Alone Against The Horde

I've been threatening to do some Zombie gaming for well over two years now. I've took part in Zomtober for the past two years and they finally hit the table last October for Halloween Weekend (it's a thing). However, I've also toyed with solo gaming (I had a crack with 7th Voyage a while back), and my long term goal has always been to do a solo zombie campaign.

With the arrival of the man-cave and the terrain I've been doing for Batman, this is now a reality.

I've decided to use 7ombieTV from Crooked Dice as I like the tongue-in-cheek tone of rules, however I'll also be drafting in ideas from All Things Zombie from Two Hour Wargames, which has more campaign detail (although I'm not overly keen on the amount of tables this game uses).

To get to know the rules, I concocted a quick scenario (I've no idea how balanced it is) in which something has gone wrong at an industrial plant and the dead have begun to walk. I'll be controlling two Cop Co-Stars and a bunch of Survivor Extras as a growing horde of Zombies appear (using the Spawn Cards from the 'For Ghouls and Colleges' supplement). 

The Cops (Officers Newman and Redford) have a goal to protect (help the Survivors escape) and to serve (prevent any Zombies leaving the table). Each turn, a new Spawn card is drawn and whatever is detailed on it appears at the edge of the table. To escape, the Survivors need to leave the table from the opposite end of the table from the industrial plant. The Cops begin off table in their cruiser (vehicle rules are taken from 7TV).

OUTBREAK!

With the sirens blaring, the staff of the plant head towards he exit in an
orderly fashion.

Some head for their cars...

...whilst others consider barricading themselves in, but are unable to get the
warehouse doors closed!

And then the first zombie appears and things begin to
get panicky...

A straggler among the survivors is called over to the safety of the warehouse
as a living corpse closes in...

...but the doors are finally dragged shut keeping the zombie out, which begins
to batter on the door.

And eventually the door buckles, letting the the living dead through. 

The Survivors flee through the warehouse, with the
zombie in hot pursuit.

As the Survivors scatter, the police finally arrive and begin to fire at the
encroaching zombies, knocking them down...but they keep getting up.

Realising that they not facing ordinary perps, the police back off to the
safety of their cruiser.

But the dead just keep coming...

A close encounter forces Newman and Redford to quit
 the 'safety' of the car and back off even further.

Although they get some distance between them and the approaching horde,
 a faster looking specimen specimen breaks from the mob...

...and manages to wound Officer Newman before being taken down.

The fight with the fast zombie allows the rest of the horde to swarm the
 police officers.

Newman is finally dragged down, and wracked by anguish, Redford is forced to
 leave his partner to his fate and back off again, firing all the time.

Redford begins to find his mark and takes down zombie after zombie,
 but it just isn't enough.

Reford finds himself cornered, but he keeps firing and
 loading, loading and firing, trying to keep the dead contained.

Despite heroically holding off the horde long enough for the
spawn cards to run out, Redford eventually succumbs...

...and the infected spread out, unchecked, into the city...

I really enjoyed the game, and it's probably for the best that the virus escaped for campaign reasons. However, I discovered a few things:

• I need to remember the Heroic Action, things got more manageable when I did
• I was not using the correct rules for zombie casualties and they were getting up sooner than the should, however this nicely reflect lack of knowledge of how to deal with them at this stage in the outbreak
• The Survivors all escaped mainly because the Spawn Cards were kind early on in the game
• In a steal from ATZ I was only using events when the initiative dice were even, this is something I'll keep
• When creating scenarios, I need to put obstacles in the way of Survivors just running off as the speed difference between them and the Zombies is massive

Having got to grips with the rules, the next stop is to try to run the ATZ Day One scenario using 7ombieTV rules.