It’s close to miiiiiiiidddnight…

So a couple of months ago I mentioned a Halloween scenario and, by complete co-incidence, last night I ran it...

Now this was originally from 4th or possibly 5th edition, so I had to do a fair amount of work to bring it up to date, and I didn't have time to playtest, so just winged it. So, now the game is done, what feedback can I give?

Well, the zombies won, so it was probably a little too difficult.

The zombies armour save of 5+ followed by the resilient save has not modified well. It was based on their 5+ armour and FNP of 5+ from several editions ago. Of course in that time there were many weapons (flamers/bolters etc) that would completely bypass that armour save, something less common now. There were also ways to bypass the FNP roll, by using power weapons or double the toughness of the target. Of course FNP doesn't exist any more and I borrowed from plaguebearers in my design and perhaps it was a bit too much (although plaguebearers with a 5++ followed by disgustingly resilient will prove to be a real problem to shift)

The consensus on the table was a 6+ save would have been more suited.

World War Z-zombies - I increased the speed of the zombies from an original 2D6 per turn to 3D6 per turn. The 2D6 was set at a time when most units could move 6, then run D6 or assault 6. Very few could run and assault. So the chances were that the zombies on 2D6 would keep up. Now though, you can move about 6" (varies from race to race) advance D6 and while you then usually can't assault, some units can... and if you chose not to advance, you can assault 2D6. That's about 18" per turn potentially, and I felt the zombies needed a bit of a helping hand keeping up, so I gave them an extra D6.

Now admittedly, I couldn't have known that I was gonna roll less than 12 on only about 4 occasions, the two occasions I rolled a collective 4 everyone breathing a sigh of relief and making a break for it... it's a random dice roll. I still think that with the speed of certain units, the 3D6 isn't too much, unless I acted in some way to slow the speed potential of certain units down.

Speaking of which, jump infantry. On original design spec they'd have been disallowed under the "infantry only" rule but now they count as infantry, but with the "fly" keyword. I hadn't anticipated this when designing the rules and only noticed it when picking a team on the day, so I took a squad of 9 stormboyz. This lot could move 12, advance D6, then assault 2D6 (taking mortal wounds for everyone who rolls a 1, costing me a third of my squad on my first charge) orks being able to innately reroll one of their charge dice. This unit could potentially reach the choppa in 2 turns, it was unreal. Luckily for the game, I played it in character. The boyz went hell for leather down the middle making as much noise as possible creating a mass brawl within sight of the choppa. They were all dragged down and turned... leaving a massive herd of zombies in everyone elses path. They all loved that...

On a second attempt I took someone elses suggestion and flew to the top of a high rise building, and then just hopped from rooftop to rooftop, leading a small band of zombies up one building, then back down and up the next, then back down and up the next, as I stepping stoned my way to the choppa. This was way too powerful a tactic, and if I hadn't lost some of my orks after getting stuck in a brawl (a brawl I entered to rid myself of the ork boy tagalong I had "won" slowing my pace and crippling my tactic) I could have beat the end boss and won, instead I got bogged down fighting him and the following back caught up, swamping me once again.

That was clearly too good a strategy. However I am loathe to outlaw the "fly" keyword as that hits a large proportion of tau stuff, which hardly seems fair. Although the swooping hawks pull back and redeploy rule definitely needs stopping. I think the best case would next time not to be crossing a city, but leaving a 40k shopping mall. Necromunda style scenery, nothing higher than one level above street level. Have a doorway to the parking lot where the choppa is waiting. but assume anything before that doorway has a roof, so while you can get up a level quickly, you can't fly high and away. That would stop the sneaky swooping hawks, and mean that while you could gain a few inches safety from the zombies, you wouldn't be able to put yourself 12" of vertical movement away from them.

Ironically the boss zombie himself could probably do with being a little tougher. My 5 boyz almost had him, if the full squad of 9 had hit probably would have.

The powerups could do with a little clearer wording... the chainsaw seems OP unless we say it's one attack only. No you can't ducttape a chainsaw. stuff like that. Also, with the option to ALWAYS take the blue shell unless spawning, and if you're last you can add 1 to the roll, it seems zombie bile would NEVER take effect unless you rolled a double 1 in first place... and even then, you'd probably be better off taking the blue shell rather than the bile. Maybe incorporate the blue shell into the list and just let the bad times roll around every now and again.

All in all though, despite the fact no one won, and we eventually called it a zombie win, much fun was still had. With a few tweaks there is still potential for this scenario. Maybe next year...

But in the meantime...

No one's gonna save you from the beast about to strike...