Read Trevs excellent
report on this scenario and thought I'd share my experience.
We played the scenario last night. A scenario which obviously from Trevs report gives the ZP the upper hand.
The scenario quickly evolved into a cat-and-mouse kind of game but although it seemed like the Heroes where going to be slaughtered as they suffered from a lot of bad die rolling (Jenny moved one space for five consecutive turns!) and mediocre items, the fact that the Heroes split up from the start changed the odds considerably.
My hordes did their best capturing the town center and forming a line to prevent the Heroes from escaping. Building after building was taken over and with each passing turn the rope of the undead tightened around the Heroes necks. But the Heroes held out, continuously running, confusing the horde, forcing it to split.
With 5 turns remaining I finally managed to turn the tide. The Sheriff with his
Laying Down the Law saving his revolver time after time suddenly ran out of luck while defending Jenny in the open. With the zombie card
Resilient he lost the revolver, minutes later the zombies swarmed the area with poor Jenny being the first catch followed by the Sheriff and then Sally (Jennys replacement).
With Jenny joining the ranks, the horde now turns towards the Sheriff for some sweet braaiiins:
[
attachment=1387]
Alas it was too late. Even with reinforcements arriving, time ran out as I had just closed in on the two Heroes missing in my collection.
Yes, the Zombies lost...
Lesson learned from this game: To win as a Hero; run fast, run far and try to keep the ZP from getting any Zombie Hero early in the game.
Great report and a well fought win for the Heroes in your case.
Haha in my game Jenny turned into a Zombie Hero too. Maybe she's secretly a Zombie sympathizer (see Trash from Return of the Living Dead). As always these games are usually pretty close.
One thing I have noticed. Students always seem to roll a 1 for Movement at the worst possible time when they have 1 wound remaining and get dined on. Or is that just me?
(06-09-2012 12:46 PM)samuraitrev Wrote: [ -> ]Great report and a well fought win for the Heroes in your case.
Haha in my game Jenny turned into a Zombie Hero too. Maybe she's secretly a Zombie sympathizer (see Trash from Return of the Living Dead). As always these games are usually pretty close.
One thing I have noticed. Students always seem to roll a 1 for Movement at the worst possible time when they have 1 wound remaining and get dined on. Or is that just me?
Thanks for the feedback.
I think it was actually panic that dominated the choices made and less strategy. I kept thinking
Run Forest, run! Fear my evil demonic power! And then they beat me
You're right. Jenny always gets it bad when we play too.
We must be having the same dice. They never fail me (almost) as ZP but the Heroes always get the 1s. At least that wad the case last night.
I just played this for the first time. We were two players, one hero and one zombie. Myself, playing the zombie, I couldn't help but feeling the scenario was hopelessly unbalanced, in the hero's favour.
We stopped played when there were five turns left. The hour was late and there was simply no chance that I was going to achieve my goal of killing five heros. I had, up to that point, managed to wound ONE hero.
The zombies were too slow to keep up with any of the heroes, who moved in a pack and kept themselves distanced from the majority of zombies at all costs.
There was nothing in this scenario that forced heroes to places where they would risk coming into vicinity of zombies, and the short gameplay (clocking in at the shortest scenario at 13 turns) made catching up with the heroes pretty difficult.
I did manage to encircle them once, all four of them actually, but a few well placed revolver shots broke my line and let the heroes through.
Also, when only playing the base game, I'm pretty sure you run into cards like Shamble and other movement enhancing cards more often. I did not draw a single such card during this playthrough.
Overall, not a super fun scenario. Too little time to accomplish something that perhaps isn't the zombies forté = Killing loads of heroes. Zombies are good at discouraging heroes and scaring them away. But rarely does a sensible hero player get himself stuck in a slugmatch with zombies.
However, even when those slugmatches did appear in my game, I must admit I had a pretty bad stroke of dice luck. Out of maybe six fights, I won one. And that's with double zombie fight dice and winning on ties!
(07-03-2012 12:16 AM)EvilNed Wrote: [ -> ]I just played this for the first time. We were two players, one hero and one zombie. Myself, playing the zombie, I couldn't help but feeling the scenario was hopelessly unbalanced, in the hero's favour.
We stopped played when there were five turns left. The hour was late and there was simply no chance that I was going to achieve my goal of killing five heros. I had, up to that point, managed to wound ONE hero.
The zombies were too slow to keep up with any of the heroes, who moved in a pack and kept themselves distanced from the majority of zombies at all costs.
There was nothing in this scenario that forced heroes to places where they would risk coming into vicinity of zombies, and the short gameplay (clocking in at the shortest scenario at 13 turns) made catching up with the heroes pretty difficult.
I did manage to encircle them once, all four of them actually, but a few well placed revolver shots broke my line and let the heroes through.
Also, when only playing the base game, I'm pretty sure you run into cards like Shamble and other movement enhancing cards more often. I did not draw a single such card during this playthrough.
Overall, not a super fun scenario. Too little time to accomplish something that perhaps isn't the zombies forté = Killing loads of heroes. Zombies are good at discouraging heroes and scaring them away. But rarely does a sensible hero player get himself stuck in a slugmatch with zombies.
However, even when those slugmatches did appear in my game, I must admit I had a pretty bad stroke of dice luck. Out of maybe six fights, I won one. And that's with double zombie fight dice and winning on ties!
Sorry to hear you didn't have fun with this scenario. I can't help thinking you should have played through all turns though. I know you aren't supposed to play board games at all cost but that's what I do
This game's flaw - at least a flaw to others than yours truly - is you
do need luck to actually win. If your dice fail you, you can't win unless the cards are in your favour. If they aren't any good either, you
can't win as long as your opponent play his/her strategy right. Period.
That said, even though I suffer from bad die rolling from time to time I usually pull the right cards to push the Heroes around. And that's what this scenario is all about. With the ZP's hand size of 6 cards I find it hard not pull some badstuff and as long as I keep the cards flowing I know there'll be horrors in every turn.
I actually played this very scenario last night. After 3 turns 4 buildings got
Taken Over and I had the Heroes running scared and weeping around Woodinvale. In the end they managed to win (hey, it's a B movie after all) but it was a darn close one.
I recently bought SOTF and it was my second game session using grave weapons and survival tactics/unique items. Johnny had a lucky survival tactic find (can't remember the card's title) which allowed him an extra roll to check wether a hand weapon was actually lost. Nice one. This card did save his shotgun from being lost quite a few times and more importantly, it secured victory for the Heroes, but it wasn't an easy win.
Overall, I really enjoy this scenario as it places the ZP on offense and the HPs on the verge of breaking down. It's fun even to lose as it's always a win for me if I sense a glint of fear in the eyes of my opponents.
(07-03-2012 12:16 AM)EvilNed Wrote: [ -> ]I just played this for the first time. We were two players, one hero and one zombie. Myself, playing the zombie, I couldn't help but feeling the scenario was hopelessly unbalanced, in the hero's favour.
We stopped played when there were five turns left. The hour was late and there was simply no chance that I was going to achieve my goal of killing five heros. I had, up to that point, managed to wound ONE hero.
The zombies were too slow to keep up with any of the heroes, who moved in a pack and kept themselves distanced from the majority of zombies at all costs.
There was nothing in this scenario that forced heroes to places where they would risk coming into vicinity of zombies, and the short gameplay (clocking in at the shortest scenario at 13 turns) made catching up with the heroes pretty difficult.
I did manage to encircle them once, all four of them actually, but a few well placed revolver shots broke my line and let the heroes through.
Also, when only playing the base game, I'm pretty sure you run into cards like Shamble and other movement enhancing cards more often. I did not draw a single such card during this playthrough.
Overall, not a super fun scenario. Too little time to accomplish something that perhaps isn't the zombies forté = Killing loads of heroes. Zombies are good at discouraging heroes and scaring them away. But rarely does a sensible hero player get himself stuck in a slugmatch with zombies.
However, even when those slugmatches did appear in my game, I must admit I had a pretty bad stroke of dice luck. Out of maybe six fights, I won one. And that's with double zombie fight dice and winning on ties!
That is a shame to hear about this in respect to this scenario. This is exclusively a bloodbath in our group whether the final result goes the way of the living or the dead. We also have all everything available for LNOE, so it's very options heavy on top of what's detailed on the scenario - special mention to Zombie Horde and get some Grave Weapons
in there too.
In saying all this, as with any scenario, the zombie player needs to constantly cycle cards. Play everything possible in a turn and then always discard during the Zombie draw phase. Also, with 6 cards, chances for Zombie combos are greatly enhanced. Check out the thread "Nasty Combos" (even posted some myself) for some ideas. Show no mercy.
I think it's a great scenario, especially if you don't mind the occasional combat heavy gig.
To clarify, I did discard one card (as the rules permit) every turn, I drew one to four new cards every turn, but the cards I drew were almost exclusively fight cards and I couldn't spend them unless I ended up in fights. Which was such a slow process that I never really got any new cards.
And I didn't have that bad luck in die rolls, the heroes just had slightly better luck, but more importantly, had a foray of cards that could A) cancel fights or B) force me or them to reroll their fight dice.
Not a very fun scenario by any means. Especially when the goal is to kill and wound 5 heroes, whereas all the heroes has to do is avoid the slow zombies. Again, a big problem with this I found was that the heroes didn't really have any reason to let any zombies get close to them, or run around. I mean, one lucky dice roll for a hero could send them 4-6 paces away from the closest zombie. So while I'd like to call it a game of "cat and mouse", the cat was limping and slow and the mice quick and nimble.
I do realize that this was partly due to the fact that I had a bad luck in my card draws, but I've never really played a scenario that was such a crash and burn when this happened - at least for the zombies. Part of the zombies advantage in this scenario is their 6 card hands. But that's a poor consolation when you draw 6 fight cards straight away and you can only discard one per turn.
I can't help thinking that your critique of this scenario applies more to the rules and the luck factor of LNoE in general (the importance of pulling the right card on the right time and killing Heroes - most scenarios can be won by killing 4). Having a hand size of 6 cards really improves the ZP's chances of having the right card when needed. Also, this scenario really just emphasizes the role of the ZP and his/her objectives.
That said, from
this post concerning Fight cards it sounds like you could have played the cards wrong, which would explain why you had a rough ride. If so, do try playing this scenario again as it should be a completely different experience.
I also think you should look into the strategy of the ZP. Don't rush into facing the Heroes one on one but build up your horde before moving in and take control of the center square as this limits the movement capabilities of the Heroes. During your build up you ought to get some cards that could push the Heroes around a bit.
(07-04-2012 05:37 AM)scarydk Wrote: [ -> ]I can't help thinking that your critique of this scenario applies more to the rules and the luck factor of LNoE in general (the importance of pulling the right card on the right time and killing Heroes - most scenarios can be won by killing 4). Having a hand size of 6 cards really improves the ZP's chances of having the right card when needed. Also, this scenario really just emphasizes the role of the ZP and his/her objectives.
Yes, you're right. But out of all the scenarios I've played, this is where luck has reared it's ugly face the most. So it's actually a critique of both... For instance, in Burn Em' Out, the heroes are forced to spawning pits. They're forced to at least get close to zombies. In Escape in the Truck, the heroes have a goal, and the zombies can of course protect that goal.
As for several cards per fight issue, in this particular game, I was actually never more than two zombies in the same space as a hero, so that rule didn't really apply... But yes, that is how I've been playing so far.
(07-04-2012 05:37 AM)scarydk Wrote: [ -> ]I also think you should look into the strategy of the ZP. Don't rush into facing the Heroes one on one but build up your horde before moving in and take control of the center square as this limits the movement capabilities of the Heroes. During your build up you ought to get some cards that could push the Heroes around a bit.
I did exactly this, actually. My only fault being, perhaps, that my line of zombies was just one zombie deep and working on enveloping the heroes (a long line of zombies tightening the snare one step each turn). But this was an extremely vulnerable tactic and not very good at all, because it took time to organize and easily distrupteale by ranged weapons.
(07-03-2012 07:17 AM)scarydk Wrote: [ -> ] (07-03-2012 12:16 AM)EvilNed Wrote: [ -> ]I just played this for the first time. We were two players, one hero and one zombie. Myself, playing the zombie, I couldn't help but feeling the scenario was hopelessly unbalanced, in the hero's favour.
We stopped played when there were five turns left. The hour was late and there was simply no chance that I was going to achieve my goal of killing five heros. I had, up to that point, managed to wound ONE hero.
The zombies were too slow to keep up with any of the heroes, who moved in a pack and kept themselves distanced from the majority of zombies at all costs.
There was nothing in this scenario that forced heroes to places where they would risk coming into vicinity of zombies, and the short gameplay (clocking in at the shortest scenario at 13 turns) made catching up with the heroes pretty difficult.
I did manage to encircle them once, all four of them actually, but a few well placed revolver shots broke my line and let the heroes through.
Also, when only playing the base game, I'm pretty sure you run into cards like Shamble and other movement enhancing cards more often. I did not draw a single such card during this playthrough.
Overall, not a super fun scenario. Too little time to accomplish something that perhaps isn't the zombies forté = Killing loads of heroes. Zombies are good at discouraging heroes and scaring them away. But rarely does a sensible hero player get himself stuck in a slugmatch with zombies.
However, even when those slugmatches did appear in my game, I must admit I had a pretty bad stroke of dice luck. Out of maybe six fights, I won one. And that's with double zombie fight dice and winning on ties!
Sorry to hear you didn't have fun with this scenario. I can't help thinking you should have played through all turns though. I know you aren't supposed to play board games at all cost but that's what I do
This game's flaw - at least a flaw to others than yours truly - is you do need luck to actually win. If your dice fail you, you can't win unless the cards are in your favour. If they aren't any good either, you can't win as long as your opponent play his/her strategy right. Period.
That said, even though I suffer from bad die rolling from time to time I usually pull the right cards to push the Heroes around. And that's what this scenario is all about. With the ZP's hand size of 6 cards I find it hard not pull some badstuff and as long as I keep the cards flowing I know there'll be horrors in every turn.
I actually played this very scenario last night. After 3 turns 4 buildings got Taken Over and I had the Heroes running scared and weeping around Woodinvale. In the end they managed to win (hey, it's a B movie after all) but it was a darn close one.
I recently bought SOTF and it was my second game session using grave weapons and survival tactics/unique items. Johnny had a lucky survival tactic find (can't remember the card's title) which allowed him an extra roll to check wether a hand weapon was actually lost. Nice one. This card did save his shotgun from being lost quite a few times and more importantly, it secured victory for the Heroes, but it wasn't an easy win.
But the Shotgun is a Range Weapon so does it still count for a "lost" roll? I don't have the card in front of me and may be getting confused with the broken roll.