My FFO Campaign - Mayhem City Massacre part 3 - Week 2

TURN 6.   Activation - Crips = 1, Police = 4, Zombies = 3, PEFs =6.

 The cops took time out from shooting zombies to check the status of the five prone gang members. It was quite apparent that four were dead but Geoff Brown noticed that one of them, Jevon Yenga, was still breathing.
"Hey, great stuff!" he exclaimed, "we've got a live one."
"We need to get him out of here and find out what happened," Carole Malia said.
"Agreed," replied Paul Muni.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth when a male zombie lunged at him with its one good arm trying to grab hold of him. It moaned loudly in response to being so close to warm flesh. Flesh that it wanted to devour.

Patrolman Muni acted on pure instinct and adrenaline. He raised his Shotgun and at almost point blank range shot the zombie in the mouth, killing him instantly.
Both sides passed 1d6 on the Charge Into Melee test (see p.30), which allowed Muni to fire once before the zombie reached him. Fortunately for him, his shot was not only accurate but also fatal as well.

A group of four zombies suddenly charged at "Stewie" Whincup. He fired his 12 Gauge Remington Pump-Action Shotgun at the closest zombie and hit him in the left thigh. The zombie crumpled to the ground and snarled back at "Stewie."
Then things went from bad to worse for the unfortunate patrolman. His Shotgun suddenly clicked on empty. "Oh shit!" he muttered. "What a time to run out of ammo!"
"Stewie" won the Charge Into Melee test by 2-1, which allowed him to fire as many shots as the target rating of his gun, which was 3. He rolled a 6 followed by double 1s. To make matters worse, when he rolled for damage (see p.27) he rolled higher than the Shotgun's Impact of 2 and so just scored a Knock Down result. The double 1s meant that his Shotgun had run out of ammo.

"Stewie" was forced to use his now useless Shotgun as a club to defend himself against three rabid zombies. At this point he totally ran out of luck. The first zombie to reach him knocked him off balance and he fell to the ground, hitting his skull on the concrete pavement. He blacked out.
The zombie beat him in Melee Combat by 2-1 and scored a  Knock Down result. "Stewie" immediately took the Recover From Knock Down test (see Police QRS) but only passed 1d6, meaning he was now Out Of the Fight.

The other zombies pounced on him and began ripping and tearing chunks of flesh from his prone body. I rolled to see how long their feasting would last (see p.48) and scored a 5. At the end of Turn 11 they would finish feasting upon him by which time he'd be long dead.

At the back of  the warehouse three zombies charged at Quadri and Michelle. The Crips Gangstas let rip with their Assault Rifles and killed all three in a hail of gunfire before the zombies could reach them. In reality, the zombies stood little chance against two Rep:5 Gangers with Shooting Skills of 5 and armed with Assault Rifles (Target Rating:3 and Impact:3). Quadri and Michelle easily won the Charge Into Melee test and were allowed to fire three times each. Their shooting was devastating. They both hit twice and between them they scored three Obviously Dead results (two for Michelle and one for Quadri).

The five zombies who had been knocked down last Turn stood back up. The others moved even closer towards the cops. In this photo above you can see the three new zombies who appeared at the end of last Turn just behind the group of six.

Slowly walking along the road from the other side of the warehouse were the second set of three newly arrived zombies. Note that I have replaced the dead zombies with corpses, just to make the board a bit tidier.

 More and more zombies were arriving on the scene in a never ending wave.

Quadri and Michelle quietly slipped out of the warehouse's back door and left the board.

I rolled 4d6 for zombie reinforcements at the front of the warehouse. Two arrived at 12 o'clock, which placed them inside the warehouse.

Then I rolled 6d6 for zombie reinforcements from the point where Quadri and Michelle had fired. Four were placed at 10 o'clock from the shooting, which put them at the back of the car park. At this point there were 36 active zombies on the board and just 3 active Police. These were pretty atrocious odds.
TURN 7.   Activation - Police = 5, Zombies = 3, PEFs = 2.
At this point the Police now replaced the Crips as the Human Player Group, but what a time for them to fail to activate! A total of 10 zombies were in Charge range of the 3 cops. Let battle commence!

Four zombies surrounded Paul Muni. He managed to fire a single shot before they reached him but in his panic he fired high and wide, hitting no one. After that he was literally fighting for his life. He managed to push one zombie, a very old white-haired male, on to its back with his Shotgun. But a second zombie grabbed hold of his Shotgun. The pair then had a grappling contest to see who could wrest it from the others hands. Neither succeeded. However, a female zombie to the left of him made a grab for Muni's legs. He fell over and screamed in agony as she tore a chunk of flesh from his left thigh. He was unable to do anything to stop the fourth zombie from pouncing on him and ripping out his throat with its teeth.

Both sides passed 1d6 on the Charge Into Melee test, which gave Muni the opportunity to fire once. He rolled badly and missed. In the first of the four Melee contests, Muni won by 3-2 but only scored a Knock Down result. In the second contest Muni drew 2-2 with the zombie. This meant they were evenly matched, which gave the following zombies a +1d6 bonus to hit him (see p.31). The third zombie beat Muni by 3-2 and knocked him down. Muni only passed 1d6 on the Recover from Knock Down test and was rendered Out Of the Fight. This left the fourth zombie with a free attack with a +2d6 modifier to hit a prone target The zombie won 3-0, which also resulted in Out Of the Fight. It was game over for Patrolman Paul Muni. I rolled 1d6 to see how long the zombies would feast on him and rolled a 4.

Patrolwoman Carole Malia was the next to fall in the line of duty. As three zombies charged at her, she totally freaked out and snap-fired her pistol without aiming. Twice she fired and twice she missed. She wrestled with a zombie whom she thought looked remarkably like Victoria Beckham, wearing a black miniskirt. This left her practically defenceless against the other two. The second zombie lunged at her waist and knocked her to the ground. As she lay, momentarily stunned, her last thought was, "please God, make it quick!" The third zombie duly obliged and sank his teeth into her exposed neck. She quickly bled to death as the zombie gulped down her warm blood as quick as it could swallow.

This Turn started badly for Carole and just went downhill from there on. She did win the Charge Into Melee test by 2-1 but her shooting was woefully bad. She missed with both shots. A Pistol does not count as an Improvised Weapon under the FFO rules (see p.29) and so she was classed as being Unarmed. This gave her already poor Melee score of 2 a further -1d6 modifier. Incredibly, against the first zombie she drew 1-1. However, this meant she was now evenly matched, which gave the next two zombies a +1d6 bonus to hit. The second zombie won the combat by 2-0 and knocked Carole down. She did remarkably well to pass 2d6 on the Recover From Knock Down test but because she was not wearing body armour she was Stunned. This gave the third zombie a +3d6 bonus to hit her (+1d6 for her being evenly matched and still in combat and +2d6 for her being prone). The zombie won the combat 4-0 and scored an Obviously Dead result on her. The feasting on Patrolwoman Carole Malia would also last for 4 Turns.

Last man standing at this point was Patrolman Geoff Brown. He went down even quicker than his two colleagues. He failed to fire at the three zombies before they reached him. He simply froze. The last thing he remembered was being knocked down and having half of his face bitten off. It hurt like hell but he quickly fell into unconciousness and never recovered.

Geoff lost the Charge Into Melee test by 1-0, which meant he could not fire at his attackers before they reached him. He then lost the first Melee contest by 2-1 and got Knocked Down. Alas, he only passed 1d6 on the Recover From Knock Down test and he went Out Of the Fight. The other two zombies began to feast upon him, a process that would last for 2 more Turns.

It was all over. The Crips had been massacred and the Police had been massacred. This left two groups of winners - the Kill Krazy Kommandos and of course, the zombies. Whoever said zombies were too easy to kill?

COMMENTS. I must admit that this was far and away the most enjoyable game of ATZ-FFO that I have ever played. Whenever I play with Team Vampifan I always want them to do well but I never fudge the dice to help them out. With this game I really did not care who won or lost. All that mattered to me was telling an interesting story. I really did think I'd blown it by the end of Turn 1. I was not expecting to see such a one-sided fight. Once the Kill Krazy Kommandos started shooting, the Crips had no chance at all. I could have stopped there but I'm mighty glad I didn't. I keep on saying this but it's true, the beauty of games like this is that they can take on a mind of their own and head off in directions you never even considered. For sure the rules aren't perfect (what game is?) but they work well enough for me and at the end of the  day, that's all that matters.
Incidentally, for those of you wondering about the fate of Crips Gangsta, Jevon Yenga, who went Out Of the Fight in Turn 1 but who recovered thanks to a Random Event card, he did escape at the end. The zombies around him were far too busy feasting on the four cops to notice him slip away. So at the end, four Crips Gangstas died, including second-in-command Frederic Blackmore. Although four did escape, gang leader Adam Obunge would face a leadership challenge from Quadri Ogunkoya.
The one thing I did learn from this scenario was just how dangerous zombies can be if they are allowed to grow in numbers. At the start of turn 7, the final turn, the zombies outnumbered the police by 36 to 3. That could only end in one way and, predictably, it did! Heed this lesson, my friends. Keep the zombie numbers down as low as possible!