Do I have enough Zeds?

[SBRPearce]

I know the short answer: "Never"

But there's a small local con coming up in less than a month, and I only have 72 zombies ready to play - 3 Wargame Factory packs, based as a 12-man "horde" and 60 individuals. I'll be using Akula's AR:SE rules, and of course zombie casualties will be instantly recycled.

But is it enough to present sufficient challenge to my players? The heroes will have a short squad of US Army National Guardsmen (Empress US Moderns - gorgeous figs) with a Humvee-mounted MG (Force of Arms), a package of Tactical Miniatures' "Big City PD" cops (5 officers) and a few (3-4) Hasslefree armed civilians. All in all, about a dozen effectives. The scenario is "Z-Day plus 7", where a mixed bunch of safety forces are sent into the city center to extract civilians who actually obeyed the mayor's "Stay In Your Homes" order of five days past. These are the folks who don't have cars or access to other transport, and the situation's gotten dire enough to try an evacuation.

The safety forces are (theoretically) supposed to establish a cordon, clear the area inside of "the infected", load the rescued civvies aboard commandeered school buses, then cordon off the next street and continue. Lather, rinse, repeat. The quick way to summon civvies from their homes (driving down the street with a bullhorn) will also draw every zed for a mile around. On the other hand, going house-to-house will be slow and dangerous, and will give the "zed-train" time to get rolling on your position. I expect a lot of creative tactical solutions from my players - they're a cunning and blood-thirsty lot.

But is it a sufficiently "target-rich" environment for them?

[Lowtardog]

Definatley more than enough

[Eldorf.Dragonsbane]

The short answer is possibly, unfortunately the long answer is NO. To have any where close to enough you have to have Vampifans horde of 500+ zombies (I wouldn't be surprised if he is pushing closer to maybe the 650/700 mark by now). 

I know my hoard is currently about 115-120 zombies, and I am always looking for more. Granted I probably wont use all of them in one game (ATZ primarily), unless its a big game where I have a couple other people joining in on where we each have our star plus 3-4 grunts under our control. I figure I can easily recycle the "dead" zombies as needed. I am always looking at getting additional zombies, just to continue building up my collection so I have a selection to choose from. The same goes with my survivors, I am always looking at getting more, just so I have a choice of what to use.

[Ajsalium]

I think I've read from some of the "zombie experts" (here, on the FoD, or on Frothers), than zombies should outnumber survivors in a 10:1 or 12:1 ratio.

[Hitman]

I played in a Zombie game at H-Con. My buddy running the game had almost 100 figures painted up. We ended up using another 20 unpainted figures...in total close to 120 Zombies for our game!!

Get painting!! 

Regards,
Hitman
 

[Weird WWII]

I have about 120 or so as well for my gaming.  I had to limit my zeds to a single minis case or I'd have so many more.

Brian

[Skratch]

I know the short answer: "Never"

You already answered your own question, so ...

No seriously, depends a bit on the game you're going to play. Could work but with zombies more is always better

[DD-Chris]

If you do not plan on buying/painting more zombies, i may sugest that you use a "fog of war" type mechanic. players dont get the 'gods eye view' of every zed on the table. but as they turn onto a street, WHAMMO u drop a bunch of Z's. this will keep things CREEPY AS HELL for the players, and be a lot less taxing on your painting schedule.
Granted this may cause you to remove zombies from streets they passed up, and repopulate them in a newly discovered area. but i never said it was a perfect solution, it just adds a new element that many games dont have.

[SBRPearce]

Thank you for your input, gentlemen! Further acquisitions are planned, just not in time for the upcoming event...

DD-Chris: I've actually decided that I need to make "blind" markers that will populate uncleared buildings and also streets the safety forces haven't reached yet. Each blind represents "threat or rumor of threat", with no way to tell what it actually is until a scout actually puts eyes on it.

I'll probably have to devise a way for blinds to multiply - IE, if the characters bypass a concentration and kite off down a side street, the Zeds get changed into two or more blind markers, each of which has the potential to be all or part of the group that was spotted previously.

I have some Ebob dollies and I'll probably be making a few masters for casting my own Zeds, but that will clearly be a project for "Floor Wars 2012", not "Floor Wars 2011"

On a related note, any good source for female zombies? The Wargames Factory sprues are all men, leading my Lovely Bride to trumpet her sex's superior survival skills, come the Zombie Apocalypse. 

[jp762]

Studio do an almost 50/50 mix of male to female zombies.
Hasslefree have several lovely female zombies too.

[zemjw]

Bag O Zombies do male, female, clown and dog sets, generally 50 per set.

There's only one pose per set, but there are always clippers to remove arms and legs 

The detail isn't great, but they're fine for hordes.

[Onebigriver]

Are they guest players or members of your group?

At the Nightmare on Froth street game at Salute a few years ago, Frothers attending brought zombies for the game, even if they didn't take part.

If not, maybe you can order the Victory Force bargain pack for a quick addition to the horde?

[dexter]

I ran a zombie game last year at a con using A,R,S,E. The play area was a 4ftx4ft board and we used approximately 120 zombies . We ran games with six players controlling one randomly picked survivor. The game was set at Zed Day + 2 weeks. It worked very well. 120 zeds was enough to maintain the fear factor in the game.

ALSO THE bag o zombie figures are great for filling out a big horde.

dex 

[DD-Chris]

i would also recomend the boardgame "last night on earth"
it comes with 2 styles of zombies a male 'shambler' and a female 'runner' but it also has some FANTASTIC survivor models. the only downside is the soft plastic they are cast in. but for $35 getting 8 survivors, and 30 zombies, is a deal in itself.
as for your 'blind' markers may i suggest this.
have a bag full of tokens numbered on 1 side. the numbers can be anywhere form 0-5. and place several of them on each street. when a scout gets within X inches, he can flip those tokens, and reveal how many zeds are at that location ( place them within X inches of the token ) as noise is made, you cay move the tokens towards the noise, you can do something as simple as 2 sided printed paper, side 1 being the numbers, side 2 being a picture of zombies, or an empty street, or a question mark, or of your bride "sorry sweetie, looks like u didnt make it"
 

[Commander Vyper]

Just to throw my rotten corpse in the pile here.

For our games we start with say 50 or so 'milling' around and then depending on how evil I'm feeling we then spawn up another load prior to game start using the spawn markers and 2d6 for the number of zeds per allocated spawn point. So we start a game with around 70- 100 on the table (the table being 6 foot by 4 foot, full urban spread). If you want 500+ on the table that's fine, but realistically, you gonna be using and moving and rolling for all of them.... nope didn't think so.

We use a ratio of at least 10:1 (hell you think there's a happy ending in zombie films!) sometimes up to 20:1, but this is a rule of thumb, I don't waste time working out the ratios, I'd rather play with what feels 'right'.

Blind tokens will work well, either mark them up or create a random roll table.

Bag o zombies are really too small for use with other 28mm zeds and wargames factory....erm plenty of other zombies out there. Want plastic, snaffle some old GW plastic zed bits and a few boxes of mantic games plastic zeds, lots of potential for kit bashing. Lots of options/zed conversions in my urban zed thread.

Good luck

The Commander