Review of Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse, Part 3

Zombies and the Campaign Cycle

Now we should talk about the elephant in the room: zombies and their special rules. Zombies, in the core book, have the Shoot them in the Head! special rule.  This rule states that damage for zombies only matters if you hit them in the head. Thus, when a model hits a zombie in the Shooting or Close Quarters Combat Phase, roll 1d6 instead of rolling for a Damage Total. On a roll of 5 or 6 the zombie is hit in the head and the brain is destroyed.  Remove the destroyed zombie model from the board.  As a consolation prize, if a model hits a zombie, but not in the head, the zombie instead suffers an amount of Knockback dependent on the weapon used. 

Zombies also do not have a Courage characteristic. Instead, they cause Horror. If a model that causes Horror makes contact with a model that has the Courage characteristic, roll 1d6 for each model and add Horror or Courage, respectively. If the model causing Horror has the higher number, the model with the Courage characteristic panics and mechanically may NOT use Action Points to break contact for the remainder of the turn. This is why Zombies (Horror causing models) can be so dangerous in large numbers.

What is the Campaign cycle?  Since Last Days recommends it, your first game likely will be the Encounter number 5, Scavengers (p.98) where you fight against another player and the zombies in the field. After each game, note which members of your group, if any, were taken Out of Action. Roll on the Injuries table for each unfortunate member who was taken Out of Action and apply the results accordingly. If your group Leader dies, then you must choose a new one.  Then there is the Experience section where each Character gains some Experience for taking out zombies, rival group members, surviving a mission and fulfilling an objective.  When a Character levels up, the results of their advancement is uncertain. Each level up a Character can choose to either buy a roll on the Characteristics Increase table or the Skills Increase table.  Last Days is very much a “work with what you get” game, and that fits the theme of survival during a zombie apocalypse. Then the group enters the checking supplies phase (or loot phase if you prefer). Next, the group members who were Out of Action during the game spend time recovering from their injuries, which functionally means they will be a negative influence on the group during the subsequent Zombie Attack.  Group members who were NOT put Out of Action may be assigned Jobs around the Refuge, which result in various net benefits to the group. Finally, the Zombies Attack the Refuge. This is handled by a 2d6 die roll where, as mentioned previously, Characters knocked Out of Action during the previous skirmish game, negatively influence this roll. Then the cycle starts again and you may use the Encounters Table (p.98) to determine the goals and limitations in the next skirmish combat.

The Encounters Table describes five additional types of combat encounters besides just scavenging for supplies. These encounters range from defending your Refuge, to launching an ambush against a rival group, to rescuing captured members of the group, to even escaping from a horde of hungry zombies that just don’t stop coming.  These encounters provide plenty of variation and tweaks to the rules to keep combat skirmishes interesting.

For even more survival horror fun, there is an expansion published by Osprey books called Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse: Seasons which adds more of everything and includes hunger, thirst and warmth rules.  If you want alternate zombie rules, check out the article Last Days: Evolutions in the wargaming magazine BLASTER, volume 2. You can find BLASTER as a pdf at the Wargame Vault website. In fact you can find more Last Days rules and additions in BLASTER volumes 1 and 4 as well.

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. 

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.

Thoughts on Ash Barker’s Foreword on Skirmish games from Last Days : Zombie Apocalypse

 I bought Ash Barker's, of Guerrilla Miniature Games fame, 2018 zombie skirmish game Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse yesterday and I am reading through it.  I love it when wargame authors go over their creative process and I enjoyed the foreword by Ash.  Specifically, he was talking about wanting his game to produce three things while a player engages with it: Memorable Moments, Crackerjacks and Ever-Afters.  I liked his description of these three elements; I'll keep them in mind when writing my own stuff. I think, in an example of convergent evolution, Ivan Sorensen’s works also includes these three elements, specifically in 5 Parsecs from Home, and these three elements are one of the reasons I like good skirmish games.

Memorable Moments are just that: the thrill of escaping a firefight with one hit point left, making an almost impossible shot, things that can really put a spotlight on a character in a skirmish game. Crackerjacks, as Ash describes, are the feelings of anticipation you get when you can possibly obtain something really cool, specifically like a treasure from a skirmish game. It is often the reward at the end of the scenario that you acquire, regardless how beat up your skirmish units are.  Ever-Afters are the "threads that tie the games together". Ash says creative players will think about how the story continues after the skirmish ends or what happens in between skirmishes to motivate the characters to get from story point A to B. 

When I was writing up my 5 Parsecs After Action Report, the skirmish details made the narrative I was weaving around the characters emerge organically and logically.  To be frank, thanks to Ivan's tables and details, specifically about the background of the skirmish characters, a cohesive plot emerges very easily.  And the characters lived on in my mind, making it even more simple to figure out why they would have their next skirmish.  Anyway, I'm liking Last Days so far.