Vacation time

Hi, friends. We're heading out on a little vacation for a while. Up to the lake. I'm bring some stuff to paint and some paper print-outs to make some furniture for my houses and boxes/merchandise for my big box store project. I actually played the final 2 locations for my Day One scenario. Ended up being put OOF in the 3rd location (Big Box store). I just used my fists fighting the Terrified Civilians at the Big Box store. I had to fight 6, the 5th put me OOF.  I did better in the 4th one (Supermarket) and actually killed some gangers and Zombies  and even found a SAW. I used the Risk and Rewards cards for the first time, that's how I got the SAW. Used the SAW to kill the Gangers who came from a PEF resolution, the SAW attracted Zombies whom I killed with the Katana. I also didn't mess around with the Terrified Civilians in the 4th one. I used my katana on them, too. Made a big difference. Killed 4 in no time. LJ is now Rep 4. 


Anyway, I'll check in on you folks' blog while I'm gone as I can. See you soon.

All Things Zombie Batrep - Day One, Location 2, Home

Hi, friends. I couldn't stay asleep. Got up at 5:30 am. Drank some coffee. Decided to do another location for Day One scenario of ATZ. I'm using rules from Better Dead Than Zed, and some from I, Zombie.  The first location I did was ATM, that went well. I had chosen 4 locations for Day One. Now it's time for location 2, home. 3x3 foot table. Zuzzy mat, homemade roads, houses mainly from Stoelzel's Structures.

Narrative:
Having just hit the ATM for some money, Joe got in his car and headed home, planning to touch base with the family, then go to WalMart and one of the nearby Supermarkets. Calling home on the cell, Joe said "Hi, sweetie. I'll be home soon. Is everyone okay? And do you have the list ready for the things you want me to pick up from the stores?" "Yes, everybody's fine, just a little scared. The list is ready", Joe's wife responded. "Be careful coming home. There's a roadblock at the end of the street, and a Police car was cruising by telling everyone to stay indoors because of a "Civil Emergency". We might not be able to go shopping to get supplies if they're closing roads." "Yeah, Joe said, "we'll see. Everything seems fine here. Okay, I'll let you go. Love you. See you in a bit." Pocketing his cell phone, Joe saw the Police barrier at the end of his street. Big-ass concrete block. "Damn, no way around that. I'll have to park and walk the rest of the way" Joe thought.

That wasn't here this morning. Looking up the street, Joe's destination, the white house, is on the left.

View from the opposite end of the board.

Lucky Joe: Rep 3, Military Reaction Table, Katana, Attributes - Stone Cold and Slow.

Rolled on the Getting There Table, by vehicle. Passed 1 d6 (Rep 3). Rep > location number. Counts as passed 2d6. "Arrive there normally".

PEF Placement

All PEFS placed behind cover and out of LOS.

Turn 1

Activation: Humans 3, Zombies 2

LJ moves 8" up the street. PEF in section 4 now in LOS. False Alarm.

"What's that behind that tree? Oh, stray cat. Gotta stop being so jumpy", Joe thought. 

I did a Fast Move once the PEF was resolved to finish LJ's movement. Used only 1 d6 for additional movement, because of "Slow" attribute, instead of additional 2d6 per the advice of Vampifan. (Thanks, Bryan) Rolled a 5, so moved an additional 5". Man, that fatboy can run. :)

The first PEF resolved is represented by the black dice under the tree. It turned out to be a stray cat. (False Alarm)

Completing the Fast Move. There's a PEF hidden in the tree line to LJ's right (Black dice).

Zombie's Turn: PEF in Section 6 can't move, it's Rep was higher than the ZED activation roll. The REP 2 PEF passed 1d6 and moved "1 section toward the nearest PEF, ending its move in cover". Hmmm, this is getting interesting. LJ's got two PEFs in the sector near him and he doesn't know they're there.

"It's quiet ..., too quiet" LJ mutters to himself.

Turn 2

Activation: Humans 6, Zombies 5.  Rolls are too high for either side to activate, but for Day One Scenarios activation rolls equaling 11 means the Police will approach you. "If unarmed he will tell you to leave the area", if visibly armed he will draw his gun and order you to surrender your weapon." 

I wasn't quite sure how to handle this. It's not illegal to carry a sword around, but you are visibly armed with a katana. I decided to submit it to the Dice Gods. 1-3 on a d6 he arrests LJ, 4-6 he lets him go. Rolled a 5. Yay. What would you guys do?

Policeman: Sir, what are you doing with that sword?

LJ: I'm just taking it home, Officer, I live in the white house behind you.

Policeman: Okay, sir. Just get inside your house and stay there. The Mayor has declared an Emergency Curfew and all citizens are required to remain in their homes and stay off the streets until further notice.

LJ: Yes sir, Officer. No problem.

With that, the policemen gets back in his cruiser, checks the roadblock and heads back up the street.

PEFs must still have not been in LOS because of the trees.

Turn 3
Activation: Humans 4, Zombies 2. LJ rolled too high, can't activate. Both PEFs pass 0d6, can't move either.


Turn 4
Activation: Humans 3, Zombies 2.
LJ moves 8". Off to his right he thinks he sees something in the tree line.

Pic above shows the 2 PEFs hiding in the trees.

PEF Resolution - Rep 2 PEF is a false alarm. Rep 3 PEF rolled on Random Road Encounter. Result was "It's Freakin Hot". Either consume 1 food unit, or Rep is decreased by 1 for the remainder of the scenario. Great, now I'm Rep 2. At least I didn't get all killed up by Zombies. :)


Fast Move an additional 5". Rolling good.

LJ's almost there.

Turn 5

Activation: Humans 2, Zombies 6. All of the PEFS have been resolved, but I figured I still needed to roll because you never know if you'll get doubles (optional PEF generation), a 7 or 11. However, LuckyJoe continues to be lucky and moves 8" to enter his home, ending the scenario successfully, and bloodlessly.

Honey, I'm home. And where's all the damn furniture?

Another lucky run. No Zombies at all, again. LJ is beginning to doubt the existence of Zombies, probably just some media hysteria for ratings. However, next locations will be a Big Box store (need ammo) and a Supermarket (need beer food). 

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for looking. 

Interiors of the Neighborhood

Hi, friends. One of the things I really like about the Stoelzel Structures buildings I've been making is the beautiful interiors. Carl Stoelzel, the artist and designer, has done an excellent job on the interior textures of these buildings. So, without further yakking, here's some pics of some of the Stoelzel neighborhood house interiors.

The Cape. This pic shows the second floor (first for our friends across the pond). 

The Cape. Ground floor. 2nd floor has been removed.

The Farm House. 2 floor. Some of my walls are rather wonky. I love the different textures Carl used on the floors, especially the bathroom (lower right) and the kitchen downstairs.

The Farm House. Ground floor. Kitchen along right side with old linoleum and checkered wallpaper. Even a rug in the living room.

The Split Level. Upper view. I haven't finished the 2nd set of stairs.

The lower portions of the Split Level. I made some crude stairs with Hirst Arts bricks.

The upstairs of the LJ house. Still need to make the stairs to connect the floors. Master bath and bedroom to the left, Man Cave to the right.

The main portion of the 1st floor. Family room and bath to the right, garage, kitchen and dining room to left.

The kids' portion of the house. 3 bedrooms, bath and rest of kitchen. The wooden texture to the left edge is the outdoor deck.

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for looking. I hope you take the opportunity to pick up some of the Stoelzel Structures buildings. They are beautifully done with playable interiors and furnishings.

Mr. Stoelzel's Neighborhood

You ever notice how a project always gets bigger and bigger? If you remember, I posted a Day One scenario for All Things Zombie a while back. The first destination was an ATM. That went like a breeze. Then my second destination was home. I was getting ready to do that scenario but realized I didn't have enough suburban houses (I live in the burbs of a small town). I had one Plasticville house I was planning to use, but no other suburban houses.  This is the house I was going to use. You may have seen it from an earlier ATZ batrep.

 It sort of resembles my real house in that it's white with black shutters.

My real house.

Anyway, I was going to use the Plasticville house and make some paper houses for the rest of the neighborhood. I chose some Stoelzel Structures paper terrain houses. The houses are very cool and come with playable interiors, and even furnishings. Unfortunately, the paper houses were much larger than the Plasticville house. So, then I had to scratchbuild a loose replica of my house as well as build 3 Stoelzel Structures houses, in order to play the next scenario. I built a Stoelzel Structure Cape Cod style house, Split-Level house, and a Farmhouse. I also bought the Raised Ranch house, but haven't built it yet. I'm using a 3x3 board and a Zuzzy Ruined Forest latex mat for the base of the terrain. That meant I needed roads. So then I had to make roads to place on the mat. I took a page from Morbious's website and made some roads. Instead of using hardboard like he did, I used my cheap vinyl floor tiles, painting them black and adding lane and edge lines with paint pens.  Really quick and cheap and they came out pretty good. I named this post "Mr. Stoelzel's Neighborhood" because 3 of the 4 houses are from his kits, and the last one is a scratchbuild using some of his textures as well as textures from WorldWorks Games.

The Mean Streets. 6 inches wide, 12 inches long. 3 sections traverse the board.

Pic above shows a little of the Stoelzel Farmhouse in the left foreground, the white scratchbuilt house on the right foreground, and the Stoelzel Cape house in the background.

This shot shows the Stoelzel Farmhouse and Split Level on the left and a little of the white scratchbuild on the right foreground.

Here's a shot of the back and side of the scratchbuild LuckyJoe house in the foreground, with the Stoelzel Cape house in the background. The balcony is made from a piece of foamcore with toothpicks (cocktail sticks for our cousins across the pond), and coffee stirrer pieces for the top rail. I use that balcony to spray paint minis and such in real life. Could also prove a good vantage point to cap Zombies in the coming Apocalypse. I'm just sayin'. :)

View from a different angle, showing at least some of all 4 houses.

Yet another angle. The Cape house in the foreground has an upstairs. I may kitbash it to make a Ranch-style one story house. One of the really cool features of all of these Stoelzel Structures houses is they have multiple colors of exterior walls. Usually a yellow, green, red, or blue. You can get a great tabletop variety from just one kit. 

This shot is primarily featuring the Split Level in the foregound right and the Farmhouse in the background. The Split Level was made using one of the alternate color schemes. It also has a chimney which I chose not to use. I did use the chimney for the Farmhouse. That chimney is solid, made with 5 layers of 5mm foamcore cut to size. I like my terrain tough.

Another view down the street. The window frames were made from 1/2" square chicken wire painted white and inserted into the window openings. The shutters were printed and mounted onto mattboard (a technique I learned from Vampifan). Each of the Stoelzel houses has a page of 6 different  colored shutters with 12 shutters of each color (Brown, Green, Black, Blue, Red and White). I really love the variety of builds you get from each kit. For example, the Cape house in the left foreground has five different exterior color schemes, has optional dormers (having 0, 1, 2, or 3 dormers means 4 different houses) and an optional rear roof extension. When you consider all of the possible combinations of colors, dormers, rear roof extension or no extension, you can make a lot of houses from one $4 pdf. 

This shows in the right foreground the red Split Level version I chose, featuring the side and the rear. The little black (asphalt) driveways by the houses are made from pieces of vinyl window blinds painted black. I really like the design of the Split Level house. It makes for a nice change from 1 or 2 story buildings, though I had a hell of a time making the interior stairs between levels. Could have used more detailed instructions. In the background on the left is the white LuckyJoe replica house. It's not a perfect replica, but it's close. I stole the windvane from the Plasticville house for the replica.

This shot shows the back of the red Split Level house. The stairs are my usual kitbash of the Stoelzel Structure stairs. I used his very nice brick texture for the sides of the stairs, mounted onto mattboard ala Vampifan, then used coffee stirrers painted white for the stair steps. The gaps between the stair steps allow you to slip the slotta bases of the minis into the space between steps, so minis can be placed mid stair, if you wish. Across the street you see the LuckyJoe house. Note the red door. My wife and I painted our front door red recently. It gives a nice splash of color against all that black and white. 

Well, that's it for now. I've now got a suburban terrain board to use, and can now proceed to do destination 2, home. Next will be a big box store, and then a Supermarket. Hey, Dave Stoelzel, can you please make a Walmart-ish kit, and a Supermarket? :) Thanks for looking, everyone. Have a great day or evening.