Scenario: Dead End (Lite)

[SPARTAN VI]

Modified my original Dead End scenario, simplifying it further by removing the complicated barricade rules, but expanding on a few key areas.

I intend to eventually implement Left 4 Dead's "special infected" into this scenario in some form or another.

Quote:Dead End

Turns 14

Zombie Horde, Zombies Auto-spawn, Free Search Markers

Scenario Objectives

1) Heroes win by gaining entry to the Safe House and having at least 2 Heroes alive in the Safe House by dawn.
2) Zombies win by killing 4 Heroes or by having 12 or more Zombies inside the Safe House at any time.

Scenario Setup

1) Setup the game board using the center of town and 4 L-shaped outer boards. Refer to illustration for board setup and random building selection.
2) Roll a Random Building on the L-shaped outer board furthest from the center of town board (blue in the illustration), this building is now the Safe House. Place 4 Free Search Markers (face up) on the Safe House, then populate the rest of the board with Exploration tokens as usual. Heroes are guaranteed these 4 Free Searches when in the Safe House.
3) The Safe House is allowed to have 3 doors; using the open door counters, place these doors anywhere on the Safe House to bring the total number of doors to 3.
4) The Hero team must then go through the Hero deck and select 8 items of their choice, place them in a seperate deck, then shuffle both decks. This is the Safe House deck.
5) The Zombie team then rolls two Random Buildings and places Zombie Spawning Pits in any space of these buildings.
6) Heroes spawn in a random building on the L-Shaped Outerboard labelled 1 in the illustration. Replenished Heroes spawn in a random building.




Special Rules

1) The Heroes must first run a gauntlet and gain entry to the Safe House, then defend it until dawn.
2) When searching in the Safe House, a Hero may "Pick Up" an item from the Safe House deck (the 8 items previously selected). The "Pick Up" ability of the original building is still available for us as well; for example, if the Gun Shop is randomly selected as the Safe House, Heroes may use its Pick Up ability to draw guns, ammo, or draw from the Safe House deck.
3) Zombies may not move into the Safe House until at least 1 Hero has entered it.
4) Zombies may not move through the walls of the Safe House, only through the doors. Diagonal movement through doors is allowed [for Zombies only]. Heroes treat Safe House walls like any other in the base game.
5) Zombies may ignore Zombie Hunger only if they cannot move to the nearest Hero(/es) without going through a wall of the Safe House.
6) The Safe House can never be the target of Zombie Cards (Lights Out, Taken Over, etc) or be selected as a Random Building.
7) Zombie spawning is less restrictive. Spawning Pits on board sections that are void of any Heroes may be deactivated at the discretion of the Zombie player when placing Zombies, but there must always be at least 3 active Zombie Spawning Pits. Zombies must be evenly distributed amongst those active Zombie Spawning Pits.

Image from: http://juhoham.deviantart.com/art/Left-4...-113863516

[SPARTAN VI]

Just now thought of some ideas for "Special Infected" that use what we already have in the base game. May be interesting, may be incredibly imbalanced, but just juggling ideas. Trying to play with the concept of using poker-like hands. Matching card types would be like a flush (Fight cards, Event cards), matching titles would be like a pair, 3 of a kind, 2 pair, things like that. Take a gander, throw in a couple cents, need ideas for Witch and Tanks.

Quote:Special Infected

1) Hunter - At any time, the Zombie player may discard 2 Fight cards, select a Zombie, and immediately move it to a lone Hero in an adjacent space. The Zombie gets an extra fight dice in the subsequent Fight.

2) Jockey - At any time, the Zombie player may discard 3 Fight cards, select a Zombie, and immediately move it to a lone Hero in an adjacent space. If the Zombie wins the subsequent Fight, both the Zombie and the Hero may move D3 spaces in any direction of the Zombies choice.

3) Smoker - At any time, the Zombie player may discard 3 Fight cards to select one Zombie and move a lone Hero within 2 spaces of the Zombie to its space.

4) Boomer - When a Zombie is killed in a Fight, instantly killed or otherwise, the Zombie player may discard 2 Shambles cards to explode boomer bile on the offending Hero. All Zombies in adjacent spaces may move to that Hero's space.

5) Spitter - At any time, the Zombie player may discard 4 Zombie Event cards, then select a Zombie who can in turn spit acid up to 2 spaces away wounding everything (Zombie or Hero) in that space. Use the green goo marker to represent the acid spit. The acid spit remains until the beginning of the next Zombie turn. (This could use some work, perhaps so the Zombie player can combo a Jockey attack a la L4D2)

6) Charger - At any time, the Zombie player may discard 3 Zombie URRGH!! cards, then select a Zombie who can in turn charge a Hero up to two spaces away. If the Zombie wins the Fight, the Hero and Zombie Fight again and again until the Zombie loses, the Hero dies, or the if Fight is canceled.

[supervike]

I'm digging this. Very clever rules, they seem balanced enough to offer strategy, yet varied enough to give the 'feel' of L4D.

[SPARTAN VI]

Thanks!

Noticed that I forgot to number the tiles again.. Should be from left to right 2, 3, 4, 5 (the L-shaped boards).

[SPARTAN VI]

Recycled the Grave Dead rules, but instead they're Special Infected. These abilities are to be used like Zombie Event Cards, they're played, effects resolved, then the Special Infected lose the ability. Just because you play a Hunter ability doesn't mean that Special Infected will always be a Hunter... that requires book keeping, and we don't like extra work!

Again optional rule, don't want to overwhelm people with words and letters. Dead End should play perfectly find without special infected.

Quote:Special Infected ··
(two dots)

Instead of spawning 2 Zombies, the Zombie player may choose to spawn 1 Special Infected (Red). Special Infected Zombies are to be treated like any other Zombie; they roll 1D6 in Fights, can only move 1 space, and are still susceptible to Zombie Hunger rules. The only exception is that Special Infected Zombies may be the target of the following abilities:

1) Hunter - At any time, the Zombie player may discard 2 Fight cards, select a Special Infected Zombie, and immediately move it to a lone Hero in an adjacent space. The Zombie gets an extra fight dice in the subsequent Fight.

2) Jockey - At any time, the Zombie player may discard 3 Fight cards, select a Special Infected Zombie, and immediately move it to a lone Hero in an adjacent space. If the Zombie wins the subsequent Fight, both the Zombie and the Hero may move D3 spaces in any direction of the Zombies choice.

3) Smoker - At any time, the Zombie player may discard 3 Fight cards to select one Special Infected Zombie and move a lone Hero within 2 spaces of the Zombie to its space.

4) Boomer - When a Special Infected Zombie is killed in a Fight, instantly killed or otherwise, the Zombie player may discard 2 Shambles cards to explode boomer bile on the offending Hero. All Zombies in adjacent spaces may move to that Hero's space.

5) Spitter - At any time, the Zombie player may discard 4 Zombie Event cards, then select a Special Infected Zombie who can in turn spit acid up to 2 spaces away wounding everything (Zombie or Hero) in that space. Use the green goo marker to represent the acid spit. The acid spit remains until the beginning of the next Zombie turn. (This could use some work, perhaps so the Zombie player can combo a Jockey attack a la L4D2)

6) Charger - At any time, the Zombie player may discard 3 Zombie URRGH!! Fight cards, then select a Zombie who can in turn charge a Hero up to two spaces away. The Charger grabs the Hero and plows him D3 spaces back (as straight as possible, but Zombie player's choice) or until they hit a wall, which ever comes first (direction of movement is determined by which direction the Charger originated from).

After they stop moving, the two *immediately* Fight. If the Zombie wins the Fight, the Hero and Zombie Fight again and again until the Zombie loses, the Hero dies, or until the Fight is canceled. The Hero still has to Fight any other Zombies in the space they moved to.

[SPARTAN VI]

Play tested last night and it was CLOSE. Normally that would be a good indicator of balance, but I think it's weighted heavily on the Zombie side. Right off the bat, we ran into a problem of Zombies and Heroes spawning in the same building, so I'll have to amend the start location rule so that all four Heroes start in the same building (Heroes choice) on board "2," the board furthest to the left, and start with 2 random or 1 selected Hero card. Subsequent Hero replenish spawns are completely random and can include the Safe House. We found that if they spawn in random buildings, there's a good chance they spawn next to a Zombie and have to Fight before they even take their first turn. Second it wasn't L4D thematic as the Heroes always spawn in the same location in the game.

We tested the Special Infected rules and found just how difficult it is to get any of the above matches. I burned through cards like crazy hoping for pairs, but the only ability I was ever able to play was the Hunter. Wasted it on Johnny, who's movement stopped to Fight the Hunter, killed him, the blitzed and kept moving..

Game came down to the wire. When the Heroes finally reach the Safe House, it turns into a desperate Defend the Manor House, except Heroes can search and there are a crapload of Zombies. With 1 turn left, 3 Heroes had already been killed, and he had 2 Heroes in the Safe House, both mortally wounded. It didn't matter, he used a fire extinguisher he drew from his Safe House Deck and moved all of my zombies out of the Safe House (which was the church) and immediately won at that point. Very clever, I never would have imagined putting the fire extinguisher in the Safe House Deck.

So to recap the changes:

Quote:1. Heroes' Start Location is now Hero Choice on L-shaped board #2 (the board furthest on the left of the above illustration).
2. Heroes replenish in a Random Building; Safe House is an eligible spawning location.
3. In both of the above cases, each Hero starts with 1 card of their choice, or draw 2 cards from the top of the Hero deck.

[deadandwalking]

sounds wicked fun. i need to break out my game again. it's been a while. work seems to be taking up all my time...well work and Champions Online anyway.

[SPARTAN VI]

Yeah, I know what you mean. We brought it out during the break and reminded us of why we used to play it 3-4 times a week.

Play-tested with a group of 5 tonight with Hero Start Cards (2) and Well-stocked Buildings, still very close but balanced. The Heroes had no problem with the 5 board trek and almost looked like they'd run away with it, but I pulled out a lot of stops once they reached the last board. Probably the most fun we had with LNoE.

[gavindowning]

This definitely looks like a lot of fun. I keep thinking that the Zombie Weapon rules might be better for the Special Zombies. I know you don't want to keep the bookkeeping on that, but just a token under the zombie (exactly like a zombie hero) isn't a bunch of upkeep, really. Just a thought.

[SPARTAN VI]

gavindowning Wrote:This definitely looks like a lot of fun. I keep thinking that the Zombie Weapon rules might be better for the Special Zombies. I know you don't want to keep the bookkeeping on that, but just a token under the zombie (exactly like a zombie hero) isn't a bunch of upkeep, really. Just a thought.

Well, if they (FFP) already made rules for Grave Weapons in the new expansion(/s), then by all means. Special Infected aren't required to play this scenario anyway. You can use regular Zombie Horde rules, which is still incredibly challenging.