Thursday, January 31, 2013

Forward to Glory!: A Warmaster Samurai AAR

Okay, it has been a little too busy in my tiny corner of reality. On the one hand, I was able to sell enough of my miniatures to various gents to pay for school and expenses for a bit. On the other hand, I have been substituting at several schools around the area, but won't see a paycheck for a solid month (hooray for once a month paydays).

Brent and I played a Warmaster Samurai game, using Alex's Clan Wars figures at the Crazy Squirrel this past Tuesday. It was a game fraught with stresses for both sides, one where I nearly threw in the towel...it was THAT bad for me.

Set Up:

Brent runs a lot of Warmaster games, for the club, as well as at conventions in the state. He's run this game before, using three times the forces, but with a 4x8 table, and 25mm figures, we had plenty of troops to crowd the table with (that is a bit of foreshadowing).

As we usually do when we play, Brent brought out the "Feck-Your-Buddy-Binder-of-Optional Rules™" I usually do well with this, but not tonight (I should have taken this as the bad omen it proved to be). Brent was able to screw with my defensive terrain by taking a hill on my side of the table and placing it on his, and then placing a fecking building on my table edge in the middle of my deployment zone.

Yes, he was smiling, if not gloating, when this happened.

THEN, I ended up losing a unit of Retinue due to another bad roll using this optional rules, a unit that never actually came back to the table (I forgot about it until it was too late to make any difference).

Brent deployed first and went first, so I did have the saving grace (which it turned out to be) of deploying after he had committed his forces.


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Brent's right side is in the foreground.  photo image_zps63d4a99c.jpg
Brent's left side. Notice that big hill to the left? Yeah, that WAS in my deployment zone at the start of the set up phase, which was nice as I was the defender...until he out scouted me.
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Yeah! Mr. Roll Better Than Me, see what I did there? I went all "strategic" (well, "tactical" in the non-RTS world)on yer ass. I deployed ALL of my forces in about 1/3 of the length of my table edge.
 photo image_zpsb2d8d344.jpg My super awesome (and brilliant!) deployment seen from my own side of the table. Sorry for the slightly fuzzy pics, but it was crowded in the game room that night and I had to dodge people all the time while snapping the pics.

We decided that the building in my deployment zone counted as fortified (6 to hit, disregard first 2 wounds for push-back from missile fire). I placed two units (six stands) of retinue in there.

Oh, yeah. This was a Minimoto game, so ALL troops counted a having bows, in addition to hand weapons. Feck me! Cavalry had a range of 16" and infantry a range of 24". Foot moved 8, except Household Samurai who moved 6", Cavalry moved 12".

Turns 1-2

Brent was able to move all of his forces at least once, but he failed with his cavalry on his far left to move a second time.

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Brent, being diabolical, teased me with the range of his Retinue at the beginning of Turn 2.

I, on the other hand, moved my cavalry on my right (six stands) and one brigade of 12 stands immediately to its left. Nothing else passed command, even though I needed 8's with my generals and a 9 with my C-in-C, I rolled...poorly.
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Yet another crap pic. Man, I was on the ball that night. :( Here is my army at the end of my first move. See that crazy formation of my infantry brigade there? Yeah, that was my cunning plan, to lull Brent into thinking I was being a moron.
 photo image_zps962e6a37.jpg My super tough cavalry about to get tickled by archery fire.  photo image_zps9aa05ae9.jpg The other half of Brent's Line of Pointy Death Dealers. And another fecking fuzzy pic. photo image-14_zps57ff158b.jpg
The first of two cavalry units burst through my infantry defenders.

My fecking cavalry taking 2 wounds that I failed to save, causing them to run away. I decided they would push through the friendly infantry behind them, risking those infantry becoming confused, but I was a bit miffed I failed two 3+ saves. The infantry failed to become confused, which worked out okay.

Turns 3-4

Brent Moves his entire army, yet again. The cavalry on his far left balk a bit, but still are within striking distance.
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At this moment, virtually his entire army (minus the cavalry on his far left) was in range to shoot my troops. Which they proceeded to do every turn!

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Here is my pathetic excuse for an organized force at the end of turn 4. Hey, the infantry is in line along a wall, counting as defended (5+ to hit, ignore first wound for push-back), but that didn't last long. See my cavalry at the top of the frame? That is the result of 5 fecking command rolls (fail, fail, fail, pass, fail). At this point, I had rolled box cars and then a one, resulting in that brigade being at -1 to all command rolls for the rest of the game. Feck me again!

Turns 5-6
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Brent's slowly advancing force using me for a pincushion. While my troops cannot seem to find the way out of the deployment zone.

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See that Charlie Foxtrot in the center of my line? That's 2 confused units (one cav, one infantry) and part of my wall undefended. I did get one unit of three stands of  Household Samurai into the one building before the rest of the brigade failed to advance. See that cavalry at the top of the frame? Yeah, they failed their command roll once again. Feck me, feck me!

On turn 6, my fecking cavalry finally move again. I was so excited that the moved that I forgot to take a pic. My archers along the wall and in the building on my right were able to get enough lucky hits that they pushed back parts of Brent's line of Retinue, blocking the cavalry behind them.

Keep in mind, no casualties have been removed as missile fire has only been sufficient to push units back.

I am about to throw in the towel at this point as my units are one big Charlie Foxtrot, aside from the one brigade of cavalry on the far left that is finally clearing the zone. Brent has Retinue in one of the buildings in that village, but everything else he has is in range of my defenders. I am taking 15-18 stands of bowfire a turn, where I can only hit back with 7-9 stands.

Turns 7-8

Brent reorders his lines a bit, following my lucky hits and his failed saves.

My army is finally unconfused, and my cavalry advance far enough to charge a unit of Retinue on Brent's far right. I beat them, killing two stands, and follow up into a fresh unit of Household, so that I won't be charged by them on turn 8.
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That is my cav on his flank. Brent's CinC is the one stand towards the top right, from his infantry being attacked.
 photo image_zpsb790580e.jpg Detecting a weakness in his battleplan, Brent re-routes his cavalry from his left, towards his right. They don't get far before the end of the game.  photo image_zpsd28c18f9.jpg Brent responds to my Ginsu Cavalry, moving his CinC to a safer position, and advancing another unit of Household to support the one being attacked.  photo image_zps30191c31.jpg I manage to get a second unit of cavalry up, to deal with the one remaining stand of Retinue, followed by a single unit of Household. They turn out to not be needed.  photo image_zpsd8f495db.jpg An extremely bad pic after I was able to get single unsaved hits into two units of Retinue, pushing them, and the cavalry behind them, backwards by five to seven inches, confusing some Retinue in the process.

Brent's turn 8 sees our units tie, causing us all to break off 1". My turn 8 sees my cavalry charge into the last remaining stand from the one unit, which had the CinC in contact. Turn 9  photo image_zps7256827b.jpg Brent and I fight it out again, and I put all of my attacks into the one remaining stand, but fail to kill it (I did 4 wounds, but it takes 5 to kill), but the combat tied again as I was now flanked and had lost a stand.

At this point, Brent was late for cleaning up as he had to go pick up his son from work.

However, I still had my turn to take, so in order to save time, I had my general (not my CinC) issue a challenge to Brent's CinC because they were within the range to do so (an optional rule of Brent's).

Alex and Brent both felt I'd lost, because "Everyone knows you tend to roll 1s." Which is so true that it's a cliche for us. 

We fight five quick rounds of combat, rolling 3 dice each for attacks. Round 1) We both fail to wound. Round 2) We both score one wound on each other. Round 3) We both miss, completely. Round 4) We both fail to score a wound. Round 5) Brent wounds me once. I wound him twice, killing his CinC and ending the game in a victory for me.

I calculated that I pass 25% of my command rolls the entire game, rolling high all the time. Those high rolls helped me in combat, though.

I lost one stand of cavalry, and Brent lost four stands of infantry (two Retinue and two Household), plus his CinC.

Feck me!


Monday, January 28, 2013

Been a busy week

Due to some sales of personal miniature collections, I was able to come up with the dosh to pay for my last semester in my Masters of History program. Off went my entire Man O' War collection and a portion of my Epic collection, with some odds and sods of 40k and LOtR sets and blisters. Even ran into some Foundry Romans packs, which went fast on TMP.

Still a lot more up for sale. I just need to drag it out every so often and find what can be sold quickly. I even found some Warmaster blisters, which then reminded me of all the Warmaster stuff that was burglarized last May. Sigh.

Luckily, I am THIS close to graduating from grad school.

I have to post on Zed Dawn tonight, or tomorrow, the first of the 38 Days Later reports. Been meaning to get to that, but have been swamped with sorting other crises. My sons should be back this weekend, which means a naval game and a zed game. Hope none bring an illness with them this time.

Wish, wish, wish I had the dosh for my own laser cutter. Man, what I could do with that, apart from make money selling terrain. Well, lots of stuff coming to my blogs in the future. I may even get in a game tomorrow night, too.

Edit on 1/29/13

Was slammed, today. Then went and played a 25mm Warmaster game, using Samurai. I took pics and will post a battle report, but the first 38 Turns Later post is put off until tomorrow as I have work early in the morning.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Homebuilding in 15mm, Part 3.

Finishing off the first project of a suburban home, this post is the final one of the series.

Before I painted the model, I brushed on a mix of watered down white glue, about a 50:50 ratio, and let it dry. This serves to seal the sand to the model, otherwise when being painted, bits of sand come off.

Unfortunately, the dollar store foamcore is made differently than what is found in framing shops, the paper is thinner and does not have the same finish. Thus, my past experience in making 28mm terrain failed me here, as the paper ended up coming off the foam in a couple of places.

Luckily, as the model dried, the paper shrank a bit, tightening back up onto the foam, mostly. So, if I seal the sand again, at this scale, I will need to use less water, if any.

I sprayed the roof with Army Painter's fur brown, as I had it available, and black would have been a poor choice for a red base coat. photo image_zpsccd29d31.jpg

I then painted all of the sand covered foam and the garage door in a cheap Sienna Brown, found at Michael's or even Wal-Mart.

Once dry, I did a heavy drybrush of a cheap off-white, nearly a match for GW's Bleached Bone. I also painted the garage door, leaving a bit of the sienna brown on the sides and top, for framing.

I painted the front door a cheap Persimmon Red , then the rest of the windows/sliding glass door were painted first in black, and then highlighted with shades of blues and a white dot in the corner, using a technique for painting jewels that I read in White Dwarf over a decade or so ago. I painted the roof tiles in a cheap Bright Red and highlighted them with the Persimmon Red.
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The stucco finish came out nearly perfectly, the brown and bone colors were a good combination.
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Front view.
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Rear view.
Side view.
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I did glue a piece of thick card to the bracers in the bottom, so I can later add an interior. You can see the bottom of the roof, which I will eventually glue foamcore stops to, so that it will not slide off the house during a game.

I have some 1/4 plywood available to me, and some Woodland Scenics trees, but I must first acquire the lawn, which is a special material. So, while the building is finished, I will add a final terrain piece post in the future, where it all comes together for the tabletop.

This took approximately seven hours to complete, but at least three to perhaps four hours was waiting on parts to dry so I could move on to another stage. I figure I can make the next three houses, using the same floorplan, in the same amount of time.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Homebuilding in 15mm, Part 2

After leaving the parts of the roof to dry overnight, while compressed, to keep them flat, I began to finish the construction this afternoon. photo image_zpse7b23361.jpg

Two halves of the roof, the roof base, and the house.

I used the tried and true method of cutting strips of thick paper in widths of half an inch, and length of 11 inches, then I sliced them crossways, about every quarter inch, half the width of the paper.

I then glued all of the exposed edges of foam. As I may decide to primer the model with a spray, which would eat the foam.
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You can see that I added bracing to the roof base, as nine inches or so of cardboard is not strong enough on its own. I only have three pieces of 5mm foam to glue to, each side. Next time, I will have at least five pieces per side, increasing strength of structure and likelihood that the roof will stay attached to the base section.

I pinned the roof halves in place, to make sure everything would fit properly, then I glued each half to the base.
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You have to be careful when pinning, as if you insert the pin at an angle, you may poke through the paper of the foamcore and prick a finger, which I did not do. I was sure to be careful.

Here is when I realized 3 bracers per side were not nearly enough, but it was too late to fix it.

After gluing both halves to the roof base, I set it aside.

I then "liberated" some builder's sand from the garage.
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Which I then glued to the house structure, using slightly watered down white glue. This would, hopefully, give the appearance of stucco, once everything is painted up.
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The sand must be very fine indeed, otherwise it would not resemble stucco at all, but rather a crappy rocky exterior.

With the house now drying, I picked the roof back up and saw that the edges were a little loose. So, I cut some tiny strips of paper, folded it, and then glued those on the underside of each end, to add strength to the joins there.
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With everything dry, I checked the look of the house.
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And saw that I needed to add sand to the roof base, on each side, which I did.

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Any gaps in the sand are fine, really, as they just show damage or wear over the decades since the house was built. Any gaps that are just too large can be carefully glued and filled.

Tomorrow, I will paint it. I do hope I covered all the foam with glue, else it will be a disaster.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Homebuilding in 15mm, Part 1

As I lack the necessary hardware to print out nice, colorful, terrain, I have to make-do with scratch building some tract homes for the ATZ campaign my sons and I are running.

I was able to pick up two of these
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for a dollar each; 20" x 30".

I then, with the help of my eldest son, took measurements of the house where I rent a room, to get an idea of dimensions and scale. I determined that I would construct a house 18cm long by 9cm wide, with a separate roof, so we could use the interior in our games. The dimensions include an attached single car garage

 photo image_zps7d6e45a9.jpg The height of the walls is 3cm, giving enough space to put 15mm figures in and then replace the roof. The roof piece adds another 2.5cm to the structure, a little too tall for reality, but it's fine for wargame terrain. photo image-14_zps55e23f0d.jpg
I checked the size of the walls against one of our characters.

Using white glue, I glued the walls together and temporarily pinned them. photo image_zpsb8dada5f.jpg

I then added strength to the structure by gluing pieces of cereal box cardboard, cut into triangles, into the underside corners. These helped to keep it square while the glue dried. photo image_zpse1ba2c1c.jpg

Using more cardboard from the empty cereal box, I cut out pieces for the door, windows, sliding glass doors, and garage door. photo image_zps05b5fbcd.jpg
Front  photo image_zps5b183e83.jpgRear

I used this method as I felt cutting tiny holes in the foamcore would be too fiddly, and would likely weaken the structure. We will see if I made more trouble for myself when I go to finish the exterior later. photo image_zps23fe6289.jpg

Again, a check for scale. The truck fits nicely in the driveway, but won't fit in the garage, which is fine. I can use this for a few games and see if I want to do a finished interior. photo image_zps0f02acb3.jpg

Here is the roof piece, it is a simple gable roof, that I have glued, pinned and left to dry.

Part 2 will detail the rest of the roof construction and then Part 3 will show how I finish the exterior and paint the model (I haven't gotten there yet, but most of the roof is done at this time).




Sunday, January 13, 2013

ATZ Campaign Begins

Okay, my sons are all at their respective mothers' homes again, and I am alone, still ill, but with enough energy to begin catching up on blog posts that I need to do.

We started the ATZ campaign a week or so ago, but with five sons, one of whom went back to school this week, with the eldest also in college, it was tough to get everyone together, and healthy enough, to fight more than a few scenarios.

We began the campaign with a few assumptions, some of which I may have posted or alluded to earlier.

1) The year is 2021 and the boys and I are playing ourselves in that distant future.
2) We all have knowledge and skills gained thus far in life, or for the younger ones, what they can expect to have gained within the intervening nine years.
3) Dad's is the rally point. This is how it is in real life, everyone is to rally on my home or place of living, should a disaster occur. In 2021, I would have a significant amount of food, ammo, batteries, etc., as I am one who prepares for the worst, but hopes for the best. We, as a group, concluded that I would have a large quantity of food, so I rolled 3d3 worth (3-9 months of food in ATZ) per person and the result was that I could feed all six of us for five months.
4) Michael would have taken that martial arts class that he wants to do.
5) Duncan would have served in the Army Reserve as an MP and been hired as a cop by the local police department.
6) Fionn would be working as an artist, locally, but also has trained in an intensive and combative "art" for several years (we couldn't explain his brawler skill any other way).
7) Liam and Aidan are both attending the local college and room together. Aidan has a car, which Liam shares the use of. As students, their resources would be limited, but they'd both have backpacks for carrying books and supplies around.
8) Our first area of play is our current locality.
9) All other family members are assumed to have moved away and are out of play. It would be difficult to explain, "yeah, we tried to save you, but zombies got to you before we could" when the lads share their gaming exploits, so this rule is in force.

The Zed Dawn blog, a link to it is located at the top of the left side frame, will be where we share the highs and lows of our post-apocalyptic future.

We hope you enjoy the reading of it.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

The House of Plague

It has been another week of illness in the house, unfortunately. Yet, more work on ships and zeds was able to take place.

I have a couple of battle reports for ATZ to post, but I am going to break them up into five or six posts, I think, and try to post them throughout the next week or so.

The younger three return to their mother's tomorrow, so we won't be able to play together again for a couple of weeks. However, they want me to run a game for them on the computer... Such is their excitement to face the zombie hordes.

I need to get over this respiratory illness, so that I can go back to work, but it is kicking my hindquarters in a seriously damaging manner.

I will be posting the ATZ reports on the other blog, so please look for them there, I hope to be able to get to the first post as early as tomorrow evening.

Friday, January 4, 2013

The Zeds In Our Midst

It continues to be a house of plague, here, with a fourth member of the brood beginning to show signs of illness. The fifth one is testing his luck by proclaiming, "I never get sick!" Even so, more work was done in the shipyards today, but those pics will be later this weekend.

We wanted to get in a game of ATZ today, but with us still feverish and another confined to his bed, we just couldn't do it. Although, the remainder of us were sorely tempted to begin the campaign on our own, but I felt that would be unfair to those left out.

Since I have been mentioning ATZ from Christmas Day on, I thought I would post some pics to prove the existence of the figures here.
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Caught in the spotlights, from left to right, Fionn, myself, Aidan, and Liam. Further to the right is a ganger (and a half).

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The lousy camera refused to focus where I aimed it, unless I aimed it at a wall, so sorry for the slightly distorted appearances. Continuing from last photo, the gangers again, and the local doers-of-relative-good.

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Now we see the vanguard of the zombie horde. I painted all of these and ended up painting most of my sons' pictured earlier, except Liam proved brave enough to paint nearly all of his (I did the hair and blocked out portions that bordered other colors). I began the zombies by drybrushing a mixture of Army Painter Army Green and a pale flesh color. I then went back and painted the clothes and hair, trying to use up whatever paint I mixed on the palette on different zombies, before going getting out another color.

I realize none of these photos do justice to the figures or the paintjobs and I will try to borrow a better camera from a family member, soon, to correct the visual display here.
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While this is a slightly different shot from the first pictures, the spotlight is now on the zombies in the right rear.

Being apprised of our intentions, my two nephews want to play along with us, when opportunity permits. So, I will have them (the nephews) join the lads on outings when they are over to play, but when unable to join us, they will be guarding the hideout when the lads are searching for resources and gear.

These were models supplied by some of the persons unknown, there are others of the same line of figures that were already painted (I will show them at another time). We also received some 28mm figures. Now, the 28mm figures will be used as zombie "bosses" as my lads are all too familiar with console video games, which thrive on such enemies. I will paint up these models and use them when my lads are getting too cocky.

I do have a problem, though. I have no idea how to finish off the bases. I can do regular earth style with static grass, or a greyish rubble, or even a city streets look, but I don't really know that I would be pleased with those. I am happy to take suggestions from anyone with experience playing with zombie miniatures.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Scratchbuilt Pre-Dreadnoughts

Well, with three of us still down with illness, we still managed to get a little work done on priming figures (zombies, gangers, police, and military), assembling naval vessels, and I even based and primed an army for Dux Britanniarum. This latter force was made possible by the founding member of my wargame club. A couple of months ago, he began to unload large portions of his unpainted miniatures, from thirty years ago, and I was lucky enough to be handed a force of about 50 Viking-ish Citadel figures.  These will work as Saxons for DB, but I do need to comb through my own collection of Mordheim plastics in order to make up some archers.

As my sons, minus one, worked on their cruisers again, I worked on my pre-dreadnoughts. Since I had fewer cruisers than the rest of the group, I finished mine earlier. I figure my pre-dreadnoughts will give them enough ideas for building their own that it was worth completing them early.

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Not a great shot, but you can see the ships. The one on the left is, under the rules, an Old Pre-Dreadnought, while the other two are Modern Pre-Dreadnoughts.

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A better sense of scale, with a destroyer on the far left and cruiser on the far right. While the lighting, and my photography skills, are too poor to show off the paint scheme, essentially it is a medium brown decking and midnight blue for all else.

My sons have some pretty wild paint schemes, so those paint jobs are taking a bit longer, but I will show them when completed.

If my second eldest is recovered enough from being ill tomorrow, we will play ATZ.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Zed Hunters

Amidst cleaning up the holiday decorations at my parent's and several of the lads being sick (myself included...it is the fault of the youngest!), we've tried to get as much done on our naval ships and zombie miniatures as we could. The weather did not cooperate at all last week, but this week has been sunny, albeit quite chilly.

We have each created a civilian for ATZ: FFO, and hope to be playing this weekend, provided the rest do not get sick (fevers are no fun).

I will post on the Zed Dawn blog about our group of civilians, but I do want to mention that the ATZ rules look to be very fun, especially the starting "Day 1" scenario that is downloaded through the THW Yahoo group.

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Two zombie hunters, having just chosen their attributes.

In the process of creating our band of post-apocalypse civilians, we had some rather bad luck. The rules allow the player to choose a starting Rep, but because there were six of us, I felt that were we all to choose Rep 5, that this would unfairly give us significant advantages. So, I determined that we would each roll a single d6, with 1-3 being Rep 3, 4-5 being Rep 4, and a 6 resulting in Rep 5. Well, my younger three sons all got Rep 4 characters, but my older two sons and myself all rolled 1s! With no Rep 5 characters, we were looking at a short period of survival, so I "pulled rank", being the leader of the wayward band, and made myself Rep 5, much to the amusement of my sons. However, I explained that the rules allowed us to choose, and we needed a leader who could actually lead with a decent chance at doing so.


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 My eldest looking through the attribute list, while my youngest passes along his flu germs (as it turns out) to my second eldest.

The setting for our family campaign is the year 2021, with us playing ourselves in our locality. This allows my sons to use their individual knowledge about our community and surrounding areas in order to have a better chance at surviving the downfall of humanity.

I will be posting our games on Zed Dawn, so I ask that any viewers of this blog, who are into Zombie games, to please check out our adventures over there.