The Walking Dead - Issue #1

Another day, another blog post...

As regular readers will know, I've recently been painting up miniatures for The Walking Dead: All Out War. Not only is this a really good game, based on a popular brand with excellent miniatures; but it also has dedicated solo rules which actually work. All this means that this game is ideal for me to set off on another of my solo flights of fancy, and begin a (sort of) campaign.

Thus I present the first of (hopefully) three adventures featuring the soon-to-be Governor of Woodbury, Brian Blake. The scenarios I'm playing are the solo tutorial scenarios from the Prelude to Woodbury starter set. I'm playing them as written as I thought I'd get to grips with the game properly before I start tinkering with rules. Also, subsequent expansions, such as the Days Gone Bye set contain a whole raft of scenarios based on the action from the comics, so there's plenty to be going on with. The only changes I intend to make are if characters die or survive when they aren't supposed to, in which case I'll alter later scenarios to make things work.

Oh, and I'm doing these battle reports in Comic Life because it suits the source material, I've done it before and liked it, and I've been inspired by 'The True Adventures of Rick and Glenn', which you can read on the Pimp My Board Game blog (see the sidebar), in which you'll find that whilst I've only made my photos black and white, he's actually painted all his models and terrain that way; it's awesome, I highly recommend having a look.

So, without further ado, I present:

Prelude to Woodbury, Part 1 - A Hard Lesson

The dead have begun to rise, and Brian Blake needs a place to hide. He decides to make his way to his parents' empty townhouse to wait for rescue. He stops to scavenge for food on the way, but he's not the only one who's hungry!

The game was really close; much closer than when I tried the rules out the first time. Brian was bitten on the first turn and it was then a race against time to see if I could complete the scenario before he died. Much as he griped, Brian would not have made it if his first two searches had not provided him with bandages and the ability to heal damage.

What I like about this game is that even in solo mode the event cards and supply deck make sure that each game plays out very differently, offering a really good degree of replay value. Hopefully it won't be too long before issue two, and there are more Walking Dead miniatures that have been completed which should be appearing tomorrow.