28 Dice Later game: Fatal Collision

Frances & I recently tried the tweaked rules that I'd been working on for 15mm zombie apocalypse skirmishes.  These are essentially Osprey Wargames Black Ops by Guy Bowers, but with a few changes to suit the setting of a modern-day UK caught-up in a terrifying zombie pandemic.  This initial trial scenario was of my own devising, & as it was for testing the basics like card activation & turn structure, it didn't make use of the main feature of Black Ops that attracted me - that of the stealth rules.  I call my tweaked zombie survival version of these rules 28 Dice Later...

For this scenario, set during the initial hours of the apocalypse, I played the Infected, & Frances played the Uninfected.  In this setting, freshly-infected victims are known as 'Ragers' (28 Days Later-style zombies), while injured or decaying victims are known as 'Shamblers' & 'Crawlers' depending on their state (classic Romero-style zombies).

The story was that a speeding 4x4 had crashed into a tree in a narrow country lane.  Farmer Giles Scrumpy & his sheepdog Patch had got out of their tractor to help, & he had called an ambulance, as well his wife Rosie back at the farm to tell her about the collision.  The driver was badly injured, with a suspicious neck wound, while a passenger who had not been wearing a seat belt appeared to have been thrown through the windscreen & bisected (gruesomely, only their legs remained inside the 4x4).

At the start of the game, the ambulance has arrived, & Giles looks on as the paramedics stablise the driver on a stretcher, & prepare to take him to the ambulance.  Nearby, the severed upper body of the passenger has emerged from a hedge, & is crawling towards them!  A police car is on the way.  The initial objective is to get the patient into the ambulance & drive off bottom edge of the board.  However, there is a chance at the start of each turn that the patient will become a Rager (albeit a stationary one).

Patch barked in fear at the Crawler, & he & farmer Giles kept their distance from the horrific form as it dragged itself towards them, grasping.  A police 4x4 pulled up during turn 2, & a pair of coppers got out to establish what was going on.  The saw Rosie Scrumpy sprinting between two wheat fields from the farmhouse, a scoped rifle in her hands; & Giles Scrumpy & his dog backing away from the crawling corpse.

As Rosie had already been attacked by the Infected (outside the game), we allowed her to attack before being engaged in combat.  We also allowed the police to use preemptive violence, although other characters had to wait for confirmation of the nature of the threat.  Rosie turned to face the trio of Ragers sprinting after her, gunning one down with a perfect head-shot.  But then the others were upon her.  The police, & Giles dashed to her aid. A copper Tasered one Infected, while Giles sent Patch to attack the remaining Rager in the wheat field, until he caught up, wielding his trusty spade.  Patch & Giles spent much of the game failing to defeat the Rager in the crops...

The coppers turned to face a new trio of Ragers who had sprinted up the lane.  One needed to reload his Taser, while the female officer failed to hit with hers, meaning that the first had to club one Rager to death with his truncheon before both officers lost their nerve, making a dash for their car!  This left Rosie to face the new wave of Infected alone.  She managed to get a couple hits in with her rifle butt, but was overwhelmed before the male police officer remembered his duty to protect, & returned to the fray, beating down another Rager with his truncheon.  We ad-libbed a D6 countdown until Rosie turned into a Rager, but in hindsight this should probably be an 'Infection' marker, with a random chance to turn zombie/die at the start of each turn.

During all this, one paramedic had been locked in a desperate struggle against the Rager on the stretcher inside the ambulance, both failing to wound the other, but unable to disengage...  While the female paramedic had taken control of the tractor, & used it to splat the Crawler, before swinging it around to park near the exposed police officer.  The panicked female police officer - back in the police car - had driven at speed in a circle, running-over & killing two new Ragers who ran in from the side of the barn, before screeching to a halt next to her colleague, & jumping out to help him.  Over in the wheat field, Patch suddenly found his killer animal instincts, tearing-out the throat of one Rager, before being ordered by Giles to attack the last remaining Rager, which he dutifully did, saving the police!  At the end of the game, the other paramedic was still trapped in the back of the ambulance with the Rager on the stretcher...

Another victory to Frances!  She only lost a single character :-)  This game felt nicely balanced, with a real sense of threat to the survivors at times.  They had to be resourceful to survive the waves of incoming Ragers. The card activation system (using a small deck of royals from a standard playing card deck) was new to me, but made for a fun game where you cannot be sure each turn the sequence in which the different figures will activate.  I applied the Ace/Joker function of the deck in Black Ops to the Ragers, which gave them an extra activation, making them a scarily frenzied prospect.