New Scenario: Release the Beast

[nitro9090]

Here is a new scenario, called release the beast (attached as a pdf). It was originally going to be part of the reality game show scenario series, but I couldn't get it to fit properly. So I made it its own stand-alone game, which you can attempt to incorporate as you like but you need team work to win this one.

Since the design was based on the reality game show, the premise was that the heroes are to fight and kill a super strong beast (I suggest using other games' monsters to play for the beast, but you can be creative). To level the playing field, the heroes would run around pushing buttons while fending off zombies and each button pressed would hurt/mangle the beast in such a way that would reduce the beast's strength. So, after turn 10 the game show would withdraw all of the zombies and would release the beast in the center of the field in a dramatic way. The killer of the beast would get bonus points and pretty much be awesome. I thought it was a cool idea. It ends up I went overboard with the beasts and it was incredibly hard for 2 competing teams to defeat the beast and kill each other at the same time.

The game can run a little long, seeing as I have removed the timer from the game when the monster comes into play and some kill slowly. So, as an alternative you can start the game on turn 10 (follow the rules from there) and include, the heroes start with 8 cards in random buildings and the players together pick an X value before the game (the lower the number the harder the game for the heroes, as a rule of thumb 0-4 is a hard game, 5-6 normal, 7-10 easy).

Have fun, leave feedback and if you have any more beast designs I encourage you to share.

7/19/2011 added in the game specific rules to the bottom of the scenario pdf and cleaned up a few things.

7/21/2011 more cleanup and adjusted some rules

7/25/2011 a little overzealous these days, created another 6 monsters, then grouped the monsters by simplicity. The new ones are a bit more varied than the last set and generally more complicated. have at them!

8/7/2011 couple character updates and cleaning, last update until I can try out these monsters or I hear some feedback.

[Orguss]

I'm all for convoluted rules, but my lord. I couldn't even follow half of it...

[nitro9090]

(05-20-2011 05:52 PM)Orguss Wrote:  I'm all for convoluted rules, but my lord. I couldn't even follow half of it...

Can you be more specific?

Here is a simplified version of how the scenario should be played out:
If you use the normal rules the heroes get 4 extra cards at the beginning and the heroes spend their first 10 turns hitting a button that is randomly placed on the board, for each button pressed the beast (that comes out later) becomes a little weaker. zombie player draws up to 4 cards per turn and before playing any discards 2 of them, this helps balance. everything else is the same as a normal game.

After 10 turns, the buttons are removed and you roll to decide which beast the heroes need to kill (I had a really hard time getting the beast rules as concise and rounded as is, so I am sorry if it still isn't clear). the beast is placed at the center of board along with a ring of zombies around him. Heroes win when they kill the beast, zombies/beast win if they kill all of the heroes. Turns go: heroes, beast, zombies, heroes, etc. the beast turn is just like a hero turn, but no searching or item trading.

Does that help?

[thanatos]

I hate to ask a basic rule question, but I'm new to the game and can't find the expansions anywhere. I think I understand most of the rules, but I'm going to list each rule with my interpretation because I wanted to clarify, because this scenario sounds like tons of fun.


heroes respawn(1): Does this mean that each hero player is allowed to respawn with a different hero once, or does it mean that the hero players as a collective are only allowed a single respawn?

starting cards (4): You explained this, but just to clarify - each hero starts the game by drawing 4 hero cards, right?

pick your own hero: This one is self-explanatory - no random drawing of heroes by the hero players

autospawn: I've seen this on several growing hunger scenarios, but I'm not sure what this rule does - does this allow zombies that are in play to be cycled back to spawn points if there are no zombies in the zombie player's pool?

zombie cards(4,2): This one seems self-explanatory, too, but just to clarify - one zombie player, 4 zombie cards; 2 zombie players, 2 zombie cards each, right?


Thanks for the very cool idea!

[thanatos]

We finally got to test this one last night, although after looking at your reality show scenario, I realize I got weapons of mass destruction a little wrong, and the Remains in Play and Zombie Fight Card buildings did not get used. Basically, we scattered the weapons around the map, one per building, but face-up, and immediately returned them to their respective buildings on breakage. We also allowed "My Favorite Weapon" to break. I also (obviously) misunderstood the zombie cards (4,2) mechanic. Now that I understand these rules, my heroes should be happier next time we play.

Anyway, the scenario was an absolute blast. The players LOVED it. They were making mad dashes around the board trying to make sure one hero was in decent range for any button that might spawn, and cursing my name as my zombies moved to block as many doors as possible.

Thanks to the building rolls, zombies only delayed entry into a building once, and they managed to hit the button 8 times before the beast appeared. I grabbed some of our Hero/Horrorclix to serve as stand-ins for the beasts, as follows:

(removed as images were copyright material that the holder had already removed)
(Edited to add what figures were used WITHOUT links to copyrighted material)
Bulldozer: The Thing (Marvel Heroclix Clobberin' Time #048)
Zatoichi: Silver Samurai (Marvel Heroclix Universe #051)
Argopelter: Blastaar (Marvel Heroclix Clobberin' Time #060)
Chupacabra: Toad (Marve Heroclix Clobberin' Time #038)
Walking Inferno: The Human Torch (Marvel Heroclix Clobberin' Time #051)
Zombie Master: Avatar of Cthulhu (Horrorclix #089)


They chuckled at some of my choices - especially Toad as the Chupacabra, but they were still very nervous when it came time to roll the beast out. We ended up with Zatoichi on the board. He came within one wound of ending Father Joseph, then lost track of him and was shot by Sally. In an amazing display of lucky rolls (and unlucky ones on my part), Sally managed to take him out in just three more turns without even taking a wound, and the heroes breathed a collective sigh of relief.

The buildup to the beast's arrival was absolutely frantic, and the players loved how they had to adapt on the fly to try to get to each button in time. This one is definitely going into our regular rotation!

[nitro9090]

Thanks a lot zanatos! I was afraid this game would never see the light of day, much happiness over here. The figurines sound like a fantastic touch, I will look into them.

The reality game show scenarios and the rules can be a lot to take in and add a little bit more micromanaging, but they make for a much different game. If you have any questions I will be glad to answer them. (I have been a bit busy trying to get a degree at this point, so it has been hard to come here too often, but I will do my best)

Since you asked for clarification:

The heroes respawn(X); means that each hero individually may die X number of times and be respawned (as the same hero) X number of times after that they are permanently out of the game. think of it as the number of extra lives each character starts with. so for heroes respawn(1): each character on the hero team can die once and be respawned, but if they die again it is game over.

starting cards(X) -just means that the entire hero team ,not each individually, draws X cards at the start of the game and distribute any weapons and equipment however they choose. Then the normal starting draw rules apply, aka if outside they draw 1 card or none if starting in a building. (if they started with 4 cards a piece, making this right will make sure that they have a much harder time hitting all of those buttons)

autospawn- means instead of rolling to see if new zombies are spawned each turn they automatically spawn every turn, so you ignore I think it is step 3 of the zombie turn and instead at the end of the zombie turns always spawn new zombies normally (if you are out of zombies you are out)

zombie cards (4,2) - means that if there is 1 zombie player the zombie player each turn during the draw phase draws up to 4 zombie cards in hand, then immediately discards down to 2 cards zombie players choice. If 2 zombie players, each zombie player during their draw phase draws so he has 2 zombie cards in hand then discards down to 1.

I hope this clears some things up and thanks again for giving it a chance.

[thanatos]

That does clear up some things. I had dug around and figured out most of the rules, but your clarifications on hero respawn and starting cards help a lot. My players are going to like the hero respawn rule, but they've gotten used to lots of cards when we don't do item houses (although they like those, too), so they may grumble a bit about the starting cards .

One last point of clarification, if you don't mind: for the zombie player to win, each hero has to be killed twice, correct? We've been playing to four total deaths, although we've only had one playthrough where it came that close (likely due to the fact that the heroes have started with four cards each ever since).

I made a "ZM" executive decision to turn our playthroughs of this scenario into a sequential progression after our next two playthroughs ended up with the Bulldozer and the Argopelter, respectively (meaning that my players took on the first three beasts almost exactly in order). Once we have progressed through all six beasts, we'll start doing random rollouts - The Argopelter needs a second chance after the dice let him down his first time out. They downed the walking inferno last night after a hard-fought battle, and I have to say that the progression of beasts is, so far, excellent. Each beast has managed to up the ante over the last without becoming impossible to beat, and each one has forced a different strategy for the players.

I can't wait to roll out the Zombie Lord - he may just be the beast that takes down the heroes .

[nitro9090]

Yes, for the zombie players to win they need to kill each hero twice, I thought the monster including a full range of normal zombies would be very difficult to take down so giving the heroes more lives would balance. 16 cards to start is huge, so I hope the drop down to 4 gives you a bit more breathing room as the ZM and makes the game much more intense. It forces heroes to split up, some searching and some button pressing. I was hard pressed when I played it to get more than 6 button presses just due to lack of supplies and zombie blockage.

I am not sure all of the details of how you are playing, but as another point when a hero dies they don't respawn with any of their old items (unless you are playing with my favorite weapon). So, even if they respawn I see it as the heroes still needing to scramble together to get supplies in the midst of the monster and his zombie horde.

Seeing as you have shown interest in my game, I have been looking over the rules again and have made some updates to the monsters, mainly clarifications and a small update to the walking inferno and zombie lord (you will probably like these ones). By the way, if you have any suggestions or clarifications that can be made with the monsters or the setup I am all ears. house rules are always free to be used and I would have no problems hearing about them.

I am glad you are having fun with this, cause I am too.

[thanatos]

I like the updates - especially the higher burn damage chance . Reading the updates reminded me that I did want to get one more point of clarification for the Chupacabra's drag ability (your rules update clarified my other question - whether the Chupacabra stops at the first zombie encountered). Since I wasn't sure, I house-ruled in favor of the heroes, but if the Chupacabra is able to drag a hero into a space with, for example, three zombies occupying, does that hero take three wounds or does s/he only take one wound?

I had one thought for a possible house rule in the future with the walking inferno, but I'm not sure if it would make him too OP. My thoughts are that it would balance out because of the nature of his ability. Given the nature of the beast, I wondered about having EVERYTHING he passes within one space of roll for burn damage. There are a few situations where this would give him the chance to harm more heroes, but, if last night's playthrough was any indication, he would also run the risk of decimating a large part of his zombie force, which is where I thought it might balance out. It would force the beast player to think his moves through more carefully, too, since the shortest path to the heroes might burn through two center squares full of shambling hordes

If we try him that way, I'll be sure to post how it goes.

[nitro9090]

I think it should only be 1 damage for running into any number of zombies with chupacabra. It gives the heroes a chance to chase, where they will have to fight all of the zombies along the way which will wound them and make it easier for the next drag and if they don't their ally is dead. It seems to balance. Also, since the chupacabra moves first, then the zombies, you could drag the hero into a zombie, then immediately move that zombie to block the path of the following heroes. When you include the healing ability with that, he is actually one of the more devilish monsters.

As for the walking inferno addition, its a pretty good idea. It would make the inferno that much more destructive and at the same time would basically limit any zombies' ability to get close to him and any heroes he is chasing. If you try it and it works, I would have no problem adding an addendum of house rules for the different monsters.