Welcome to my blog, the story of my continuing journey into the World of Zombie Wargames.

Monday 24 June 2013

Night Cops


I retained four of the boards from my previous scenario, rotated them 90 degrees and added my SuperDuperMart and a parking lot for this scenario.
This was the night after the events of "When Jimmy met Milly".
The alley between the bank and the burger joint are at the bottom of the picture.
  The object of this scenario was a try-out for my driving rules, and would basically have a cop car drive around the table, spotting various markers. The route for the cops is shown by the yellow line and the objective markers are within the red circles, though they can't all be seen. Only one marker wasn't visible from a vehicle, the one just off the top of the picture.
 This would mean at least one cop would have to leave the vehicle and move to a position where he could spot the objective.
The markers do look out of place but it didn't really matter to me as they served their purpose for the game and were obvious to the player who would play as the cops.
As this is only the first night of the coming apocalypse there would still be civilians on the street and traffic - there was a lot fewer of both throughout the game. As I'm slowly introducing new elements of play to my scenarios, this game would feature PEFs (potential enemy forces) and the use of Events. For the latter I used the excellent set of cards produced by Colgar6 . I determined the Encounter rating of the Area to be 6 as it was really just a continuation of the previous scenario, This meant that every turn when two initiative dice were thrown any doubles of  '6' or less an event would occur.
Cop start position
As the chance of this happening is one sixth, to simplify matters we threw a d6 at the beginning of each turn, a '6' indicating that an event occurs.
PEF '5' start position.
All three PEFs
 Three dice were used to mark the positions of the PEFs, which were a '4',  '5' and a '6' for initiative and they were all positioned in the bottom 2/3rds of the table.
The three PEFs can just be made out out on the photographs.
PEF '6' is in the bottom left of the photograph whilst  PEF '4' is in the top right; PEF '6' can just be seen in the top left of the photograph.
The player  playing the cops (my son-in law) had two cops at his disposal.
Officer Gunther Toody and Officer Francis Muldoon. As cops go neither of them are at all special, I've assumed that they were drafted in from their day-time desk work as the ongoing crisis develops in Perdition.
The stats for the pair of cops were:Officer Muldoon: Initiative 4, Leadership 3, Shooting 3, Melee 3, Driving 3
Officer Toody: Initiative 4, Leadership 3, Shooting 3, Melee 3, Driving 3
Both are armed with BA pistols (and a back-up pistol) and a nightstick. there is also a pump action shotgun in their vehicle.
On turn 1 the cops entered the table from their start point as planned and turned into the car park, they're travelling at speed (2) which with their bonus die gave them 15" of movement. The picture below shows their position after their movement. The die at the rear shows a '2' which is their current speed. One of the few civilian vehicles that entered the game can be also seen (no dice were used for the civilian vehicle speeds, they were all travelling at a uniform speed of '2'). Other vehicles and civilians on foot moved around as in the last scenario. The three PEFs all moved toward the cops location (they had actually activated  first).

Two joggers arriving
PEF '6' arriving fast.

The start of turn two set the tone for the rest of this scenario with an event.
The cops had ran out of fuel ! So rather than just sitting idle.
Muldoon elected to leave the vehicle  to investigates the objective marker whilst Toody called for help.
We decided upon three possible outcomes for the call for help, A tow truck (1), a tow truck with petrol can (2-5) or a new vehicle (6).  the result was a five and the tow truck would arrive on turn 5, from a random road entry point (there are 6).
On turn 3 Muldoon checked the first objective and the marker was removed and other than the normal civilian traffic nothing much else occurred.Turn 4 saw Muldoon moving towards the second objective which he could spot and Toody sat in the car eating pizza , whilst PEFs '4' and '6' continued their inexorable movement towards the lawmen. PEF 5 had decided to play at being a yo yo and move back and forth from its original start position.
[Somehow I'd missed moving PEV (6) allowing PEF (4) to catch it up, but it wasn't noticed by either of us whilst playing].
It was probably inevitable, given the way thing were going, that on Turn 5 another event occurred.
Was it officer Toody caught somehow in the handbrake reaching for a piece of fallen pizza  No, of course it wasn't ! It was Muldoon snagged on the pallettes he was near.
Coupled to this was the fact that all three PEFs would activate before the three cop groups. (Muldoon was now far enough away from Toody that they were now two groups of' '1' and the civilian driving the tow truck was about to enter the table too)
PEF (6) activated and made a bee-line for Mulhoon and was resolved as 3 zombies, perilously close to Muldoon. Luckily PEF (4) had stayed in place. On the cop activation they both passed their Zed or no Zed test. Toody exited the cop car and both drew their pistols and shot twice at the three zombies, two of whom died (again). The civilian in the truck with the jerry can of fuel drove entered at the same point ads the cops and drove into the car park blissfully unaware of the current events.
(The yellow counter shows the "dead" zombies)
Turn 6 and the single remaining zombie activates first and charges Muldoon; Muldoon's shoots manages to kill the Zombie. PEF (4) activates next and enters the fray, revealing itself to be a single zombie. The single remaining PEF decided now would be a good time to make a bee-line for the cops.
On the police activation Muldoon shoots twice and misses whilst Toody also shot twice and got a '2' and a '20'. The '2' is a hit and merely knocks the zombie down whilst the '20' is a possible Out of Ammo result.  Rolling for Out of Ammo (based on the Target value of the weapon) of course resulted in Toody being Out of Ammo! Mulhoon is still snagged on the palette too!
The driver of the truck (now named as Mitchell Davis for reasons that escape me) slows to zero speed but takes his 1d6 bonus inches of movement.
Turn 7 opens with yet another event (the player playing the cops threw all the dice throughout this game).
Another die was thrown to determine which of the six possible roads this dog (and the zombies closely following it) would enter from and of course it was the one nearest the cops !

Luckily the cops acted next, Mulhoon fired once more at the downed zombie this time  successfully ending its existence. Toody, having heard the ruckus behind him turned to see the dog and the four pursuing zombies then made a dash for the car to retrieve their shotgun.
"Mitch" accelerated to speed (1) and started to turn towards the exit. PEF (5) continued its movement towards the cops and was revealed as three civilians.





Turn 8 heralded yet another event, although at least this one was potentially beneficial to the cops. this bit of luck continued as the cops activated first.
Muldoon took advantage of the short lull to free himself whilst Toody takes advantage of the shotgun and lets blast at the first two of the approaching zombies, hitting the first twice and the second once.
The result being that the two zombies are knocked down. Mitch stopped the truck and watched.
To determine what the civilians would do we gave them three possible courses of action, this resulted in one going home, one going towards the cops "to help" and one watching the events as they unfolded.
The zombies and dog of course had their own agendas, the dog continued running and the two remaining standing zombies moved towards the cops.

 Turn 9 saw no event but did see two of the zombies shuffling forward whilst the other two stood back up as they activated first.
The now freed Muldoon closes on the zombies and shoots twice whilst Toody once more with the shotgun opens up.
In the picture the white dice represent Toodys three shots, the yellow dice represent Muldoon's
and numbers show the order of their shot.
The gunfire result means the front two zombies have shook off their mortal coil, leaving just two more to deal with. It also results in Toody's once running out of ammo ! (for the shotgun)
The civilians decide that they've both had enough and head for home.
Turn 10 and the zombies activated first, but are still out of their 6" range (which would allow them to go into frenzy and "charge") and so continue their shuffle towards the two cops.
Muldoon shoots once at each zombie and misses both. Toody draws his small backup pistol and rushes a couple of shots off, getting a single hit but killing the zombie.
Turn 11 and once more there is no event and the single zombie activates first and charges Toody who manages to get off two shots, hitting and killing with  one of them.
 Up to this point we'd been playing for about 4 hours (with a short break). As there were no more PEFs we calculated how long it would take for the pair to get their  patrol finished (12 turns). We next threw for possible events getting events on turns 5, 8 and 12.
Turns 5 and 8 were "none events", in that they didn't apply, but turn 12 summed up their patrol and yes, that is the edge of the board, just by the carpark.
At that stage we called it finished.
 

I know how I get frustrated with some bat-reps leaving you dangling, waiting for the next part so although this is a very long report I thought it worth the effort of posting it all at once - congratulations and thanks to all those that managed to read it through this far.



As always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated

19 comments:

  1. Thoroughly enjoyable. I do like this low key approach to the campaign, it's building the tension nicely. Colgars cards look really good, I may have to back track and sort some out for myself. The terrain still looks great and I can admit to being jealous.

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    1. Thanks for the kind words Clint, I suspect it'll be failry low key for a while yet. (And C6's cards are superb imo)

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  2. Really enjoyed playing the scenario as the worlds unluckiest cop duo. I think that PEF6 yo-yo'd which allowed PEF4 to catch up maybe?

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    1. Thanks "Andrew"; we just fecked it up by forgetting the PEF 6's movement once.
      If you knew more about Toody and Muldoon, you'd understand why I was chuckling throughout.

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  3. Hard to really comment on the rules, but I still can't get enough of your terrain Joe! Two thumbs up! :D

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    1. I know Mattyoo, I'm on the last few bits of my rules now and it's hard to tell what I've done with the changes I've made.
      Thanks for the comment about the terrain,there's still a lot more terrain and scenery I'd like - especially some archetypical looking US Cop Cars !

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  4. Ah, I really hope that the rest of the police department is a bit luckier than this pair. I can't believe how many things happened to them - perhaps they'd be better staying behind their desks instead!

    Still, at least they survived and completed the mission. Credit for that :-) .

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    1. It truly was a comedy of errors.
      I think the police will have all hands to the pumps over the next two weeks of the apocalypse.

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  5. Really looks good, your city! A good read too . Pretty good they survived.

    I like the fact that you used the layout from before.

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    1. Thanks LS. using the same area again was a way of testing the "rolling terrain" for car chases (gangster style).

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  6. Seeing all the great ATZ games and terrain that so many players come up with, including yours, is a bit humbling. I remember out first play test back in 04 and am truly amazed. Thanks for posting.

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  7. The story is cool and the terrain looks ACE!! very interesting read.

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  8. Nice job Zabadak, The tale that is being told is really good. I like what you've introduced to the rules. The cops unluckiness though the survived made me chuckle. I though it was very film like where everything goes wrong runs out of fuel and then ammo twice.

    Keep it up the terrain and story being told is excellent well done sir!

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    1. Thanks Brummie, I thought "Naked Gun" like - perhaps frank Drebben may star in the future ?

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  9. More damn fine work sir! Really enjoying the slow build up you're using Joe. More soon!

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    1. Thanks Colin, it'll be a while before the next one I'm afraid.

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