Catch UP

It's half way through May, well almost and I haven't posted since the Easter holidays. The school holidays really do upset my routines been playing catch up ever since. I have not stopped playing but I have just not had the time to blog. So I am doing a quick catch up today and will make time every week to blog going forward./

I have played two introduction games to ATZ and found 4 new players so the next thing is to play day one with them all and get them hooked into the miniatures world. Hopefully I will do this next month in June as I am stacked this month.

I have a few weeks of Karl to type up and I started playing Lizzie on her own so have a couple of weeks for her to type up too. The biggest thing though is that I have started painting and I really love it. It's like meditation for me and I have joined up with 3 fellow gamers in building a Saga force and you can see my good friend Andy's blog for progress. Click here for the intro HERE and HERE for my late entry into their Tale of 3 Gamers Series.

The first intro game went like this;

I got the table set up and then got 3 teams ready as in one player would have the guy with a chainsaw. Another a Husband and wife team and the third a mother and 2 kids. The aim of the scenario was to gain 3 resources and leave via the opposite board. Only one figure survived, the husband.

The wife was the first to get bit and the husband took her out before she could turn. The second to get bit was the guy with the chainsaw and in a fit of rage knowing his life is ending throws a grenade at the family who had just found a car with fuel and keys. The grenade took the car out and knocked down the family which let the Zed';s get them. It was fun. Here are some pics from the day;

 Moving onto the table and setting up the ZED's

There were several large groups like this one as the ZED's chased the mum and her two kids into the cafe

Just too many ZED's for the family to survive

It feels good writing this blog post now to catch up on the blogs I follow

Karl Hunter week 5 AAR

"...dad....dad....dad...DAD...DAD!!!!" Karl turns to face his daughter, he'd been lost in the past remembering when he first met Megan at the mall, wearing skin tight Jeans and a Led Zepplin t-shirt. His daughter is frantically pointing to his left. He turns and sees a ZED stumbling towards him through the tree's, he pulls his machete out swings and slices it's head in half. "For f##k sake Dad what's wrong with you!" As he looks as his daughter Lizzie tears start rolling down his cheeks, "she looks so much like her mum" he thought to himself. "You've gotta pull yourself together Dad!" Lizzie shouts at him and then says more quietly realising she could draw more of the dead towards them. "Where are we going to go now Dad?"

It's been two day's since Karl had seen his wife being eaten by the ZED's and it was eating him alive from the inside. He'd been replaying it over and over again in his mind. "I should've left the car" he muttered again to himself. There was a crack of a twig to his left and he turned expecting to see another ZED but a scantily clad woman stepped out followed by three men and said "hi".

Karl just stared slightly dead-eyed at them before carrying on walking in the same direction as he had been. Lizzie however returned this woman's hi with a "Hey where you headed" The woman just watched Karl carries on walking whilst one of the men said "to a hospital in the next town, we heard there was a medivac chopper airlifting people to safety" The woman turned and glared at her comrade whilst Lizzie just said " We've just come from there and it's overrun with shuffles". "Shuffles??" said the guy, "yer the dead ones" replies Lizzie and runs after her father who has just continues to walk on.

Lizzie catches up to her dad and tells him what the others had to say "I am never going back to that f##king place" he replied. "Why not?" asks Lizzie and Karl just glares back at his daughter but continues walking on. "We could head back home and I could see if Mat is still there" suggests Lizzie and Karl just grunts. Lizzie steps in front of Karl and takes the lead and Karl doesn't notice that Lizzie has started to turn them back towards the town........

Again this game was played with Andy but my report is from Karl's perspective again. There's a rumour of a medivac helicopter landing at the hospital. The goal of the scenario is to get on the chopper and find a resource. We decided to play this on a larger table 6 x 3 and used 6 PEF's instead of 3. We divided the table into 12 sections and rolled a D10 ignoring the 0 and placed the 6 PEF's in section 1-9, 10-12 being the table edge that we come on.

It's been a few more days since Lizzie had heard that there was a possibility of a medivac helicopter and she had been steadily working her way back round to the town, her dad trudging along behind her and as they walked from the forest she could see the town in the distance and the hospital. Her dad glanced up saw the town, growled and looked at her "Girl I guess we'd better check out that hospital then"

Move onto the table and generate 8 zombies, before Karl is a tunnel underneath a military looking outpost on the edge of town. The barricades are down and the doors to the tunnel have been left open. I enter decide to enter the tunnel as it's the quickest way to the hospital. 

Karl hunkers down by the edge of the military compound and looks ahead his daughter by his side. It looks quiet, too quiet. He nudges his daughter and silently points to the tunnel, she replies by a reluctant nod of the head and they move quickly but quietly towards the entrance. As they move they can see 4 ZED's up on the mound by the satellite and 2 to their left and 2 to their right. Karl just heads straight into the tunnel and lets his eyes adjust to the darkness. It seems to be empty so they both head in deeper and a mean looking man steps out and shoots Lizzie who falls to the ground still. Karl whips his shotgun round and fires killing the man and another who stepped up beside him.

Karl checks on his daughter, she's still breathing but he can't see shit in this poor light so moves further into the tunnel and finds himself face to face with 4 zombies, pulls out his machete and charges into them with a pent-up frenzy killing all four of them quickly.

Karl quickly searches the tunnel as he makes his way back to his daughter finding some keys and a composite bow with arrows. Checks on his daughter again who is still breathing and searches the gangers taking their weapons. Straps everything onto himself and picks up his daughter moving towards the end of the tunnel again noticing that the weather outside has got bad.

The tunnel is classed as two buildings due to its length. In the first part we encounter 2 gangers who walked the walk with Karl and his daughter ending up with the gangers killed and Lizzie being taken out of the fight. The insight happens with a ganger going first, then Lizzie(but she can't as she's been taken out of the fight), then Karl who kills both of the gangers with his shotgun. The other ganger was due to go last. In the second part are 4 zombies.

Random event bad weather.

Karl moves down the street carrying his daughter and sees movement up ahead through the rain and places his daughter on the ground and draws his shotgun and waits. 2 men and a woman appears and stops short as they see Karl holding a shotgun aimed at them. One of the men say "hey man" noticing the girl at Karl's feet adds "fancy helping each other out and sticking together?" Karl doesn't respond and the man adds "we could help carry your girl there?" Karl stands up and grunts a "yes" shoulders his shotgun and says "that sounds like a good plan".

PEF resolved as 3 citizen's. I win the meet and greet and they join Karl and his daughter.

"Let's get out of this rain" Karl shouts to the others as he  leads them towards the closest building with the two guys carry Lizzie between them followed by the other woman. In the distance, 5 zombies follow the group towards the house.

Karl enters the building followed by the others and come face to face with three mean looking men. The woman and the 2 guy's carrying Lizzie just turn around and go back out the door. Karl curses "chicken shits" ducks back out all the same, not liking the odds of 3 to 1.

The group then enters a building and find 3 gangers. The 3 citizen's fail their brown pants and duck back out the building. I choose also to duck back rather than face the 3 gangers on my own. 

Karl runs back out the house yells at the others to get up and run. The 3 men in the house run outside and pursue Karl and his new friends. Karl jumps over the fence with the others following as the 3 men come round the corner of the house pursuing them they open up with their automatic pistols. Karl gets hit by a bullet grazing his temple knocking him to the ground. As he lays there his ears ringing trying to focus his eyes he sees the lady that joined them go down from a gunshot to her leg banging her head hard on the ground. The two guy's look around panicked grab the fallen woman and run away down the street.

Zombie's appeared from around Karl and head towards the 3 men, suddenly they turn their focus away from Karl and start to shoot at the ZED's that are approaching them from all sides. Karl gets back to his feet unsteadily and watches the 3 men shoot at the ZED's to see only one fall and more appearing from behind them.

I decide that the best course of action is to run away from the 3 gangers as the 3 citizens I've met seem to be cowards. When the gangers fire at us, as we are close together that each ganger will target 2 people. This results in Karl and the new lady getting shot. The third ganger missed altogether. The citizen's fail their brown pants again as they took fire and run. I decide that they would not just abandon the lady they were with so they drop Lizzie and take her instead. The 9 shot's fired by the gangers generate 7 zombies!! Zombies that were already following Karl now follow the gangers as they have fired and are slightly closer than Karl and co.

Karl gathers his wits, picks up Lizzie and moves towards the next house. As he moves he sees that woman they came across in the woods followed by the same 3 men who just wave at him and move into a house. Karl enters the house cautiously and is relieved to find it empty.

This is the only point that mine and Andy's players can see each other during this encounter.

Karl stays in the house and gathering his thoughts, thinking where to go next as carrying his daughter around is tiring him out.

Failed activation.

Karl looks out the window and sees a car and decides to leave Lizzie on the couch and go check the car out. Maybe it'll start with these keys and we could drive the rest of the way to the hospital. As he approaches the car he notices movement inside, suddenly the window winds down and a cheerful face appears and says "Geez man you look like shit", spots the keys in Karl's hand and says "they won't work on this heap of shit, there Porsche keys" Karl goes to turn away and the man adds "there's a blue Porsche a few blocks back that way" pointing in the opposite direction to the hospital.

"F##king no good to me then" mutters Karl. "Hey man, I'm Shaun if you don't want them keys I'll take them off your hands?" the guy in the car says. "What ya wanna swap them for then?" Karl replies. "All I got is some food, my shotgun and a grenade that I found in this car would you believe it? You can't have my food or gun dude" replies Shaun with a thoughtful look on his face then adds "you can have the grenade". Karls holds out the keys, Shaun takes them and tosses the grenade to Karl just as a chopper flies overhead, heading for the hospital.

The car has a ganger in it when I go to search it, I win the meet and greet and  a people challenge so that he'll swap his grenade for the car keys!!! Result. This turn we also find out that the helicopter is arriving and will stay for 8 turns before leaving.

Upon hearing the chopper Karl turns and heads back to the house grabs Lizzie and then heads towards the hospital. Karl enters the hospital and heads for the rear exit as quickly as possible. He encounters no more trouble at all but as he reaches the top of the fire escape at the back of the hospital the chopper takes off leaving him stranded there watching it leave.

It took 8 turns to get to the top of the stairs, there were 2 turns were I didn't activate which cost me my ride. I met no-one else on my travels and no more zombies either. It was an uneventful end to the encounter.

Karl watches the chopper fly off into the distance and then heads back down the stairs and heads back towards the woods leaving the town behind him.

I just move Karl off the table to finish the encounter.

Karl chucks another twig on the fire as the pan starts to boil the water and glanced over at his daughter. The bullet was a through and through of her upper arm and she had a huge welt on her head from where she banged it after falling down. She seems ok Karl thinks to himself but she hasn't said a word since waking up.

A twig snaps and Karl reaches for his shotgun but it's ok, it's only Sam the woman they met back in town with the two other guys. Karl shoots her a quizzical look and she shrugs saying "they wanted to go back to the hospital in case another chopper came and I thought I'd be better off without them. Saw your fire and when I got close saw it was you and thought maybe we could stick together?" Karl looks at his daughter who just shrugs and he says "sure why the hell not" and she settles down and warms her hands against the fire.

"Dad" Karl looks at his daughter and is a little surprised to hear her voice and she continues "Why don't we head back home? It might be safer now and I could see if Dave is still around" looking hopefully at her father. He just says "No". "But.." starts Lizzie and Karl just looks at her with a withering stare and says "NO" very firmly. "Dave, he was no good for her anyways," Karl thinks to himself.

Lizzie gets up in the middle of the night, picks up her bag which has half their food in it, picks up one of the shotguns and the composite bow and leaves a note in their place and heads out into the woods on her own.

Karl wakes in the morning and rolls over, looks at where his daughter should have been laying. Realising she's not there he sits up and notes that all her stuff has gone and the bow and one of two shotguns is missing but there's a piece of paper left where they were.

He reaches over and picks it up and starts reading;

"Dad I need to go and you need to deal with Mum's death. I can't be around you right now so I'm going to go and see if Dave's ok. I know that he's most likely one of them now but I need to check. If it's ok back home I'll wait there until it's no longer safe and then I'll head to Aunt Jenny's ranch down in Texas. Maybe we'll meet up down there. I love you Dad I really hope we see each other again. Just get over Mum cause if you don't I don't think I'll see you at Aunt Jenny's. Has to be said Dad. I love you Lizzie xxx"

The encounter was a failure luckily there was no rep decrease

Sam who joins up with Karl carries a Pistol and a unit of food and has the attribute rage.

As you can see there are no pics for this encounter, we got so wrapped up in the game I took very lax notes and no pics were taken!! A post is not complete without pics so here are some to make up for it;

The Hunters

Karl

Megan (Deceased)

Lizzie

I will be playing ATZ with my good friend Andy using Karl seeing how long he can last. I will be playing ATZ at home using Lizzie. I am also hoping to start a campaign using gangers more to come on that as and when it happens.....

Hope you enjoyed

Catch up and a look back over the past month and a bit

It's been great getting back into tabletop games and I'm loving the 3 games that I now play.

Obviously, ATZ as that's what this blog is all about, but I have played 2 bolt action games and enjoyed them so much I am now the proud owner of a small force of Americans, Brits, Germans and Russians.

After playing just one game of 7TV I am looking forward to my next one and after Salute, I am sure that there maybe a few others that I'll fall in love with.

It's been over a week since I was last online blogging and I have just caught up with the blogs I follow and added a couple more to follow.

So my first post will of April will feature 3 figure's I got with my Yakuza, strangely they were bundled with these 3.........

 Riot police in full contamination gear

These have featured in just one game of ATZ and they played the part of the national guard.

The Yakuza

My second gang I purchased was the yakuza

The boss and his girls

The big guy (bodyguard)

The girls

I used this model for Mrs Hunter (now deceased)

The guys

You may recognise this one as I liked it and use it as Karl Hunter

I am also looking forward to using these in 7TV at somepoint

My First Gang

This was my first purchase of miniature's that was not zombie's. These 5 Gangers. They are not very well painted but have been used once so far.

There's a well muscled male with a machine pistol. An unarmed female and a female with a machine pistol. There is male with a shotgun and a male with an assault rifle.

Week 4 for the Hunter Family AAR

This is a straight forward search encounter. Goal is to acquire at least 3 resources and/or recruit group members. I played this encounter as a joint game with another player, my friend Andy. We started at opposite sides and we could leave by any table edge once we got our resources. Andy's crew and mine never met during the game so I have written this AAR up from Karl's perspective only and not included any of Andy's movements. As it was a joint game not many pics were taken and only sparse notes so I am using more of a story telling style in this AAR. 

Karl looks over at his wife and kid and thinks "geez how are we going to get through this" He thinks back to when they left the supposedly safe zone, they ran for all they were worth towards the treeline seemed to take an age. Once inside the woods they looked back at the safe zone and could hear screams and gunfire and one one of the houses was now in flames. Karl thought to himself "I don't wanna go back to our place. But where to go now? Well the next town get some supplies I guess".

They had seen the odd zombie in the woods, what else can they be called, but they had avoided them. "Lizzie had started referring to them as shuffles, Megan hasn't started to call them anything, me on the other hand" thought Karl "I just think of them as Zouls". Karl gets up walks over to his two girls and sits down next to them. They look up and he says "we haven't got much, I don't wanna go back lets just head over to Smithsville and see what we can find". Lizzie shrugs her shoulder's and Megan, his wife looks at him and half smiles. "You never know it might be better over there" he says, thinking "it isn't going to be."

As they approach Smithville they can see the hospital and decide to head towards it. It's all very quite. Not a soul to be seen. It's eerily quiet the only noise is the litter being blown in the wind.

The town seems deserted and they're getting close now to the hospital. "We just need to make it up the road and turn left and  make it to the hospital. Got to be stuff in there still", thought Karl to himself.

In front of them are 4 detached houses. Behind them is a road of terraced houses. Looks like a couple of them have been on fire at some point. As they move up the street they see for the first time something else that moves, "shuffles" mutters Lizzie. (Karl his wife Megan and their daughter Lizzie move onto the table and generate 9 zombies all of them located near the two detached houses past the first two detached houses).

Karl heads towards the house on his left, "might as well check it out on the way to the hospital" thinks Karl and the girls follow him. They enter the house and find themselves face to face 3 zombies, Megan and Lizzie duck back out, but Karl opens up on the 3 ZED's with his shotgun, killing one and knocking the other two down.

Megan looks to the next house to check on the zombies to see if how close they are and nudges Lizzie. Lizzie looks up the road to see what her mum is looking at. There is a bear of a man looking at them holding a very big gun. He shout's "stay there little girlie's I have plans for you", in a very menacing tone. Standing close by him is a very sexy girl and 3 others step out to join them carrying uzi's. They appear right by a group of 6 ZED's and open up at them, some dropping to the ground. (The girl's ducking back brought them insight of a PEF which was resolved as a 5 strong gang, the leader having a REP of 5. The others were a REP 4, 2 REP 3's and an unarmed REP 2. The gangers won the meet and greet and walk the walk with the girls but with Zombies closer to the gang they start to shoot at the zombies first and move towards the girls as the zombies are more of an immediate threat. The gang kill's one zombie and knocks another down but because the Uzi's only have an impact of 1 most of the zombies hit just carry on. The gang shot a total of 12 shot's. 3 from an assault rifle and 3 each from the Uzi's. This generated another 8 zombies heading towards the gangers).

Megan and Lizzie go back inside the building, Karl shouts at them "Finish them off before they get back up". They each walk over to a downed zombie and put a bullet in it's head. Karl searches the room quickly not finding anything. "Hey babe" shouts Megan at Karl. He turns towards her and she says "not only only have we got to worry about these things, outside is a very large man intent on doing bad things to us". Outside they can hear a lot of gunfire. (Megan and Lizzie pop the weasels of the two downed ZED's and Karl searches the room. The gangers continue to fire at the ZED's but have effectively become surrounded so they don't move. They kill 5 Zombies this time but generate another 7).

Karl looks out one of the windows, sees the big man and thinks "geeze he's huge" Seeing all the zombies out there moving towards the gangers and the fact that the girls said they weren't very friendly he decides to leave the house out the other door. There was no zombie's about so they head straight towards the side of the hospital, puttting as much distance between them and the Gangers as possible. They continue to hear gunfire but also a blood curdling scream which was obviously female. (Karl and co move and thanks to the ZED's generated being away from the house they were in they didn't encounter anything. The ZED's moved but the gangers didn't activate. This allowed the closer ZED's to initiate hand to hand combat. The leader of the gang, his girl and another ganger had to melee the ZED's. The big guy killed his the ZED's on him easily. The ZED that attacked his girl killed her knocked her out of the fight. The other ganger killed the ZED that attacked him. Although 4 ZED's were killed 5 more were generated).

Karl decides it's time to run and the girls try to keep up but he opens up a bit of a gap on them. They continue to hear gunfire from behind them. (I roll a 4 and a 3 for the fast move so Karl can move an extra 8 inches but the girls only 4. The gang continues to fire at the ZED's and fight them. The 4 remaining gangers are all in melee with the ZED's. Another ganger falls. 2 ZED's have started to feast on the unarmed ganger. 4 ZED's attacked the leader and he killed them all. 2 gangers are faced with a single ZED wwhich they disptach easily but the last ganger, the REP 4 faces 3 ZED's and loses miserably being taken out of the fight).

Whilst running down the side of the hospital Karl puts more space between himself and the girls. Karl decides that with no ZED's around he can get to the back of the hospital and check it out first without endangering his girls. Behind the hospital Karl see's 3 cars near the fire escape and heads towards them. They hear less shot's coming from behind them. (I rolled 2 4's for fast moving, so Karl could run but the girls could only move their 8". I decided that as there was no ZED's within 30" they'll be ok activating on their own to catch up. The remaining gangers move away from the ZED's towards the closest board edge firing as they go. Dropping 5 ZED's, generating 4 more).

Karl reaches the first car and searches it. He finds a shotgun and that the car has fuel but no keys. He searches the second and finds a machete. He searches the third car and finds a rifle. The girls just wait for him to finish and watch from the corner of the hospital. Karl goes back to the first car, try's to hotwire it and fails. (The girls failed to activate for 4 turns whilst Karl just kept going. The remaining gangers leave the table).

(Random event: Dog runs out of the back of the hospital followed by 4 zombies. The direction in which the dog runs put's the zombies following it inside the hospital. Between the Karl and the cars and his his Megan is a rear door. So we decide that the dog ran out of that door and the zombies would follow it out of that door).

Karl beckons to the girls to join him. They walk past the dog as it runs off the table and Karl ask's his wife to try and hotwire the car. She fails. Approaching from the other side of the cars is a group of 4 zombies and the 4 zombies walk out of the rear of the hospital. (The girls finally activate and the wife fails to hotwire the car).

Karl gets his daughter to try to hotwire the car and charges at the 4 ZED's that came out of the hospital. Megan shoots at the other 4 zombies and misses as they shuffle closer to her. The daughter succeeds in hotwiring the car but sets the car alram off. Karl manages to kill 2 zombies and knocks one to the ground and wrestles with the fourth trying to keep those teeth away from him. 3 Zed's approach from the corner of the hospital. (I activate first and decide to give the car one last go with Lizzie. I charge Karl into the 4 ZED's and get Megan to shoot the other 4 ZED's approaching them. The 4 zombies move closer to the cars and generate 3 zombies that appear round the corner of the hospital).

The zombies by the car charge at Megan, she fumbles with her pistol and drops it. The first zombie knocks her down stunning her. Karl kills the zombie by putting his knife through it's eye and stabbing the zombie that climbed back to his feet through the temple. He turns round as he starts to hear his wife's screams and watches as a ZED bites right through her jugular spraying blood all over itself turning her screams into gurgles. He stands there watching as his daughter runs up to him and grabs his hand as he starts to walk towards his fallen wife, but Lizzie drags at his arm screaming at him to run. Karl looks at his daughter, looks back at his wife, takes a firm grip on his daughters hand and runs away from the back of the hospital. Away from the Zoul's eating his beautiful wife. (The Zombies activate first and the 4 ZED's charge Megan who fails her charge into combat, meaning she's unarmed for the first round and the zombie knocks her to the ground. She passes her knockdown test whcih doesn't really help her as the other 3 start to feast on her body. I decide to run Karl and Lizzie off the board.

After the encounter I roll to see if the daughter and father stay together, they do and they both also get a REP increase. Karl is now REP 5 and Lizzie REP 4.

I have to say I am so gutted that I lost Megan this way as if I'd just left without trying to get a car she would still be alive.

More Zombies

These were the second lot of zombies I purchased and I am really pleased with them

Below are my two favourites out of the 25;

Mime Zombie

The ex-wife

This mini really looks like my ex-wife lol