Game 3 and 4 - Defend Manor / All Hallow's Eve AAR

[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.