Thursday, April 25, 2024

Stargrave - Hydroponics

 On Sunday we played the next scenario in our campaign. Due to illness & work, we only had 3 of the 6 players attend.

 

Scenario - Having made it to a spaceport, some repairs were made to the ship, empty chairs recruited for, you look at what remains of your treasury....it isn't much.

You spend some time ruminating over the logs from the time at the Q37 facility. A small bit of info about another facility on a planetoid piques your interest. It's location is several jumps away & not much else is mentioned other than 'Alien Resources' & a name....A43

Your ship arrives at the planetoid & sets down. Your crew exits the ship & begin searching for an entrance, though your sensors are not helping much. You see some caves in rugged hills & make towards them. As your climbing the ground beneath your lead crewmen crumbles & caves in. He manages to avoid tumbling in & closer inspection reveals what remains of a corroded panel beneath the earth. Looking within, occasional flickering lights & metal piping can be seen. Humid warm air rises from the hole.

Using the rapelling gear, your crew drop down to the floor below, finding yourselves in an artificial jungle. Momentarily confused, you then realize its a highly advanced & unusually large Hydroponics Laboratory, built within the caverns below the hills. Scores of trees filled with strange fruit stand in large water bowls, whilst smaller vegetable plots & berry bushes fill spaces in between. The air hangs thick & warm, while the sounds of dripping & bubbling water come from all around. Your crew starts to fan out to investigate when you hear the ominous 'ping' of your life trackers. If that wasn't enough, the cable connected above is snapped & tumbles amongst your scattering crewmen. You won't be going back out that way...

In the centre of the lab are a set of sealed doors within a rocky outcrop.


 Setup: The scenario follows the info from the Q37 book with the addition of the following.

The doors in the central rock lead to  a control centre. The console within unlocks the doors at the edges of the boards & these cannot be exited until unlocked. Players can attempt to hack/pick the main doors (TN18). Another console sits atop another rocky platform. This console controls the main doors & can be hacked (TN14)


 Inside the control room, a player may spend 2 actions downloading the schematics of the facility. 


 Players must exit through one of the 3 doors on the far side of the table from where they entered.

As we were down to 3 players, I changed the exit door locations to the corners.

Chens crew was quick to reveal a ping marker & revealed a couple of worker bugs. Let the fun begin!

 


One of Kurt's infected crewmen changed into a plague zombie in the middle of his crew!

 


A couple of bugs appeared near my crew as well, including an acid spewing one...Oh joy!

 


Chen found a couple members of his crew locked in melee with the worker bugs.

 


The rest of his crew continued...seemingly leaving them to their fates.

 


Kurt dropped a wall of force to block Chen's crew from getting to the control centre. This ended up being a pain for his own crew as it was blocking the path towards his exit doors.

 


As loot was gathered, the slow slog to the exits began. It didn't help that by this time, we were all suffering -2 move due to water from burst pipes.

 


As Chen was getting closer to his exits, he found himself inundated with several bugs that had appeared around his crew....wonder how that happened!

 


Chen had several crewmen taken down, but we all managed to get through our exits.

Until next time!

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Zombicide Campaign Game 2 - City Blocks

Our last club night, I brought out Zombicide again. With 3 players, we each ran 2 of the survivors.

This time it was City Blocks (out of the core game rulebook)

 


We did not add the Epic Weapon Crates as of yet, as this is still early in the Zombie Apocalypse. We holed up in the central building & as the sounds of sirens & weapon fire faded, our food supplies running low, we ventured out. Due to time constraints at the store (& not getting them painted in time) I have opted not to bring out the walls for the buidings.

 


Wanda gets into the first building & finds that there are not many zombies within. Thats a good start!

 


Josh goes in to deal wih the 2 walkers, knowing he will be able to slip away if things don't go as planned.

 


But as expected, things began to get hairy, with the arrival of an Abomination!

 


We had managed to keep a Molotov from the first game & used it to good effect to deal with the Abomination & a bunch of his brethren!

 


We managed to find the food supplies needed & got everyone to snag their objective tokens, then made a dash to the exit. We also found a new suvivor - 'Dave' who joined us with a couple more Molotovs.

 


Well done all! Our next campaign game will happen in June! Until then.

 

 

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Zombicide Campaign - Day Zero

After a previous training run to learn the system, we redid the first scenario & it went much better, though close to a quick finish of the campaign... We had 3 players out, so each of us ran 2 survivors.



 So with the board setup, we began. Wanda was at the greasy spoon she worked in, getting breakfeast ready for the morning crowd.

 


Ned was cursing aloud readying his axe to take down the door of his vault...sans key.

 


Phil was arresting Josh....again for more graffiti.

 


A 'Bad day' about to get worse for this fellow...

 


The day begins as any other....Ned does crash through the vault door. Phil & Josh head to the police car.

 


Josh decides to open the door to the closed building... finding zombies shambling about inside. This can't be good.

 


Those not infected do manage to gather in the central area & begin bashing zombies. We are gonna need more weapons!

 


The search begins...hold them back!

 


As weapons are found & distributed, things got rather painful & a brief fallback into the building.

 


Having made a Molotov,  Ned approached the swarm coming down the street...

 


And torched them!

 


Having found a chainsaw, we quickly figured out a great method of handing it off to one another to rush into zombie mobs & cut them down.

 


Eventually Ned got to Red! The objective to allow us to make our exit.


Battered bruised, the survivors prepare for their final dash to the exit. (By this time all were down to just 1 or 2 wounds remaining.

The swarms continue to arrive, just as we were leaving!

 


After our escape, food was cooked & we had found enough that with the pan over the fire, we have a bit of food remaining for our next scenario.

All survivors managed to retain gear & we did get to keep the Chainsaw! 

Til next time...

 

Sunday, March 17, 2024

The Thing - Painted!

 In prep for an upcoming event, I've been focussed on getting the figures from 'The Thing' painted up.



I have the 4 dogs left to get done, but here are the cast of players...

Macready


Windows (freaking out....again!)


Childs


Bennings


Copper


Palmer


Clark

 

Garry


Norris (bet he is infected!)


 Nauls


Dr Fuchs



Dr. Blair



I got in on the Kickstarter version & from what I've heard, managed to get all the cast. Apparently the retail version just had 8 characters in it.


Here are some closer images of them




And of course we need to have the 'THINGS!



I painted them using mainly speed paints & was trying to paint the bases to represent the green of the game board. It seems a bit light & my need either another coat or a slightly darker green brushed on.