Zombicide "Completion-ism"

Just wondering if any one else suffers from this. I had a quick Zombicide game yesterday and after lookin through the boxes, I thought I should maybe do some organizing.

First, noticed I had a bunch of Season 2 actors still in the boxes. I like to keep the survivors and Zombivores in separate ziploc bags. I also keep each zombie type divided in ziploc bags by genre and class. ie. normal Zombie walkers are separate from normal Zombie runners and are separate from Toxic zombie walkers etc. it just helps locating pieces during game play.

I also decided to snap a picture of ALL the Survivors and Zombivores.

The Zombivores are on the left of the table break and the survivors on the right. This is every survivor ever made minus two family game night promos - Bill and Mr. Phal - which are both in various states of transit to me, and Season 3, which was held up due to the Longshoreman's strike on the West Coast.

8 rows of 7 plus 2 at the back totals 58 survivors and respective Zombivores...

For those with the keen eye, there are three primed survivors on the extreme right which I haven't stripped as I'm afraid of damaging the plastic.

Lastly, I organized the equipment cards and zombie spawn cards.

Here they all the equipment cards! 5 rows of 10 plus 6 extra totals 56 types of equipment (or wounds) you can carry.

I then culled some of the repeats to create a master equipment deck. Wounds and "plenty of ammo" cards aside, no item has more 4 cards in the deck. 

On one hand, I feel good as I organized some of the components a little better but on the other hand, became aware a literal treasure trove of things I may never use but have for the sake of simply having it.

Solo Zombicide Game

So I had a little free time today and decided to squeeze in a quick game of Zombicide while the wife and 1 month old slept.

I picked Scenario 10: Small Town from the Zombicide Season 1 rule book.

I usually like running 6 actors ( lots of actions) but decided to run 4 due to the narrow window.

I opted to use my 3 newest actors as I haven't had the chance yet. Union Worker 42 and Alyana Heska came from a Wrath of Kings Kickstarter Crossover. Thiago (Not Austin Powers) came from the Family Game Night #2 kit (via eBay). Lastly, dependable Phil (aka Rick Grimes from the Walking Dead).

Hindsight being what it is, the first 3 are all melee oriented with Phil is the only ranged specialist.

Turn 1 - lucky lucky lucky! Managed to get Phil the other pistol. Being able to dual wield them means he can shoot them together for 1 action.

The group moves towards the first building and breaks down the door.

After dispatching the meagre zombies. I made my first mistake and split the group. I NEVER split the group. Don't really know why I did. 

The actors moved up to the cross roads and set up shop. ( Mistake #2 - any spawn card with man hole cover spawns zombies on each man hole which means 3 extra potential spawns). Also 3 of the 4 actors have been wounded. Not looking too good for the good guys. Especially with those fatties ( legit game term, honest) coming from the north spawn zone.

The crossroads are finally clear. Time to move. 

Breaking into the bottom right building spawns more zombies. I don't have great equipment so move everyone (minus Thiago- who has been devoured) inside  to search. Not good. 1 actor down. 2 wounded.

Trapped! Trying to break free/whittle them down.

An Abombination enters via the north spawn point. I have nothing to kill it with and a large hoard surrounding Alyana after the space was cleared and she chopped open the next door. Luckily he had a chain saw and the dice gods were kind.

 

Alyana makes it back into the room unscathed. 

 

The actors clear out the room and begin to pray. The Abombination is getting closer...they empty the street and run across into the next building a growing horde at their heels.

Thankfully this building had a back door as the rooms are filling quickly with zombies. They escape the building and make a run for it. Only targeting zombies ahead, and leading the others toward the final building.

 

Outside the final building. Zombies all around. The runners just got an additional move meaning there are 9 within striking distance. The actors kill all the zombies in the spaces immediately north and south and move inside the building.

The actors make it inside and seize the final objective with runners standing on the door step. This one really came down to the wire.

The survivor cards at the end. All three had hit the red level and contiued again. Looking at the numbers, minus he objective tokens Phil and Union Worker 42 killed 48 zombies each and Alyana killed 38 zombies. Thiago added another dozen or so.

Afterthoughts:

I shouldn't have split the group. I possibly could have avoided some of the early wounds. I didn't use Thiago's reaper ability properly by having him fight single zombies.

I also didn't get to use Alyana's sword master ability but she and Union Worker 42 were melee monsters as the levelled up. 

By standing in the crossroads for several turns, I allowed extra zombies to spawn from the man holes.

I love Zombicide and hopefully I can get another game in soon. The season 3 Kickstarter can't come soon enough.

Ooh Shiny!

On March 6th, I placed an order with Nexus Miniatures for several Freaks of Nature - Dr. Makalay, Piascha, 2x "Not-Wolverine", 2x "Not- Cyclops" and 1 pack of alternate heads.

My plan is to paint them up just like the X-Men in a superhero/spy-fi crossover world.

Look what was waiting when I came home from work! Yay!

My initial impressions are:

Piascha - no mold lines anywhere, very crisp casting, shiny appearance 

Dr. Makalay - cape has some mold lines near bottom - but otherwise pretty crisp

"Not-Cyclops" - some mold lines under arms and head. Minimal work required.

"Not-Wolverine" - most mold lines, mainly under both arms and around hands.

The two "Nots" aren't very shiny in appearance either. Maybe some sort of mold release agent is still on the bare metal?

All in all, very nice and minimal work is required (excluding my grand conversions). 

Kudos to Nexus Miniatures on their new venture and I can't wait for more of the Freaks of Nature line.

Now that the weather is nice (10 degrees, isn't nice but better than -20s we've had) hopefully I can get these primed by the weekend.

Kickstarters

I received my Wrath of Kings (WoK) pledge the other day. There was a knock on the door and the postman had a parcel addressed to me! Weird, I didn't order anything. It was my WoK Kickstarter pledge. Where was my shipping notification? It wasn't until later that evening I received my shipping confirmation...oh well. Lmao.

I only backed WoK for the exclusive Zombicide crossover characters. But as (long story) I didn't back Zombicide Season 2, I couldn't just purchase the crossover figures, I had to spend $50 on WoK product.

I picked the Shael Han faction below but didn't really follow the rest of the KS. I also got a bunch of exclusives. Yes! I have ZERO plans of playing this game so hopefully I can sell it at a local convention (Hotlead) which is coming up in 15 days or LAF at a later date. Just looking to break even at best. Not including the exclusives of course. I'm not greedy.

Onto the Zombicide S.2 exclusives:

I haven't gotten around to opening the box but Elena looks pretty cool, model wise. Basically she and Charles (see below) are at a convention dressed in gear when the Zombies come. Interesting premise. Charles is also a pretty neat sculpt. IMHO, Probably one of the better of the "passive" poses. 

Stats wise:

Elena's yellow action is interesting. I can't think of another character who doesn't have +1 Action for the yellow. Elena has +1 Melee Action which really pushes the theme of her being a hand to hand specialist. As if double katanas doesn't give it away.

Charles is also suited for hand to hand combat. 

I tend to run more ranged specialists when I play.  But these look like nice additions.

Now just to have the "dock workers" strike finish that is delaying the season 3 shipment.

Descent: Journeys In The Dark 2nd Ed. - Forgotten Souls

So I picked up the (newish) Descent Cooperative Adventure titled Forgotten Souls from Meeple Mart about 2 weeks ago. And printed the rules at work (on the full colour printer -shhh!)

The package included Peril Cards, Exploration Cards (how the campaign gets laid out), Activation Cards (dictates how monsters activate) and track sheet (chances to get upgraded equipment or lose horribly).

The exploration cards contain an onset card ( initial encounter) three main encounters and 8 other encounters. Without failing miserably and being defeated, the game will run from 10-12 encounters depending on how you've dealt the cards.

I played a quick campaign and found it pretty enjoyable. I was a bit distracted though and only managed to make it halfway through. As you can see, with everything laid out, there's not a ton of table space. 

I had to turn the map and extend the table leaf to fit before I finally called it quits. I was distracted and ran out of time...

I also find I get caught up in whatever I'm doing and forget to take photos. 

Today, I thought I'd set up the exploration deck and draw the cards and lay out the tiles to show just how big the game can get.

I kid you not, this was a completely random shuffled and drawn layout. Due to a special rule regarding overlapping tiles, last main encounter is separated from the rest of the map. Otherwise it would actually be partially off the table.

Now imagine the table with player boards, act 1 gear decks, etc and this is huge! I suppose you don't need to leave the previous encounters spread out behind but I think it adds to the dungeon crawling theme.

Overall it's a pretty good expansion. It was good enough to get me to purchase  the 2nd coop expansion Nature's Ire. 

Pros: No Overlord/fully coop. Everyone wins or loses together. Ability for solo play.

Cons: only utilizes 4 monster classes. The activation cards control how the monsters activate and change each encounter but it's still only 4 monsters classes for the entire campaign. Only utilizes specific tiles. The exploration cards dictate the order they are played in but each tile has the same monster classes in it each time you play.

Definitely a good expansion. I'm a bit concerned about the replayability but Nature's Ire (hopefully) should utilize diff tiles monster classes and knowing Fantasy Flight Games' love of expansions, there are probably others in the works as well. 

Another boardgame night.

IYesterday I met with Will at Jamie and Vanessa's for what will probably be my last night out for the next few months (baby #2 is due in one month).

First we played Bang! The bullet. It went down with dramatic flair. An outlaw and the renegade were killed early, leaving the sheriff and remaining outlaw left to battle it out. The dynamite blew me up and the Sheriff won. 

Jamie had just gotten Xia: legends of a drift system off of amazon. We had both missed the Kickstarter campaign and heard about it though Dice Tower. We played a quick intro game to familiarize ourselves then launched into a 10 point game.

This games comes with painted miniatures to match each battle board. It uses Tetris like pieces inside the ship interiors to limit what you can carry. I have a decent engine (grey z piece) and a basic missile (yellow I piece) but couldn't fit blasters of a shield. The two purple cubes are cargo and I had two other (empty) cargo spaces remaining. 

Some pics from the game...

It started out with 4 tiles and as we explored, it began to sprawl...

This was the final map layout:

Th

This is a sandbox style game. Basically you can do whatever you want. You can explore new territories, complete missions, buy and sell cargo, or go pirate and try to destroy other ships. There are also 3 NPC ships flying around. One is a merchant, one is and outlaw hunting good ships, one is an enforcer hunting outlaws.

All in all it was a great game an I can't wait to play more of it.

Lastly we finished off with Tsuro of the seas. It ended with me laying the tile that killed both my ship and Vanessa's. As you can see, it was quite the voyage.

Happy New Year!

Well, a lot went on near the end of 2014 and I (stupidly) didn't take many pics. I don't like posting without a pic but I haven't checked in lately...

1) sent some Gripping Beast Anglo-Danes to another member of LAF to paint. 4 points for SAGA.

2) received them and 1/2 were damaged in the transit. Probably due to cold temps in the cargo hold unsticking the glue.

3)picked up the YT-2400 x-wing release by Fantasy flight games.

4)picked up a boardgame called Bang! The Bullet edition

5)had a boardgame night where we played Bang! The Bullet, Tsuro of the Seas, Zombicide (1st time I lost :/ ), Dominion:Intrigue and Descent 2nd edition.

6) Christmas prezzies! Received the VT-49 Decimator x-wing expansion, 4 point Viking warband for SAGA, bondi command and Anglo Saxon command blisters all by Gripping Beast

My plan with the Bondi and Anglo Saxon commands are to simply provide extra models so I can use other rule sets like LOTR: SBG. Now to send them off to my painter...

I hope the New Year treats everyone well and I hope to be more productive in the hobby this year.