Next up, the crews needed to cross a cluttered cargo hold to reach some nice solid looking bulkhead doors that should hold off the zombie horde snapping at their heels. Oh bugger, they are also in front!
They were deifinately out there!
This was broadly following the Mission 2 rules (Zombie Shoot), but modified for 2 player coop. Rather than the hatches being in the middle, they were on the other side of the board, 15 zombies across the middle instead of 12 and all the zombie reinforcement results were basically doubled.
The might golden Piggy was again the central loot counter, with standard 2 each of physical and data loot across the board.
And then started what was basically a 4 hour slog through a never ending horde of zombies!
Given the restricted starting space, we each started off choosing a side of the board each, and then by god they came for us!
Stargrave combat results are so swingy, when you are being faced down by endless slavering hordes, its really hard to put things down for good. 3 or 4 of your guys could be up against a single zombie, and the dice just don't go with you and then someone gets zombie juice in their face.
With our backs against the wall, the first stage of the game was just damage control trying to stay out of reach while cutting the bad guys down to size. The Wellermen found they were being surrounded by newly arrived friends.
On my side the reinforcements were turning up a bit further away, and could be ignored for the time being. So after a bit I was able to turn some assistance to Kash and his boyz. However, in some cases no assistance was required as Dakkabot 3000 headbutted zombie after zombie into gory smears on the deck, and then gunned a few more down for good measure. Dakkabot definitely had enough love for everyone!
We found that the best tactics in close quarters was to have one guy as the lure, and line up 2 or 3 mates on either side. Then when the zombie moved in, they could force combat in support of the target and then gang up on the incoming zombie. We may have been playing it wrong, but it looked awesome so we continued to do this
For example, this zombie did not do well!
On my flank, while things were going OK, one zombie got a bit too close and everyone fluffed their shots. It was looking dicey for my captain, until my Grenadier managed to land a smoke grenade right at her feet, confusing the zombie which proceeded to wander off in the other direction in its turn.
finally we managed to break free and make some moves across the board.
But then everything ground to a halt again as more reinforcements started arriving right in front of us
We managed to grab 4 of the 5 loot tokens, but couldn't face the slog of getting that last data loot. Even my drone got in on the action. My captain unlocked it remotely and the drone swooped in and grabbed it before turbining (its like legging, but for drones without legs) away from the following shamblers.
After some fancy footwork and cooperative turn planning, everyone finally left the following zombies behind and made it to the hatches and safety (for now).
And at this point we were both knackered and gave it up for the night.
The final part was left to the morning!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
The next morning dawned with our crews having spent a crummy night hiding from the horrors and checking out the shinies they had found. I ended up with a fancy lightweight carbine and comms set for my first mate and a long range shotgun for my robot trooper. Handy stuff.
However, safety was still on the other side of a docking bay:
This was a modified version of the coop mission Get to the Lift. And so we had to get to the lifts...
Based on the slog of the night before we started with double the normal number of zombies and toned the reinforcements down to normal levels.
The luscious Golden Piggy again graced the centre of the board, with more loot tokens in each corner.
And so it began. This time there were zombies with guns! so cover became a necessary precaution.
Oh yeah, Da Red Gobbo had found some combat armour somewhere on the station and gleefully got strapped in (old skool orky Dreadnought).
Based on our experience of the night before we managed the initial zombies with limited problems and pushed out from the starting zone:
The gun zombies were actually much easier to deal with than the walkers. If they have a target they don't move, and therefore don't get closer. You can easily hide the closest target in super hard cover and tank the shots, while they don't use cover in return so are relatively easy pickings.
Looks like the last picture I took was about halfway through the game as we needed to motor on so GRaphite could get home
Needless to say, our brave crews managed to sweep through the resistance and shashay into the lifts with no further casualties. A few more shiny geegaws were had.
Da Red Gobbo greatly enjoyed kerb stomping zonbies in his powered monstrosity, and Dakkabot 3000 gave out much love to all in its way.
On my side, we found that smoke grenades were super handy in controlling the actions of the zombies. Grenades and rapid fires were definitely the way to go in putting the beasties down.
On the whole, it was an awesome time rolling dice and worrying about getting your face bitten off.
I really enjoyed how the game played. As each combat engagement is based on a single dice roll by each side, its a world away from the
40k style of tending toward the average. in a turn, your guy can save and save and save and then a single critical comes in and they are dogmeat.
However it means its super quick to play. We found it helpful to have the game summary tables and suchlike posted on the wall to refer to easily. The standard crew sheets are also not super easy as you have 3 A4 bits of paper to shuffle around. I think I'll gin up an alternate version to bring it down to 2.
However, the games are fast to play broadly (when you don't have a million zombies to kill). And while your guys can get taken out relatively quickly in some cases, death is rarely fatal and there are free options so you can always bring your crew back up to full strength for the next game if you have a run of bad luck.
So I can definitely recommend having a go at a bit of a story mode. Looking forward to chapter 2!
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
