Loot

I went to Durham Wargames show on the 8th June and picked up a few bits but the title "Loot" is rather grandiose for the meager "haul"  I managed to get. I ventured to the show for the first time in many years with my son and a mutual friend as company (and excellent company they both were). The most pleasing part of the whole visit was seeing and chatting to many old friends and meeting several fellow bloggers (all of whom I already knew but hadn't seen in a very long time).
As for the actual 'Loot', I picked up two buildings, from the ever-friendly Dave Thomas. The first was the "North American Farmhouse" which I quite liked the look of, being very similar to the cottages I scratchbuilt a while ago.
It'll fit in with my own modern set-up as houses like these , I'm led to believe are still used all over America. Even if they're weren't it could still perhaps be a preserved historical building (birthplace of Jebediah Springfield perhaps?).
The second building was the Renedra "Ramshackle Barn". It's a very simple barn and can easily be used in a modern setting.
It's barns just like this one you can see used as garages, hideouts and so on in all sorts of eras. It obviously won't fit in with my modern city set-up, but for the rural areas (and maybe in the suburbs), it'll be usable.
Both models consist of very similar and basic components - four walls and a roof, with no measurable internal details. the farmhouse has the extra 'L' shape on the front, whilst the barn has a 'shed' type structure tacked on the side.

The farm house

Renedra fences

The farmhouse has three sprues, two for the main building and a 'Renedra" fences sprue which has three different fence types on it making it less than useful. It does encourage the buying of a box of these in future to have a fence of usable size at least.

Side walls and roof

Barn front and back

The barn's three sprues have one sprue duplicated, containg a side wall and half of the roof. Although this means  the side walls are identical one of them is intended to have the 'shed on it' so it isn't really  that noticeable.The most annoying thing on this model is that the front doors are one piece and overlap, making it a nightmare for conversion.

In addition to the two buildings I picked up some d20s that I could actually see (my current ones are mainly all very dark colours) and some animals, both from the very friendly Ian and Ron at the "Irregular Miniatures" stand. As long as I can remember I've always used whatever cash I have left buying things from them at this show.
I've slowly been writing up my zombie game rules (based heavily on ATZ - of course) and I'm using d20's for shooting and for some aspects of melee.

The animals I bought were mainly dogs (there is a cat there somewhere) which I intend to either use as feral domestic animals, as yet another hazard for survivors to face or as markers for PEFs (potential enemy forces). In my latest game I realised I hadn't anything to use as PEF markers and had to simply use dice, which wasn't a particularly elegant solution. I'll be adding to my dog pound in the future with the dogs from "Black Cat's" gangster ranges and I'll be adding a few from their other animal ranges too.
Other than buying yet more things to paint I've had a burst of energy and undercoated another batch of figures ready to paint (aarghhh)

Zombies, Civilians, Survivors, MIB and Hazmat guys

"EM4" Plastic Troopers

 I've also finally assembled my "EM4" plastic troopers I'd bought more than a year ago along with the metal heavy weapon conversion pack.
They were easy enough to assemble and do some minor conversions on.
I'll be using these as the Military in my games (if they ever get undercoated and painted) even though they're a bit Sci-Fi.
Other than the zombies (Blue Moon) all the figures bases are 20mm washers and gunked up with wall filler from Poundland.


That's it for another week, I'll be writing up the last game for my blog next week.

As always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

When Jimmy ate Millie (Finale)

Part three of my game continued for another two fairly brief sessions, unfortunately without assistance.

Turn 7

Initiative results: Civilians   5; Emergency Responders 8; Zombie 7

Large red counter = feast, small red one= running away.

With nightstick and pistol drawn Officer Talltrees moves bravely towards the suspect (Jimmy the zombie), recognises him for what he is, sees him feasting and then bravely skedaddles away into the sunset screaming like a big girl. Officer Hallihan makes her way to the rear of the ambulance takes one look at what was happening and ducked behind the ambulance for cover.

The ambulance crew stay ducked down but have the foresight to step on the brakes and the ambulance is halted [it was probably a bit of a fudge on my part but things were messy enough].

 Old Jimmy the Zombie seems to be revelling in his new role and continued his feasting.

Ivor the wannabe hero

Ivor Adams in the boy racer car (the black one), looks up and decides he’s had enough [he passed 2d6 on my "hero table"], with a quick look around his car he finds nothing to use as a weapon and goes into the fray against Jimmy with his fists and boots.

The outcome isn’t pretty,  Jimmy gets 2 successes against Ivor’s single success and Ivor is quickly dispatched (dead), and Jimmy will immediately start to feast on him instead of his previous victim Millie.

Anne Nhon in the silver car is content enough to continue watching.

The driver of the red car is still ducked down whilst the passenger is taking photos on her phone and messaging her friends.

Mac has decided he's seen enough and having done his civic duty heads for home probably phoning his wife to say he'll be late for dinner.

The group of civilians opposite can't see what's was going on and continued walking up the street whilst even more civilians enter the area (even with multiple random chances of moving elsewhere this particular street seemed to be a magnet for the civilians). 

Turn 8

Initiative results: Civilians 8; Emergency Responders 5; Zombies 10

The initial casualty Millie was not being feasted upon this turn and had a chance to turn into a zombie.[i] Millie, right on cue, rolls a six, turns into a zombie and stands up.

Old Jimmy the zombie happily tucks into his dessert of the now deceased Ivor.

Anne Nhon in the silver car decides she’s had enough of this fiasco; a quick five point turn and she’s at least headed in the right direction.

Fleeing civilians and Officer hallihan behind the ambulance.

Five civilians all come into view of the new feasting malarkey, all of whom see the two zombies and Jimmy tucking into his new victim. The results are that three are stunned by what they see and two flee from the abhorrent sight.

The driver of the red car finally looks up just to see her passenger decide to attempt to batter the nearest newly raise zombie with her phone and fingernails (she, like Ivor, couldn’t find anything handy in the car to use as a weapon) In the ensuing even melee, both sides having 3d6 she gets one more success than the zombie knocking it to the ground.

The driver of the red pickup was left sat wondering what all the fuss was about.

[As it could be important as to who acted first amongst the responders I diced for it and the Ambulance crew “won”]

The Ambulance passenger decided it’s time to act and emerges from the Ambulance with his trust metal clipboard and attacks Jimmy, in the melee, it’s 4 dice for the Doc against 3 dice for Jimmy with a result that neither get a single success, so they’re locked in combat.

Whilst Officer Talltrees continues to head for them thar hills; Officer Hallihan emerges from behind the ambulance shouts a quick warning and determined to get her man (Jimmy) she pops off two shots from her pistol, which  results, in a hit and a miss The impact of the shot blows Jimmy’s head off shooting him dead (dead again, but permanently this time).[ii]

 Turn 9:

Initiative results: Civilians 5;    Emergency Responders 7;  Zombies 9

The red counter represents Ivor

Millie the new Zombie can do nothing but stand up, so she does.

Officer Talltrees is no more to be seen, (having by now fled the table); Officer Hallihan shoots at Millie the Zombie and with the same chance as before, gets two hits, enough to put two rounds in her head.

The Ambulance driver finally looks up and realises there’s work to be done whilst Doc looks to see if anything can be done for poor Ivor, who after all, has only suffered a few bites here and there

The Citizens have little to do now (except perhaps applaud), Anne Nhon drives away and  more civilians arrive.Most everyone else tries to take in what they’ve just seen .

Aftermath "...and you say there was a silver car..."

At this point I declared the game over after I had determined how long it would be before Ivor turned into a Zombie (needing a 6 on a d6),  as it turned out it was actually six turns, by which time I thought the ambulance crew would have loaded him in their ambulance and headed off, for him to revive en route back to the hospital.

More police and detectives would be called to the “crime scene”;  ambulances to remove the remains of the three deceased would also be needed etc.

I took the final photo illustrating a possible aftermath for my own amusement.

The "named" NPCs will be given a proper character card, with suitable stats and an attribute according to how I interpret their role, so they may well feature in future games.

Observations:

There were a few times that I had to back-track when I’d forgotten which side of the road the Americans drive on, but it was fairly amusing at the time and just something else to remember.

I spent a lot of time photographing and taking notes, (which didn’t get any quicker as the game went on) and was much more than I’d anticipated. Writing up this whole scenario, selecting and clipping photographs, took about the same length of time as playing it. I’m sure though that once I find a writing style that I’m comfortable with it’ll be easier – I won’t be explaining as many of my rules in the future either, which will help enormously

 

I was quite pleased with all the various alterations I’d made to the rules; the game worked and flowed at an acceptable rate for my first effort.

There were various things that I hadn’t though of, such as the number of markers needed - feasting, stunned, ducked down/back running, away (and in future games for gunfire noise).

The dice I used for car speeds I’d already envisaged but were still a little larger than I’d have liked (they were 5mm cubes). As the campaign progresses though fewer vehicles will be involved, so it won’t be that much of a problem.

I would of course have liked actual casualty figures and better tokens for the various events, but these will all come in time. It also became apparent that I didn't have any figures to represent the crew of the ambulance (I've since looked around and have only come up with two alternatives - "Warm Acre" do a set of British first responders and the minions from "Crooked Dice" could do at a pinch), but I'm still looking. I'm also still looking about for vehicles, especially an ambulance and typical US police cars

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[i] [In ATZ  it’s decided after the scenario whether or not someone turns (a d6 +Rep needing a ‘9’ or better to survive), in FFO it’s decided during the game by a slightly different mechanism in that as soon as a character is stunned or put OOF by a zombie then the die roll is done then and there as above, but if the character will turn then he carries on whilst a die records how long it will be before he does so)

I’ve decided that I don’t like knowing when someone will “turn” or be OK – so I’ve decided on a middle ground, so each turn after a character has a chance to be turned a die is thrown when he would normally activate. If a 6 is thrown then the decision is made.

The character throws 2d6 and needs his Initiative or less to avoid turning, though I am considering revising this slightly)

If he was previously OOF and survives it can be assumed he will lapse into consciousness long enough for anyone seeing him to know he’s OK (my “Harry I’m actually Okay !” rule)

If he was previously stunned and turns then he’ll fall to the floor and immediately turn into a Zombie, activating when the zombies next activate and standing up – even in the same turn –“Harry I’m actually not Okay !”

 

[ii] I use d20’s for shooting (and for weapons in melee),

The base chance of anyone shooting is a 4

Added to this is the shooters ability x2 (I’ve been considering making shooting skill have a scale of 1 to 10 rather than my current 2 to 6, which would mean simply adding your skill rather than having to double it, but it doesn’t quite fit in well with the head shot rules against zombies)

There are various other additions and subtractions to be made to the chance to hit, according to both the shooter’s and target’s situations.

In the above example, Officer Hallihan has a 4 (basic) equalling +8 (2 x Shooting ability 4) +1, (shooting a zombie) and so needs to throw under a 13 to hit.

She threw a 19 and a 2 giving her one hit. Had she threw a 13 she would have hit the Doc (firing into a melee). The head shot was achieved by throwing under her skill of 4 on a d6 (Zombies are easy to kill rule).

That concludes this scenario, let me just say "Welcome" to my latest follower "Hobbyworker" whom I hope finds something here of interest.
I received an interesting email from a fellow zombie enthusiast and as a plug for him here's the gist of it:
"...you might be interested in a rule set I am currently creating. It is free to download and I could use some feedback if you have the time. You can find the rules on the google community (link below) along with some video battle reports I made on my youtube channel."

https://plus.google.com/u/0/?tab=wX#communities/108863897726135327206

https://www.youtube.com/user/Scheitelpunkt?feature=guide

Lastly, as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated

Postscript:
Some of you may not yet know that fellow Blogger and friend Bryan/Vampifan (Vampifans World of the Undead) was recently hospitalised and has undergone surgery.
I'm sure that, like me, you'll all wish him a speedy recovery.

When Jimmy met (and ate) Millie (2)

My second session of this game saw the arrival of a friend to help me with decisions about the game, move pieces around and look up rules whilst I continued to bimble about taking notes and photos. This speeded the whole process up and we got through four turns in the time it had taken me to play two.

Turn3:
 Initiative Results:Civilians 4, Zombies 6

The red car arriving (turn 2)

And the red car swiftly exiting turn 3

 Zombie Jimmy is currently feasting and a throw of the die indicates that he’ll continue to do so (he needed a 5 or a 6 to stop).

Skater girl ducked back.

The driver in the red car is stunned at seeing the feast (passed 2d6) and drives straight on, despite what he may have wanted to do or where he may have wanted to drive.

 Skater girl ducks back behind the shop on the corner whilst the Old woman heads for the hills abandoning her ward, the footballer wannabe; the woman who was with the skater ran down the alley.

 TV guy and the football child are no longer stunned and are joined by "Mac", the man in the tan raincoat.

None of the three are in any particular danger, nor are they aware of the zombie, though Mac is currently out of range of seeing the feast.

"Mac" arrives

As no player was actually in charge of the civilians, it was at this point that I decided I needed an extra test to see what those involved may do and this test came about:

Pass 2d6 – Have a go (get involved)

Pass 1d6 – Stand and Watch (rubberneck)

Pass 0d6 – Walk away from the incident.

 (This test subsequently became known as the Have-a-go or Hero test – even passing this would not counter the Zed or no Zed test or the Brown pants rule, it’s just a mechanism to decide what NPCs may do)

Turn 4:

Initiative results: Civilians 5, Zombies 9

Old Jimmy is certainly enjoying a good meal, (probably the best he's had in a long time) and continues to do so (Zombie continues feasting).

Wannabe hero Adam leaps into action...

Ivor Adams joins the fray, driving to the scene in his black "boy racer" car, jumps out and “sees the feast”, then immediately ducks back in to hide.

Civilians outside of the action area mill around as usual, but tests are made for the TV guy, the wannabe footballer boy and Mac.

...and suddenly it's Mac by himself !

Both the footballer boy and TV guy have both had enough and decide to head off (Hero test)

Mac passes 1d6 on the Hero test and it’s decided that he’ll call the cops and continues to watch events unfold as he does so. The cops will be here in 1 to 3 turns.

 Skater girl decides to have another look and reappears from behind the shop having finished ducking back (using the hero test)

Turn 5:

Initiative results: Civilians 5, Zombies 10

Perhaps not surprisingly the Zombie, Old Jimmy, continues “feasting”:

 Anne Nhon, the driver in the silver car has recovered from her duck down and now decides to call the emergency services (she passed 1d6 on the hero test)

 Skater girl continues to rubberneck, probably texting her friend and/or taking photographs on her phone.

Mac  continues to chat to the emergency services and to survey the unfolding drama.

A red car pulls up and has two people in it both of whom see the zombie and the feast with the result that they both duck down in their vehicle. (They turn out later to be an old woman and a young girl)

 Another vehicle (a red pickup with a crate) drives onto the street with a single driver in it as the various other civilians go about their business as do other vehicles.

 Sirens can be heard approaching fast as both Emergency Responders enter the table at speed. Turn 6:

Initiative results: Civilians 5, Emergency Responders 10, Zombie 10

After a re-roll the zombies have initiative ahead of the responders.

 With nothing better to do Old Jimmy the Zombie continues feasting

 The Cop vehicle hadn’t slowed and had come to rest about 1½” behind the red pickup with the crate in it.

The situation at the end of turn 5

 The police car is in a precarious position and must slow down, it is currently doing a speed of 3  (18") and has less than 2” to spare before hitting the red car in front.

It slows by 2 “speeds” as normally allowed in my rules but must dice against the driver’s skill for an emergency 3^rd reduction in speed.

The emergency braking table results (throwing two dice against driving skill):

Pass 2d6: may decelerate an extra speed

Pass 1d6 may not decelerate an extra speed this turn (may try again)

Pass 0d6 may never decrease an extra speed again in this game (with the same vehicle).

With a driving skill of 4 the cops pass their test with 2d6 and screech to a halt taking another 1½” of movement from their extra d6”, to enable the following ambulance to get passed their rear. I imagine the driver in the red pickup, breathed a sigh of relief as the cops didn’t rear-end his vehicle.

The situation becoming crowded once more.

The ambulance has a clear path now to make its way to the scene of the “accident” reducing its speed to 2 which with its d6 die roll of 4” places it adjacent to the feast..

Officers Carrie Hallihan and Abraham Talltrees make their way from the vehicle (losing a ¼ of their movement rate to exit the vehicle)

The ambulance crew have used all their movement driving and can’t exit, but they do see the feast from their cab and are both shocked at what they see and duck down beneath the dashboard (yellow counters not yet placed); the two police officers can’t see the feast, which concluded the Responders initiative.

Anne Nhon in the Silver car observes the scene, whilst Ivor Adams, the boy racer in the flashy black car decides to stay ducked down.

Mac still appears fascinated and continues to observe proceeding along with Skater girl on the opposite side of the road.

The red pickup with the crate travelling at speed 2 elects to come to a halt, whilst various other civilians and vehicles go about their business.

 [Note: The small dice in front of the three vehicles involved represents their speed - each pip representing 6” of speed). Normally I’d place these dice at the rear of the vehicles, but I’ve shown them placed at the front for clarity. Both ER drivers were assumed to have a driving ability of 4 for this scenario]

The concluding part of this will be next the subject of next week's blog, let me just finally say "Welcome" to my latest followers "Mosan92" and "Mathew Raevis", hope you find something here that interests you.

As always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated

When Jimmy met Millie

The street between the two crossroads is where all the action takes place

I make no apologies that this post will be fairly verbose as I try to explain some thoughts on how I wish my campaign to “feel”, though I've kept most comments to notes at the end, should you just wish to read through the "action". 

Rather than following the story of one character or group I’ve decided to give the bigger picture of the city.

When Jimmy meets Millie

As a first outing for my rule changes and amendments I wanted to take a little more time over the game and it turned out to be much more time consuming than I’d thought it would. This was not only due to me wrestling with the tangle of rules from ATZ and FFO and my own but also I hadn’t anticipated how many notes I’d need to take to explain everything I wanted to and how many photographs I’d have to take to show the action.  I know how much readers like the photographs, so I won’t be scrimping on those.

The City of Perdition has sixteen urban and suburban districts surrounded by the eight rural districts that make up Harbinger County. USA

This action takes place in one of the urban parts of the city, it’s mid afternoon. There are no PEF’s (potential enemy forces) not are there any “players” in the true sense, that is to say the population’s actions are entirely decide by the dice and some obvious choices.

A lot happened that didn’t affect the actual “action”, civilians and vehicles moved on and off the table throughout the game, not all of which have been shown, but can be deduced from some of the wider shots.

Turn 1

Initiative (1d6): The civilians threw a 3 and the Zombie (Old Jimmy) threw a 5, which in my game I ADD to their Initiative rating to give final scores of Civ: 6 and Z’s 9. [i]

(The raw dice rolls for initiative will also determine events in future games.)

 Had the Civilians won the initiative then I would have deemed them to have just moved to their starting position and then it would have been the Z’s turn in any event)

General view of the action area

After initiative the zombie attacks its victim (and with it came the first frantic search through the rules for a solution to the first “problem” - see note[ii] )

In melee the zombie and Millie each get 3 dice per their melee ability.

In my games humans don’t get the single automatic success against a zombie as I wish to make zombies a little more fearsome than they are in FFO and not just a hindrance.

Anne Nhon pulling up and getting out her car.

The results of the melee were: Millie 1 success, Old Jimmy the Zombie 2 successes, the impact die after the melee indicated Millie was out of the Fight (OOF).

This action concluded the Zombie initiative for turn 1.

The civilians in the area now have their activation.[iii]

The only other person of note in the area is the occupant of the silver car, which when diced for turned out to be a single woman.

She sees the Zombie and I suffer the same dilemma as above over what she does, (see note 2).  All dice results indicate she should charge into melee but she’s in a car currently travelling at speed[iv]

She therefore slows to a stop and gets out to confront the Zombie !

General view at the end of turn one

Turn 2

Initiative results: Civilians 9 and Zombie 6, the civilians move first.

The situation just before the civilians move.

I’ve adopted a convention of moving all vehicles first before pedestrians.

All the civilians on the table were moved.

Only the civilian driver from the silver car (now named Anne Nhon) had a decision to make, having passed the Zed or no Zed test, she immediately failed the Brown Pants roll and stood for the time being.

Situation after the civilians have moved

Five citizens entered into range of seeing what would become the Zombie Feast

After moving all vehicles and civilians on the table I again diced to see if any new vehicles or civilians entered (a 5,6 on a d6 indicating that a vehicle would, whilst a die roll of 1,2, 3 indicated a single civilian, a 4,5 indicated two and a 6 indicated 3. – further dice were thrown to indicate which side of the street they would be on etc.).

Old Jimmy the zombie’s action was mandatory in that he had to start his feast.[v] – on poor Millie.

The zombie’s action of feasting also meant that all within range had to take the “test of seeing the feast”. [vi] In the game I replaced poor Millie with a large red counter. Seeing the feast, results in two civilians running away (indicated 

by a red counter), one civilian ducking back (yellow counted), and two civilians stunned (blue counter)

The erstwhile have-ago heroine Anne Nhon in the silver car also erred on the side of caution and ducked down back inside her car (yellow counter).

It can be seen from the photograph that “Jimmy the Zed” has his back to these newcomers to the party and so no Zed or no Zed tests were taken.

I justified this by thinking that from their point of view, he could equally have been a mugger or trying to give help to an injury on the prone victim (mouth-to-mouth anyone?).

The driver of the red car is more than 6” away from the feast and it’s debateable whether or not he could see it due to the silver car blocking the view.

 To get this far into my game had taken about two hours and I was quite done in, having moved figures and vehicles about and taken 2 pages of scrawl which only just passed as notes. The write up has taken about twice as long.

The scenario has actually been completed and part two will follow next week.

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[i] I use five characteristics for figures, more or less in line with what I’d came up with about a year ago, I feel any more would be too cumbersome.

Initiative (a general catch-all for everything the other characteristics don’t cover)
Leadership (for interaction with others and in groups to determine whose Initiative to use)

Shooting (for all (non-exotic) firearms.

Melee (for all brawling and hand-to hand combat)

Driving (For driving all vehicles)

Zombies always have Initiative 4 and Melee 3 .

For this encounter and for ease, all Civilians have a characteristic of 3 for everything, the Emergency response units were determined to generally have 4’s.

Civilian vehicles moved at a more or less constant rate of 12” whilst on the table.

 

[ii] First the victim (whom I’ve called Millie) has to take a Zed or no Zed Test, with three possible results:

ATZ: Carry on; take being charged test; zombie charges with an advantage,

FFO: Take charge into into melee test;  Zombie charges and you can take a shot; zombie charges.

The ATZ being charged table again has three results:

Have a shot, melee normally; melee normally; retire (ie runaway)

The FFO Charge table has four possible results all basically ending with a melee

The ATZ result of “carry on” doesn’t make sense when the zombie is charging you – (Carry on being charged?) whilst the FFO results all end with a melee with no chance of running away.

I opted for the ATZ result and allowed poor Millie to take the being charged roll, but alas she opted to stay and fight !

However in FFO she would also have to take the “Citizens Brown Pants – Part two” rule which gives two possibilites: got to the charge table or runaways and got to the breaking off melee table (there are two distinct sections of rules in FFO for this which is highly confusing as one refers to characters and the other to Grunts, but both could easily be rerering to a Player’s figures)

[iii] Both cars and civilians reaching a junction throw a die to determine their route, civilians move 6” per move (Zombies move at a rate of 4” normally but 6” if within 6” of humans”.  I felt a movement rate of 8”/6” was too much given the size of table generally being used. On a four foot wide table a human moving 8” with fast move can clear the edge of the table in 3 turns from anywhere on the table and with smaller boards even faster.

[iv] It’s a speed of 2 (12”). Each “speed” a vehicle does equates to a 6” mandatory movement” in my driving rules. Vehicles can go up one speed per turn or down two. They also have a “bonus” die of 1d6” which drivers can use all, some, or none in their turn. – This enables a bit more precise movement.

[v]  Normally, in ATZ, the zombie feast lasts a number of turns equal to the throw of 1d6 but I really don’t like the predictive nature of this. Instead I determined that a die is thrown each turn after the the feast has started to see if the feast is concluded, a 5 or 6 on a d6 indicating that it has. This obviously means that you can’t predict or know when it will conclude.

[vi] Both ATZ and FFO have similar results although ATZ take two tables to get there.

ATZ does have a chance to “Carry on”, whilst FFO doesn’t’ and FFO doesn’t have the “Hunker down” reaction.

I prefer the “cleaner” FFO version (but see note iv above.)

I also consider the feasting of zombies on a fresh corpse to be a mistaken view of a zombie’s frenzied biting of its victim, to try and make sure the victim is infected.

 That's all for this week then except to welcome my latest follower Phil C, I hope there's something here to interest you.

As always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

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Welcome to Perdition

As the title says, "Welcome to Perdition" and smallish city in Harbinger County.
This set-up will be the one I'll be using for my first test-game, which I'll report on next week.

Although the photograph shows six of my smaller  terrain boards (two foot by two foot), the playing area will be slightly smaller as I'm discounting both the top and bottom six inches or so of the short ends.

The outbreak hasn't yet started in any big way for this scenario, think of it as Apocalypse day minus1.
I wanted a fairly urban setup with six easily defined areas for the single zombie in the scenario - He by the way can be seen on the roof of the building in the bottom left of the photo. I'd placed him there solely for convenience and forgot to remove him for the photos.
He'll be playing the part of  "Old Jimmy"  a well known "down and out"  in this area  of town.

The table wasn't completely set-up randomly, I used dice to determine all manner of things.
A d6 was thrown to determine how many civilian types were present on each road segment, then again to determine which side of the road they were on and lastly to determine which way they were walking etc.
Similarly I threw a d6 again for each segment of road, twice for vehicles, once for each side of the road.
A d6 determined if there was to be no traffic (1, 2 or3), a single car (4, or 5) or two vehicles (needing a 6 !)
I haven't got a lot of vehicles and I didn't particularly wish to have regurgitate them as they left the board at one end and entered in the opposite end.

The photographs roughly follow an anti-clockwise view of the table, with the well-known (at least here they're well known) of the McDoom's Franchise (soon to come under new management), the Horseman' diner chain and Nippers newsstand empire.
For this particular game I'll not be defining any of the civilians, they'll all have the same stats to begin with.
I, doubt I'll be naming any of them either until after the game though "Sid the Sweeper" is present on the table somewhere, but no clues as  to exactly where !
Yet another view of the same set-up

As mentioned above, the road in the right of the photograph will play no part in this particular engagement.

The vehicles that can be seen not on roads are merely there to fill up the space and aren't necessarily part of the game. This photo also shows my quick attempt at some greener, using a couple of left over foamboard boxes from my supermarket build and some loose plastic foliage.

"Old Jimmy" lurking behind the vending machine between the bank and McDoom's  burger joint.

And the final photo showing his first potential victim, Old Jimmy's base can just be made out.

 Next week I'll hopefully be showing the results of my first game (or games?), it'll be a pretty simple affair but it will give me the opportunity to show some of the many rules I've changed, amended or altered.

Finally let me take the opportunity to welcome my latest followers "Doomonyou" and "Phil C", hope you find something here to interest you and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Cityscape

I'm sure I've heard or seen the term "Cityscape" used in some other context but be assured that this  merely refers to me showing the other buildings that weren't shown last week.

Here's a general view of the table layout in much the same form as last week's blog but I've taken off two of the wider road boards and they've been replaced with the narrower roads I made originally.

Here's another view of the same layout; the more astute amongst you will see that my convenience store has lost its roof.
I blame this on moving stuff I made sometime last year from one room to another
There's not much really to say about the set-up but from my perspective there seems to be a lot of open space that need fences, walls and other such obstacles.
I've put out nearly all my scratch-built building materials in one corner, just to fill the space, but I do have plans to make a proper construction site.


Here's another view showing the layout and you can see that the cottages in the bottom corner are crying out for fencing around them to afford them some privacy.

Close up view from the "other end" of the table.

 

 

I had forgotten to place another building that I've yet to show, the original one that kicked this all off - A Sarrissa "Cityblock Residential", but it's still in the stages of being finished off.

 

 

 

I've decide that I'll be playing most of my games using only three-quarters or a half of the table as this will allow me be able to have a moving terrain - as the characters advance up the table, then I'll be able to take terrain boards off one end and replace them at the other end. I only have a limited number of terrain boards and using fewer of them at a time will enable me to have greater variations in the terrain.

Following on from last week's wide roads I re-arranged the above board, replacing my curved one with another to come up with this arrangement.

As can be seen there is a central boulevard which could have traffic going in opposite directions each side of the central reservation, though the central reservation does need some flower beds, trees or similar to break up its grey monotony.

Another view of the "boulevard" set-up,

The tenements were made with this size road in mind as it gives a lot more space around the back using the narrower roads rather than the wider ones. You can also see that I've only used three-quarters of the table, having removed the wide road terrain board leaving a two foot space at the top of the picture.The boards will be pushed up a foot when playing, leaving a foot at each end for  rules, dice, tea mugs and all the other crap that normally clutters the playing area and which I hate.

And that's it for another week. Next week I'll hopefully be showing the layout for my first game and revealing  the setting for my campaign (the city name, characters etc.).

Finally let me welcome my three latest followers, "Danisnotatree", "Mac" and "Gimzod" I hope you all find something here to interest you.

As always all your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.