This weekend Project Zeke was bringing the zeds to this year's
Conpulsion event at Edinburgh University's Teviot (the oldest students union in the world apparently).
All weekend I have been promoting and running demo games of
All Things Zombie: Final Fade Out for willing conventioners and shamelessly showcasing my wares in the process. I also took the opportunity to road test some soon-to-be-released PZM terrain items that we'll look at in a moment.
First of all, here's a look at the demo board. The board, road sections and non-card scatter scenery were built and painted by my own fair hand. The cardstock terrain is a mixture of
ModernPaperWorld,
Germy and
Warm Acre products:
The set-up
The night club...all quiet now
The grass is always greener...
The set-up was simple: Get our Rep 5 survivors across the board from behind the nightclub (top right corner), nailing zombies as they appear and make it into the gun shop (bottom left building), where they will be greeted by a shotgun-wielding ganger.
It's hard to tell in the top picture but the entire starting area is enclosed by high fences that are 10(ish) inches from the starting corner. This allowed players to experience basic movement
and Fast Moves before the zeds were generated and then Challenges (to scale the fence) as soon as they began the game proper.
By the time the players' characters met their first zeds, they already knew how to activate, move, do challenges and generate zombies, leaving them to try shooting and/or melee. After that it was free play until they reached the gun shop.
Another challenge to unlock the door to the gun shop and players were introduced to the In Sight Test and the Reaction System as they met Eddie inside.
"Knock, knock?"
"Who's there?"
This day just keeps getting worse
All in all each game lasted 10-15 minutues, which was ideal for the purposes of showing players the basic rules and ethos of ATZ and having a little post-game chat whilst not holding them up for too long from the rest of the convention.
In the time between demos I otherwise "occupied" myself...
Okay, so thankfully nobody had to tackle a horde like that but the games were very well received and I thoroughly enjoyed spreading the infection. Anyway, you can't go wrong spending a weekend with friends and making a few new ones.
I also held a prize draw for everyone who took part in a demo game and Ed from Two Hour Wargames was incredibly kind in providing a copy of the ATZ rulebook for the winner. A massive "well done" to our winner: Paul.
Now onto something exclusive. Some of you may have noticed various items of set-dressing on the board above. I can now announce that in the next week or two Project Zeke Miniatures will be releasing its first range of resin-cast scenic products:
Pictured above is the Rusty Carcass car wreck piece, usable in any environment from a corn field to a junkyard. The wreck will be sold as a single piece and will be accompanied by a handy painting guide here on the blog.
Lastly, we have the Urban Detritus Pack, which includes four rubbish bags of varying sizes and a grubby mattress, ideal for dressing up your alleyways etc.
More scenic products to follow very soon.
