Hero figures all painted up!

I started painting these a while again with Nigel Heather, but the white undercoat was awful - a horrible white paint by Games Workshop. I tried my best to make do with washed out details and also my eyesight not as good as it was! :) Anyhow I think this is a reasonable effort (better than grey plastic!) but the eyes could have been much better. :(

Zombies! Coming outta the walls and...

So what do you do when your mum comes down for a few days for Easter? Crack open a game of Last Night on Earth of course! Maya loves this game and wanted to play the Defend the Mansion House scenario which I'd never played before. Roshni wanted to play the zombies, so the mansion was played down and the four the corner pieces chosen. I played two characters whilst Maya and mum played a character each.

Roshnis zombies didn't have to roll for spawning, they just rolled for how many would turn up. There was a lot of turns to go until sunrise, but we were determined to make sure the zombies wouldn't get in or get us! They needed 9 inside for the heroes to loose. And as they only moved at 1 space at a time, we thought this was easy - especially as we had some great weapons.

At first we were blasting zombies left and right, my characters were taking them out with a shotgun and pistol; mums character took one out with a flare gun but decided to run off to the Hanger to get another one; but kept getting 1 on the die for movement! Maya decided to follow with the nurse when she should have stayed inside and healed my characters but she was determined to get some good cards lol.

But just when Maya and mum reached the hanger (because Maya kept throwing poor movement rolls), Roshni threw a Locked Door card! Luckily they had a Key card, otherwise all that would have been for nothing. But by this time, zombies were pouring into the house - my shotgun ran dry and the cop went down! No!! By then it was too late and all over as 9 zombies managed to clamber in the doors, walls and windows....

The zombies are on the march as Billy and the nurse try to find
some good kit in the diner

All characters move to the house as a large group of undead line up .
Armed with a shotgun, I take aim!

Billy makes a run for the hanger to get another flare gun -
the nurse doesn't know what to do, whilst zombies pile up 

"They're coming outta the god damn walls and...!" Too many! The cop
goes down whilst the drifter runs out of ammo. The others have fled!

Anitas first play of Last Night on Earth and very good it was too!

Having played Roshni and Maya several times at Last Night on Earth, I asked if Anita wanted to play a game - at first she was hesitant and wasn't sure but Maya persuaded her. And at first she was a little hesitant as to what to do, but with Mayas help, she soon got to grips with the game, even describing the game as "quite good and easy to pick up". But time was against them, turns were being eaten away (no pun intended!) and not enough zombies were being racked up.
Maya was the nurse and the cop whilst Anita was Billy the kid and Jake the drifter. Being the cop, Maya's character came with a pistol and whilst searching she found a shotgun. But for some reason she kept running away and doing more searching! Bemused my zombies shambled on.

Eventually it clicked that if by sun down 15 zombies haven't bitten the dirt again then it was game over for the humans! So the two of them came out guns blazing. One after another zombies went down; pesky "1" rolls also kept coming up - any time they had to make an ammo check after firing a gun and I said "Don't get a 1!" - they would roll a 1!! On any die! This happened so often that Anita on a few throws demanded to retake it - as it did seem to happen more than once and it was her first go, I thought I'd let this slide in the view of fair gamesmanship. Besides, there was only a few turns left and too many zombies to take down, so I thought they wouldn't win any how. How wrong I was!

With 7 turns to go and only 5 zombies down -
10 to go - things did not bode well for the humans

Anita and Maya turned tails and came out and started taking down zombies one after another - on the last turn they needed two more down to win. Anita charged at two, whilst Maya shot at another. 1 more left! On the last turn, on the last throw of the dice, Anita took on a zombie in melee combat - stabbing one with a pitchfork. I rolled. She rolled. One of her die came up 5. I got a 4. Yay she exclaimed (thinking she had at least not been wounded) when another 5 bounced to a stop! A double! The first of the game on the last throw! The humans win! After much hi-fiving, Anita declared she liked game enough to want another go and Maya stating she wanted to play the Escape the Town in the Car scenario. I'll get them next time!

Charging in, Anita scores a double on the last game throw of the dice!

Last turn (top right) and 15 zombies down (bottom left)! Humans win!

Painting Last Night on Earth with Nigel

As good as the figures that come with Last Night on Earth are, they are unfortunately unpainted and come as plain grey (for the Heroes ) and green/brown (for the Zombies). Steve had done some attempts at painting his Hero figures and Nigel asked if I was interested in getting together one day over the Christmas Break to paint our own figures; seeing as he had the Growing Hunger and I had the Hero Pack each as well as the base game. Nigel had found a great close picture of the figures painted in lovely detail as we set out with our respect Games Workshop paints to do as good a job. Unfortunately my Skull White had dried up and I had to get one from Andy, this was for undercoating.

Nigel used a white spray for his undercoat, which came out perfectly, whilst mine was very disappointing because the new Skull White was very thin and needed several coats. The paint volume had also gone down and annoyingly, a new lid type is used that is flip type and flips shut almost as soon as you have opened it.

Nigel and I with our lack of practise managed to get some base colours and skin tones done, but we found it very relaxing and enjoyable - I compared it to two guys sitting fishing :-)

Nigel emailed later about looking for another source of paints and said he found some at a company called Wayland Games made by a company that had dealings with Games Workshop in the past to make paints using the same paint mixtures and colours as the GW set. Sounds good.

More Last Night on Earth and Memoir '44!

Today I picked up two more items for some of our base games - the 2nd Campaign Book for Memoir'44 and the Survival of the Fittest scenario box for Last Night on Earth. These are two great addons that are in no means small fry. The 2nd Campaign book concentrates more on the Far East campaigns, the Japanese invasion of South-East Asia and the subsequent American Campaign in the Pacific. There is also a campaign for the breakout of Normandy and another for the Fall of Poland. There is also an Air Aces campaign too.

The Survival of the Fittest box contains a whole bunch of new missions and punch out tokens for LNOE. It also includes a great sounding mission for barricading up buildings (including barricade tokens) and one for going out for supplies whilst fighting off the zombie horde! New weapons, cards, zombie and hero cards too.

Last night on earth - with Maya and Roshni

Maya asked for another game of Last Night on Earth whilst Roshni wanted to join in too having not played before but had heard lots of good things about the game from her sister. They took the role of the Heroes, two each, whilst I played the Zombies again. This time I thought no holds barred - if I get good anti human cards, I'm going to use them! The scenario was the basic one, the humans had to kill off 15 zombies to win. We all rubbed out hands and set out to win!

First things started going badly for the zombies, the Heroes whacked a couple but then they started charging other zombies and were wondering why they were not winning, only just pushing them off. Quite rightly I've not exposed my kids to the sort of films this game is based upon, but anyone who has seen a zombie film will understand that zombies are pretty hard to kill - head shot and nothing else will do. But if you didn't have this knowledge you'd be wondering why your dice vs the single zombie die results in not many kills. Zombie knowledge is a pre-requisite for playing this game! I tried not to use this to my advantage, but the fact you're charging my zombies I'm not going to give you an easy time!

Things going well (for the Zombies!), Billy bites the dust!

After Billy bit the dust (or the Zombie bit Billy), the Heroes floundered a bit but the new character they got helped out a bit more. Then the girls got the idea to attack en mass and started clobbering more zombies. I fought back but as you can see in the image below, my dice rolling left a lot to be desired!! Three 1's is great in Vegas, but not in the Last Night on Earth!

Gimme a break!

Finally the game started to turn into a slog match of human v zombie, with me getting the upper hand with a lot of draw dice rolls equalling wounds against the humans. 

End game, zombies win!!

The end of the game was triggered with the loss of the humans second Hero, Jake going down under a storm of groans and outstretched zombie arms (why do they walk like that??). Great game!

Last Night on Earth? No way! Take that zombie!!

Tonight we were around Brians again for another bash at Last Night on Earth. Tonight we had myself, Brian, Steve, Ruth, Tom and Nigel.Therefore we could have two zombie players - Steve and Brian - verses the rest of us with one character each. Ruth had the nurse; Nigel the school jock; Tom the farmers daughter and I had the drifter. The scenario was a different one for us - find the fuel and keys and escape in the car! This involved a made dash around town looking for the keys and fuel whilst fighting off zombies.

Lucky my character had the ability to pick up two cards whilst searching and choose the best, so I went to the garage and almost straight away found the keys!! This just meant finding the fuel; we spread out and zombies started to appear. Luckily Ruth had a pump action shotgun with her but unluckily every shot except one was a miss! But luckily for us, the zombies were having a bad run of dice throws - Brian seemed to be stuck with always getting a 1 to the point where he was stating Here I through my 1 lol.

It didn't all go the Heroes way - Nigels jock went down under a pile of zombies and Ruths nurse ended up being nibbled on! At one point Nigel and I were on the car fighting them off whilst waiting for the other two to get the fuel to us - some hot swapping of cards and tactical playing of event cards was need. Then we had a pile of zombies surrounding us from all sides and after we fought them off, we had to tactically retreat! Nigel then asked for the shotgun from Ruth and proceeded to fire a blast at 8 zombies in our square! Unluckily only a few went down and a card was played by the zombies meaning it was out of ammo!

The Heroes fought back, even if Ruths character and mine were forced to miss a turn in a square surrounded by zombies because apparently we were more interested in a hot bit of passion!! We made it back to the car and whilst fighting off more zombies, fuelled up the car and were off, running and knocking over stumbling and shambling zombies in our way!! Go heroes!!!

With the keys and petrol in hand, the heroes make a mad dash for the car, but are surrounded by zombies! Fighting desperately, they try to make a run for it! 

Yay! With fuel in the car and the keys in the ignition, the heroes win by driving off into the sun rise!

Guurrrr! Zombies win again!

I'd been bugging Maya to play Last Night on Earth again - and finally we set up again, she wanted to get back at me for losing the last time we played. We swapped sides this time around, I played the Heroes with Johnny the Quarterback, Jenny the Farmers Daughter, Sally and Jake Cartwright the drifter and Maya played the zombies. I had a few ideas how to play with the Kill the zombies scenario - somehow I had to kill 15 zombies! And it almost worked, I had some decent tools and weapons and I was picking off a few, especially with the shotgun, until it ran out of ammo. Urk! It then turned into a slog - unfortunately first down went Johnny under a pile of zombies then Jenny. Jake got trapped in the Hanger and Sally was blasting zombies with a pistol in the hospital; it was a race against time, with only a few turns left, I had to take out 4 zombies. A pistol shot to the head took out one; Jake took out another; but then I ran out of time!! Zombies win again ahgahgah! Great game - next time Roshni wants to join in with the fun so we'll try it next week. 

Taking on the undead with nothing more than a couple of out of ammo shotguns and a Cross!!

Maya and I decided to have a game of Last Night on Earth; in a hope that I could learn more of the rules and so that Maya could learn a new game and have some experience of the rules if we played more than two players.

Maya played as the Heroes whilst I played was the Zombies. Things went well initially for Maya, but then her Heroes started to get caught in one fight after another; and I unfortunately missed one crucial rule...that if a Hero fights off a Zombie, which they normally do, they can then run off next turn. Oops.  I thought it was a little hard for the Heroes to win, especially as more and more zombies ended up in a square; seeing as you need to throw a double to kill a zombie. Hmmm. And I wasn't even using the zombie cards against her!! One hero then went down. So did another. Then a 3rd. This left the vicar. Who went on a mad dash, occasionally bashing a zombie. But eventually she ran out of turns and it was game over!

Mayas opinion of the game so far - before I realised Heros can run away from combat  - oops

Run Vicar! Run!

Another good Battlequest Evening

Last night was another good night at Andys - I was a little late again but a game of Last Night on Earth was just about to start and I was invited into the table as the 2nd zombie player alongside Nigel Heathers. Also on the table were Andy, Matt Green and the guy who owns the game, but I didn't know his name. Must find it out. Anyhow, my arrival possibly proved to be the downfall of the humans as no matter how hard they tried, I kept seeming to throw a high percentage of winning zombie attack dice to the point I'd killed off Andys Elvis-a-like vicar lol. There was also a point when I picked up two zombie cards, they were both Play Instantly cards - one of which was a Pick up three more cards. Of which two were instant plays, including another Pick up three! 

After a desperate battle by the humans, they ended up loosing after the Vicar went down. I love this game, especially with lots of players - in my eyes Zombies!!! doesn't compare. 

Zombies on the march!

"I'll save ya Reverend!"

Next up was Panic Station - a super tense thriller of a game where a group of individuals with clones set out to destroy an alien infestation - the twist being that one person is infected from the start with a virus who tries to pass it on to other people in the game in an attempt to kill off the human players. As each player moves into a room with another player, they have to swap a card from their hand. At the start, everyone has three "Infection" cards which are not passed on until they are infected (or are the host from the start). If a player receives one of these marks, a bit like the Black Spot of pirates gone by, then they are infected. Like Galactica Cylons, the infected are not to pass on they are infected - people have to guess and if they do, try to kill them off. Paranoia sets in - people accuse each other and infighting starts.  

In our game, I was the original Host and a few turns in I attempted to take over one of the players. Now I was under the impression that if I passed on an infection card, the player will only block me if they passed a petrol can at the same time (these are used to destroy the hive nest) - remembering the cards are passed face down. I made a pass of the card and I had a petrol can in return. Ok, I was blocked. Except the receiver looked up a rule that says they can state that a failed infection has taken place!! Ahgahga! If I'd known that I'd have never have tried....oh well. I tried another infection at Dale which failed too. 

Then I tried another tactic and passed a med kit to Matt which threw them for a while and suspicions moved  about. Then I tried Dale again and again I was blocked. Then I was stumped. I had used all three of my infection cards! With no success. Later I tried different things to attack people, moving creatures that can appear in their way, by which time everyone was certain I was the Host. In the end Dale destroyed the Hive and the humans won. But everyone was in agreement that after I had been blocked 3 times, I was pretty much stuck - the rules weren't up to the fact that someone would try to infect a few turns in or would fail 3 times. 

That said, the rules had been amended 3 times since release at Essen! And a release came out the day after at Andys! Yikes! Still a good thing that its getting a lot of amends and fixes to get it just right and definately worth another go.

Zombies drag their feet....literally!!

Yesterday evening to the early minutes of the following day, we played a game of Zombies!!! - yes literally a game. Four of us, Brian, Nigel Wood and Nigel Heathers got together around Nigel W's house for a zombie evening of Zombies!!! and Last Night on Earth. After a quick natter after my late arrival, we set about playing Zombies - everyone was new to the game so we had to go through the rules. Even I hadn't really played the game with all aspects of the rules.

We started a game but we found that we were about half way through the stack of cards and not many shots were fired. In fact, Nigel H pointed out, the zombies were turning out not to be much of a threat as they only moved one space whilst we could move up to 6 using a single D6.

Then Nigel W noticed in the rules the paragraph that if we get a tile with no shops/buildings on, ie just cross roads or L shape, you place two or three zombies on it. Ah. That changed things a bit. So we lived and learned and started again.

This time it was more tough, blasting through zombies and finding a way through to the helicopter. Which appeared but covered in zombies. Then the game went from a semi- co-op game with everyone being nice with their event cards to all out war on the zombies and each other! And this is when things fell apart. We would either be killed by zombies (end up back at the start) or be stopped by the other players from reaching the helicopter with an Event card.

This happened over. And over. And over. We started at 9pm. We finished just after midnight!! 3 hours?! The box said no more that 1hr. Hmm. Something was going wrong. We were knee deep in zombies (we needed the Bag o'Zombies that I bought extra) and each others event cards. The game became something of a slog and we missed out playing a game of Last Night on Earth! I was very disappointed in bringing such a game to the table - disappointed also for the others in that they didn't get much, I felt out of the evening.

I stated the next day I'd be selling the game - Brian had suggested he'd be interested in getting it, so I'll sell it to him - good to start a clear out I think of unused/unplayed games before Christmas!

Gaming day jolly!!

Yay! Monday was a day of getting together with my best mate Matt at his place whilst he had the place to himself for a few days to play games, eat pizza and drink beer! It was also an opportunity to introduce him and his game-aspiring daughter to Euro gaming :) I had brought most of the games with me to try and squeeze in as much as possible.

Firstly we played Diamant as a good introduction. This went down a storm - very popular as it is very easy to learn but difficult to master - Hannah, Matts daughter, got the idea straight away and loved it - eventually winning the game.

Next out of the bag was Zooloretto - obviously it took a bit to explain the rules, but the game proceeded quite well, with only a few references to the rules - this game has a great system where although it is a fairly complex game, say compared to Diamant, there is no text in the game to get confused with; no cards to read or text to ponder over. Again highly enjoyed by all - and again won by Hannah. :)

It was time then to drop off Hannah to her grandparents; after which Matt and I explored the contents of 7th Fleet and Gunslinger, just to get an idea of what ye olde '80s punch counter games were like - actually Gunslinger looked quite attractive to play and if I'd known the rules we'd have given it a go.

So we had a go at Back to the Future the card game - I've played this a few times solo play, so this was a good chance to test out the rules with two of us. The concept of how to play took a bit to understand (even for me and I'd played a few times!) but after getting into the swing of it, it was a great game - won by Matt in the end.

Next was Niagara - Matt loved the idea of the plastic discs acting as the flowing river and there was much merriment in pseudo-Mexican voices. The ending was full of tension as we both had our fill of gems, me 5 different coloured gems, Matt his mixed collection of 7. We just needed to get one more gem each to the finishing line. With our last paddle cards and the end in sight, we raced for him - Matt pipping me to the post!! Another game lost! :)

Next was Memoir '44 - actually two games of Memoir as it was so popular with Matt. The only unfortunate thing I found was that set up took too long and was actually a bit confusing with two people on opposite sides of the table whilst looking at the map in the book. Something to consider in the future. But the games went off really well - the first an American attack against heavily entrenched German positions - including several elite German tank platoons; leading to a win by Germany that followed the course of History. Then it was another try at an Omaha beach landing, this time with Matt as the Americans. This turned into an unmitigated disaster for the Yanks as one after another unit and platoon were destroyed or mown down on the beaches of France.  Notch one up for me! this would turn out to be my only win of the day...

Finally we had a game of Last Night on Earth - and as I'd not played this before, game play proceeded a little slowly at first as Matt read the rules, counters were punched and cards were shuffled. The scenario we took was Get Petrol and Keys for the Truck! or something like that. This involved my humans searching for petrol and keys whilst fending off the undead! Unfortunately one character after another died and then the Sun set and it was game over man game over! A good game, if not 100% my cup of tea in its mechanics. Perhaps another couple of games will win me over.

In all, a hugely successful gaming day/night! Cannot wait to do it again!

Shock - games list goes down!

I just looked at my list of games on boardgamegeek - ha, its dropped to 71 - I was aiming for 100 but the big ASL sale culled a few from the ranks. A few Memoir '44 purchases should bump it up again. There have been some recent additions to the list, either from my local stockist, online or even from boot fairs.

Imperium Romanum II
Last Night on Earth
Lost Cities the Board Game
Memoir '44
Zombies!!! 2nd edition

Am looking at some new games to fill the ASL gap - possibly Power Grid...maybe...