Zombie Game

Game played, January 2013.

Mixed lighting (sunlight & regular light bulbs) and Automatic White Balance turn my lovely green table, into a dusty red.  Reader be assured, this happened on earth, not Mars.  (note the wooded areas, top & bottom, the felt is the same colour green, but looks bluish at top, near the sunlit window, and dark green by the camera edge.

The Bus, Gas Station and Rusty Car:  see previous posts for details.


Scenario:  the survivors are out of gas for their bus, and start near it.  The zombies start near the top & bottom table edges.  There are a few different types of zombies, however the ones with the Red bases had the most impact on this game - they are the "Rage" zombies popularized by the "28 Days Later" zombie movie.  The survivors must get to the gas can (adjacent to the gas pumps, far right hand side), and return it to the bus, at which point, they can refuel the bus and escape.  Victory is based on the points value of the Survivors that escape the table by bus.

Terrain:  The Gas Station can't be entered, and most of the terrain is along the edges.  Tactically the situation is pretty straight forward - but not easy.

All the Zombies are paper cut outs, as i don't have any zombie figures (yet).  Red for Rages, Green for Bloaters, Yellow for Leaders, Orange for Tanks.  (Leader provided to be kind of useless for this scenario, as zombies can't be moved any faster or slower then they already are!)
All the survivors are regular metal figures.  Green dots for Extras, Stars for Co-Stars.

The Rage Zombies are roughly twice as fast as all the other zombie types, which makes them fairly deadly.  These two are approaching from the bushes, while the survivors begin to step off from the bus.

Note in the 7TV rules,  only about half your models activate each turn, you get to choose which ones activate, but you can not activate everyone, which means some models are going to get left behind in a race like this....

BRAINS !!!    BRAINS !!!   BRAINS !!!

The Survivors had some good event cards, and excellent luck for most of the game when it came to initiative, and were able to entirely outrun the 2 Rage zombies for about 2 turns.  Just barely... as the Rager's charge fails by millimetres this turn.

The survivors  took the hill in the centre of the table, and the only figure with a firearm (a pistol) was able to get off a few shots, while the others raced for the gas.

Unlike the survivors, ALL zombies get to move once per turn (whether activated or not), however they still don't get very far.  An active figure gets 2 Actions per turn, however zombies can only use 1 for Moving, while survivors can move twice per activation.

I like the telephone poles !

In 7TV figures are divided into 3 types:  The Stars (who are rather powerful), the Co-Stars (who are fairly capable), and the Extras (how include cannon-fodder, mooks, victims, etc).
The Ragers finally get into contact with a couple of Extras, and quickly turn them into snacks.

One survivor gets to the gas can, jumps on his scavenger bicycle, and scoots about 4 moves back towards the bus!  Lucky cards ! 
Every dead figure whether a zombie or a survivor, and unless shot in the brain, is marked with a "living dead" counter, and at the end of each turn can return to play as a zombie!  This didn't happen much, but could be very useful.

However, he gets separated from the others, out ahead on his own on the way back to the bus, and falls to a coupe of regular zombies.  The other survivors scramble to get to the can again, losing a couple more, as the zombies finally get within range of their bites.
On the 2nd last turn, the survivors had gotten the gas can to the bus, and were all on board, but one Co-Star was just outside the door - there was much debate as whether to leave them behind or not, they decided to wait for him, feeling they were fairly safe for a turn from the advancing horde - if their initiative held out.
However... as they were under half numbers and failed their Morale test, the 1 last remaining Extra fled off the board.  Hilariously she was already on he bus, and so, fled out the convenient emergency exit!
The last 2 remaining survivors, both Co-Stars, were able to get off the table.  However they had lost too many of their companions (5, all Extras), and the Zombies won the game by a slight margin.

Rusty Car

Built January 2013.

Forgot to take a "before" picture.  Dollar store toy racing SUV.
Wheels, plastic chassis, seats, dashboard, and headlights removed.
Judicious hammering used for that "seriously wrecked" look.
Cork base added.

Painted rusty browns, and a Grey wash over top.
Bushes from the dollar store, standing by to germinate inside it.

Finished model.

Gas Station Accessories

Built January 2013.

Victorian Street Clock - Dollar Store Christmas decoration.
Gas Pumps - 50's style pumps, O scale train models.
Store Counter - irregulars miniature medieval bar counter.
Newspaper Box, Garbage Can, Filing Cabinet & TV - Mega Miniatures.
Tank - resin.
Mail Box - scratch built from balsa and styrene tube.

Sofa & Wardrobe - resin
Pop Machine - Dollar store toy.
Crate & Bottles - rifle crate and wine bottles, resin.
Oil Barrels - dollar store.

Note:  items are based to increase their stability, and weighted when possible as well.

Wheels - from the rusty car scratch build project.
Flat of Coca Cola - O scale train model.

Telephone Poles - 1/4" Styrene tube, balsa cross piece, plastic beads for insulators, with styrene rod through the bead centres and into holes in the balsa for increased strength (the ends have yet to be trimmed in this shot).

Bases painted, and items washed.

Labels added.
Dinoco is the oil company from the Disney/Pixar films: Cars, Toy Story and Wall-E.

Gas Station

Built in

Built October 2010.

For the zombie game - a Gas Station for the surivors to get fuel from, and to refill their Bus.

Made of Balsa wood, Bass wood, some nylon model aircraft hinges for the doors (which open and close for the most part), some clear plastic sheet from some item's packaging.

Styren strips make the cross peices on the windows.

50's style, south-western style, commerical building.

I was worried about the durablility of having a fragile store sign sticking out of the building; so I placed a magnet on the front of the facade, and inserted a iron nail int othe styrene tube that makes the sign.  Works great, and can't be broken off by a hapless gamer.

Action shot of the gas station.

The grey wash I use on top of the white I painted the building, turned out to have a lot of blue in it, and so, its more blue-ish, then grey & worn.
The roof is easily removeable, allowing figures to enter and pilalge the gas station as required.

Reversable Styrofoam Table-Top Table

Built in October 2010.


I've wanted a Styrofoam table to experiment with for a while. This allows the construction of items with very narrow bases, and with the help of pins, they can be stuck into the form and stood upright ! Envision telephone poles standing upright without bases!

Also hoping to put on a zombies based game for Halcon 2013, and this would let me bring my own "fancy" table top (and not suffer whatever size tables they may have there). Have to wait and see if that happens....



1.5" Blue Styrofoam. If using this for table tops, be aware of the overlapping edge, and the finished size of your project - as your edges might get very tight once you start cutting it - as it comes in 2' x 8' sections, which includes the overlapping edge part.



Once the 4' x 4' styro was glued & pinned together, I encased the edges with pine boards, giving me something to staple into.



Stapling.  I covered it in quilting fabric (to give it a soft touch, padding for the other wise hard surface) on both sides - and then on one side a White Sheet (for a Winter table), and the other side a Forest Green upholstery fabric (for a traditional Grassy table).

Around all that, I built a slighter taller board frame, allowing either side of the styro to be used by flipping it over, yet preventing either side to come in contact with the actual table top (thereby keeping it clean & undamaged).  A smaller inner frame of curved moulding was used to hold the styro to the outside frame.







Painted the wooden parts white.



Test Shot, with an O Scale Jug band.
The green material looks even better in person, every photo I've taken of it doesn't to it justice (esp in mixed sunlight/light bulb lighting situations).






Action shots of the table-top in use (its sitting on two side-by-side folding tables - this project has no legs of its own).
I like how the game area is well delineated from the table top - however I'd like to raise up the actual table surface, so it wasn't so far below.
The only use of the styro aspect of the table, was a long hobby T-pin holding down the white styro hill.

If I was to remake this project, I'd make it single sided only - easier to make, I wouldn't need the extra outside frame & moulding, it would be lighter and cheaper.

Cardstock Bus

 

Built in Oct, 2012.

Bus Blueprints - For an upcoming Zombie game, the survivors need to get their bus refuelled to escape from the zombie hordes.  Unable to find a bus in the scale I wanted, and with a usable interior, I made my own.

Get on the Bus! - Printed on yellow Card Stock, folded & glued, with windows cut out with a scalpel, and doors done with one side folded - it turned out pretty good.  Not very rugged, but should last a year or so, enough for a number of games.  Action shot below, shows bus on the edge of the table and out of gas - with 28mm figure on board, watching the shamblers surrounding them.

In the Beginning

My First Gaming Table - actually my model Train table, but it performed double duty.  Bits of wallpaper remains, from improvised rivers, swamps & forests (of all all colours & patterns) still stuck on it, and a hand painted road, with track crossing.  HO scale train, oval track, and a few HO buildings - driving a train around in circles pales in comparison to the excitement of a wargame!
     One its side, with a wood stove in the foreground, it looks more like a martian landscape, then an earthly battlefield.  Rammed into a basement corner, we had to crawl up on it, to get to troops on the far side - but we were young & spry back then.  
     I was quite surprised about 2 winters ago, to find that it had survived all these years, still as a full 4' x 8' sheet of plywood !

 

First Toy Soldiers - I remember waking my parents up rather early one Sunday morning, bugging them for *JUST* one dollar so I could mail order these from the back of a comic book  (in my day they were only $1, not the $1.25 as above).   
     They came a wonderful little cardboard locker box, and the figures were plastic semi-flats in wonderfully inspiring poses.  They travelled with me well and often when I was a kid.

First Wargaming Rules (circa late 70's) - I think this was the first set of proper rules that any of us owned.  Before then, we had done the classic "Plastic Army Men in Lego Forts vs. the Rubber Ball".  

     Christmas 1977, my grandfather gave me a spring loaded model WW1 Howitzer, that you reset the shell, by pushing the spring back with a pencil until it clicked with a place, added a silver plastic bullet on top, rammed it home in the barrel, locked the breech, and was ready to fire!  (sadly it seems to have been lost in time & space).  Little did I know then, that like many others, we had reinvented H.G. Wells's "Little Wars" rules.

     We played a lot of these rules.  Including a massive all weekend game at someones cottage.  Instead of a table, we used a large mattress, with cushions under a blanket for terrain.  We lacked figures, and used cut out pieces of graph paper - with each grid being one soldier - huge armies were cheap & easy to produce.  I recall one specific moment in this massive game, when 2 large units of Pikes had whittled each other down to a single man, and turn after turn, the last standing men were unable to kill the other! (we may have ignored the "un-fun" morale rules back then).

     A rematch would be a great excuse for a reunion!

     Our first game of D&D (red book) was New Years 1978/79.