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SPARTAN VI · (This post was last modified: 06-04-2009 05:59 PM by SPARTAN VI.)

Played our third game today, Defend the Manor for the first time, and lasted about 2 hours (our buddy forgot the rule book at home, so we had to constantly run back and forth between rooms to read the rules and check these boards). Of equal significance, this is also our first game using the "Revenge of the Dead" and "Stock up" decks. I hear a lot about how Zombies win most of the time, and almost all the time for this scenario. But we really wanted to give a good ol' defense scenario a spin. We're still an inexperienced bunch, so with that said, this is how it went down.

Within the first few turns, Zombie's had fielded their maximum 14 Z's AND played the "No! It Can't Be!" which meant we had a Zombie Hero (drew Billy at random) with a general concentration on one side of the house. Our strategy was to block off the doors to prevent heroes from drawing us away. Question: Does the ZH count toward the Zombie limit of 14? I couldn't find it in the rules where it said they're exempt, it explicitly said there should never be more than 14 Z's on the board and that ZH's are like regular Zombies, "except" they can take more wounds and roll D3 to move.

Heroes chose Sheriff Anderson, Becky, Sally, and Jake. Their first few turns were ridiculous; they already managed to find a revolver (not including the Sheriffs), a shotgun, baseball bat, dynamite, torch, and soon afterward - a chainsaw. Consistent good rolls kept our Z's at bay (ranged attack after ranged attack) occasionally getting a few Z's inside, only to get hacked down. I seriously did not think the Z's could possibly win with all the good loot/weapons heroes were finding.

Somehow, Zombies managed to gang up and kill Jake, turning him into a Zombie Hero. Killing Jake was a huge mistake though, it allowed the Heroes to field Jenny, who combined with a crowbar and baseball bat, was the perfect Zombie hunter. They got wise and sent her out to draw Zombies away from the house. She must have killed at least 6 or 7 Zombies before her bat broke, then "felt strange," and turned into a ZH. The damage was already done, she had drawn around 6 Zombies 2-4 spaces from the manor and we were running out of time. To make matters worse, Heroes played Old Betsy on Z-Jenny and the others that shared her space.. we weren't going anywhere any time soon.

The balance of power was on the Heroes side all the way up until the end. Sally went out to draw us away, combined with a chainsaw and her lucky ability, took out at least a dozen Z's over the course of the game. Heroes made one game changer mistake, they did not move Sally far enough away from the house when she rolled a 6.

At our 3rd to last turn, I drew "The Smell of Brains," which allows a Zombie to roll an extra fight dice, and if the Hero is wounded in the result of this fight, all Z's within 2 spaces automatically jump to his space. On our LAST turn, just 2 spaces from Sally was Father Joseph, who was drawn when Jenny died and more importantly inside the manor.

On our very last zombie turn, we moved 3 Z's into Father Joseph's area, but this is the "genius" part: the heroes KNEW we had something up our sleeve and that it wasn't a card that they've seen before; I was a little excited and too vocal, but so were they... I overheard they that they had a cancel card in hand and would cancel my Fight: card... So, in an attempt to make them play their cancel card, I told my buddy to play his fight card during the first fight... He was totally confused, he insisted that I play mine, but he didn't know what I had planned. So he played it, and of course they didn't take the bait. Second fight, I threw down my other fight card and backed it up with some show. I exclaimed, "ha! have you guys seen that card before?" They took the card, read it, and took the bait! They played their last and only cancel card! So for the third and final fight of our turn, I played "The Smell of Brains," rolled the extra dice, and we got our wound! Instantly snapped the 7 zombies from Sally's space to Father Joseph giving us 11 Zombies in the manor house (one was off in the corner on his own somewhere, the 3 already fighting Father Joseph, then the new 7) and ending the game! They were totally irate that I played them like that. If they had only held their cancel card, they would have won!

Totally epic ending. So far, Zombies - 3, Heroes - 0.

SovTech · 05-25-2009, 04:04 PM

Da capo! Da capo! Hurrah, hurrah!

My old mother would have been proud of you sir! Ingenious metagaming, and a great writeup. I have as the heroes never been able to win The Manor, and I like that you keep up with this statistic.

To answer your question, as far as I believe, the Zombie Heros does count toward maximum number of Zombies on the table. As you yourself states, except for the extra wounds and movement, they are just Zombies.

Cheerio,
ST

**mqstout** · 05-26-2009, 12:15 AM

This is my favorite scenario. It's always pretty close until the last few turns. A couple of times we've played it, it wasn't truly decided until the last turn (and there was once a last turn zombie upset).

**mqstout** · 05-26-2009, 12:18 AM

ZH do count. Page 19 of the rulebook, right column, "(Zombie Heroes DO count when determining how many Zombies you have on the board)."

SPARTAN VI · 05-26-2009, 01:39 AM

mqstout Wrote:ZH do count. Page 19 of the rulebook, right column, "(Zombie Heroes DO count when determining how many Zombies you have on the board)."

Ah good, thanks dude. So we were right (for once) to remove the surplus zombies from the game.

**mqstout** · 05-26-2009, 02:58 AM

SPARTAN VI Wrote:Ah good, thanks dude. So we were right (for once) to remove the surplus zombies from the game.

Your zombie pool doesn't change. You could still get 15 zombies on the board if you a bunch and then played a zombie event card that lets you add more to the board. It just counts as one when you're going to roll to add new zombies.

SPARTAN VI · 05-26-2009, 04:20 PM

mqstout Wrote:
SPARTAN VI Wrote:Ah good, thanks dude. So we were right (for once) to remove the surplus zombies from the game.

Your zombie pool doesn't change. You could still get 15 zombies on the board if you a bunch and then played a zombie event card that lets you add more to the board. It just counts as one when you're going to roll to add new zombies.

Hmm, so the moment that Hero turned into a ZH, we would have had 15 Zombies on the board. Would we remove one Zombie to bring it back down to 14 (like we did) or leave all 15, then as they die off, only replenish up to 14.

**mqstout** · 05-26-2009, 10:58 PM

Replenish up to 14. The 15th'd stay. It's really rare for it to even get close to that, though. If it is, the players already have something going awry.

SovTech · 05-27-2009, 09:38 AM

SPARTAN VI Wrote:Hmm, so the moment that Hero turned into a ZH, we would have had 15 Zombies on the board. Would we remove one Zombie to bring it back down to 14 (like we did) or leave all 15, then as they die off, only replenish up to 14.

Ah... Now of course as I remember there is auto-spawning on the Manor scenario, isnt that right?

In that case, I think I would continue to roll and spawn every round.

The thing is that when you count the Zombies on the table, you count them for the "Tjeck if we spawn this round" roll, and not because you cannot have more zombies on the board. The number of Zombies allowed on the board are limited by your Zombie Pool (which I think should be named Graveyard btw), and any Zombie heroes you have. Thus you can play cards that spawn zombies, even though you have a total of 14 zombies and zombie heroes on the board, but you cannot spawn in the end of the turn if you have 12 or more total zombies in the start of the turn.

Hope that confused you, err... Cleared things up a bit I mean!

Cheerio,
ST

SPARTAN VI · (This post was last modified: 06-04-2009 07:05 PM by SPARTAN VI.)

So to my surprise, my friends actually wanted to play our 4th game last night. Surprised because our "Defend the Manor" game took 2-3 hours to complete! I don't mind, but figured everyone else was bored out of their mind (mmmm brains!!) just waiting.

So we chose the scenarios at random, and drew the All Hallow's Eve web-scenario. In short, Heroes got their very first win.

There were 4 of us, so we played a 2 vs 2 game. Setup game with the gun shop, high school, graveyard, and chapel L-pieces. Managed to place the townsfolk near spawning pits and tried to avoid placement in buildings with a Pick Up ability. Heroes started with Johnny, Sally, Jenny, and the Sheriff Anderson.

First few turns in general were pretty dry. The Heroes couldn't roll the 4+ needed for a successful interrogation on the first townsfolk they encountered in the high school, so the Zombies managed to converge on the building in considerable force. To increase their chances of success, Sally, Jenny, and Sheriff Anderson each took turns interrogating the Doc townsfolk with no luck. Wasn't before long that we got our first taste of braaaaaaaaaaains.. Sally's brains specifically. But it wasn't all for naught, the Heroes managed to draw the "Just what we needed" card and pulled a lighter from the deck. Billy spawned to replace Sally and went to help Jenny and his pops. 11 hours to go on the tracker..

Johnny on the other hand, was covering massive amounts of ground with his Blitz ability. Alone, he was able to blitz past Zombies and systematically interrogate the townsfolk until he finally discovered that Deputy Taylor was the Zombie Master. Johnny fought Zombie Deputy Taylor that same turn, fended him off, but got the instant kill with an event card. He now had the necronomico..err... uh the book of the dead. Only 9 hours left on the tracker to unite the lighter and the book.

Zombies were generally getting terrible draws; kept drawing Lights out and useless Fight cards when what we really needed was to cover more ground (we didn't draw a single Shamble card), but it was our mistake for not realizing this sooner and discarding more often. Zombies attempted, in vain, to create a death wall to coax Johnny into a melee, but left a small diagonal gap that he was able to side step through. He was too fast! Heroes designated a rendezvous point near the high school to burn the book, which Johnny arrived at with no less than 7 hours left.

Jenny gave the lighter to Billy, and with his track athlete ability was able to meet up with Johnny with just 5 hours left. Zombies no where in sight.. clumsily shuffling half-way across the board... Johnny chanted "Klatu, Verata, Nicto," burned the book, and didn't have to put up a fight at all; the closest Zombie was one turn too far and too late. GG, not much of a climax, almost completely one-sided, but congrats Heroes on their first "W."

Zombies: 3 Heroes: 1.