Home Sweet Home

It has been a while but she's back!  LTL Mom finally got off her duff and came back to the table for a rousing game of ATZ.  Previously, we've tried several times, (always unsuccessfully) to complete a "take back" mission so our group of Survivors would have a base of operations and a place to call home.  Mom claims we've been setting our sights a little too high with the urban settings so this time she sought out a more likely locale; a trailer park!  Being a Woman, a trailer is not her first choice for a home but she's decided that our group of knuckleheads is unlikely to get anything better in the foreseeable future.

For this mission the line up was LTL Mom, LTL Dad, Nick, and Jil who is making his first appearance in the family campaign.  Jil now has quite a bit of chain reaction experience under his belt making this crew fairly professional compared to the hodge-podge of beginners we usually have involved.  This means no excuses this time!

I didn't realize until I started blogging that some of the pics came out a bit fuzzy, sorry for that.

LTL Mom and her Immortals getting ready for battle.

A typical East Texas trailer park with a small farm house to one side.

Clan LTL charges onto the map and enters a small shanty.  Two survivor females are laying low within and are just too happy to join Mom's group!  What a nice start to the mission.  We'll call them Red and Blondie.
Dad yells out "Hurry up you girls!  Here they come, we're about to have company!"  "You can chat about the latest in camo fashions later."

Sure enough, the Zeds have taken notice of the intruders and are on the way.

The adults quickly form a battle strategy and Nick says he's just gonna post up and blast anything that looks at him.  We quickly figured out that since Dad is now Rep 6, he can only miss a non-charging Zed with a 1 on the die, and a hit is now a autokill with the easy to hit rule on non-charging Zeds.  Very nice perk.  So Dad and the new girls start cleaning up the Zeds on the perimeter while Mom, Jil, and Nick start dropping the mobs.

The only trouble is that new Zeds keep coming to the sound of the guns at an alarming rate.  Mom wants to start taking them down in melee, Dad does not.  Dad hates melee!  I mean, why in the heck would you ever want to go fisties with a Zed when your holding a perfectly good weapon!?!?

Mom and her team at the shooting gallery.

Roaches, rats, and rabbits got nothing on Zeds when it comes to reproduction rates.

Mom gets her way and the group starts making plans to take down some Zeds in melee.  Here is Red and Blondie going to the mat with a very large Zed.  Dad looks on and prepares to "one shot" the Zed Doc.

Nick and Jil stand off and keep shooting while Mom charges in with her sword to take down a Zed.

All the girls take down their Zeds in melee.  The boys drop theirs with gunfire.

But there's still plenty of Zeds!  Gee wiz these things are a pain in the arse.

The group calmly starts moving to the weakest Zed position while carefully popping a few shots and watching the flank and rear.  Mom and Jil go on melee elimination detail.

By keeping a cool head and being patient, the group is steadily whittling away at the numbers of Zeds.  Some controlled melees mixed with careful shooting is lowering the number of new Zeds attracted to the party.

We're almost under control now!  The Zed sheriff drops a BAP which will come in handy since Jil forgot to pack extra ammo for his!

Great job gang, only one Zed left.  You can see him at the corner of the shack in the distance.

That last Zed is in real big trouble, wouldn't you agree?  Now to get down to business.  We need to clear all the buildings and we're home free!  We might just finally do it this time.. or maybe not..

 LTL Mom, Dad, and Red all go down in melee to a single Zed!  I'm telling you now, there was a deafening silence at the table for a moment while this soaked in.  Fortunately Mom and Dad only got stunned!
ATZ is a truly brutal game.  It always strikes with disaster when you're feeling at your best.  It was now that I pointedly reminded LTL Mom why I NEVER like to melee unless ABSOLUTELY necessary!  Another fortunate thing was that Jil and Nick weren't screwing around and dropped their Zed cold and activated first next round to come save us.  The moral of the story is no matter how high your rep, and how well you play, you better not get cocky in this game!

The boys even manage to recover Red with no adverse effects.  However, she WILL have to check for infection after the mission.

Clan LTL's trail of destruction thus far!

In the next trailer we find a couple of gangers hiding out.  A hard case with a SMG and a wannabe with an SMG also.  These two lads are overawed at the strength of our group and eagerly join us despite the fact that we are Survivors.  We'll be watching those two closely.

Now our group made a little bit of a mistake.  Mom and Jil thought it would be a great idea to send the two gangers in to search the next trailer.  The only trouble is that they found a couple of survivors in there which makes for pretty bad odds of a peaceable resolution without the superior numbers of the entire group present.  However, miraculously, (and due to some crazy dice results) the gangers pulled it off and the survivors joined the group unconditionally!  Now Clan LTL has a small army at it's back.  What a great mission so far.

Moving on to the farmhouse we find the now large group confronting a single Zed.  After that close call earlier we decide to take her down via small arms.

And more Zeds are attracted!  Here we go again.  Dad, Nick and Jil go out first and whack a couple in the front yard.

Which attracts even more Zeds!  We definitely do not need this to become an epidemic again so the group opts to go back into some selected melees.

Mom and her gals taking down a Zed jogger.

Cleaning out the last couple of shanties is pretty uneventful.  A couple of Zeds surprised a couple of the NPC gals but they were shot down in the charge.  No new Zeds were attracted which meant this take back mission was over, and successful!!!

LTL Mom immediately started cracking the whip and putting everyone to work.  She wouldn't let us rest until all the Zeds were disposed of and the houses swept and cleaned.  She took the farm house for herself and it wasn't long before she had flower beds, pigs, and chickens about.  She says LTL Dad can sleep in the out house.

So here's the way our friends finished up.  We have a new all time first with Dad making it to a lofty Rep 7.  He is now a one shot, one kill powerhouse.  Until he gets whacked..
Mom made another rep level as well!  She is now Rep 6.  Nick didn't make the cut this time but Jil did and he's already sitting at Rep 5.

One of our new Survivors made a Rep advancement as well.  None of the girls did and Red never had a chance because she went OOF.  She did get a great break though since she turned out to not be infected!

Both of our new Ganger additions to Clan LTL made Rep advancements.  The wannabe is now Rep 3 and the hard case is now a real threat with a Rep 6 rating.  It may be difficult to keep these guys in line during the campaign but we shall see.  Maybe we can get them to turn over a new leaf?  I doubt it.

Well that was fun!  I cannot wait to get Mom back on track for some more games.  Now that we have a home base of sorts we can start collecting more junk.
Go play some ATZ!
LTL Dad