ATZ Batrep - The Boys are Back in Town

We know what happened to Mom, and we know what happened to our poor fallen heroes, Dad, Nick, Maggie and AJ.  But what happened to their long lost Brothers and Sister?  Let's tune in and find out.

After the outbreak, Dad2, Nick2, and AJ2 all banded together along with a friend named Brandon.  Maggie2 refused to have anything to do with them because she has always felt like they are a bunch of knuckleheads, so she headed off alone.  Three days after Thanksgiving the boys stumble across a truck stop out in the middle of nowhere.  In the vicinity there is also a little motel and mechanics garage.  They are getting quite hungry and decide to check it out.

It is a sleepy little place and there doesn't seem to be much going on.

As the lads walk into town on the main road, they see several Zeds staggering about.  They already know what Zeds are so they decide to keep their distance.

They decide to stay in a group and run off together leaving the Zeds far behind.  They are very pleased with themselves.

The gas station snack shack is the first place they head to, but to their dismay, there's nothing there.

Next stop is the truck stop building.  They loot the first two floors and find nothing.  On the third floor they run into three heavily armed civilians who are hiding out from the Zeds.  These are fairly tough looking rascals who won't even talk about joining forces so the lads forget about any thoughts of overpowering them and start to go back down the stairs.  Meanwhile the Zeds have begun to catch up with them and are closing on the area where our heroes were last seen.

With a mob of Zeds hanging around out front, Dad2 gets an idea all of a sudden.  He wants to try to lead the Zeds up to the third floor and see if the Civilians and the Zeds will duke it out and then maybe we can ambush the winner who is hopefully weakened?   The boys decide this is a great idea so they all start yelling and banging things from the second floor hoping to attract the Zeds.  It starts to work!

Finally our boys get the Zeds to follow them up to the third floor.  The Civilians and the Zeds go to war.  But the activation Gods frown upon our nefarious tactics and the Civies wipe out the Zeds and activate before our heroes leaving no chance for a sneak attack.  Rats!  Foiled again..

The good news is that the town is completely cleared of Zeds and our friends can now go around looting almost with impunity.  They find a couple of Zeds hiding in the garage, and Dad2 is surprised and goes OOF. 

Fortunately he recovers and gains consciousness.  Once again there is nothing to loot, but they do come away with some improvised melee weapons.  Hammers, tire irons etc..

Now with no Zeds to interfere, the little group of scavengers go on a looting spree and even check every car and truck for keys.  The looting is still going badly with only Dad2 finding some food.  They also come across two more groups of Civilians hiding out in the buildings and one group of three joins our heroes for mutual survival.  There's another Civilian in one of the trailers but they're not too friendly.  As an added bonus, Brandon finds keys to the red dump truck, and Dad2 finds keys in the Silver Porsch.

This was also about the time that it happened...  It is immediately apparent that Dad2, Nick2, and AJ2 are related to Dad, Nick, and AJ by what happens next.  Brandon must be a Cousin or something.

Everything was going smooth and under control when Nick2 flatly states that he is not leaving this encounter until he gets a Zombie kill because he wants a chance to raise his rep after the encounter.  He is really set on this course of action and after a lot of whining, wheedling, and coercion, Dad2 and the others finally agree.  Dad2 is figuring what the heck, with this rural area the Zeds don't seem to be attracting too easy, it's probably alright.  So Dad2 pulls his shiny convertible out into the street to try to attract a couple of Zeds.  The trouble is that Nick2, AJ2, and Brandon all do the same thing.  I guess they were a little disappointed in the poor Zed attraction rate and figured that if a little bit is good, then more should be better right?  Well....

Before you know it, there are quite a few Zeds on the prowl.   To add insult to injury a barking dog shows up and decides AJ2 is his friend.  This was like a cold splash of ice water in the face and all concerned immediately decided that they would make tracks right away.  No more messing around.  So Brandon (red truck) gets his rig moving.  AJ2 is in the blue truck and it won't start up.  Dad2 just got knocked down.  And to make matters worse, the activation is doubles and Nick2's truck (silver) is out of gas and rolls to a stop!  Doubles again and there is a Zed in the back seat of AJ2's truck.  ATZ is kinda funny like this.  It always knows when it is time to strike.

Then comes a lot of confusion, milling around, screaming, and chaos in general.

Zeds have AJ2 trapped in the blue truck and are tearing at the doors.  Nick2 is still sitting in his out of gas truck (silver) hoping like hell the doors hold a little longer, all the while screaming about wanting to get his chance to raise Rep and begging Brandon to come save him.  Oh, and that's Dad2 laying on the ground by the shiny silver convertible.  Don't bother him right now, he's busy providing a feast for the Zeds now.  Then, you ready for this?  Nick2 fails his See the Feast Test and is hunkered down in the truck.  And Brandon, the nice guy that he is decides to stop the truck and try to help Nick2.  What was he thinking!?!?  AJ2 manages to get out of his truck and winds up going OOF while trying to get into Nick2's truck.  There's another feast on the way.

Doubles again and now there is a Zed in the back seat of Nick2's truck.  There's a double header going on at the Zed feast night as both Dad2 and AJ2 are fully on the menu.  Now there is a Zed in the back seat of Brandon's truck!  Really guys, you should always check when you get in.  Brandon goes OOF and won't recover but luckily one of the Civilian henchmen is there to smoke the Zed and drive the truck if they can manage to get rolling again.  The other two Civilian Henchmen are trying to pull Nick2 out of the truck and carry him back to Brandon's truck.  They kill the Zed in the backseat and get Nick2 out.  But...

The Zeds finish feasting on Dad2 just at the wrong moment.  Several Zeds slam into the rear of Nick2 and the two Civilians who are carrying him.  Miraculously the low rep Civies survive the vicious attack!

But the dice are not kind and the Civies do not survive the second attack.  And neither does Nick2 who is now the third course on the menu tonight.  The Civilian driving Brandon's truck puts the pedal to the medal and runs over a Zed on the way out of town.  Looks like we got four Stars down again.

But there is some good news!  The dog got away :)

ATZ Batrep - Thanksgiving Z Day +3

Well, Mom is back; she's wearing her No Bozos shirt, and she's just plain bad.  After recovering all those cool weapons and supplies, she felt that the town was about looted out.  So the next day she hit the highway and headed for another area in hope of finding more supplies, recruits, and possibly a good base to operate from.   Here we see her speeding down a deserted rural highway when she spots another vehicle coming straight at her and it changes into her lane aggressively.

Mom decides she is not taking any chances.  She slows down a bit, leans out the window, and fires off a couple of snap shots at the oncoming vehicle hoping to score a lucky hit.  Not surprisingly, she misses both shots and alerts a lone Zed that is wandering the highway.

The other car is headed straight for her at high speed, she senses that the driver is going to attempt to bash her.  What a nut!  Doesn't he know that both cars have the same bash value?  At the very last second Mom is able to swerve around the oncoming vehicle while maintaining control but then as the two cars scrape paint jobs passing each other, several shots ring out and Mom is hit.  Mom is stunned but passes her control test and skids to a safe stop.  If she was a cat, that was definitely one life.

Mom quickly recovers and blasts away at the rear of the car with her shotgun.  With amazing luck and precision both, she OD's the Ganger boss and OOFs the Banger driver causing the car to lose control and roll over.  It takes out the Zed and stuns the third banger at the same time.  Now this is a Woman who is destined for legendary Rep!

She comes to a stop and decides to use the long range capability of her SAR on the hapless rogue who is still in the car, but she keeps missing as it is a hard shot in cover.  A little more Zed activity is building.

Mom's in no hurry, she patiently stalks her prey and goes to work with her SAR.  Eventually the fool of a Banger charges her with his BAP, and this is just what she's been waiting for.  Down goes the banger.

Life is good.  Mom quickly goes to work looting the Gangers.  She wants to top off her tank with fuel too, but she needs to get the Zeds off her first.

No worries.  Mom's getting downright surgical with her weapons about now.

She knocks down the last Zed and runs up to pop the weasel and all is quiet.  Now to top off the fuel and head to the next area loaded with enough gear to equip a small army.  Dang she's good at this.

ATZ Batrep - Thanksgiving Z Day +2

After watching Dad and Nick go OOF from a safe distance off map yesterday, Mom decides to go back to camp and have a try for the weapons they dropped next morning.  For this mission she has decided to walk in with no weapons or gear so she will have no encumbrance issues when collecting gear.  She has also opted to change into her "No Bozos" shirt for this special mission.  When Mom gets out the No Bozos shirt, she's dead serious, I can assure you.  Oh by the way, Mags started to turn last night and Mom had to pop the weasel.

Mom fast moves into town and makes it to the mangled corpses of Dad and Nick.  She scoops up the loot.  A SA Rifle, Shotgun, BAP, and meds; wow what a nice catch.  Two Zeds are generated, and of course they show up where she least wants them.  I don't know how Ed does it, but his rules can actually control die rolls anywhere.  I swear there's some kind of strange vodoo-telepathic thing going with ATZ.  On the first activation she rolls doubles and we get a random occurrence.  Uh oh, here we go..  Well, not too bad, it is for packing wrong ammo on primary weapon.  She rolls for which one and the SA Rifle is out of ammo.  No big deal, she still has the shotgun and BAP.  She rolls activation and gets to move and the Zeds don't!  Now everyone is egging her on to go into town and loot some more and try to steal that fuel truck.  So.....

She tells everyone to bugger off and she makes her fast move test and goes back to camp.  She's really making us all look pretty bad.

To be continued..

ATZ Batrep - Thanksgiving Z Day +1

After our close call on Thanksgiving day our heroes sped out of town and made camp in the middle of nowhere.  Dad and Nick felt like it was a very successful day so they allowed themselves four victory beers.

Mom and AJ didn't feel as confident, they just had three.  Mags had three also and was nursing a nasty bite from her OOF result in the melee and everyone was wondering if she could be infected.  Nick wanted to cap her on the spot but Mom said let's wait, we can always do it later if she turns.  After some discussion everyone decided to go back in the morning to raid the gunshop and try to steal that tanker.  AJ decides to stay in camp.  So here they go and right off they see several Zeds lumbering around town.

The group bursts into the gunshop where Dad and Mags are surprised by a couple of Zeds.  No problemo, the Zeds are taken down in melee.  Nick finds a semi-auto rifle!  Mom finds some meds.

So far so good.  All is quiet so the heroes go up stairs to see what they can find, but there is nothing.

The Zeds are heading for the gunshop where they last saw the group, but our heroes are already heading out the back way down the fire escape.

Since the girls still have no weapons, Dad and Nick stand guard while they climb down. The Zeds are getting pretty close.

Our heroes run into the tall office building across the parking lot where they find a single scared civilian hiding.  They have no problem convincing him to join the group and he doesn't even protest when Mom takes his gun.  Dad manages to find some food in here too.

The mob of Zeds is still following and heading for the office building so our Heroes decide to leave the back way.

What the Hey!?!?  Its AJ.  Looks like he got scared all by himself and decided to come anyway.  Here he is entering the board in an effort to catch up.  Complete with a Zed in tow.

A couple of lousy activations has the Zeds in the building and our heroes are still hanging around arguing about what to do next.

And arguing...  Really, they should be a little more observant.

Well that tears it!  While our friends are messing around a mob of Zeds burst through the door and attack!

They actually do a pretty darned good job of beating off the attack, but their new recruit is Zed chow.  He sure didn't last long.

Nick and Mags decide to head over to the silver convertible in the parking lot and lo and behold, Nick finds the keys in it!  About this time AJ comes running up all out of breath, but very happy to be with his friends.

Right about now there is a lot of chatter around the table about how well we are doing, how in control we are, blah blah blah..  Everyone is chasing butterflies and eating jelly donuts etc.. Top o The World stuff..

Then Nick decides he wants the garbage truck.  As he is heading to it, AJ whines about wanting his own car so Nick gives him the keys to the convertible.  Nobody has any idea yet, just how significant this decision will turn out to be.  (ominous background music)

Meanwhile, while the kiddos are playing, Mom and Dad are after much bigger game.  Dad heads straight for that tanker he has been thinking about all night.  Well, how cool would it be to have a mobile gas station?

Mom is back there breaking into the gas station office looking for snacks.  But nothing again.  Nick loots a building on the way to the truck and finds a shotgun!  Man life is good.

And then it happens..  AJ just couldn't stand it.  No matter how many times everyone told him not to start the car, it was just too much for him.  So he fires up the car, and backs out into the street all the while declaring and singing that he is going to run down all the Zeds.  See, the trouble is that there were some Zeds lurking around the corner, and he wasn't paying attention, and as he backed up they mobbed the car.  The car being a convertible, wasn't providing much cover, and he was sitting down in melee so he fought as prone.  The Zeds pull him from the car and OOF him right on the spot.  Yes Sir, lightning strikes VERY fast in this game.

Now, I am not sure if the full ramifications of this little boo boo have hit you yet, but believe me, it was big.  The only good news is that Nick and Mags were just out of See the Feast Range or who the hell knows what would have happened.  Starting and driving the car also drew a bunch of new Zeds into the area.  Anyway, the activation dice aren't cooperating and  there is no way anyone is getting there to help AJ before the Zeds start to tear him limb from limb in their big feast.  Nick is trying to steal that truck!

While the debacle with AJ is going on, Mom has been on a looting rampage and she's pissed cause she's not finding anything.  She runs into the building across the street by herself and is confronted by four Zeds!  Doh!

Luck is with her however, and she manages to drop one and match the others.  She now has a little time to think.

Here is a birds eye view of the feast as more and more Zeds are drawn to it.  But guess what kids?  We have some really bad news for you.  When AJ was yanked from the car, the car was left running and it is drawing 6d6 of Zeds every activation!   WHAT!?!?!?!?!  Holy Moly, we gotta get out of here is the new battle cry around the table.

Oh, and there is Mom kicking some Zed arse in the building.

Here is a nice view of the feast with the running car bringing in more Zeds each turn.  This is not good.

Mom has now lost all interest in looting.  She has ejected from the building and is heading around back to try to sneak out.

Things are going downhill fast, the Zeds are coming in like flies on dog doo.

Zeds everywhere!

Braaaaaiiins.. (sometimes one words says it all)

Right about now is when I first had the revelation that I simply do not have enough Zeds painted.

I really hate it when people say "well, at least it can't get any worse" because that's a bunch of crap, it ALWAYS can get worse.  This is illustrated here with the burning building attracting even more Zeds.  This was a surprise and Mom had to run and grab some red construction paper and a scissors to make this great prop happen on the fly!

Oh, I almost forgot about Dad.  All this while he has been over at the other big rig trying to hot wire it.  He figures with the new situation, his only chance is to get this thing running and bash his way through the Zeds but he simply can't get the doubles he needs.  (We have a house rule that you can try to hot wire each new activation).  To make matters worse, we roll doubles on activation about now and it seems that there is a Zed in the back seat of the truck!!  But don't worry, Dad is so tough that he defeats the Zed even when surprised from the rear.

Meanwhile, back at the feast, Nick is spotted by some Zeds and he gets out of the truck and bashes ones brains in.  Mom is already gone.  She told Nick to get out now as she left the map.  Maggie has already gone from the map also.  Maybe girls are smarter than boys?

Nick never listens in real life, why should he start now?  He decides to run around back and head over to help Dad.  What a nice boy..

Decisions.. decisions.  Things are heating up and Nick is having second thoughts.  Looks like he has groupies.

Uh oh, just great.  Zeds are coming from both sides, and to make things worse, a barking dog comes running up generating another Zed around the corner.  It ALWAYS can get worse.

Activation is the root of all evil.   Nick has a situation on his hands.  And to think that just a few moments ago he was talking about being the stud who would go save Dad.

Maybe he is a stud.  He's blasting and meleeing Zeds left and right with his shotgun.  He's such a nice boy.

Doh!  We got another building on fire and Nick running for his life with Zeds in hot pursuit chanting "Brrrraaaains".  But he's almost to the edge of the map!

Dad finally gives up on the big rig and decides to risk a run back through town.  He's a Born Leader and has a decent chance of keeping his fast move going.  And there doesn't seem to be many Zeds between the river and the town; better get moving then.

Did I mention activation rolls a minute ago?  And just like that, another one bites the dust.  Nick goes OOF when he gets slammed in the back by a horde of Zeds.  He manages to take a couple with him though.

(don't worry though, the dog got away!)

Well, Dad is all alone now and he sees a traffic jam of Zeds forming up ahead.  (sick feeling in stomach)

Dang these things multiply fast.

Take that Granny Zed!!!

Time to go around.  Dad blasts off to the left hoping to leave the Zeds far behind.  He also curses himself for a fool as he forgot to snag Granny Zeds cane for a melee weapon.  Too late now.

Look at Dad go!  He's running like a bat out o hell.  You know, I think he has a chance.

You do remember that the car is still generating Zeds all this time right?  We have been digging up figures from every game we have and recycling left and right.   Dad manages to make another great move and is hiding behind the building and truck.  He might just make it yet!

Left in the dust, many Zeds just wander aimlessly.

Uh oh, it looks like a fair number of Zeds noticed Dad zipping by and are starting to move off to follow.  Well that's it then, there is no turning back, Dad is committed.

Some of the Zeds who finished off Nick are still in the area.  There's only three of them, Dad can handle this!  He's going to make it!  As the Zeds charge home Dad fires two rounds from his BAP and....

He misses BOTH bloody shots!!  AAAAAARRRRRGHHHH!!!  Then he gets OOF'ed in melee.

Just 8" from the edge of the board and a brilliant escape.  Instead, he's Zed chow.

The day after Thanksgiving we have 4 out of 5 Stars down, I'm thinking the campaign is over.  The morale of the story is:

1.  Always listen to Mom.  She's always right.  (and the only one alive)

2.  ATZ is a bloody great game and you're a big lumpy Zed if you don't have it.

Happy Thanksgiving Z Day +1 to everyone!

So whaddya think?  Civilian kill of the week?