AKULAVILLE - Game Reports (Zombies...lots of them)

[Captaingeneral]

Awesome stuff, very inspirational!

Love the 'horde' base very L4D!   

Thanks for sharing

[warrenss2]

@ AKULA and/or Cmdr. Vyp.

Do you guys even worry about "balance" in these games? It's not that I'm concerned with balance. I just like to know things like how many hordes, fast, slow, and tank zeds you table for a game.

Do you base it on the size of the table? The number of survivors? Toss the all zeds into the air - which ever ones land on the table are played and started in that spot? Any rhyme or reason to it?

Just trying to get an idea on what and how many to field.

Warren

[Commander Vyper]

@ AKULA and/or Cmdr. Vyp.

Do you guys even worry about "balance" in these games? It's not that I'm concerned with balance. I just like to know things like how many hordes, fast, slow, and tank zeds you table for a game.

Do you base it on the size of the table? The number of survivors? Toss the all zeds into the air - which ever ones land on the table are played and started in that spot? Any rhyme or reason to it?

Just trying to get an idea on what and how many to field.

Warren

Balance? 

All depends on the scenario really. Howeve my supplement* has a slightly different approach to spawning points: (extract below, will distribute the supplement*).

The dead are drawn to the living like well… undead bees to a fleshy honeypot.

Gunfire, screaming, chainsaw motors, mobile phone ring tones, motorised vehicles, human scent/blood all draw more zombies onto the table.

This is a simple spawn point rule that would work on both small and large tables.

Mark out your table edges: dice are used at table entry markers, three down each long side of the table, (one in each corner and one in the middle ordered 1-6.).

Gamers note:

On a small table this works well, especially when an objective is placed in a corner or near to a table edge spawn point, gives the survivors, (and zombies) something to really get their teeth into!

To spice things up a little, (urban sprawl, busy shopping mall etc..). Consider 2d6 for zombie numbers entering the table rather than 1d6.

At the beginning of each zed turn roll 1d6:

1d6   Result:
1-3   Attracted by human activity… more zombies shamble forth!
4-6   Your actions go unnoticed: no additional zombies for this turn…

If more zombies shamble forth this turn:

Roll 1d6:

1-6 = dice entry markers/point of entry.

Roll 1d6 (or 2d6 as discussed above):  Dice roll indicates the number of zombies arriving from that spawn point.

Additional Zombie Spawning Points:

Gamers note:

Don’t feel restricted to using just table edges as spawning points, this is the real world remember.

When play testing we decided on six spawning points as this worked on a small coffee table, whereas if you’re using a more traditionally sized gaming table you might want to create a little more of a challenge for your survivors!

Want 8 spawning points?
Maybe 20 spawning points?

Grab those old redundant D&D dice you KNOW you have lurking around from your RPG days and get creative!

You could also consider the following areas to add a little bit of flavour to your games:

•   The abandoned school bus or coach at the crossroads.
•   The sewer system: drains and manhole covers.
•   Large public buildings: (hospitals, schools, town halls, cinemas, shopping centres etc…).
•   The emergency shelter: where everyone was told to head to?
•   Multi level spawning points: (apartment buildings, multi-storey car parks, subways,
            (eat fresh eh? Or the Underground?).

If I'm feeling really sadistic, then I roll more spawn point dice for set up and up the zed generation dice.

With Akula's significant zed resource I'm sure he has more of a scatter gun set up approach.

At the end of the day.....you think anyone's supposed to win? 




*(Disclaimer: Vyper's  Rules: Supplemental  (VRS) are in no way connected with ARSE: rules and can be incorporated into any post apoc-future modern zombie related 28mm tabletop gaming experience involving 28mm related zombie miniatures...any similiarities to ARSE rules or reference to any persons living, dead, (dead and got up again and started eating people) are strictly co-incidental, )

[AKULA]

Do you guys even worry about "balance" in these games? It's not that I'm concerned with balance. I just like to know things like how many hordes, fast, slow, and tank zeds you table for a game.

Balance....?  Que?

I've (currently) got 200 individually-based slow zeds, 3 horde bases (another 100 zeds), a rat horde base, c30 or so fast zeds (larger bases), and 3 "tanks" painted up. 

They all generally start on the table, because I like to look at a table full of zombies!  Depending upon the scenario, i'll adjust the starting number of survivors (generally 2 or 3 per player), their weapons, skills, vehicles etc, plus what they have to do.

On otherwords, try it - if they die in the first 10 minutes, try a different scenario. 

A survival rate of 25-50% feels about right, as I don't want to be accused of being on the side of the zombies (as if).  Allowing an umpire to choose which spawn points to allocate the recycled dead to, helps with "balance" and gameplay, and he can make it easier/harder by where he puts the new zombies on - or you can just dice.

Careful placement of the hordes can channel the players in one or more directions, splitting them up, into more bite size chunks (freudian slip...)

extract below, will distribute once this edition's finished).

You could always write your own set of rules from scratch, rather than attempt to rewrite mine.... that way you could publish them and make millions...

[warrenss2]

At the end of the day.....you think anyone's supposed to win? - Hell no! It doesn't happen like that in the movies or according to Max Brooks... so it shouldn't be that way on the gaming table. 

A survival rate of 25-50% feels about right - but how do you know how many Zeds is takes to achieve a ballpark figure like that percentage?

I know that not all the zeds are activated all the time... so maybe it's just as simple as peppering them around the table so that there's a good chance a survivor will be near by when a black suited card shows up. Place hordes somewhere near the path toward their goal? Maybe use Tanks to force survivors into taking routes toward hordes or <shudder> a witch or liche.

I think the witch/liche make PERFECT ambushers. Make then non distinguishable from the rest of the zed... they yell and all zombies within 30 inches come looking for dinner! NASTY!! 

Quote from: Commander Vyper on Today at 04:00:27 AM
extract below, will distribute once this edition's finished).

You could always write your own set of rules from scratch, rather than attempt to rewrite mine.... that way you could publish them and make millions... - I think the two of you should team up, create a company, co-write the rules, branch into miniature sales, hire me to be a gofer, then make millions! _{And pay me big bucks!!!}

[Commander Vyper]

At the end of the day.....you think anyone's supposed to win? - Hell no! It doesn't happen like that in the movies or according to Max Brooks... so it shouldn't be that way on the gaming table. 

A survival rate of 25-50% feels about right - but how do you know how many Zeds is takes to achieve a ballpark figure like that percentage?

I know that not all the zeds are activated all the time... so maybe it's just as simple as peppering them around the table so that there's a good chance a survivor will be near by when a black suited card shows up. Place hordes somewhere near the path toward their goal? Maybe use Tanks to force survivors into taking routes toward hordes or <shudder> a witch or liche.

I think the witch/liche make PERFECT ambushers. Make then non distinguishable from the rest of the zed... they yell and all zombies within 30 inches come looking for dinner! NASTY!! 

Quote from: Commander Vyper on Today at 04:00:27 AM
extract below, will distribute once this edition's finished).

You could always write your own set of rules from scratch, rather than attempt to rewrite mine.... that way you could publish them and make millions... - I think the two of you should team up, create a company, co-write the rules, branch into miniature sales, hire me to be a gofer, then make millions! _{And pay me big bucks!!!}

Heh,

Well my additional supplement*, doesn't work with an umpire as such, (Gamesmaster what ever you want to refer to it as) due to the practicalities of only usually having two players.

This is where the fixed spawn points and dice rolls come in rather than umpire's choice. (So on a Zed turn, if players have made a noise the turn previous you roll for the possibility of more zeds arriving from relative spawn points).

I'm not personally looking to add all the L4D characters into the game from my perspective*, we don't even use fast zombies (walkers or dogs) yet, (again part of this is that my mate that I play with isn't into big rules so I'm adding things incrementally). I might consider the tank but then again probably not.

At the end of the day, the games are short and bloody, if it doesn't work try it again.

Company together?

 

The Commander




*(Disclaimer: Vyper's  Rules: Supplemental  (VRS) are in no way connected with ARSE: rules and can be incorporated into any post apoc-future modern zombie related 28mm tabletop gaming experience involving 28mm related zombie miniatures...any similiarities to ARSE rules or reference to any persons living, dead, (dead and got up again and started eating people) are strictly co-incidental, )

[AKULA]

Disclaimer

Numptie!

 

[Commander Vyper]

Numptie!

 

 Well it was never intended to be a re-write and the stuff I've included is off in another shambling direction so no problems Matt, this will stand alone in future.

Cheers big ears!

[abhorsen950]

Excellent report im going to be using those rules myself.
who manufactures those zombie minis?

[AKULA]

Excellent report im going to be using those rules myself.
who manufactures those zombie minis?

At least a dozen different manufacturers - as with my rules, there is also a list of zombie manufacturers on my blog (in the signature, on my first post on this page).

 

[abhorsen950]

Cheers i was thinking of getting Bag O Zombies and using them figures but ill have a look

Regards
Steve

[dexter]

Cheers i was thinking of getting Bag O Zombies and using them figures but ill have a look

Regards
Steve
[/quote
The Bag O Zombies are more like true 25mm figures , so they can look a bit out of proportion when mixed with metal zombies but then they are very cheap, which is a bonus.. Just thought i'd let you know incase you hadnt seen them in the flesh so to speak,

[abhorsen950]

Cheers Dex and your right i havent seen them in the flesh
Thanks man

Steve

[warrenss2]

i was thinking of getting Bag O Zombies and using them figures

They could work - you'd have to mount them on a riser to get them to the right height.

I use them to thicken my zed collection a bit. But since they're only in one pose each (ie - the male, female, and dogs) they get kinda boring after a while. I plan to keep them around until I can afford some variety of figures and poses.

[Galman]

I did the same thing.  Bought a bag so I can at least field plenty of zeds.