The Mike Lung Project #79 - More Range Hares of Shadows Deep

More pics of the set up. The hares will start around the well which is the center of the board. They will then have to find the various clues scattered on the board while being besieged by the pumpkin zombies and crawlers.

(Last Days) Santa Claus is Coming to Zombietown

Despite the quarantine, the holidays, my medical recovery, and even my boss telling me to slow down, getting a miniatures game has seemed overwhelming.  With that thought, it's no surprise that a Christmas game nearly took until Orthodox Christmas to happen.  

I had the idea of running a one-off zombie game using Last Days, once I completed these fine folks: 

All available in Brigade Games Post-Apocalyptic line

Backstory:  You think a mall is a safe place?  Not in the middle of a zombie outbreak, right in the middle of the holiday season, and you're a mall Santa.  The carnage inside the mall made him snap, thinking he was the actual Santa Claus, he's recruited a couple short guys to dress as elves, and occasionally help the good boys and girls who can handle themselves in the apocalypse.  

Santa - Selfish Leader

Elves -  Cronies, toned down the machine guns they're all toting around (that's a lot of ammo to scrounge up.)

Kids -  Kids, except I gave the boy a FA of 2.  He has a pistol and a slingshot. Kid's got to have skills.

Rather than have a survivors vs survivors... with zombies that the game usually set up, and without digging out the Seasons book, I set up a simple plan while scrounging for supplies.

The town, with some ratty shoebox business, too zombies, but supplies... and a Taco Truck.

Simple set-up using the "Escape" scenario out of the main book.  Santa and his elves were on a supply run, when they realized there were too many zombies around the town, but they needed supplies before winter came in full.   Three supply markers were laid out.  Getting one and escaping in the taco truck would bring doom to the others back in the refuge.  Two would be just enough to get by, and three would be a joyful Yule for all. 

Zombies are already encroaching on the town.  Time is of the essence!

My eleven-year old Maja took control of the Santa and decided that splitting the group was a bad idea, and travel as a pack.  No issue with the first objective, but she then proceeded to have Saint Nick and the elves unload on a lone zombie near objective #2... only to not kill it.  It was finally dispatched round three, but by then it was too late.  Noise tokens (gunfire attracts zombies) brought a few more on the board and each one of the monsters knew the one spot the noise was coming from.  

Another lone zombie was too much for horrible dice rolling, and Elf #1 fell.

Meanwhile, the horde found the location of all the noise.  

Luckily, they sprinted around the building losing all but one or two of the nearer zombies...

... and reached objective #3, only to have an unexpected guardian

Elf #2 dropped the supplies and fired one shot right between the eyes.  

While the barn/garage in town was tempting, the Taco Truck was their only chance of escape from the growing horde. 

The little girl crawled into the back of the truck, and the others formed a perimeter to give Santa time to get the truck started. 

Santa needed to roll a 8+d6 and hit a target number 15.  Luckily, each round after the first, he would add a cumulative +1 to the roll.  

1st Attempt:  Auto failure, but a 12 made things look positive.  

Meanwhile, the boy pulled out a revolver, and his first shot was the best shot of the night, blowing away the menacing zombie.  

2nd Attempt:  An oh-so-close 14. 

Elf #3 finally got into the action.

Attempt #3 - As bad as it could get, a 12!

The horde finally reached the truck, boy and elf fought valiantly, but were simply overwhelmed by the numbers.

By the back of the truck, Elf #2's marksmanship declined quickly, taking out one zombie, but unable to hit the head on the one behind it.  He opened up the back door of the taco truck and decided his last stand would be there... if Santa couldn't get the truck started.

Attempt #4 - With zombies descending upon him, Santa, the jolly old elf made one last try to fix the engine... and rolled a 14.  

He took out two zombies before they were simply too much.  

Oh Santa

We called it at that.  Elf #2 and the Little Girl were probably eaten by zombies, but there is that fleeting hope that he blasted the zombie trying to enter through the backdoor, locked everything up, and the supplies they recovered would be enough to tide them over until things calmed down.

They were probably eaten.  

It's been a long time since we played Last Days, which is sad because it has been awhile since Maja picked out the rulebook... and the kids from Brigade Games booth at Historicon (remember conventions?)  We butchered certain rules, like noise, but it took a little over an hour and dad and daughter had fun.  

Next up:  I try to get the younger sister in a quick Pulp game to finish that storyline. 

(BECMI) Adventures in Gulluvia #5 - Fire Sale

17 Mai 534, Village of Mere, Barony of Gulluvia
With Hugo back at his hovel doing "magical research stuff," Bodo, Beulah, and Slothina celebrated their good fortunes. The haflings Bodo and Beulah chastised the lummox that is Slothina for trying to coax out the last surviving kobold while Hugo double checked the Gygar's Castle (see last episode).

The kobold was terrified, so Slothina dropped a trail of iron rations behind the party as they head back to the village. The last distant glimpse of the kobold was as they moved through the surrounding farmlands.

The party was hailed for their take, but no one believed that (a) something actually was in Gygar's castle or (b) they were kobolds.

Slothina returned home to her drunk father and was grounded for a day.

21 Mai 534, Village of Mere, Barony of Gulluvia
A few days later, Hugo decided to test out the "Broom of the Mountain Lord" with some comedic moments. He discovered that their are no much-needed harnesses on the device, and upon testing its speed, realized the Moorfowl Mountains weren't as dangerous as the infamous Thunder Mountains to the south, but there was still a chance for plenty of lightning in those clouds.

Upon his return, the same kobold Slothina led with a trail of food (that Hugo was completely clueless about) flags him down and alerts him to a flaming wagon and cart. "Many angry kobolds kill men" was all Hugo can ascertain. Farmers come to investigate and the kobold flees. The villagers began to show up and are alarmed.

The wagon and cart appear to have been one of the rare merchants that visit Gulluvia. They are more concerned by the loss of business than the reason they were attacked. The village elders calm the crowd, and after the fire is put out, the crowd disperses.

Beulah and Bodo find the trail of the kobold ambushers and decide to go out in the remaining light and try to hunt them down.

But kobolds aren't familiar to these here parts...

After some effort, they found giant carvings of the Agents of Zoltar (the lawful sect responsible for peaceful death and burial) against the hillside and uncover a secret entrance... with small muddy kobolds footprints leading inside.

Next: #6 - The Tomb of Peaceful Death

The Star Wars Stories We Want Are Quite Simple

Despite all the evils of social media, I always enjoy going through the daily "Memories" on Facebook.  Over the holidays, one consistent theme has been a family trip to the movies to see the latest Star Wars film on the big screen.  

Unfortunately, it was one family tradition with increasing disappointment.  The only Star Wars Christmas release that I enjoyed was Rogue One, and the sequel trilogy got so bad that my girls, who were six and eight at the time, picked apart The Last Jedi, and two years later, thought Rise of Skywalker was a steaming pile of bantha poodoo.  The only benefit of slugging through that two-plus hour disaster was listening to the girls try to rewrite portions they thought would be "more fun."

But now we have "The Baby Yoda Show" (aka The Mandalorian).  Sixteen episodes with the underpinning storyline that facilitates the "Get MacGuffin X" plot.   It pays homage to the Western, Samurai, and Pulp serial roots of Star Wars.  It hits on my nostalgia-tinged worldview of the franchise, the Star Wars d6 RPG/Tramp Freighters/People other than Jedi view of the galaxy that I want more of.

Don't get me wrong, like every other kid, I was wielding a yellow wiffleball bat like a lightsaber in the backyard, pretending to be Luke Skywalker, or his long-lost brother/4th cousin/force-sensitive milkman.  However, enough raps on the hand with a hollow plastic tube is enough to put those down and play with the action figures.  

I still suspect Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau play with action figures....

Sure, by the time I was able to wander the neighborhood to a friend's house with a red wagon overflowing with toys, it was a mixture of Star Wars, GI Joe, and anything generic our parents picked up (That Fisher-Price helicopter made a great speeder), but we didn't necessarily.  We set up the story, set up figures, and resolved things... usually badly, but playing pretend beats paging through a rulebook for a rules clarification in the blazing Summer sun.

Outside of the "Frog Lady" arc, each episode was a self-contained "adventure" fitting into the main storyline of "Find Baby Yoda's Family."  Character came and went, but ultimately helped out for the greater good in the finale.  I can only hope that a Mandalore-focused season three doesn't lose that simple magic of the movie serial or Western and turns it into Games of Thrones in space. 

Support the War Effort

 

A Stark Realization

After what felt a like a decade, I have escaped the evil clutches of 2020, and I didn't even need an awesome motorcycle jump to do so!  Let's not recreate that year... EVER.

Whereas everyone else appears to benefit from the taking the entire week off between the holidays, I'm the low man on the totem pole for a short three-day.  Plus, who doesn't need to escape the family to an empty office in our COVID reality?  

That all being said, I came to a stark realization spending some actual quality time with the family. While discussing various projects (home, basketball, hobby), I heard these words uttered from my mouth to my wife's ears:

"I have enough stuff.  I need to paint it."

If I simply painted two measly figures a week for 2021, I don't think I would get the figures on "working" side of my painting bench finished, much less the disorganized mess on the right side, and we aren't even talking about the bins of minis on the shelves.

Let's not mention I was checking on the delivery status of an eBay purchase (Bob Olley Space Dwarves from the Simtac "Macho Women with Guns" line).  

This goes beyond the lead pile.  My bookshelves have been at capacity since we moved into the new house six years ago.  Every new rulebook, boardgame, Car Wars Kickstarter, and map project is now either precariously balanced, or, like the copies of Wars of Ozz and Last Days I'm staring at, sitting in a pile on the floor.  The normal "to-do" pile I leave on my desk has been supplanted by dual monitors for work. 

Of course, I could justify more things if I just played more games.  Working on that today.  

Happy New Year!