Sunday 17 March 2024

Were-wolf? There-wolf!

My evening panting sessions have seen me finish another two miniatures, a pair of werewolves primarily for the first co-op Silver Bayonet scenario:


They’re sculpts from North Star, for the game Dracula’s America, and they’re nicely scaled and proportioned. They’d been sat undercoated for far too long, and the promise of being able to actually play my first home Silver Bayonet game if I finished them proved too much to resist.


Alas, I didn’t get to take pictures using natural light, so we’ll have to make do with these slightly washed out ones. 

I also decided to paint them different colours just in case I ever get round to playing the Rangers of Shadow Deep scenario Blood Moon, as I vaguely remember one of the clues in that game being finding some red hairs, hence one werewolf being a redhead.

Finishing them takes the 2024 Tally to:

3 vs 4 = -1


We also played our second session of family D&D on Mother’s Day:

The party made their way to the sea caves by boat to find out why the previously peaceful mushroom man farmers were acting up, and after fighting a fungal octopus made their way inside to get ambushed by the world’s slowest moving mushrooms, much the the dismay of the mushroom farmers. 

I’m quite enjoying running a pre written adventure, as it means we can play with minimal effort and stress, which also leaves more time (and brain space!) for trying to make it fun. We had some cool moments, like my youngest’s character getting gripped by the octopus when he got knocked out, causing a panic when it was killed and started to sink and dragged him down with it. My wife’s immediate reaction was to tie a rope around him, only to find herself getting dragged down too! My eldest also rolled her first crit too, which I was as excited as she was about!

Monday 4 March 2024

Goblin’ my Hob

I mean I’m sure there were worse puns to use as a title, but they’d be hard to come by…

Excitingly, I’ve finished my first miniature of the year:



A Mage Knight mini originally, he’s going to be my hobgoblin for games of Silver Bayonet.


In The Silver Bayonet, Hobgoblins are humans that have been twisted and changed by dark magic, and I felt like his wildly uneven stature (not to mention rows of stitches) fit that theme quite nicely. It’s hard to see in these pictures, but a good dousing of crimson wash around the stitches makes them look pretty raw and uncomfortable.

If I was to do it again, I’d probably not leave the model unconverted - swapping out that big armoured shoulder pad for an epaulette, maybe. But I didn’t, so we can only assume the tricksy fae slapped it on him before using him in some nefarious gladiator battles before they got bored of him and released him back out into the world… I tried to make the shoulder pad looked weird and patina’d, for a little visual interest as much as anything else:


Painting him brings the Tally to:

1 vs 4 = -3


In other news, I introduced my family to Dungeons and Dragons at the weekend:



I helped them make characters and then ran them through the first couple of hours of the adventure in the latest starter box, and let me tell you D&D with children (4 and 9) is a very different beast to what you’re used to. I’m grateful that my wife also tried the game for the first time, so there was at least one player desperately trying to follow what was going on and drive the narrative in between one character constantly offering to play viol for everyone they met, and the other exploiting their entire backstory to everyone they met! If they want to carry on, we’ll have to see about getting them some proper miniatures for their characters…

Wednesday 21 February 2024

All quiet on the western front…

So, having spent a month and a half unpacking, we’re still not done. Not even halfway, potentially. But even so, I figured it was time to pull out some of my miniature bits, as all work and no play makes Jack a full boy, or so it is said.

While I haven’t been doing any painting, I have started prepping some miniatures, which if you look at the swathes of prepped but unpainted miniatures in my house you might think was my actual hobby…

After watching one of the Spider-Man movies with my youngest (as he was insistent we watch the second Andrew Garfield movie, but we thought the Gwen Stacy death scene might be a bit much as he’s only four) I dug out some of my painted Superheroes and some Heroclix mats and whipped up a quick set of rules so that we could play out some four colour tights & fights action:



Opposed rolls, different size dice for different skill levels. More play testing required perhaps, as these were thrown together in about half an hour.

A bin was the first thing I found that could be used as an objective, so Spider-Man, Scorpion and Boom Boom were fighting to recover secret plans that had been dropped in the trash…


After the first game, we added a second character each (as it wasn’t much fun for my youngest getting knocked out relatively quickly) 


My dice rolling remained characteristically terrible though, here’s me using Scorpion’s power attack (allowing him to sacrifice two actions to roll double dice, which against an opponent rolling a single, probably smaller, die, should be nigh on unstoppable) and absolutely whiffing it.

Despite not doing any painting so far this year, the Tally has taken a hit as my wife bought me some miniatures as part of my Valentine’s present:


Half-orcs and Tieflings, as I mentioned that I didn’t have any miniatures of either, which takes the Tally to: 

0 vs 4 


The rain let up enough for me to spray some minis too, so there may even be some painting in my future…

Friday 26 January 2024

2023 in review

As ever, my annual post where I look back at my progress over the previous year, and plan for the year ahead.

Just… wildly later than usual. We moved house over Christmas, which I heartily do not recommend if you can avoid it, and now pretty much all of my time that I’m not at work is spent unpacking boxes and all of my minis and paints are somewhere in here:


Tally

Christmas happened since my last post, adding these to my heap of minis:

Add to that not having painted any miniatures since October (again, my evenings and weekends from the end of October were spent frantically throwing things into boxes) it leaves the final total at:

33 vs 227 = -194 

Which while it’s my second worst year for number of painted minis since the blog began (second only to the year I got married) is actually only the third worst year for overall Tally score - what can I say, I’m a sucker for a big box of secondhand minis! Hopefully this year I can spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s the way it’s supposed to be, frantically drybrushing to get my numbers up before the year ends and the Tally resets!


Thirteen years of stats:

2023: -194 (33 painted)

2022: 0 (85 painted)

2021: +16 (52 painted)

2020: -100 (47 painted)

2019: +3 (46 painted)

2018: +52 (52 painted)

2017: -14 (47 painted)

2016: -287 (56 painted)

2015: -96 (59 painted)

2014: 0 (80 painted)

2013: -416 (25 painted)

2012: -103 (68 painted)

2011: -173 (122 painted)

Hmm, only four times have I managed to end the year not in the negative. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned there abou- what’s that, Salute tickets have gone on sale now? Nice, should start making a shopping list really…


Posts

I managed at least one blog post every month for the whole year, driven mostly by playing a year-long Last Days Seasons campaign in real time. While a lot of my posts were game reports or me having painted things I was going to use in the game, I did also manage to paint and post a variety of other bits and bobs fairly consistently throughout the year as the fancy took me.


Last Year’s challenge


  • Finish my 500 point Skaven Warhammer army
Failed, but not catastrophically - one day, gadget, one day!
  • Play at least 12 games in 2023 
I actually succeeded at this one, managing to get 15 games in last year!
  • Prep all the monkeys in the monkey box (I mean I couldn’t delete this one after so many years)
This is just a meme now, me actually doing this is probably one of the signs of the end of the world by now…
  • Convert at least one miniature
I thought I hadn’t managed this, but looking back at my posts I was reminded that I converted some zombies for Zomtober and some additional Doctor Who Autons, so that’s another pass!
  • Add to the Monstrous Alphabet project
Alas, another fail, although I did buy some minis for this project last year, so that’s sort of a half step towards success?
  • Do Zomtober posts
Success!
  • Do a May the Fourth post
Success!
  • Do a festive post
Failure, as no painting at all happened this festive season. 
  • Average at least a miniature a week (so at least 52 completed miniatures across the year)
Failure - I’m usually the most productive at the end of the year as the looming deadline tends to motivate me to get things finished!
  • End the year with the Tally in the positive
A big no - partly due to not getting much painted, but also not helped by buying a load of secondhand Warhammer either…

So overall a 40% success rate - not great in real terms, but compared to most years an outstanding victory!



Projects (according to the last end of year post)

Warhammer

While I didn’t finish my 500 point Skaven army, some progress was made, and I also added even more models to my Undead over Zomtober, so that’s not bad going.


Zombies

A resounding success, as I managed to hit my target of playing a year long campaign in real time. I started making scenery of the farm that was the group’s home base, so there’s potential for future games with this group in the future…


Frostgrave

I played a single game of this, and half painted some of the miniatures that I need for the next scenario, so less than I’d planned to do, but more than I might have done.


Rangers of Shadow Deep

Again, I’m averaging a game of this every eighteen months or so - I was really happy with how the game I played came out though, with specially modelled cocoons, nest trees, and Halloween spider web to decorate the table.


Silver Bayonet

First two minis for my group painted, and parts selected for a conversion for the third member.  Just need to find the box he’s in though…


Star Wars

As is now routine, I painted a single mini for May the Fourth, and managed to largely ignore my friend messaging saying ‘ooh look at Shatterpoint isn’t it shiny’ otherwise the tally would have been even worse…


2024 Projects

Despite messaging my buddy (who I start a lot of projects with, but don’t play a lot of games with because we keep starting new projects before finishing the previous ones) saying that we should focus on one project in the new year and actually get a game in, my 2024 project list looks like this:


Warhammer



Weirdly, with each new bit of information that got released about The Old World, I got less excited for it, but still am in the mood for some Warhammer, so will probably stick to my plan of starting with 500 point eighth edition. Once the Skaven are there, I’ve also got my Zombieslayer Undead project, plus a bundle of Empire ,I is bought at the end of last year - 500 points of them would paint up a lot quicker than 500 points of Skaven I’m sure!



The Silver Bayonet



While I bought the book when it came out and have only managed to finish two minis for this, my buddy played a demo game at Salute with me and then banged out an entire painted unit, so this is very much a possibility for getting a game in! I need to paint half a dozen or so minis for my Unit and two werewolves, and then I’ll be ready to go with the first solo scenario (which I’m assuming can also be played with more than one player - I’ll have to double check when the box with that book in turns up)



Frostgrave



The adventures of Tim the Necromancer will continue. Need to make some vapour snakes…


Rangers of Shadow Deep



It’s still on here, but less likely to see play in the near future, as I need to make quite a bit of scenery for the next scenario (a river, a bridge, a ford etc). Ooh, that reminds me, I met Joseph McCullough a couple of weeks back, turns out he’s local to me. I’d like to pretend I was suave and composed, but reader I was a little star struck and fanboyed at him. I managed to throw out the name of this blog though, so if you’re reading this Joe, hi! You’ll notice the majority of my major projects are games you wrote, keep up the good work! 

Also, Ronin of Shadow Deep falls into this category too - it’s not top of the list, but I suspect every now and then a Japanese Fantasy themed palette cleanser might creep into my painting queue.


Battletech

Having acquired a decent number of stompy robots last year, I’d like to get some of them painted!


Zombies


I’ll do Zomtober, and hopefully get in another game or two of Last Days, potentially having built their farm in miniature. Fingers crossed I can find some 3d printed toilets and other interior furnishings at Salute…


Star Wars



I’ll do May the Fourth, although I don’t know what I’ll do yet - maybe another Imperial Assault mini, so in a hundred years time I’ll eventually have a fully painted core box!


 Cowboys



I got bit by the cowboy bug last year - I forget if I posted about it, but it started with me wanting to do something with magic cowboys, but evolved into me wanting to do something with just regular non-magical cowboys, maybe using the stack of Legends of the Old West books that I’ve got knocking around. I ordered some miniatures, which arrived the day we got confirmation we were getting the new house, so they went straight into a box. As soon as I find that box, we’re back on! 


 Board Games



Our new house is somewhat more spacious than the old one, and means that we could probably have people over to play games without anyone having to sit on each others laps (unless they wanted to), so part of me wants to paint up one of the mini heavy games that I have in my collection like Hellboy or The Umbrella Academy. The realist part of me knows that doing that means I won’t get to play it for a couple of years, but still the optimist thinks it’s a good idea…


Acolyte



Aforementioned horrifically productive chum and I were discussing doing some 28mm Inquisitor, potentially using the Acolyte Kill Team mod, and he’s only gone and painted an entire retinue, as well as the enemies, so I should probably convert and paint an Acolyte!


2024 Challenge

Aiming for a similarly limited challenge this year:

  • Finish at least one playable force for a game (whether that be my 500 point Skaven army, my Silver a bayonet unit, or something else entirely…)
  • Play at least 12 games in 2024 
  • Prep all the monkeys in the monkey box (I mean I couldn’t delete this one after so many years)
  • Convert at least one miniature
  • Add to the Monstrous Alphabet project
  • Do Zomtober posts
  • Do a May the Fourth post
  • Do a festive post
  • Average at least a miniature a week (so at least 52 completed miniatures across the year)
  • End the year with the Tally in the positive

I’m not sure how I’ll do aiming for a game a month without the pressure of a monthly Last Days game (plus, all my stuff is buried in boxes!), but 12 still felt like a good number to shoot for…

Sunday 24 December 2023

Last Days Seasons campaign: December

As we’re (hopefully!) moving very soon (or maybe have already moved by the time this gets published?) I played my December game of Last Days at the start of the month so that I could then pack everything up. As it’s the last game of the originally planned year long campaign, I decided to play the final special Season scenario, Whiteout. To make it extra festive, we also had thematically appropriate zombies:


I set up an abandoned refuge deep in the woods, with a number of crumbling perimeter walls.


To make the board look snowy, I threw down a fleece that was previously doing double duty as a draft excluder. While it makes the table look more festive, it also means that all of the pics this month look very dark!

Most of the group are bedridden, so Dionne, Kev & Cece find themselves trudging through knee deep snow to investigate an abandoned refuge in the hope of securing some supplies.

“It’s snowing, nobody trusts each other, we’re all very tired”, says Kev suddenly.
“That’s not the quote, he doesn’t say anything about snow does he?” replies Dionne, shooting Kev a questioning look.
Cece looks at them both blankly - “what are you two talking about?”
“The Thing! You’ve never seen The Thing? Kurt Russell?” asks Kev. Cece pulls a face as if to suggest that this is a ridiculous question, of course not.
“Ugh, another thing I miss about civilisation, before the biters we’d have been able to go home and fix this” says Dionne, seemingly in shock. “Wait, quiet, there’s something up ahead” she says, peering though the blizzard…

As the group enter the area heading for the abandoned refuge, Santa zombie and his elves start to trudge towards them.


Kev Dionne and Cece begin their advance on the abandoned refuge, aiming to enter through a hole in the tumbledown surrounding wall. Kev was particularly perturbed by the weather, as his skill set largely revolves around running in and rapidly grabbing things, which he was unable to do due to the deep snow! Until I re-read the Free Runner skill, and realised that Kev can actually parkour over the top of the snow like he’s Legolas toting a magnum and a cricket bat - go, Kevolas, tell us what your elf eyes see!

He barrels off towards the closest supply token, while Cece and Dionne struggle through the snow behind him. Unfortunately, due to the blinding snow and high winds, they’re not able to clearly see the monies heading towards them, and so there isn’t any shooting. Kev is close enough, but has been told that he is only to fire his magnum as an absolute last resort, for fear of causing an avalanche (whether of snow or the walking dead, we’ll likely find out eventually).

Kev swings the backpack onto his back before moving across to the right to try and lure the nearby zombies away from the opening so that Cece and Dionne would have a clear path into the compound.


Dionne loosed a crossbow bolt at Santa zombie, but was horrified to see that the zombie’s flesh was frozen, and so the bolt failed to pierce and bounced off! Seeing this, Cece raised her sniper rifle, but Dionne waved her back, whispering “not yet, let me just try again” wanting to reassure Cece, but her nerves showed in her rapidly darting eyes.

More and more zombies seemed to jerk into activity now that the survivors had started to break the tree line, and stumbled forward in even greater numbers.


Kev skirted the wall, and trudged into the compound proper, scooping up a fuel canister as he did so (I decided for this scenario to say that survivors could pick up a fuel or food token in addition to a supply token, and that fuel and food tokens would count as Heavy 1 - otherwise it would have been a short and boring scenario if the survivors just popped in, grabbed the 3 nearest tokens, and then immediately left!)

Cece advanced toward the lone elf zombie, knife in hand, while Dionne loaded a fresh bolt in her crossbow and followed behind:


(Look at how much my trees are still shedding!)

Dionne loosed another bolt, and was again surprised to be unable to take out a zombie (don’t worry, it’s not that her injuries and the weather are affecting her abilities, I just rolled a 1 both times…)

Kev suddenly realised that he’d ranged too far ahead when the zombies that he was previously luring away turn around and close in on Dionne and Cece, rejoining the lone elf zombie that has managed to get within arms reach of Cece.

Dionne reloads and sidesteps to block Cece from being attacked by a second zombie, while Kev starts to head back to try and give them a hand. Unfortunately, he’s so laden down with supplies that he isn’t able to quite make it, ending up tantalisingly close to the action.


At that moment I realise that in hindsight it would have been a better idea to send Kev off to grab some further away loot tokens, leaving the easier ones for the girls to grab on their much slower advance up the field. Ah well, maybe next year is the year we start using tactics I guess…

Just as the zombie shed moved to intercept was about to lunge at her, Dionne whipped up her crossbow and shot it at almost point blank range, scoring the first kill of the game! Cece was similarly successful, plunging her shiv through the eye socket of other zombie elf.

Seeing that Cece and Dionne now only had a single zombie to contend with, Kev shucked the backpack off of his back and onto the ground for them to later collect, and turned back to try and gather some more supplies. He decided against the ones to his right, as although he’d be able to reach them easily, there were four zombies bearing down on them, so instead he decided to take cover on the other side of the shack and see what he could find there.

Cece looked at the backpack in the snow ahead of her for a second, but figured it would keep a while longer and instead moved to help Dionne take out the zombie in the Santa outfit that she was fighting, and although both were able to land some blows on it, neither were able to land a fatal one.

With Kev now out of sight, the zombies in the compound started to shamble towards the combat between Dionne Cece and Santa zombie:


Kev nipped around the corner, grabbed an unattended cardboard box, then headed back towards the rest of the group to hand it off. 

Seeing him heading towards her, Dionne wasted no time in decapitating Santa zombie with her samurai sword, then moves forward to receive the supplies from Kev. As she does so, Cece moves up alongside her, and grabs the previously discarded backpack. Kev tosses Dionne the box and fuel canister he’d been carrying, before turning round to make another dash through the snow on the left hand side of the shack.

Dionne snaps off a shot at the zombie that’s getting dangerously close to them, but overencumbered as she is it’s unfortunately not a lethal one.


Both Dionne and Cece back away from the encroaching zombies, Dionne pausing to slot another bolt into her crossbow as she does so. Kev, however, heads off towards the abandoned lookout tower, scooping up a crate of canned goods as he does so. 

Dionne shoots again, but still can’t make a kill (the zombie in question’s reindeer outfit starting to look more like a porcupine at this point), and so decides that discretion is the better part of valour and eschews reloading in favour of putting more distance between herself and the oncoming zombies. However, laden down with supplies as she is, it’s only a matter of time before they are able to catch up to her. Seeing this, Cece lets off a deafeningly loud shot with her sniper rifle, atomising the head of the closest zombie, even as it sent flocks of birds flying from the trees, and every dead head in the area turned to face the source of the noise…

Kev, meanwhile, had managed to make his way to a clearing in the woods where he spotted a discarded briefcase sticking out of the snow.


“Things are looking up!” He said to himself, until he heard the unmistakeable crack of a gunshot ringing out, and saw zombies starting to crash through the trees ahead of him.

With four zombies bearing down on her, Dionne suddenly remembered that she had the Quick Reload skill, and so was able to easily reload her crossbow while back-pedalling, which would have come in pretty hand in the last couple of turns!

Cece, figuring that the cat was out of the bag at this point and it was a fight for survival fired off another shot, and while she wasn’t able to land a killing blow did cause the zombie to stumble, meaning that it would be unlikely to catch up to Dionne quite so easily. 

Dionne fared similarly, although her crossbow lacked the stopping power of a military sniper rifle, and so was significantly less effective.

While Dionne and Cece continue to reload while walking backwards through snow, Kev has managed to make his way to the edge of the table, and will be home free next turn.


Dionne misses her next shot entirely, while Cece once more manages to land a staggering hit on a zombie heading towards Dionne. 

Things continue mostly like this - Kev makes his way off the board with a supply token and a crate of food, having tried (and failed) to garner a single zombie kill along the way. Meanwhile as Cece turns to make her escape, she is ambushed by a new zombie that had been attracted by the sound of gunfire:


but after a few turns of struggling manages to kill her and make her escape.

Dionne, however, continues retreating and firing, but has no luck whatsoever in taking out any of her pursuers, and they eventually catch up to her, and start to surround her:

At first she tries to take them out with her samurai sword, but finds equally little success with that method of despatching them to try and this their numbers as she did with her crossbow…


This continues turn in, turn out, with Dionne breaking away to take an ineffectual shot with her crossbow, being caught and mobbed by her pursuers, breaking free, then repeating the cycle until she is able to get off the board.


Post-game:

Dionne is the only one to gain a level, and at this point reading her sheet I remember that she has the Sniper skill, so probably would have made a couple more headshots in that game had I remembered earlier. Ah well, on the other hand I rolled so many 1s that a +1 probably wasn’t going to do enough to make a real difference… and then I remembered that she has the master skill Never Misses, so could have re-rolled every single miss! Ah well again, it’s all about self belief, she just needs to remember that she’s the deadliest thing on two legs! With her advance, she gains another point of Damage Capacity - evidently lugging all of those heavy supplies was a good workout!

Between them, the survivors managed to make off with three supply tokens, one food and one fuel, and found a smattering of food fuel and scavenge, but also a set of cold weather clothes. These were given to Devon as soon as they got back to the refuge, as they knew that being so selfless if there was ever a situation where someone had to be left out in the cold he’d choose himself so that someone else in the group could be warm, and this would then keep him toasty warm. 


Speaking of leaders, it’s lucky everyone in the group gets along (and shares the same keyword, or is neutral) otherwise we’d have had a lot of infighting and leadership challenges with how often people in the group have been suffering from sickness!

When it came to assigning jobs, once again it was the case that the majority of the group were sick and needed to get bed rest - unusually though, every single member of the group felt better this month,  waning that no one at all was bedridden for the first time in a few months! That’s the power of turning the heating on I guess… Dionne and Cece set about rustling up enough food for everybody (which they managed, with one additional meal going to waste) while Kev patrolled the perimeter to protect everyone from zombies.

Managing conditions, everyone had enough to eat, and thanks to the stockpile of fuel built up in the preceding months (as well as building a wood-burning stove) the farmhouse is toasty warm. I was tempted to be a bit ‘gamey’ and only spend 3 fuel on heating the farmhouse, leaving one room cold as Devon’s cold weather clothing would mean that he could sit there and suffer no ill effects to save me 1 fuel, but that felt a little bit too detached from the narrative for my tastes. In a shocking turn of events, nobody recovering from sickness relapsed, and everyone is out of bed - it’s a Christmas miracle! 


And with that, my full year Last Days Seasons campaign is done! I had fun playing it every month, even though the common cold seemed to be a bigger threat than the zombies most of the time. I’ll probably play some more games next year, but I’m not going to commit to a monthly schedule again given everything we’ve got going on. I could do with finishing building the group’s shelter and playing a game there at the very least though…


As well as playing a game, the Tally has also taken a few hits this month.


Firstly, this year my wife and I decided to do custom advent calendars for each other (something we used to do before the children came along, but hasn’t really happened the last couple of years). As well as an assortment of small chocolates and dice, I’ve also been getting a sprue in instalments that was apparently included in the order with one of my Christmas presents. Being a big nerd, I recognised the font on the sprue and knew what company it was from straightaway… having looked up the finished sprue, it will be 4 additional miniatures by the end of the month.


I also spotted a Warhammer box poking out of a crate on a market stall that was packing up while on my way to pick up my youngest from Squirrels, and after a couple of weeks of missing them managed to catch them and bought the following on my lunch break:


And then went back again at the end of the day and also bought these:


Looks like there’s a 500 point Empire army in my future doesn’t it? All in, that’s 64 miniatures and one resin terrain piece hitting the Tally.

As we’re moving house, grandma took the kids for the night the other weekend, but also bought me sweets and a magazine because everyone else was getting one:


Adding 4 French miniatures to the Tally for future Silver Bayonet shenanigans, and leaving the Tally at:


33 vs 222 = -189


And leaving it unlikely that I’ll get back into the positives or hit my ‘average one painted miniature a week’ target by the end of the year, seeing as how my painting stuff is all packed away and any free time that I have being spent putting things in boxes…

Wednesday 29 November 2023

Last Days Seasons campaign: November

Another month, another game of Last Days! This month I played the scenario ‘No One Left Behind’ from the Seasons book:

Leaving Jess behind to look after the bedridden members of the group and try to harvest some more medicinal herbs from the gardens, Dionne Kev and Cece once again venture into the city looking for useful supplies. Instead, they’ve found a lost member of another group who promises them a reward if they can escort her back home. While initially cautious (as she’s clearly carrying a severed head), the gang decide that it’s the right thing to do, and anyway, it might be good to establish good relations with Ella other group who might be a possible trading partner with winter ever looming…

The board I set up looked like this:



Two parallel streets with plenty of ruined buildings, rubble and fences. The weather result i rolled was light rain, which reduced the maximum visibility for survivors (but didn’t affect any zombies, as they have other ways of finding prey). 

As the group enter the area (new friend in tow), they see that it’s especially dense with zombies, so decide to go as quietly as possible. Due to their stealthy approach, only a handful of zombies actually noticed them and started to shuffle towards them.

Kev, actually getting to utilise his full skill set, silently sprints and parkours his way up the rubble strewn street towards a cache of supplies hiding in a ruined building’s fenced off yard.


Cece follows after him more cautiously, with Dionne bringing up the rear to try and quietly pick off any zombies that get too close with her crossbow, which she does as a zombie shambles around the corner of a collapsing fence.

Side note - I finally made some proper Last Days tokens! Shout out to the Files section of the Last Days Facebook group and my wife’s laminator:


Cece decides against firing just yet, feeling that stealth might still be a better option than her hugely noisy military sniper rifle.

More zombies pile into the area, but luckily very few can lay eyes on the survivors and so largely stand like rotting scarecrows. When I built the board for this game, I made a couple of streets that I envisioned having to fight across the width of, then decided to follow the rules of the scenario and randomly determined a starting edge, leaving the group with a relatively straight shot up one of the streets, trying to jump from cover to cover to avoid being spotted by the horde the next street over - especially  important as I was playing on a 2.5 by 2.5 rather than 3 foot playing area.

Kev grabs the supplies then pressed himself flat against the wall of a ruined building, steeling himself for a dash to freedom through the closing net of zombies.


Cece and Dionne follow after him, hoping to also take cover in Kev’s safe spot. Dionne reloads her crossbow and attempts to take out another zombie, but unfortunately the combination of intervening terrain and her eye injury mean that she just narrowly misses, the bolt clattering away uselessly.

Cece again abstains from firing, knowing that if she does she’ll bring an even bigger horde down on their heads.

The exhausted survivor trails after them, struggling to keep up despite Dionne’s frantic hand signals.

As more and more zombies wander onto the board. A critical mass seems to be forming behind the garages:


They seem fairly placid for now, but all it would take would be a single gunshot or car alarm to go off for them to surge out onto the adjacent streets…

Also, Kev’s hiding place was mostly solid, except for from the POV of one particular distant zombie who looked up and started to lurch towards him:


Kev continues his advance through the ruined building, his eyes nervously scanning the groups of zombies clumped together ahead of him, looking for a gap through which he could make his escape.

Cece and Dionne scrabbled after him, Dionne starting to look a bit worried at just how many zombies were bearing down on her as she clambered over a heap of rubble.


She then unloads another crossbow bolt at an advancing zombie, but despite getting a hit fails to make a kill. She rapidly double taps the zombie, taking it out, but as she does so dislodges a brick in the rubble pile she is standing on which noisily clatters away down the street. Uh-oh…

Hearing this (and realising that shit is about to hit the fan) Cece and Kev both open fire with their firearms. Cece blows the head off of a zombie that was closing on Dionne, as Kev blasts the closest zombie to him with his magnum. Again, I remember too late that I probably should have had my stealth team swap out their incredibly noisy hand cannons for something a little more suited to stealth missions… ah well, the cat’s well and truly out of the bag now!

Presumably summoned by this row, two more zombies emerge from the garages, only a short distance away from the survivors trying to make their escape…


In a rare turn of luck though, no other zombies seem to have heard this (beyond the handful that appear on the board every turn regardless due to the rules of the scenario). Speaking of which, every zombie on the board surged towards the sound of gunshots, as both Cece and Dionne found their weapons empty. While most of them were still a safe distance away, one actually managed to get within grabbing distance of Dionne!

Kev was torn - he could see a gap through which he could possibly sprint to freedom, but he didn’t want to abandon Cece and Dionne. “Go, get the supplies out of here, we’re right behind you!” called Cece, so Kev nodded, vaulted the low wall beside him, and ran off the table.

“Right behind you” said Cece again, as much to herself as anyone else.

Dionne reloaded her crossbow and strode round the corner to the street Kev had sprinted down, readying herself for a run of her own. Cece didn’t have time to reload her sniper rifle as she scrambled through a hole in the wall into the same street, almost into the arms of a waiting zombie - if not for the crossbow bolt that seemed to suddenly sprout from it’s forehead.


Although the group had returned to their previous method of stealthy maneuvering, enough zombies now had eyes on them that everyone (new survivor included) was swiftly engaged by the hungry dead. Although Dionne was able to duck out of reach, Cece and the survivor they were escorting were not so lucky, a d had to fight for their lives. As Dionne coolly took down the zombie she’d just ducked under the arms of, Cece hacked with her knife at the three zombies surrounding her, but wasn’t able to take any of them out.


In return, one of the zombies manages to catch Cece a glancing blow, and the escorted survivor fares similarly in her fight. Even as this happens, four more zombies pour out of the comic book store to join the fray.

Spurred on by her potential impending demise, the survivor manages to break away from the zombies grasping at her and stumbles up to join Dionne in the street.

Sucking under the swinging arm of a zombie in a hospital gown, Cece put her head down and sprinted towards the end of the street, no other thought but escape in her mind. Seeing this, Dionne had a decision to make - and she couldn’t just sprint after Cece, as her way was blocked by too many zombies. “Quick, follow me!” she hissed to the survivor, before cutting across into a side street and breaking into a run to try and get around the group of zombies blocking her path to freedom.

The survivor, however, was too exhausted to manage a run, and unable to keep pace with Dionne was surrounded by zombies once more.


As did Dionne and Cece, admittedly, but to a lesser extent. Dionne keeps pace ahead of her pursuers and continues to run down the street, all hope of protecting the survivor they were escorting lost in favour of self-preservation:


while Cece scrambles through a broken window to evade her attackers, before also losing her nerve and sprinting off the table.

The survivor, unable to escape the grasping claws of five zombies  is dragged down screaming as Cece and Dionne exit the board.

Post-game:

Not a lot of experience gained this month, but Kev learns The skill Sprinter (after having plenty of practice!). Cece learns the skill Agriculturalist, presumably where Jess is up and about again she’s been showing Cece the basics of running the farm. 

As the survivor didn’t make it (which seems to be a recurring theme whenever this group meets a new friend, despite their best efforts), they get no reward from the other group, and Kev’s supply cache only yields one unit of Fuel and one Scavenge.

(Brief aside - it’s really tricky to lead out the survivor in this scenario! It’s a bit like in a video game where you have to lead out an AI companion, and they walk very slowly and stupidly, and you have to stop in weird places to try and lure them after you)

Everyone bedridden Rests this month, and the group gives the leader Devon the last of their medicine in the hopes of getting him back on his feet, but alas it has no effect (slightly annoying, as there was a 5 in 6 chance he’d be able to get out of bed, but I rolled a 1!). The fireman also remains bedridden, but Lynn starts feeling a bit better and is able to get out of bed. Everyone else works on gathering supplies, with Jess harvesting medicine in the garden, Dionne and Cece gathering food, and Kev working on building up their stockpile of Fuel before winter hits.

I agonised over whether Kev should Guard the group (as there are so many people bedridden) instead of gathering fuel, but went with banking on the farm’s remote location being defence enough!

Once this was all done, there was enough food that no one had to go hungry (with one excess meal even wasted, as there was no one free to preserve it on the cold cellar). Luckily Kev and Dionne didn’t catch any sickness from Cece who had been feeling a bit under the weather during their excursion, but unfortunately both Jess and Lynn then fell bedridden again. Looks like it’s going to be a tricky winter - will the groups stockpile of supplies be enough to keep them alive with most of the group unable to get out of bed?


As well as playing a game, I’ve also been receiving some parcels:



CP Models had a Halloween discount code, so I grabbed a few bits there including a sprue of fungus faces for some conversions planned for the Ronin of Shadow Deep project.

My Heresy order placed over the summer arrived, with some Doctor Who adjacent bits that I’d been missing from my collection.

I ordered a box of cowboy bits from https://wynfordia.co.uk/, a website I’d never come across before but randomly stumbled over, which was handy as I was able to get some Dead Man’s Hand plastic gunfighters and Artizan sculpts (as well as a larger than my usual paint brush), all at a discounted price and with free shipping! 

Side note - I’ve had the urge for cowboys all of a sudden after years of the genre not really holding any appeal. I think it’s a combination of listening to Old Gods of Appalacia, then reading A War Transformed - originally I had visions of doing magical duelling cowboys (and wven bought a copy of the Dracula’s America rulebook!) but I think now I’m leaning towards doing vanilla cowboys using Legends of the Old West. I watched Tombstone too, which was grand - what’s not to love about Kurt Russell in a fancy moustache stomping around pistol whipping people while Val Kilmer had me googling Doc Holliday miniatures half way through the film?)

This does however mean that the Tally now stands at:

33 vs 150 = -117

So, yeah, probably not going to get back into the black before the New Year. 

Especially as it looks like we might now be moving house in three weeks, so some of these minis will have to go straight into a moving box…