JDMG Scenario 04 - Meet Malexica

This fourth instalment of my Judge Dredd Miniatures Game utilises two new rules from the game - Melee Combat and Mobs. Surprisingly in my three previous games, Melee Combat never cropped up. This scenario introduces another two new Judges from Sector 13 - Street Judges Gilbert and Hillers. It is also notable for the first appearance of Zombie Mistress Malexica, who will be a recurring villain of my campaign and a growing threat to Mega City One. This scenario is the One Night in Mega City One standard scenario found on page 24 of the Blood on the Streets supplement, with one extra Special Rule added.
THE FORCES - MEGA CITY ONE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Street Judge Gilbert - Level:1 Infantry Hero with 0 Experience Points and worth 175 Credits.
Stats - Move 5", Agility +2, Shoot +2, Melee +1, Melee Dice 2D, Will +1, Armour +5, Hits 2.
Equipment - Boot Knife, Daystick, 2x Lawgiver Mk II Pistols, Stumm Gas Grenades and Standard Issue Armour.
Talents - Luck of Grud and Dual Shooter.

Street Judge Hillers - Level:1 Infantry Hero with 0 Experience Points and worth 150 Credits.
Stats - Move 5", Agility +1, Shoot +3, Melee +1, Melee Dice 2D, Will +2, Armour +5, Hits 2.
Equipment - Boot Knife, Daystick, Lawgiver Mk II Pistol, Stumm Gas Grenades and Standard Issue Armour.
Talents - Skilled and Deadly and Leg Shot.

THE FORCES - MALEXICA AND HER ZOMBIES
Malexica - Level:7 Zombie Mistress Infantry Hero with 25 Experience Points and worth 270 Credits.
Stats - Psi Points 15, Move 6", Agility +1(+3*), Shoot +0, Melee +1, Melee Dice 3D, Will +4, Armour +0(+2*), Hits 9.
Equipment - Cybernetic Blades (counts 2x Knives worth 25 Credits)
Talents - Animate the Dead, Brave, Concentrated Mind, Danger Sense, Foresight*, Shroud of the Dead, Silent Action, Stealthy and The Power Within.
Special Rules - Inner Strength, Psychic Conduit, Rise my Beauties! and There Can Only Be One.

3 Mobs of 5 Unarmoured Zombies - Level:0 Illegal Infantry Minions with 0 Experience Points and worth 15 Credits each for a total of 75 Credits per Mob.
Stats - Move 3", Agility -2, Shoot N/A, Melee +1, Melee Dice 1D, Will N/A, Armour N/A, Hits N/A.
Equipment - None.
Special Rules - Dead Flesh and Mindless.

The Justice Department force was worth 325 Credits, whilst the Zombie force was worth 495 Credits. Yet again, the Judges were outscored but this has never mattered in the past. Would it be different this time?
SET UP
The game was fought on a neoprene gaming mat measuring 2' by 2' that came with my Mars Attacks game. Because the scenario in the rulebook was written to be played on a 3' by 3' game board I reduced all set up measurements by a third. The buildings are all part of my Warhammer 40,000 scenery collection. The crashed silver car was produced by Studio Miniatures and the crater by Ziterdes.

The forces are set up in diagonally opposite corners of the board with each zone measuring 8" along the two long sides and 4" along the four shorter edges. I rolled a die for both forces with the Judges rolling a 10 and the Zombies rolling a 4. Whoever rolled lowest were placed first. I chose the large grey and bronze ruined building for the deployment of the Zombie force.

Both sides rolled one die each again to determine who went first with the highest roll taking the first activation of the game. The Judges rolled a 2 and the Zombies a 6, so Malexica and her Zombie Mobs would activate first.
SPECIAL RULES
Because this scenario takes place at night, no model can make any kind of attack against an enemy more than 12" away. In addition, any model using Talents from the Sneaky Does It tree may re-roll its opposed Will check if desired. This certainly applied to Malexica, who had a few Talents from that tree.
I added the following rule - if both Judges are reduced to 0 Hits they are captured by Malexica and taken away to her secret Undercity base, where they will be transformed into Armoured Super Zombies, providing that Malexica has not been reduced to 0 Hits and that she still has enough Zombies left to form a single Mob (in this case, 5 models) to carry the Judges. Otherwise, the Judges return to their Sector House as normal.
VICTORY CONDITIONS
The fight continues until all the models in one of the forces have been removed from the table, either through injury or failure of a Will to Fight test. The remaining force is the victor.

AFTERMATH
So, for the first time in my campaign, the Justice Department suffered a crushing defeat. Judges Gilbert and Hillers were never seen alive again. Malexica had been experimenting on creating Super Zombies. These two Judges would be the first of her Armoured Super Zombies.
Malexica earned the following Experience Points -
+1 for surviving the battle.
+1 for slaying 1 Level:1 Hero.
This earned her 2 Experience Points, taking her up to 27, which was not enough to advance to Level:8. She was 2 Points short of the target required.
CONCLUSIONS
What a great game that was! Where to begin? Let me start with why the Judges fared so badly. Quite simply it was all down to some bad dice rolling for them. Using Hi-Ex rounds against Zombies was entirely the right tactic. Killing Zombies works differently to killing or disabling other models. First of all, Zombies do not have any Hits, so they can absorb a lot of damage. To kill a Zombie, an attacker must roll one D10 and add the damage of the weapon to this roll. On a result of 10+, the Zombie is removed as a casualty. Hi-Ex rounds do 3 Hits of damage, which is doubled against Zombies because of its explosive effects. So the Judges were getting a +6 bonus to their rolls to kill. Sadly, I rolled a lot of low numbers for their damage results, so they struggled to whittle down the Mobs. That was just bad luck - it can happen to anyone. I was hoping they'd wipe out most, if not all of the zombies before they tackled Malexica. Together, they could have defeated her. But one on one, with her at full strength, it was no surprise she defeated Judge Gilbert so easily. When the Zombie Mob attacked Judge Hillers, they were rolling 9 dice to hit and they scored a couple of critical hits (a natural roll of 10), meaning Hillers had to roll a 10 on her 2 dice just to tie with them. She didn't and down she went.
Regarding the Comic Life program, I am learning a lot more about what it can do, and I'm loving it more and more. One of the things I learned was how to transfer fonts from one template to another. My comic strips are based on the Sc-Fi template. I opened the Zombies template and created the sound effects - Groan!, Grargh!, Grunt! and Glurgh! - using the Zombie font. Then I simply cut and pasted them to my comic strip as needed. Very easy to do but so effective.
I also experimented with a number of ways to show Malexica using her Psi Powers. In the end I opted for her green spiky speech bubbles to show her use of psionics. Although not properly explained, when Malexica used her Psychic Boost on page 2, what she was actually using was the Psi Talent, Foresight. This granted her a +2 bonus to her Agility and Armour stats for the rest of the game.
I also darkened all of my photos by 25% to indicate that this battle took place at night. I could have gone darker but it looked too dark when I went up to 40% or higher.
There is a lot of work involved in creating these comic style batreps but I thoroughly enjoy doing them and I have a lot more scenarios planned. Malexica will return. I'm not sure when but when the time is right she'll be back. I haven't decided what my next scenario will be but I fancy doing a big battle that features all seven of my Judges I have used in the first three episodes. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed playing and producing it.

JDMG MC1 Zombie Master/Mistress 01

These past few months I have almost solely concentrated on my Judge Dredd Miniatures Game campaign. Despite my blog being called Vampifan's World of the Undead not all of my posts are undead related.  Judge Dredd would appear to fall outside of the undead category. But not so. The undead element often crops up in the Judge Dredd comic series. Ghosts, vampires and zombies have all appeared, along with such supernatural entities as demons and werewolves. I have very definite plans for including the undead in my JDMG campaign.

One of the most powerful villains to ever appear in the Judge Dredd series was Sabbat the Necromagus (Zombie Master). Arriving from the year 2178, Sabbat reanimated the dead across the entire world, sparking  the Fourth World War. Several Mega Cities were completely overrun, prompting the remainder to nuke them out of existence, killing billions. Set mainly in 2114 it featured in the Judgement Day story, which was published in 1992. The series is mainly notable because it was writer Garth Ennis' longest Dredd story, because it killed off most of the supporting cast of the Judge Dredd series, and because it was the first story to feature Johnny Alpha since he was killed off at the end of the Strontium Dog series (from Alpha's point of view it was set two years before his death). After a lengthy fight, Dredd and Alpha eventually managed to decapitate Sabbat, and left him helpless, powerless, but still alive (although a story published three months later revealed he had lost his mind and was reduced to a drooling vegetable). At the moment of Sabbat's defeat, his zombies instantly "switched off" and collapsed all over the world at the eleventh hour. Sabbat was, by far, the most powerful zombie master to have ever walked the planet. This is reflected in his stats in the JDMG rulebook, where he is listed as a Level:22 Infantry Hero costing 700 Credits. This makes him more powerful than Judge Dredd - a Level:20 Infantry Hero worth 625 Credits. He has 23 Talents - Animate the Dead, Brave, Concentrated Mind, Critical Reserves, Danger Sense, Daze, Demoralise, Die Hard, Die Harder, Heart Rip, Heroic Rush, Inspire, Luck of Grud x2, Martial Artist, Mental Sting, Mind Shield, Nerves of Steel, Parry, Resist Flames, Shroud of the Dead, Slippery and The Power Within. His Psi Score is 38. He has three Special Rules - Zombie Master - he is the Zombie Master and uses the Psychic Conduit and Rise, Rise my Beauties! Special Rules from the Zombie Hordes section. Second is Natural Talent, which when using the Animate the Dead Psi Talent, allows him to animate all eligible models within range. Thirdly, is Sabbat's Cloak. Animated by the spirits of the those he has pulled from the afterlife, Sabbat's Cloak constantly chides him but also counts as Leather Armour and grants him the Situational Awareness Talent. The figure of Sabbat was produced by Warlord Games and I must admit I am not a big fan of the sculpt. It is okay, I suppose, but I much prefer the Zombie Mistress figure.

I have two figures of Zombie Mistress Malexica. The foot figure was produced by Warlord Games and the bike riding version was sculpted by Dave Stone for Wargames Terrain Workshop. I love both versions. I was quite surprised to see just how closely Dave's version matched the foot figure and the "skeleton" bike is inspired. I removed the very tiny slottatab from the foot figure and bulked out the bottom of her cloak with Milliput so that I could more easily glue her to a 30mm diameter MDF base (she is a very tall figure due to her floating in mid air). The mounted version was glued to a 25mm by 70mm MDF base with rounded corners. I should point out that Malexica is not a character from the official Judge Dredd series but is entirely my own creation. I plan on making her the chief villain of my JDMG campaign. She was originally called Millicent Carr, a resident of Mega City One. Upon reaching puberty, her psychic powers emanated. She tried hard to keep them hidden but eventually her secret was revealed and she fled home just before the Judges arrived to take her away. Shunned by society she retreated to the Undercity beneath Sector 13, where my campaign is based. There, she discovered the true nature of her power, and unleashed psychic control of the dead, animating them into shuffling zombies. Now she will have her revenge on the city that has spurned her. At present, she is a Level:7 Infantry Hero with 15 Psi Points. She has 8 Talents - Animate the Dead, Brave, Concentrated Mind, Danger Sense, Foresight, Shroud of the Dead, Silent Action, Stealthy and the Power Within. She is armed with Cybernetic Blades on her fingers, which count as a Knife worth 25 Credits. She is worth 270 Credits.

Zombicide: Black Plague Abomination and Necromancer

The two most powerful enemies in the Zombicide: Black Plague core set are the Abomination and the Necromancer. Let's take a closer look at them.

The fearsome Abomination requires a minimum of 3 points of damage to kill and killing it earns the Survivor 5 experience points. There is no Damage 3 weapon in the Zombicide: Black Plague core set. To slay the Abomination, the Survivors must throw Dragon Bile in its Zone and ignite it with a Torch, creating Dragon Fire. This will kill the Abomination and anyone else standing in that Zone, including Survivors. Incidentally, Samson, the dwarf Survivor can also kill an Abomination if he reaches Red Level and uses a Damage 2 weapon in conjunction with his +1 Damage: Melee Skill.
If an Abomination wounds a Survivor the damage may not be prevented by an Armour roll. Ouch!

Being the most evil of all opponents, Necromancers do their best to spread havoc and seize power. They don't have time to battle survivors on their own, and try to flee as soon as they are discovered. Necromancers follow these special rules.

• The Necromancer is treated as a Zombie for game purposes.
• The Necromancer has 1 Action per Turn, 1 wound and grants 1 experience point to the Survivor who kills him.
• A Necromancer comes with his own infected army. When a Necromancer appears, put an additional Spawn token (on its "Necromancer" side) on his entry Zone. Then, immediately resolve a regular Zombie Spawn for it. From now on, the Necromancer Spawn Zone is active: it spawns Zombies in the same way a standard Spawn Zone would. 
• Each subsequent drawing of additional Necromancer Zombie cards, no matter the type, gives an extra Activation to every Necromancer on the board until they flee or die.
• The game is immediately lost if a Necromancer manages to escape once there is a total of 6 Zombie Spawn Points on the board (including the Necromancer Zombie Spawn tokens).
• A Necromancer tries to flee the board. If there are no Survivors in his Zone for him to attack during his Activation, he moves 1 Zone toward the nearest Spawn Zone (NOT his entry Zone), ignoring any Survivors he might see. if several escape Spawn Zones are at the same distance, choose one.
• A Necromancer escapes the board as soon as he activates on his escape Spawn Zone. Replace the Necromancer Spawn token it introduced on the board with a standard Zombie Spawn token.
• Killing a Necromancer slows down the invasion. If you manage to kill it, choose a Spawn Zone (including its own Necromancer spawn Zone) and remove it from the board. If the Necromancer Spawn Zone is still on the board after this removal. replace it with a standard one. In special circumstances, all Spawn Zone tokens may end in the same Zone. In that case, the Necromancer still comes with an additional Necromancer Spawn token, but flees as soon as he activates.

I have lost more games by having a Necromancer escape than by any other means. They have to be stopped at all costs, but this is not always possible. Worst case scenario is that a Necromancer spawns adjacent to a normal Zombie Spawn token. It has happened to me and unless your Survivors are close by you can't stop him escaping. The Abomination is very hard to kill, which makes him a serious threat. The Necromancer is very easy to kill but only if a Survivor can reach him in time.
With the introduction of the new expansion sets you can form a Cabal of Necromancers, allowing you to field more than one Necromancer on the board at the same time. I'll cover this topic in a later post.

Zombicide: Black Plague - An Introduction

Christmas has come slightly early for me. A few days ago I received my copy of Zombicide: Black Plague and I was so incredibly overjoyed. When I backed this Kickstarter project in June of this year, Cool Mini Or Not and Guillotine Games announced that the game would ship in time for Christmas 2015. I doubted it would happen... but I was wrong - it has! Okay, so it's ONLY the basic boxed set. All the add-ons and stretch goals will ship in early 2016, but even so, what a fantastic Christmas present. To the left of here is the game box sitting on my dining room table, just waiting to be opened. Let's take a look inside.

The first thing you see is the rulebook, which runs to 60 pages in full colour. It looks gorgeous! I have read it from cover to cover and I'm mightily impressed with it. I can't find a single fault with it. Next comes a big box featuring a stunning piece of artwork showing the six heroes of the game - Ann the Warrior Nun, Baldric the Wizard, Clovis the Fighter, Nelly the Serving Girl, Samson the Dwarf and Silas the Elf.

Inside this box are two  plastic trays of figures and other items. The top tray holds the six 32mm scale Hero figures as well as the Abomination Zombie, the Necromancer and nine assorted Zombies (2 Fatties, 2 Runners and 5 Walkers). To the left are spaces for storing the dice, coloured bases and pegs (not shown) and the game cards. The Zombie Encounter deck is shown in my photo. Finally, is something new that Guillotine Games have designed - the Hero's Dashboard. This is a HUGE improvement on the old character ID cards from previous Zombicide games. I love them. They are one of my favourite parts of the game. I'll show one in use a little later.

The bottom tray is filled with Zombie figures - 54 in total. From left to right are a female Walker, a male Runner, a male Walker, a male Fatty, a second female Walker, a second male Runner, two more male Walkers and a second male Fatty. Coupled with the nine Zombie  figures from the top tray that is seven of each sculpt. I can see me converting more than half of these. The sculpting of all of the figures is just superb. These are going to be a labour of love to paint.

As promised, here is a closer look at the Dashboard, set up for the start of play. Your Hero card sits in the middle of the board. In this case I have chosen Ann the Warrior Nun. Her skills are listed at the bottom of her card and next to each skill is a slot in the dashboard to fit a coloured peg to show which skills she has chosen as the game progresses. There is space at the top right of the ID card to place a weapon or item mentioned on the card (an extra Dagger for Ann) or one of the pieces of Armour. In the top left corner of the Dashboard are four slots to show how many wounds a Hero has, ranging from 0 to 3. In Zombicide: Black Plague, Heroes now have three wounds, making them more durable than their contemporary counterparts. To the left and right of the Dashboard are trays to show which item or weapon the Hero is holding in their hands. Here, I have placed the Short Sword (one of the six starting weapons) in Ann's right hand. Further items and weapons can be stowed away in any of the five slots found in the top right corner of the Dashboard. These represent the hero's Back Pack and the cards stand upright. Finally, along the bottom of the Dashboard is your Experience Tracker, which slides from left to right as the Hero earns more experience. I have also shown the deck of additional Hero ID Cards, the Items deck and the figure of Ann with her coloured base corresponding to the colour of her pegs, which in this case is yellow.

Shown above are the two sheets of counters printed on very thick card. The two large tiles in the centre of each sheet are the Vaults. Vaults contain powerful artefacts (much like the Pimp-mobiles from the original game) and are also a handy way to take short cuts across the game board.

Last but by no means least are the nine game tiles. These are all double-sided, giving you endless gaming set-up possibilities. They are printed on the same thick card as the counters, so will stand up to a lot of wear and tear.

Readers of my blog will probably know by now that Zombicide is my all time favourite board-game, so it seems obvious that this review of Zombicide: Black Plague will be biased. That can't be helped and I make no apologies for it. The bottom line is that I like this fantasy based expansion set more than the modern day sets. The rules will be very familiar to anyone who has played any of the contemporary sets. But what makes them better are the changes, all of which I approve of. I have already mentioned the new Dashboard. This is such a massive improvement on the old-style Character ID cards that I hope Guillotine Games will produce them for the contemporary sets. It's unlikely to happen but I can dream, can't I?
Fatties now spawn on their own, without their pair of Walkers accompanying them. The extra Wound and the introduction of armour makes Survivors have a much better chance of surviving without making them too powerful. But best of all, are the new Friendly Fire rules. Probably the most controversial and least popular rule in previous Zombicide sets was the Target Priority rule used in Ranged Combat. This rule made fellow Survivors the first targets to be hit by ranged fire. I know many people hated this rule or couldn't understand why this had to be. Some gamers ignored it completely. I accepted it as part of the game but used canny tactics to ensure such a situation never arose. In Zombicide: Black Plague, Friendly Fire only occurs if you fail to hit your target. The player(s) then choose which Survivor in that Zone is hit. But this is not automatic as the wound(s) can be avoided by making a successful Armour roll for the Hero chosen. This seems far more logical to me and is a rule that should be used in ALL games of Zombicide.
I have played the tutorial scenario twice and the first two scenarios once each, winning in every case. Bear in mind, these are all described as being easy scenarios. But even so, I took to the new rules straight away and thoroughly enjoyed playing them all. This is one game that will get played a LOT in the coming months.
Only those people who made a pledge for the game on Kickstarter will be receiving this boxed set so early. Everyone else will have to wait until early 2016 before they can buy it. Consequently, I'm not giving out price details. My final verdict is that Zombicide: Black Plague is the best zombie board-game ever! It surpasses the original Zombicide game in so many ways and I can only give it my very highest recommendation. As it stands it is damned near perfect but once the add-ons and stretch goals are released it will be just awesome! When I first learned that Guillotine Games were going to produce a fantasy version of Zombicide, I was a tad sceptical about it. But that passed within seconds when I realised the potential of the game. Every Zombicide set produced so far has improved on the previous ones. Guillotine Games have a proven track record of striking gold with their games. So surely Zombicide: Black Plague HAD to be something special? I'm telling you, folks, IT IS!