My brother-in-law, Bill, and I played a zombie hunt game using the AR:SE rules a couple of weekends ago, our first wargame of any type for several years. The after action report on the game is below. Apologies for the gradient fill in some of the pictures; we played in Bill's front room, so I cropped out bits of wall and furniture.
Looking for supplies
We had three teams of armed survivors each, and the plan was to scout around the table, picking up civilian survivors and supplies and killing zombies. We were going to keep score, but forgot almost immediately.
We placed a number of cards face down on various buildings to represent potential civilian survivors. When we got near a building, we turned the card over. If it was a red card there was nobody there, but on a black card we diced for which group it was (the civilians were split into six groups, with three dummy groups). Continuing the memory-lapse theme, we swapped the colour of the cards when checking, then wondered why we had difficulty finding anyone (well I did. Everywhere Bill drove, hordes of civilians ran out to greet him)
We had never used the rules before, so the first couple of turns Bill played a turn, and then I played a turn. However, this gave the zombies too many actions, so we decided that we would both play on a red card, and the zombies on a black card.
Bill's A-team drove down the middle of town and immediately found survivors. They stopped to pick them up, but got attacked by zombies. Two of the A-team were turned, but the rest fought them off and rescued the two survivors. This was the start of what was to become a very busy van.
My first team didn't do much, other than drive about in their monster truck. They nearly rescued a couple of survivors, but unfortunately they were eaten as they were getting on-board the truck. They did manage to kill a few zombies, but one of the problems was they only had three pistols amongst them, so they had very little to shoot with. Had they ever got out the van it would have been a different matter, as they had an axe, a hockey stick and a chainsaw. My other two groups had more firepower, but making sure a group has adequate ranged firepower is something I'll be paying more attention to next time.
We had placed a group, consisting of a corporate extraction team (five swat team members) and the "suit" they were extracting, in a building in the middle of the board. That group's mission had been to rescue the "suit" and get him back to a helicopter that was coming in later. However, their vehicle had crashed and they'd taken refuge in the building.
Their overturned blue van is in the middle of the picture below
They hailed the A-team as it was passing and piled in, bringing the total number of passengers in the van to 11. A short while later it picked up another couple of civilians. However, even with 13 people cramped in the van, and quite possibly on the roof, they still managed to kill an impressive number of zombies. They eventually made it to the helicopter landing site and barricaded themselves in to await the chopper.
At one point, all the following people were crammed into the van (16 in total)
While all this was going on, two of my teams were driving down the main road, not really doing anything, and the monster truck was bumping over rubble, looking for a way off the board. I think it managed to pick up some supplies, but other than that it was just a quiet afternoon drive.
Bill's other two teams consisted of a group in a stretch Humvee limo and a group in an old fashioned pickup truck.
The limo group managed to avoid having anyone dragged out, despite being attacked by a lot of zombies. It picked up some civilians and supplies, then headed off the board.
The pickup truck took a very torturous route around the board, including fitting through some very tight spaces between buildings. It got mobbed at one particular location and lost one of its crew when they were dragged out.
Meanwhile, the A-team, corporate minders and half the remaining civilian population of the town were barricaded in, waiting for the helicopter, which took three turns to arrive. While dicing for it, we also diced to see if zombies appeared behind the group. A few did, but there was more than enough firepower available to deal with them.
The helicopter finally appeared
There were too many people for the helicopter to carry, so we decided the civilians would fly out, and everyone with a gun would pile back into the A-team van. As the helicopter landing site was at the end of the board, it was just a short drive away to safety.
All in all, I think we only lost three survivor figures and a couple of civilians. There were a few civilians we didn't rescue, and a whole bunch of supplies we missed, but there will always be an opportunity to return for those.
Post game thoughts
Probably the biggest mistake we made was that everyone stayed in the trucks and never got out. It should have been much more on foot, dodging into and through buildings, but there wasn't enough stuff blocking the streets to stop the trucks. An approach for subsequent games may be to have a lot of rubble, and then determine whether it can be cleared or not when the vehicle reaches it. If it can be cleared, dice for how many actions it'll take (or dice each turn to see if enough has been moved), all the while with zombies approaching.
Rules thoughts
The rules really need an umpire, as there are a lot of situations that they don't cover (not surprising, given that they're only two pages long). Their simplicity, however, is also their strength, as it was easy to remember how many shots each weapon had, what the movement rates were etc.
The zombie tanks and hordes are a nice element, but really need "fleshed out" more.
Hordes instantly kill a person on foot, but seem to have absolutely no effect on vehicles: they don't slow them down, drag people from them, nothing.
Likewise, tanks throw things and have three lives, but other than that, nothing. Given that both tanks and hordes only move on a few specific cards, they spent most of their time standing around being shot or just bypassed.
We should have assigned personality types to each armed survivor group, which could have made their behaviour more interesting. Everyone helped everyone else, but some backstabbing might have been fun.
Final thoughts
Overall, an enjoyable and fast paced game. The rules, while minimalist, were easy to learn. Next time, there will be less driving and a lot more shoe leather involved.
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