Houston July Gameday

Mark Carter

Thanks for coming over, Chris and John.

Here is a little note on the other games going on that day across the room from Chris and John.

We ended up odd numbered on Saturday, so I drafted my 12 year old son Race, who has played quite a bit of ASL, both SK and some full rules. He usually wins against me. But this time I wanted to ratchet up the fun for the kid. So out came Zombie Pack 1! Mwahahaha.

Points of interest, the Zombies are portrayed by IJA counters and are always Berserk (so yes, they are morale 10). They only have 3 MP however, and always use hazardous, staggering movement, making -4 shots possible. They have no weapons except HtH melee, but once a human is in melee with a zombie, they can become infected even if they survive the melee, and as the human player you can contemplate suicide or euthanasia, because if the infection otherwise overtakes the human unit, it becomes another zombie.

Since the zombies do no shooting and never break, and since in these two scenarios, always IJA half-squads, they just vaporize, the turns are very fast.

The first scenario we took on was Zombie #5 “Matchstick Men of the Fighting O”. In this scenario, the National Guard has loaded up and is trying to reach the remaining uninfected humans in a little town in southeast Ohio. Hitting the arsenal before hitting the road they had their choice of weapons: “Oh yeah man, flamethowers! Four of ‘em. Hey look, a couple of Wasps, too!”. Roll a 10 on the FT? No problem, just refill it at a Wasp and its good to go again!

These fellows would have to fight their way through dense woods via a single small road, and they had been suffering through a bad drought (EC dry with breeze) and the forest is teaming with the undead, some HIP, with FTs and Wasps lighting fires everywhere.

I know of someone who would just love all those blazes intermixed with panicking humans and staggering zombies waving their remaining arms all around.

In this scenario I was the Humans and about to squeak by with a win when we noticed we had missed Race’s reinforcements. Had we remembered those, I would have changed by movements and would have run out of turns. Game to the “Zombie Race”.

In the second scenario, Zombie #4 Killing Fields, I was the Zombies this time trying to eat some brains by staggering across a field to humans in the trees, and some hiding behind a minefield. By using humans as bait, the human player can attract the berserk Zombies to stagger right in to the mines… The rest of the humans manned LMGs, MMGs, a FT and a MTR. We ignored the mist in the scenario (simply missed it, ha) and so my poor lifeless green forms were cut to pieces. The boy had an absolute blast mowing them down! Zombie-Rate! Race’s humans by a mile.

Ok, by now he was having a lot of fun, so I pulled out HP 15 Moldavian Massacre from Hero Pax 2 and I took the Russian defenders. Even though my cleverly set up MMG was ready to lay down that fire lane down the road, it rolled a 12 on the first shot. A 6 on the next RPh, you know how it goes…

My mortar on a hill by one of the victory buildings however was very effective keeping the marauding Moldavians off the other hill and so they were funneled into a very tight gap. The Romanians were able to capture 3 of the 4 VC buildings, but the Russians were able to hold out, finally giving me a win. A fun little scenario.

We got in three games, one regularASL and two Zombie pack treats for my son. It was a lot of fun. Those fast, fun zombie games were a great lead in to ASL so it all worked out well.

Mark