The Setup
Starting a month and a half ago, the RMiC, Dante di Pietro started a storyline of strange invaders attacking Stierbach, a North Virginia barony. It manifest as a series of e-mails to the Atlantian Rapier Net, each one recounting the delivery of a message to one of the various units, baronies, or other assortments of fencers (Gardiner’s, the Academie, the Dragoons), calling for aid against the invader. There was also a message to the Kappellenfechters, inviting them up to participate in wargames and demonstrate their skill, which I got a real kick out of writing the response to (lots of compliments, too).
So I rounded up fencers: Joe and Tony and Dreya, though she was a maybe, and eventually work got the better of her (and then illness got the better of work). I’d hoped to have a full car and a bit more total experience representing the Kfechters, but was still alright with the crew and looking forward to it. I took a shot at drumming up some additional representation from the barony, but not successfully (Benjamin was there, but he’d been planning to do it as his last MiT event).
The past week it had been pissing down rain and I admit Friday night I mulled calling Joe and Tony and telling them to have a good Saturday at home. But optimism got the better of me, and we rolled out at 6:30 on a gray, gray day. I had a Windmasters Banner to rally the troops with, but because of the rain it stayed home. We drove up, hit the WaWa, and got to site just after 10.
And then the awesome happened
18 fencers showed up, my three made up 1/6th, so I was pretty okay with our proportional representation but still could’ve stood to have more (those blasted Dragoons had 5, though it was their backyard).
Dante gathered us up, and said “Who wants to be the bad guys?” Two hands went up. Alric the Mad was one. I was the other. So I ended up commander of the bad guys and got to round up an army of bad guys. Then Dante took us aside and told us just what the bad guys were: Zed heads.
I jumped up and down and, kinda, you know, shrieked like a little girl. At least half of my team thanked me for picking them. We were all pretty darn giddy. There were, of course, limitations: we were not zoombies. Slow moving, nothing in the offhand, and could only say one thing: “Braaaaains”. Of course, we had advantages: numbers (a zombie horde must, afterall, be a horde), and only one vulnerability, the head.
We ended up split 10 zombies to 7 humans, with a higher average skill level among the zombies.
Round One, First Contact:
First scenario was a field battle, zombies against the defenders. Points would go to the zombies for killing all humans (one point), and being really good as zombies (1-2 points). Points would go to the defenders for killing all zombies.
Now, inability to communicate does not mean inability to have strategy: I figured the humans had the advantage of mobility, and zombies had to stay horde-esque. So I had our two flankers on each end of the line refuse to prevent the humans getting into our backfield and DFBing us. The humans obligingly split into pairs and advanced to meet our line, with Celric in their rear commanding.
So at every point along our line, we had a numerical advantage, and could continue pushing forward at our zombie pace while they stayed static, sacrificing their mobility. So while I died quickly (rather, I “Diiiiiiedddd”), the rest of the zombies pushed right over the humans. We got a point for that and one for being good zombies.
Thinking back on it, the humans should have run the right. The zombies were a low-mobility line. We couldn’t have done anything to counter it, while they brought seven against two or three of us at the most and rolled over us. It needs a re-running, definitely.
Rounds 2 – 5: The Farmhouse
’cause every zombie movie needs a farmhouse.
There was a haybale “farmhouse”, a square five bales on a side. Assume arbitrary North-South alignment, there were two doors, one on the west side, one on the south side, each one bale away from the southwest corner. There were three “windows”, two on the north side, one on the right side.
A series of scenarios followed for the humans (getting survivors out, getting reinforcements in, getting the zombies inside and burning the whole thing down.
While these were all rez battles, with humans rezzing as zombies, the victory conditions were either achieved or thwarted long before any significant rezzing occurred.
Zombies could “punch through” the house and pull humans out, zombifying them. This prevented the humans from forming killing cups near the door. That made zombies overwhelming the house pretty quick, but in almost all cases survivors had either jumped out the window, or in the window, or whatever by that point.
Somewhere in here I got to demonstrate my copious knowledge of Jonathan Coulton music.
By the end of round 5, the zombies had gotten some points for being good zombies, but the humans had gathered a number of points for victory conditions.
Really, the house was indefensible, and I wonder what would have happened if the humans had punched out of the house at “lay on” each time.
Round 6: Humans Get Their Revenge
By this point the people who are of the “I came out to kill people not play games” mindset were getting kind of toasty. The humans especially were tired of taking a beating and getting very little in return.
The last scenario was “get the nobility out of dodge”. Two humans were “nobles”, and the objective was to get them from rez point to the other side of the field as often as possible (after crossing the far edge, they’d return to rez point and do it again). Being slow zombies, we couldn’t really do much to chase them, so it turned into a general brawl in an attempt to head them off.
It was REALLY fun. The whole thing was.
I want to do it again. At the Pennsic fort.
Victory Conditions
So, the zombies had two ways to get points towards the ultimate victory condition: Be really good zombies, and kill all humans.
The humans had a variable way of getting points from the individual victory conditions of the scenario. They couldn’t really stop us being good zombies, but they could make sure they got their victory conditions achieved.
Some of the zombies just couldn’t turn off the fencer switch, but a lot of us were doing great work at it. Still, the humans won 10 points to 6.
3-Man Tourney
We had a good 3-man tourney, though I think it ended up being one melee too many for Tony and me, as we were both tired and both screwed up in the last round. We won half of our fights and acquitted ourselves well. I learned a couple of interesting things (like, unit cohesion applies to me, and I need to warmup with melee to get my brain switched over from “Yay Zombie mode” to “Oh, right I need to kill people” mode).
Next Year
DtG usually conflicts with NCRF, but if not it’d be nice to drag up a larger baronial presence (Melrakki and I have chatted about this a while). There was something about us losing a war to Stierbach a while ago, and wouldn’t it be nice to go get some pointless revenge? Definitely need to start rousing the militia before March.
Pingback: Dreya