Review of Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse, Part 2

Win Condition

In Last Days your group of survivors confronts an opposing group of survivors in a skirmish over Supply Tokens, with zombies present on the battlefield. Zombies are sort of like hostile weather, except with a greater hunger for brains.  You play until all Supply Tokens have been carried off the battlefield, or one side reaches its Breaking Point. 

A group’s Breaking Point is essentially a morale test. A Breaking Point test is triggered when one side takes at least one Casualty. Mechanically the group’s Leader makes the Breaking Point test by rolling 1d6 and adding the total number of Casualties his side has taken in the game. If that combine number is greater than the total of the Leader’s Courage (or Intelligence characteristic if the Leader causes Horror) plus the number of remaining friendly fighters in a group, then that group flees and the game ends.

If one group fails their Breaking Point test, then the opposing force is declared the winner of the scenario regardless of the objective, unless there is a draw as described below.  When one group fails their Breaking Point test, any Supply Tokens remaining on the table are claimed by the opposing group, assuming they too did not fail their Breaking Point test. If both groups fail a Breaking Point test in the same turn, then the skirmish ends in a draw.

If neither group has reached a Breaking Point and all Supply Tokens are secured off the battlefield, then the group with the majority of the Supply Tokens wins.  Supply Tokens are critically important for your group’s survival and have relevance in Campaign play. After a skirmish, when the group returns to their Refuge, each Supply Token captured allows one roll on the Supply Table.  Through this, these Supply Tokens are translated into Scavenge Points and equipment. Scavenge Points are used to upgrade the Refuge and both recruit and equip new characters.

Game Phases and Commentary

In one game turn of skirmish combat there are five phases, and they will be detailed in order.  In a departure from most wargames, the first phase, referred to as the Menace Phase, deals with the actions of the zombie horde. Then there is the Action Phase, which deals with initiative, determining which player is Aggressor/Defender, movement and miscellaneous actions.  The Shooting Phase is next which resolves ranged attacks. Logically, the Close Quarters Combat Phase follows, in which melee actions happen.  The End Phase is mostly used for checking for victory conditions and Breaking Points of groups.

The Menace Phase features a bit of bookkeeping to adjudicate zombie actions and maintain the high tension experience of the game.  The Menace Phase is broken into three steps: Noise Tokens step, Ammo Tokens step and Zombie Activation step. The Noise Token step determines if a unit that used a firearm during the previous turns attracts a zombie to the battlefield. The Ammo Tokens step involves determining if a model’s firearm runs dry and the model needs to reload.  

With noise, ammo and knockback (non-lethal damage inflicted on zombies) tokens in play in Last Days, there is quite a bit of token management required for this game.  Having yet to playtest Last Days, I expect that token management will cause slowdown in the action.  To mitigate this and speed up the game, I plan on having unit cards to the side of the battlefield where I can manage tokens more smoothly.  

In the Zombie Activation step, players alternate to move and activate zombies.

In the Action Phase when initiative is determined, I like that the bonus to the initiative roll is Courage + Intelligence rather than a straight Initiative roll or single characteristic comparison.  Also, the initiative roll winner can choose to go first or second (Aggressor or Defender of that turn). The Aggressor gets to activate a model first in the Action Phase and in the Close Quarter Combat Phase. The Defender gets to activate a model first in the Shooting Phase. So, winning an initiative isn’t a pure advantage, a player makes a tradeoff; which is much more tactically interesting.

There is a special rule in the Action Phase called “Locked and Loaded” that essentially allows a player to have a unit go into overwatch. This adds another layer of tactical complexity to the wargame. 

In the Shooting Phase and the Close Quarters Combat Phase damage is calculated in a similar fashion. To resolve shooting damage, a model that has made a ranged attack that hits rolls 1d6 and adds to that number the damage of the firearm. This is called the Damage Total. The Damage Total is divided by the Endurance of the model that was hit, rounding down.  The resulting number is called the Damage Points delt and the Damage Points are subtracted from the hit model’s Damage Capacity.  

Dealing damage from a Close Quarters Combat attack works very similarly, except a model that has made a CQC attack that hits rolls 1d6 and adds it’s Strength and any modifiers the weapon has to generate the Damage Total. 

As you can see, Endurance can significantly affect whether a model takes damage and loses a Damage Capacity or not. I think this is an interesting design of the system.  You have two variables, Damage Capacity and Endurance that determine unit toughness, rather than just one stat called Hit Points like you find in other systems.