Zombies and Stormtroopers

Saturday I had a long standing appointment for a day of gaming with Jim and John, the second part of our Imperial Assault campaign and other games were arranged.  At various points beforehand the timing had looked to be inconvenient bordering on the impossible - as much in the way of gaming has been of late, again - but somehow it came to pass and a tonic it was indeed.

Doing fun, stimulating, challenging or plain silly things with board games and toy soldiers is truly good for my soul.

As I arrived early we cracked out a favourite filler of mine before digging in to the big stuff.  Guilds of Cadwallon:

I thrashed him, it was embarrassing really...

 It's a game with simple elements that hark back to noughts and crosses/tic tac toe and yet offer far more decision process and engagement with the game.  Not simply chance.  Plus it takes two minutes to explain and 15 to play.  A nice warm up.

Given the next few hours would be devoted to a couple of games of Zombicide.

 

Zombicide takes all the elements of an old skool dungeon crawler and sets it to a Zombie movie backdrop.  We each took two characters and began with a simple scenario to contain radioactive zombies.  Ideal to learn the rules, which essentially boil down to move on or two sectors on the board, search if you're in rooms to find equipment and or fight; rolling D6 to hit.  There is nothing rocket science in the game but for some simple zombie themed fun it doesn't need it.

There are some smart mechanics regarding the upgrading of characters and the heightening of threat in the game, in effect as characters go up a level over the course of a few rounds of play this also triggers increased volumes of undead appearing.  It works well and encourages team play to make sure that the more powerful characters don't increase the risk levels to fatal proportions.

Having wrapped up the opening scenario we went on to one of the larger maps and a task of making it from one side of the board to the other.  By the end things were getting rather busy:

Players top right, Zombies everywhere else...  

 Still we managed to coordinate, despite getting stuck on a zombie spawn point for a number of turns, and everyone survived.  Hoorah!

Next up in our epic session was Smallworld.  Which I forgot to photograph, but saw me get sterling service from my civilisations of Alchemical Skeletons and Diplomatic Halflings.  Timing is everything in Smallworld, and I think mine was as good as it could be leading to a close result at the last.  (Full disclosure, I can't recall if I actually won or was second.)

Finally, we wound up with our feature presentation; Star Wars Imperial Assault.  Today's was a side mission and the one that came up was rescuing Luke from the clutches of the Empire.

 I sense his Presence.

Escorting Luke through a procession of readily killed Stormtroopers was easy enough for the guys, and their newly painted character models certainly motivated them to do better than in the first mission.  But when lord Vader appeared at the end of the scenario they thought their number was up!  Fortunately for them I went easy on them and let Vader's anger get the better of him, he went straight for the heroes, permitting Luke to sneak around the back of the garage and blast his way through to the T-16 and get away.

A real success for the players.  They made a decent amount of cash, gained new skills and perhaps riled the empire more than their first encounter.

A nice day away from present stresses and strains, and I look forward to the next one.