Zombie Survival Infection

 Our friend Graham loves zombie games (and comics, books, films...), so he brought his latest purchase round for us to try out.

Gentle, understated box art.

All the artwork is by the game designer.

Game description.

 

You start the game with a camp/hideout, initially an apartment building but as the game progresses you might get a prison, hospital, shopping mall.. or even be left without one!  You also start with a few survivors.

 

Each turn you roll the black die, and possibly the yellow or green die as well, depending upon the stage of the game. At the start, the black die tells you how many survivors join your group.  You might also get to roll the yellow die for some extra survivors.  The green die comes into play later in the game...

 

In the centre of the table is the pool of survivors, the draw deck and the discard pile.

 The basic rules are fairly simple.  Roll the black die, plus the yellow die if someone had given it to you at the end of their turn.  Your camp might grant you positive or negative modifiers to the number of survivors who join your group.  Having no camp/hideout has big penalties.  You then pass the yellow survival die to any other player.  Top up your deck of cards to 6.  Take an action, in our game the only actions we ever made were to play a card.  The game was never slow enough that anyone felt they could afford to spend their action discarding cards or passing instead of playing a card!

 Here's an example of my hand.  In the background, you can see the draw deck, discard pile, survivor pool (right), and the zombie pool (left).  As survivors get killed, the counters get flipped over and added to the zombie pool until all the survivors have gone.  You can see I have a Character that I could play - he'll count as an additional survivor, on top of the little counters I have.  Characters have extra rules printed on the card, for instance this one can be sacrificed to avoid something nasty happening to your camp.  Next are 3 Action cards that can be played on your camp or more usually, on an opponent's camp - there are lots of zombie attack cards that kill their survivors!  Finally, there is a Reaction card that can be played against an Action card to add to or cancel out some of the effects.  Reaction cards can build up in chains: "I play Zombie Frenzy to kill 3 of your survivors!" "I use my Shotgun reaction to cancel 2 deaths, and because I have the Police character in play at my base I get to double that to cancel 4 deaths!"  "I play this card to cancel your reaction so you still lose 3 survivors!" "Then I'll use my First Aid Kit to cancel 2 deaths!".

I lost my base quite early in the game when Graham played the Fire card on me.

 I had my revenge, playing the Zombie Frenzy, plus added a Reaction card to eliminate 5 of his survivors!

Laura was unlucky enough to be given the Carrier character by Graham.  Hidden in the draw deck is the Hidden Bite card, which goes to the player who has drawn it - unless the Carrier is in play!  Characters have various uses.  The Doctor interacts with a Reaction card to allow you to discard 2 casualties, but will sacrifice herself to save the Carrier!  The Police officer gives a bonus when you have a gun.  Some locations have extra bonuses too, for instance the Hospital allows you to search through the discard pile to find a First Aid Kit.

 The green Infection die now comes into play, and gets passed to each player in turn until everyone is infected.  The yellow survival die is removed from the game, and the yellow rules card is turned over to the green side, with a slightly different set of rules.  Now, when you roll the black die (plus the green die if it was given to you by someone), you lose that number of survivors.  In infection mode, the aim is to roll as low as possible every turn!

I was the first to run out of survivors (so got to become a zombie player, trying to kill extra survivors each turn), then Laura, leaving Graham the winner.  It was a fun game, but probably works better with more players, so that there is more to-and-fro between different camps.  There are also extra cards that are used in 4+ player games (1 of which had been accidentally left in the game and which I drew early in the game, taking up part of my hand with something that had no real use for the 3 player game).

Attack of the Space Spiders!

The city is under attack from space spiders!  Can our 2 brave heroes save the day?

The kids (T & Q) wanted a game with the buildings I've been printing recently, so we set up a small map together using those and my scatter scenery.  I also had a bag of 40 plastic spiders handy, purchased for 99p from "Home Bargains" to use at the Cub Scout Hallowe'en party next week.  They looked like they'd make good opponents.  Digging through the scatter scenery boxes and listening to speculation from the kids, scenario ideas and rules began to drop into place in my head, and thus the situation arose:

A shipping company has accidentally unleashed stowaway space spiders* (*you can tell they're space spiders because they have 3 eyes) into the city.  Our heroes have to track down 9 cargo robots, remove the data logging chips from each, and get them back to their HQ for analysis before the city is completely overrun.  Once the data has been successfully analysed, the source of the spiders can be eliminated, and the city saved.  The robots have been scattered across the city to ensure the heroes have to travel the entire map.

The City.  And the spiders.

I quickly fabricated a game ruler from a bit of cereal packet.  The GREEN length is approximately 4 inches/10cm, the RED length 8 inches/20cm, the BLACK length 12 inches/30cm* (*I say approximately because it was about 1cm short, but meh.)

The inaccurately measured game ruler.

I grabbed some bags of counters, and we decided on green counters for T's wounds; orange counters for Q's wounds; gold counters for objective markers; purple counters for data logs retrieved.

 THE RULES:

Turn sequence:

1. Q Hero actions
2. T Hero actions
3. Spider actions

Our heroes each have a pistol (regardless of the weapons depicted on the model) and can absorb 5 wound counters before they die.

Each hero has 2 actions.  Available actions include:

• Move - move up to the red distance length on the game ruler.
  

•  Shoot - Fire at a spider.  Roll D6, the to hit number is 4+ up for the green distance length, 5+ for the red distance length, 6 for the black distance length.

• Interact - heal 1 wound in the hospital, retrieve the data log chip from a robot, score an objective marker etc. 

• Drive - the landspeeder can travel the black length from the game ruler per move.  The landspeeder can try to shake off attached spiders by rolling a D6.  On a 4+, the spider is shaken off.  On a 1, the violent manoeuvres cause the vehicle to crash.
   
• Close combat - roll opposed D6 against the enemy, highest score does 1 damage to the loser.  Re-roll any draw. If the hero rolls a 1, they roll again on a special objective chart:
  

1. Toilet
2. Fuel
3. Cryogenics
4. Generator
5. Spy HQ
6. Locker room

A gold objective marker is placed on the designated location, and the hero must move as quickly as possible to collect that marker.  If further objectives are rolled before the current one has been collected, these are added to the map and must be collected in sequence.

 

Spiders have 1 wound and can move up to the green distance length and/or make a single bite attack.  Climbing/falling does not cause any movement penalty, and they can jump from rooftop to rooftop as long as it is within move range. 1 new spider enters the map at the start of the every turn during turns 1-5.  From turn 6 onwards, 2 spiders enter the map per turn.  New spiders are placed wherever

Ending the game: The heroes receive a purple counter for each data log chip they retrieve.  At HQ, these can be entered into the computer and allow the player to roll 1 purple D10 per counter.  A total score of 40+ is required to identify the source of the spiders.  If the heroes die before identifying the source, the spiders win. 

THE GAME:

The heroes (Q has the RPG, T has an SMG and radio) are spies, whose secret identity is that of burger bar employees.  They start the game in their home, above the burger shop.  You can see their bunk bed there, along with Terry the robot vacuum cleaner.  (Rupert the other robot vacuum cleaner resides in the supermarket in the middle of the city.)

 

At home with our heroes (and Terry the robovac).

 

The burger bar downstairs.

Cargo robots are visible outside.

More cargo robots scattered across the city.

Q dashes down the steps to retrieve the first robot's data.

Fighting off a spider, T rolls a pair of 1s and has to go to..

... the cryogenics building.

Q dashes to the next robot and retrieves the data.

...then, he ducks around the side of a building to get the next.

T heads to his next objective, the fuel station.

There's the objective inside.

Meanwhile, Q has reached the third robot.

T dashes across the city, fighting off spiders along the way.

Q heads back home to collect his landspeeder.

T finishes off a spider and retrieves his first data log.

Q lands next to T. "Jump in!"

T has sustained 4 wounds, 1 download, has completed 2 bonus objectives, and has found a grenade!

Q flies T across the city to the hospital.

T uses his actions over 2 turns to heal all 4 of his injuries.

Q checks out the hospital too.

Outside, our heroes get swarmed by spiders!

They kill 2 spiders but the third grips onto the landspeeder.

Violent manoeuvres shake the spider off.

The heroes fly to their hidden HQ. They can get in through the roof hatch.

The heroes enter the data logs retrieved so far into the computers.

Nearby are 2 more robots.  The heroes rush to them.

Spiders crowd in and attack!  Both heroes roll 1s in close combat.

Gold objective markers appear centre and bottom right.

Q must go to...

... the toilet!

T must return to the fuel station.

Spiders batter at the toilet door, but Q shoots both through the gap.

A spider ambushes T in the fuel station!  He fends it off.

Q sprints for another robot, but spiders pursue him!

He fights his way back towards HQ but is injured (and rolls a 1)

T tries to reach a robot but can't land close enough and is bitten.

Q is badly injured now.  One more bite and it's curtains!

From rolling the 1 in combat, Q has to divert to the locker room.

He finds the objective marker.

T collects him and together they get to the robot on the gantry.

Attempting to shake off a spider, they crash the landspeeder!

A second attempt to reach the isolated robot finally succeeds! 3 dead spiders.

With all data logged, our heroes return to HQ.  If swarmed by 10 spiders, the walls will break.  There are 9 spiders there now!

Loading all the data logs, they roll the dice... 47.  Success!

Not a moment too soon.  Both had taken 5 wounds and were near death.

Piecing together and analysing the data obtained from the cargo robots, our heroes had identified the source of the spiders.  The information was sent to the authorities, and the city was saved - hurrah!

It was a tense game for the last 3 or 4 turns!  Either hero would have died if they'd taken another bite, and only some incredibly lucky shooting and close combat at the end saved them both.

The side missions required when rolling a 1 in close combat worked well to divert them away from the robots and gave the spiders a chance to build up their numbers, so it wasn't too easy for the heroes.  T had to retrieve 2 before he could even start pursuing the robots.

Most importantly, the game kept both the kids occupied for the entire afternoon.

I'm hoping I'll get a chance to finish painting some of the buildings and other scenery soon so I can do a blog post on those!