(Savage Showdown) #5 A Complicated Arrangement

Ah, snowy weekend.  Unlike everyone else on the east coast, we only got a "manageable" eight inches, but it was enough to keep us home, save a late afternoon jaunt of errands for my wife on Sunday.

The rest of the weekend was a healthy mixture of cleaning, laundry, snuggling under electric blankets, painting, and games.  Lots of dice games and way too many games of Life filled the afternoon, and a over the top painting session of everything from birdhouses to rocks to minis capped off Saturday evening. 

When my wife left on Sunday, we rolled out the minis and buildings and ran a follow-up game to  A Simple Trade using Savage Showdown. 

When we last left our heroes, noted archaeologist Maja Millie and her travelling companion "Bob" Njano had fallen victim of a double cross by Captain Skippy McBoatswain.  If not for the intervention of a bow-wielding mousling with a pink hood, who knows what evil would befall the duo.

The trio had eluded the sailors (Maja Millie stabbing Captain Skippy in the heart) and were holed up in the local watering hole.  They could hear the sailors screaming and shooting at something.  When they finally got to the second floor for a better look, they couldn't believe their eyes.

Zombies!


The town square.  The priest on the shoebox is not supposed to be there.  Captain Skippy and the bag of cash he dropped are still lying on the ground.

For the first few rounds, our heroes got into position in the building.  Only the pink mouse was firing at the initial "horde" of six, silently hiding their position.  The zombies were very "fresh" and despite the best efforts of the sailors, their shots could not drop the living dead. 

For a few rounds, more zombies slowly emerged from the same table edge.  They were incredibly slow, and equally incompetent fighting the sailors, at least 1-on-1.  A few well placed arrows in the head and some tagteaming by the sailors dropped the initial wave, but everyone released that they were fighting a losing battle. 

 

To top things off, Maja drew a joker, allowing her to go first, make a roll on the Fortune and Calamity table (with negligible results), and initiate the first event:  the appearance of another Chupacabra!

My name Chupacabra.  You killed my brother two sessions ago.  Prepare to die!

Maja Millie usually does her archaeological adventuring armed with merely a knife, so the zombie onslaught made her search the tavern for better weaponry.    Throw in three aces on her trait role for searching, and she uncovered a working cannon being used as mere barroom decoration. 

 

They definitely didn't hide in a T.G.I Fridays!

With the sailors running interference, Maja loaded the cannon and push it out the front door.    Bob had finally found a spot with decent line of sight to fire his rifle, but some more zombies came from behind the building and he barely got away.  Shots from the second floor would be safer. 

 

It's not potato skins and warm beer, but it will do...

Without leadership, the sailors were smart enough to line up to fight the zombies, but stupid enough not to run away.  More zombies shambled out of other alleys.  Even the Chupacabra leaping down to push back a zombie didn't seem to stem the tide.  Something needed to be....

*BOOM!*

 

The powder for the cannon must have been good, for it tore into the sailors, zombies, and Chupacabra with horrifying effect.  Everything in the blast's path was destroyed, including the warehouse across the square, save the Chupacabra, who wandered away from the melee intact, but with significant scarring. 

Maja is discovered by the zombies.

Zombies, attracted by the noise, came around both sides of the bar, ready to envelope Maja.    Another timely Joker allowed Bob to race downstairs to blast the nearest undead and pull Maja back inside.  An arrow from the pink mouse gave Bob enough time to shut the door and brace it with a large table. 

 

The joker also activated the next event.  With the sailors turned to face the horde descending on the bar, Captain Skippy turned into a zombie and attacked his closest crew member, devouring most of him!

Zombie Captain Skippy latches on to his crew

The surviving crew members passed their morale check, but decided getting the heck out of dodge was the better part of valor.  They raced to a nearby delivery truck, aced their driving and hot wiring rolls and managed to peel off just as five more zombies appeared out of nowhere!

Running for their lives...



Driving for their lives.

Our heroes in the bar were getting desperate.  The undead horde had climbed over the cannon and was beating down on the door and Bob had run out of ammo for his rifle. 

 

Maja (my daughter) decided the only way to escape was to go up to the roof and make a running leap to the balcony of an adjacent building.  One of them would need to make the long jump holding the artifact!  To complicate things, Bob and the mouse each had one Bennie left to reroll the attempt, should it fail, but Maja had exhausted all of hers, and if she failed, the fall damage, if it didn't kill her outright, would incapacitate her right next to the zombie horde.

 

The mouse went first, sailing over to the balcony with ease (15,  d8 roll with one ace)

Bob went second, holding the artifact (21, d6 roll with THREE aces)

Then it was Maja's turn...

 

*shooka shooka shooka goes the die*....

 

6

 

Millie just made it over the balcony railing, into the arms of her friends.   Not a single zombie noticed.

 

For the two sailors, escape would require them to drive around the edge of town  and then head north.  They had no supplies and no direction left in their lives. 

 

Then a native man stepped out from a building with a rifle pointed square at the truck's radiator.    They slammed on the brakes.  Bob had a simple demand:  get us out of town and we can unload the artifact somewhere else and split the profits five ways.... 

 

...And if they weren't doing anything, they were going to a camp full of government soldiers  to free a wrongly imprisoned friend.  If no one shot each other, they were welcome to tag along.

This was a game of extremes.  On one hand we had sailors who couldn't shoot and then we had a character roll so well on a search for a pistol, or maybe a shotgun, that she uncovered a working cannon in a bar. 

The events that were generated from the jokers for initiative were based off a chart that ranged from a new hero appearing to government troops arriving to contain the situation by any means necessary.  If this had been a game run for anyone but my kids, Captain Skippy turning into a zombie and devouring his crew should always be the first and fixed event. 

Maja had two major worries during the game:  Keeping Bob hidden from the Chupacabra, since he had killed his "brother" two games ago and trying to befriend the sailors that survived. "Captain Skippy was the evil guy, not the sailors," although they were about to kill the Maja Millie and Bob in the last game and she just happened to unload a cannon into their backs in this game.    Lucky for her the sailors didn't know Bob had run out of ammo. 

Next:  Some kind of team has been assembled to rescue Nils Lingonberry. from the clutches of the corrupt government troops.   "Escape from Kisi Rushwa"