roll 5-6 on a die. The character gains +1 if carrying a heavy weapon or shotgun, and +1 if another character is adjacent.
After the door is open, characters may spend one action to enter or exit the shop. No more than four characters can be inside the shop at one time. On each turn of the survivors that ends with at least one character inside, roll a die. On a 6, they find the car parts. Each additional character inside the shop grants a +1 (for instance, if there are three characters inside, roll a die and add 2 to the result.)
Once the car parts are found, they have to be taken back to the starting edge of the board. There are two backpacks full of parts, each requires one character to carry. If a character with a backpack is defeated, place a marker on the ground. Another character may spend one action to pick it up.
Zombies do not enter the shop but they may gather around the entrance. When survivors exit the building, push the zombies back just enough to place the new model between them.
The Good warband
This scenario was run with a 300-point warband, ideally the one that survived the previous scenario.
Zombies
This scenario uses 12 Grouped Walking Dead. If playing solo, each zombie will activate with only one die unless it is in a position to close in and strike with two actions. In this case, it will activate with two dice. Leave the zombies with two dice for last.
Setup
Deploy the survivors one Short away from a board edge and place a building -- which will be the Mission Objective -- one Short away from the opposite edge. Deploy two groups of six zombies along the middle of the other edges, leaving about one base distance between them. You may add up to four obstacles or buildings, as long as they are at least one Long away from the Mission Objective and from each other. As with the previous scenario, the survivors start with initiative and time of day effects do not apply.
Victory Conditions
The Good warband wins if they manage to bring the car parts back to the edge where they started. In this case, they gain 3 victory points. In any case, they score 1 victory point per zombie killed. The zombies win 3 victory points if the warband does not succeed. They also gain 1 victory point per 25 points of defeated survivors.
If the Good warband fails this scenario, they may try again. In this case, if they lost two or more figures, they get one random replacement for free. If they fail once more, the zombie horde arrives before they can escape and  they lose the campaign.

Battle report
Mack, the old guy dressed like a hunter, showed us the short bus he intended to upgrade into an armored car. The outside wasn't too bad and we might be able to weld some metal plates over the windows. None of that would matter if the engine didn't get fixed. When we arrived in town, we had come across a car repair shop that wasn't destroyed, so we decided to look for parts there.
Seven of us went there: Mack, Kate, Jeffrey, Tom, Cassie, me and Terry, another survivor we found. The plan was simple: just rush to the car shop, get what we needed and fall back before the zombies found us. As we got close to the shop, I could hear the zombies shambling on the streets -- and we knew it wouldn't be that easy. Tom kept shouting at us to keep moving, like he was a damn drill sergeant or something.
A group of zombies advanced towards Kate and from the look on her face, I know she dodged them out of  fear, more than anything else. Then she braced her long rifle and shot one of the zombies in the head. Mack and Jeff got two others.
By then, me, Terry and Cassie had arrived at the shop. We forced the door and it opened. Terry went in to look for the parts while me and Cassie covered him, as some zombies were getting close. Then bad things started to happen. A group of zombies went after Jeff. Instead of moving away, he simply stood there and fired his gun while they surrounded him. Nobody else had time to react, and the zombies got him. Terry was taking too long, so I shot two nearby zombies with my shotgun, pushing them back, and entered the garage to help searching.
From time to time I would peek outside to see how the others were doing. Cassie had been running around, drawing the zombies away from the shop. It was a brave thing to do, but I could see in her face that she was about to break.
After a while, me and Terry got our backpacks full of parts and tools and left the car shop. The others were far back, holding against a large group of undead. I shouted to them that we had got the parts, and Tom said they would cover for us.
All the shouting must have gotten Mack distracted. That's the only way I can understand how he let the zombies get close. As with Jeff, he didn't stand a chance and the creatures ripped him to pieces. After that, when the zombies moved his way, Tom simply ran off. I never saw him leave a fight before, but then again, we never fought living dead.
Keeping our distance seemed like a wise choice, so we ran towards the back of a building to get away without attracting the zombies. Kate must have been mad from losing her two friends, so she kept baiting the zombies and firing against them. Luckily, she didn't get caught.
Eventually, we managed to get back to our safe house. Cassie was already waiting for us there. She had been crying and Scott, another survivor who had been saved by Mack, was with her. Hours later Tom arrived, but he hasn't spoken to anyone yet. I know it sounds cold but we have to fix that damned bus or all of this will have been for nothing. And we have to do it fast, because the zombie hordes we saw on the road must be getting close.

Scenario results
The Good warband (barely) won the scenario defeating 9 zombies for a total of 12 victory points in this scenario and a total of 22 points on the campaign, with 16 left to be spent. Six points were used replacing one warband member, and I got a survivor with a shotgun. The other 10 points were spent to get the Retaining the Initiative warband advance.
The zombie warband gains another 3 victory points, for a total of 4 victory points on the campaign.

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