Review of Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse, Part 1

Introduction and Characters

Last Days is a skirmish wargame between two rival bands of survivors in a post-apocalypse zombie wasteland.  It is written by wargamer and youtuber of Guerrilla Miniature Games fame, Ash Barker. Illustrations are by the extremely talented Arthur Asa. 

One of the suggestions in the book is to set your skirmish clashes in your home town and have a zombie-filled day of fun running around familiar streets trying to survive.  From reading the entire book, I quite like the wargame and campaign rules.  What follows will be a summary and review of Last Days. I hope to play the game solo in the future, so stay tuned for actual plays of the system. 

Characters in Last Days are defined by eight characteristics. Action Points (AP) reflect the points of energy a character can expend to move around the battlefield and interact with objects. Close Quarters Combat (CQC) is simply skill with melee weapons or bare fists. Firearms (FA) is your shooting capability. Strength (S) is the character’s ability to inflict damage or carry heavy objects. Endurance (E) describes a model’s ability to deal with damage and pain.  Damage Capacity (DC) is essentially the character’s hit points. Courage/Horror (C/H) is a character’s ability to function while subjected to fear and terror, or the ability of the character to cause said fear and terror.  Intelligence (I) is sort of a catchall characteristic which details a character’s ability to carry out complex actions under stress. Intelligence is the characteristic that comes into play if you are lock picking a door or hotwiring a car under the pressures of the battlefield.  

Leaders are special characters which define your group of survivors by determining the alignment that your group will have, and the limitations of what kind of survivors you can recruit.

Leaders in the core book come in three main alignments: Selfless, Selfish and Trained. Read “Trained” as having a background in the military, police or even a semi-militaristic organization like a militia. It is suggested that more alignments will be provided in further expansions. I really like the way Ash handles the idea of alignment.  Characters of a similar personality will get along in a group and you can only have a limited number of characters that do not match the personality of your Leader.

I like the diversity of Leaders, in particular the option of choosing the Selfish aligned Merciless Thug. It makes the game more realistic and grittier.  I would have appreciated some tables to flesh out the background of a Leader though, or the reasons why a survivor group came together.  For example, I would have liked to see something like the 5 Parsecs from Home Crew Table where a brief origin story for how the crew came together is generated. 

You also get to choose where your group lays their head to sleep. This is called a Refuge. The initial Refuges all have distinct Built-In Perks. There is no overlap between perks so every Refuge is unique, which is great.

Next time, the Win Condition and Game Phases.