Dead Walk Again - Zombie Wargame Report in 1/72 Scale - Part 2

Back again with part 2 of the zombie game report.

The game began with players 1,2 & 3 entering the town, with the Humvee leading the way. 

As they move in they discover groups of zombies wandering around on the rubble strewn streets, with more appearing around every corner they turn.

As the survivors are all carrying mini walkie-talkies, they can keep in contact wherever they are on the table and with this in mind, Player 2 decides to stop the Dodge and send out one of the farm boys armed with the scoped rifle.

He quickly runs into the high-rise ruins to  climb to the top floor so he can spot for the rest of the group and keep them informed, and at the same time take out as many zombies as possible from a high vantage point.

The Humvee and the Dodge find that their speed is limited to a mere crawl as the streets are cluttered with abandoned vehicles and all kinds of obstacles left over from the post-apocalyptic nightmare.

As the group moves through town, new zombies appear and the bikers who have no vehicles to protect them begin to get nervous as they are swamped with undead approaching from all sides.

Their bikes here are a liability and they have no way of speeding their way out of danger, so Player 1 decides that the bikers will have to abandon their beloved Harleys. 

They leave the bikes with the engines still running while they hastily make off out of harm's way, while the zombies stumble towards and lunge at the bikes only to find that metal and rubber don't taste anything like human flesh.

Player 1 made a wise choice and he knows the rules well, because in the Dead Walk Again ruleset  zombies will move toward any loud source of sound if there are no humans within either "smelling" distance (20cm) or within visual range (40cm).

The dismounted bikers

Meanwhile over on the other side of town, Player 4's small group cautiously heads over on foot towards the warehouse and industrial estate where their family members are up in the crane hiding.

They enter the industrial estate cautiously, trying to avoid any contact with wandering zombies while taking out any individual zombies they might encounter with blows to the head so as to not use their automatic weapons which when fired would alert other zombies to their presence.

However, as they enter the industrial estate they are suddenly surprised by a huge group of zombies milling around the base of the crane.

They're overwhelmed by the sheer number of zombies and have no choice but to use their guns, and start shooting out zombies left, right and centre.

Just as the Humvee and Dodge turn into the industrial estate they hear the sounds of automatic gunfire. They call the others over the walkie-talkies and the sniper tells them he can see a group of people waving from the top of the crane and can see others at the base shooting and being pursued by zombies. 

The lead Humvee turns into the industrial estate and a horde of zombies swamps the vehicle, pounding on the doors and windows, all the while the vehicle keeps moving forward crushing the ones in front and rumbles onward to the other new group at the base of the crane.

High up on the crane platform, Player 4's unarmed stranded family members look down on the events unfolding below.

The bikers have also arrived on foot and help to take out zombies, while Player 4 moves his survivors towards the Humvee to make contact with the other players. 

In the next update we'll see if Player 4 will reveal his full mission to the other players or not. Will he tell them about the plane and their plans to fly out of there ?  Will the other three players be interested ? Will they double-cross him ? We'll see in part 3 the conclusion of the game and whether or not everyone manages to get out of there alive.

In the meantime, a final picture below which shows how we were recording the zombie body count with "dead" zombies eliminated by each player placed on their stat cards. The coloured chips represent the clips/magazines that each weapon has available and as they change an ammo clip the counters are dropped into the cups and once they are gone, no more ammo.

See you on the next update soon.

Cheers, John

Dead Walk Again - Zombie Wargame Report in 1/72 Scale - Part 1

Hi again, welcome back and as mentioned in the last post I have some photos of a recent zombie game in 1/72 scale.

I've been painting up 20mm zombies on and off for quite a while, using various figures from 1/72 and 1/76 scale sets, some of those "useless" goofy poses, surrendering figures, and various figures with poses that could vaguely pass as "zombie-ish", with a little bending of heads or arms etc. 

Over the last year we haven't been able to game as often as I would have liked as life has a habit of getting in the way of things for all of us, so when a good friend José Juan had a free Saturday and invited me around to his place to host a game I jumped at the chance to dig out the zombies and use them for a multiplayer game using a set of rules called "Dead Walk Again" by Planned Movement Productions. 

My wargaming buddy Iván introduced our group to these rules some 15 years ago and back then he organised a campaign using 28mm figures. Two of the other guys from our group, Carlos and Alejandro contributed with their superb zombie figures and we had some fun multi-player games. These rules no longer seem to be available online which is a real pity as they are really easy to pick up as you play and make for an entertaining game and allow for various players to participate.

SCENARIO

There were five of us all together, our host José Juan, a new young guy to the group Luis, and Iván who came along with his young son. These four players controlled small groups of survivors facing off against the hordes of wandering zombies, while yours truly acted as umpire and controlled the zombies who would spawn at various points and relentlessly pursue the survivors as per the zombie movement specifics detailed in the rules.

MAIN MISSION- Players 1, 2 and 3

Three small groups of survivors  have thrown in their lot together out of necessity. Food, and ammo are low and they have no other option but to go into town and raid a warehouse where they can get fresh supplies.

Crossing the town and lugging back supplies on foot is out of the question, so they need to go in vehicles if they have any chance of bringing back sufficient stocks. This also has its drawbacks, the wandering zombies tend to lumber and shuffle in the direction of any source of sound, so the group will have to be quick and avoid staying in one spot for any amount of time.

Player 1 - BIKERS - these two tough-guys have been on the road with their Harleys since the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. Both are armed with hand-guns and assault rifles

Player 2 - REDNECKS - two brothers who hail from a rural community who know how to hunt and shoot. These hard-working and equally as tough farm boys wear their "Redneck" term with pride. One of the brothers carries a scoped hunting rifle, the other a revolver and a double-barrelled shotgun and are riding out the apocalypse in their late daddy's trusty old Chevy van which has never yet let them down.

Player 3 - SWAT - With no functioning state or employer, these heavily armed officers of the law have given over their loyalty to the diverse group they now belong to. They've managed to procure a rugged US Army Humvee which they will use as the spearhed vehicle for the group's incursion into the town.

SECONDARY MISSION

Player 4 - PILOT AND FAMILY GROUP - A small group of civilians had tried tried to cross the town days earlier with their family members, one of whom is a commercial pilot, in order to reach a small airfield and secure a small aircraft and fly off to a more remote region. However they were set upon by a group of zombies before they reached the airfield, lost some members and were separated. 

A few of the surviving unarmed family members managed to find refuge by scaling a construction crane out of the zombies' reach and sense of smell. (and fortunately for them these zombies are pretty dumb and haven't figured out how to climb metal scaffolding...)

Three remaining members of the group, including the pilot were forced to flee the town.

They enter the again table on foot from the other side of the town and will first try to rescue their stranded family members and then get to the airfield across the the table. They manged to get their hands on weapons, the pilot has a shotgun, the kneeling executive has an assault rifle and the businesswoman is now really the "business" and comes onto the table wielding an Uzi in each hand. 

Player 4 was told in private by the umpire that he couldn't reveal his mission to the other players unless there is direct contact on the table with any figures from the other group. Players 1,2 and 3 don't know Player 4's mission either, nor that there are civilians hiding out up in the construction crane.

The table layout above before the game begins. I didn't have any typical US small-town type buildings, so we had to improvise and settle on using adobe type buildings for the town, giving it a kind of surreal downtown Tijuana look.

THE GAME .....

I'll post pictures of the game itself and how the groups fared in PART 2 of this post on the next update very soon.

Cheers, John

Prehistoric Dinosaur-Dragon Toys

Passing through the toy section on a recent visit to a shop I found this pack of  "Prehistoric Dinosaurs", but it turns out they're actually one, two and three-headed fantasy dragon type figures that can be painted up quite nicely as 1/72 scale monsters.

The wings were warped and misshapen but this was easily fixed with a little hot water. 

After a few washes and a bit of detailing they come out as very acceptable bad guys.

Let's see how our adventurers fair against these new opponents 

I don't know if these are original sculpts or could possibly be pirated copies of some other manufacture, it would be interesting to know as they are very nice figures so any info please let me know in the comments section.

On the next update (which hopfully won't take as long as this one has since the last blog entry nearly a year ago), I'll post some game photos from a 1/72 scale zombie scenario we recently played.

Cheers, John