G&G XIX : Fort Revenant

Our first marquee event at Gaming & Guinness XIX last week was presented as a bank robbery in the town of Fort Everett, in the Territory (doesn't matter which one, really). The premise was that we would have two teams of four players - two each for the bank robbers and the law posse. Each player would control a hero and a henchmen, and eight models a side seemed a tidy number. A classic gunfight scenario!

But after getting the group picture taken and getting the town set up, I threw in a monkey wrench, and got the leader of each side to read a short script to set the scene:

After having everyone split up to search the town, I queued up the playlist I had made and while suspenseful music played, I outlined the gear everyone had found: a Buffalo gun in the post office, a scoped rifle in the upper floor of the hotel, a LeMat pistol in the bank, and so on. 

I then dramatized how one of my my two bank robbers had found a man in the cells of the sheriff's office who had bitten him!

Earl's excellent Sheriff's office, with cells

Following a stunning transformation, I revealed the plethora of zombie models I had brought with me, including a number of classic zombie gunfighters from Wargames Foundry.

Then I outlined the real scenario: desperadoes and lawmen must band together to survive the zombie outbreak by getting to the eponymous Fort 'Revenant' and closing the doors before being overwhelmed - no mean feat with characters spread all over the town.

A handful of zombies started on the board in random locations, with more appearing randomly each turn, the majority by the cemetery I had built on the sly, and the two burn piles Bryce had made for me as a gift (he also lent me his sweet NWMP outpost!).

The idea for the scenario was that the defenders would drop a fair amount of zombies (wounding them on 5+ or even 4+ on a d6) but they would get up again the following turn on a roll of 3+. Rolling a 6 to wound represented a headshot, removing the zombie permanently. 

But in the first few turns, it seemed the gunfighters either missed the zombies entirely, or rolled sixes to wound, taking them off the board! Where's the fun in that?

With three zombies in the Emporium Saloon, Marhall Cole elected a strategic withdrawal

I did catch a couple of gunfighters at the far end of the street, but only managed to kill (and turn!) one of them. 

And another human fell to friendly fire when the defenders found the gatling gun in the stable, pushed it into the street and fired into the mob in a desperate attempt to the thin the numbers of undead. A devastating weapon, killing almost a dozen zombies over two turns but also jamming each time.

They also managed to repulse a couple of attacks on the machine gun to boot! Both the gatling and the unfired cannon (loaded with grapeshot) were also loans from Bryce - thanks pardner!

All the meanwhile, an inexorable parade of zombies (with models drawn from four different games) was shambling their way from the graveyard to the fort, which was far better than a ticking clock in terms of maintaining a sense of tension. 

In fact, after Marshall Cole fought his way from the Emporium Saloon at one end of the street to the fort on the other end (but alas, not his deputy, Fergus), the defenders quickly deemed the rest of their comrades as a lost cause and sealed the doors of the fort after him.

"Welp, I'm callin' it - close them doors!"

All in all, it was a pretty fun scenario but I would change a few things if we played again; 

• move the stable and gatling gun away from the fort
• make the zombies Grit 2 instead of 3 to they get wounded by sixguns more easily, and can thus get up more! (thanks Scott!)
• give everyone sixguns so they can move and fire (rifles, shotguns and heavy pistols impede movement)
• leave scoped rifles in the fort and let players know they are there so they can get in early and offer covering fire
• make sure someone goes to the assay office and finds the dynamite!
• put more starting zombies between the defenders and the fort

And to be honest, I was hoping the zombie reveal would provoke more of a reaction, but after a zombie outbreak ocurred in the previous night's game of Bang! The Dice Game (courtesy of the "Undead or Alive" expansion), maybe it was inevitable. Or maybe it was when the bluegrass version of "Thriller" came up early in my playlist. 

Or maybe I just have to face the fact that after all the years we have spent playing together, the lads have just learned to expect the unexpected when playing with me? (Sigh.)

Well, at least they liked the t-shirts!