The Ambush

This week we had another game of Zombicide Black Plague. We played the next scenario - The Ambush. There are only six tiles and it all looked pretty straight forward. In fact there only needed to be two survivors remaining alive to win. Capture the four objectives and scoot off the board through the two towers. As we discussed things at the start I joked that it seemed really easy and I didn't understand why we only had to get two survivors off the board, when it is usually six. Over confident, we started the game.

We played the same rules with regards to survivors. We choose one each and then the rest were random. I took Recap Rodney and was dealt James and Lucas. James comes with an search function. I really like him and had considered him for one of my starting characters when the game first arrived. Lucas has Born Leader and we made great use of that in this game.

The Dark Templar choose Cadence and was dealt Mizar and Ostokar. Cadence has Marksman and can choose her target from range, which can be very handy. Mizar gets a free magic action, which I love and is the reason that I have him in my survivor groups. He is painted too which is always nice. Ostokar has Zombie link.

So the thing about this board is that it is small and therefore the distance to the survivors is small. Factor in opening a couple of doors and suddenly you are swamped. Also two of the spawn points are within 4 squares of one another so that can be real Necromancer trouble. A necromancer arrived and we had to send a poorly armed group to deal with him.

We got into immediate trouble. We just couldn't deal with everything and perform search actions to find better weapons.

A fatty and a few wolves really put us in a bad place and then Redcap Rodney was down - noooooooo!

Finally James got a couple of searches and began to hand out better weapons. We used Born Leader to give the best positioned and best armed survivor the max chance of dealing death. Cadence was in good form and Ostokar was fantastic. We picked the Speed spell which was cool.

But then poor old Lucas got isolated and things were not looking good for him. He had one more turn and then he would be toast. In fact we were struggling to identify a path to the final objective. Then we found an invisibility spell. Hurray! Lucas disappeared. Beautiful. And he snuck towards the final objective. It was just brilliant. There was light at the end of the tunnel.

Overall the game was tense. James became a hand to hand master and mowed down the zombies buying precious time. He became a legend in his own time, rushing into Orange level which just increased the volume of zombies descending on us.

James - 'I got this'

It was great fun and there was a huge sigh of relief when we finally crawled off the board. Whew!

The stars of the night were James and Ostokar and so they have pushed their way onto the painting table.

You have got to love this game.  It plays so differently depending on the items you find. You have to adjust your playing style to suit. Be wary of this scenario.

Look out behind you

Mizar had been busy mowing down zombies with his magical spells. There had been rumours of huge zombies in the area but so far he had not seen any.

Look out behind you

Ba Boom

Mizar was nervous. They had come a long way and were getting close to the exit. The day had started badly with the death of Lord Falstaff. Yes, yes a lack of concentration and a wayward Inferno Blast, but these things happen. Mizar steadied the group. He sensed danger behind the closed door.

"Now can we be clear - who has the Dragon Bile and who has the Torch? We will only get one shot at this"

The gathering menace

"One, two, three". Boom, and the door shattered. The Dragon Bile was tossed forward and Mizar lit it up with his Flaming Great Sword before diving for cover. Whoosh, and the very air seemed to burn.

Clearance

Mizar peeked his head around the corner. It had worked. The way was clear and the exit in sight.

Ultrared

Mizar has become my first Ultrared Survivor. He levelled into he orange twice, thereby picking up the second upgrade. That is 43 + 20 kills in one game!

Building my Survivor group

I have been building a group of Survivors to take on the Zombicide, Black Plague, Wulfsburg challenge. My first three have been Lady Faye for her +1 free Move action, Mizar for his +1 free Magic Action and Redcap Rodney for his +1 Damage: Melee.

Starting Wulfsburg Survivor group

My next addition needs to be able to deal some damage  from Range. There are not a lot of options really and I think that Genevieve is the stand out candidate. She starts with +1 Damage: Ranged and has good options for orange and red upgrades. I am liking +1 free Ranged Action and +1 to dice roll: Ranged.

Genevieve joins the party

So I feel that this has a nice balance to it and also can dish out proper damage from the start. Two of the guys have +1 damage.

Now I need to compliment these four.  I am thinking that a Search benefit would be good, maybe someone starting with a good weapon or maybe some more mobility. Born Leader has also been a great benefit in the past.There are lots of options to consider.

Of course, it would also be nice to include  one or two of the more magnificent survivor models.

A little magic - Mizar

Having had a good look at the models I really like the look of Inquisitor Mizar. I am loving the scythe and that tall 'dead pan' look. I plan to play him as my spell casting Magician.

Mizar

There are lots of interesting details to him. He is wearing plate armour and has the skull and bones hanging from his wait and there are lots of other nic-nacs. I even like his hair but  the scythe is the over-arching thing to like.

Statistics

He has a free Magic action to start with and then has Spellbook, all spells in the inventory are considered to be in the hand. This is cool because it saves actions swapping spells in and out of the inventory. And the final upgrade is Spellcaster which gives another free Action for Magic. Yip he is pretty cool. He can even have a Death Stike spell as his extra bit of equipment.

Can't wait to get him on the board.