Garage Talks - Ash Barker

 

We're joined by Ash Barker known from Guerrilla Miniature Games or GMG for short.

Ash Barker has a huge following on his YouTube channel and knows indie games inside and out.

In this podcast we're picking his brain about GMG in general and his two Osprey publications Gamma Wolves and Last Days.

Joining this talk as well is Torben from Miniatorium, who's been following GMG since it's beginning. 

Guerrilla Miniature Games: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbO4Vs1vlAA9hz7Ad7IMgug

Miniatorium: https://www.twitch.tv/miniatorium

Producer: Trolle

---

Please consider helping out my bloggerverse and each reach. Like, follow, share - and all that stuff.

Facebook.com/BloodbeardsGarage/

Instagram: Bloodbeads_Garage

Twitter: @Blodskaeg

Twitch: twitch.tv/bloodbeards_garage

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/bloodbeardsgarage

Podcast: https://anchor.fm/bloodbeardsgarage




Join the Discord. It's an excellent community with lots of hobby stuff (not just mine): https://discord.gg/xwcRSs7




How do I blog: http://bloodbeard.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-do-i-blog-how-am-i-using.html




Hobby donations (for Discord fees, streaming gear etc): paypal.me/blodskaeg

Terrain: Army Vehicles and radar

I've already upgraded a whole bunch of toys for the different game systems I play. I have this plan to build a full military base. For that I needed a truck, which will also see use in some Walking Dead scenarios around Woodbury.

And as part of my 2020 summer plans, I want to build a ton of military base terrain. Towers, sandbags, hesco bastion and so on. But here's the start for the project at least.

I found a good toy and did a bit of work on it. This first one is a generic army truck, usable for every country. I also got some specific Russian vehicles for use in Zona Alfa.

Scratch the entire thing with sandpaper to make paint and wash stick better.

Use masking tape to cover any glass, metal and wheels you don't want base coated.

Painting the truck

Give the truck a spray of OD green. Then give the entire thing a thick layer of different washes. I've been using both strong and dark tone for this one. Only base coated this one because the green seemed off, it wasn't close enough to that military green.

Russian truck
When gearing up to playing some Zona Alfa I went online to find some russian military vehicles. I have mostly humvees and other very american looking vehicles. Found an ebay seller with some cheap toys, actual models of real vehicles.

These were better in color, so only gave these a mat varnish and a thick layer of wash.

BTR-80 (not really)
This is another toy. A BTR-80 is a Russian armored personel carrier, so it was an obvious must have for the Zona Alfa board.

This is actually a german APC it turns out, so it was wrongly labelled on ebay, but nevermind that.

 It's another quick wash job. Actually there's a few pieces on it that could have been picked out (shovels, axes etc) - might go back an do that one day.

Sarissa Precision Radar

Got this kit on black friday when Sarissa had some very good discounts on their kits. I still have plans to make a large military base and is slowly adding pieces for it. 

This little kit is super cheap and easy to put together. A simple OD green base coat, grey base and a dusty layer of brown. Done. 

Last Days: Seasons - Expansion review

Just got my hands on the first expansion for Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse. Paid and pre-ordered myself, so Osprey is not involved in the review in any way.

The expansion book is called 'Seasons' and gives rules for a 12 game campaign taking the survivors through a year.

Having played a lot of Last Days through the last year, this is exactly what the game needed. The base mechanics and options are cool and it's really easy to come up with scenarios. But after playing a lot of games, our gangs have yet to see a single dead character and a refuge overrun.

On the other hand the use of medkits, and buying new kits when buying new crew members, have seen us get lots of extra experience points from rolling good on injury tables.

Refuge upgrades wasn't really a priority for us, neat to have - but not really essential.

So being a zombie horror game - the vanilla campaigning is a bit too soft on the players.

The new campaign
The idea of running a 12 game campaign, each representing a month, is great. And after my first read of the book, it sure seems like it will become tough.

Now you have to manage conditions of your crew members. Each season will have different challenges - warmth, food, water, sickness. And after the games you'll have to prioritize which ressources you are looking for.

There's new refuge upgrades (and new refuges) that will help you survive. But crew members can get supplies and build. So the entire ressource / worker management is upgraded a lot. There's some tough calls incoming.

When rolling for supplies, you can also choose new tables. This will not bring in as many weapons - but can get you those essential supplies instead.

If you fail to need the requirements for a healthy group, they will suffer debuffs during games - and potentially die if left in a bad shape.

So my initial thought after reading is: There's gonna be really tough calls and you will suffer at some point. The need to scavenge essential supplies, will hugely limit the amount of guys you can put on guard duty for the zombie attack.

New scenarios and weather
The book contains a few special scenarios for specific seasons, good to change things up a bit and they don't require special terrain. Another addition to regular game play is seasonal weather conditions - that can both impact the current scenario (low visibility for example) and/or your crew conditions (heat that causes more thirst to be managed).

Crew members and gear
There's a big host of new survivors to choose from, many of these survivors start with abilities that have practical implications when scavenging supplies between games. So these might be good to pick if starting a campaign fresh.

As for gear there's some neat small items, mostly gear for managing weather conditions and ressource management. There's only a few new weapons to chose from, but the standard ones pretty much covers all weapons - so that's okay.

Coop and solo
There's now rules for coop scenarios and some solo rules. This is an excellent addition to nay game and I'm a big fan of it. ... Though in reality I'm not in place where I get around to solo gaming yet - I know that one day I will.

The coop brings three scenarios to the pick, limiting the amount of models per side to a maximum level count (a fine way to roughly measure group power).  All scenarios are putting old enemies in situations where they must work together or die.

I'm looking forward to trying these games with my regular gaming buddy.

Solo rules are tough to do. I think The Walking Dead does it really well with the event deck. Last Days does something similar with a table of events, getting worse as the game progresses. I will be modding the rules for solo gaming - but it gives a good outline.

There's a rule that models armed with a ranged weapon, have to shoot and use all possible rate of fire. This I don't like. Because this will highly limit the possible ways to play - killing any options of playing stealthy. But I will use the written rules for choosing targets - when I shoot.

Instead I will try and play with sometimes reacting better to noise, moving towards noise tokens from farther away - even when not having line of sight. I also want to play with doors being broken making noise, breaking windows making noise and so on. Quickly getting into positions, where shooting is necessary but done by choice.

Last words
Osprey Games bring out some great product. This is a good sized expansion book and it's a nice hardback (would love to see Frostgrave books that way). The artwork is still top notch and there's around 20 full page paintings - a lot of art for 80 pages of book. Nice!

After playing Last Days for a year it felt like the game needing an expansion exactly like this. Ash suggest to start new groups for the campaign, but we'll try continuing with experienced survivors. If anything it'll be a harder challenge - because we haven't chosen smart skills or refuge upgrades.

With this expansion I think Last Days seems like a top survival campaign game. I love huge between-game sequences and there's a lot of it in the game now. And there will be dilemmas - that's fitting for a zombie game. Will you burn fuel during the summer to purify water - or save it for winter warmth and run a risk of sickness from unclean water. Lovely stuff.

Last Days: Gas Station Rescue Mission

For the recent game of Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse we played a modified version of the Rescue Mission in the rulebook. None of the our teams have rolled up the 'captured' result on the injury table. So we turned it into a scenario with NPC enemies.

In the center of the boards was a gas station guarded by four NPCs with the 'soldier' character stats. Each were armed with a combat knife and a surplus assault rifle. A leader were inside the building guarding a prisoner (that if rescued would join the warband). The three other soldiers were patrolling the perimeter.

The soldiers would go in a random direction on a patrol route, the reacted to noise (allowing us to sneak in staying out of LOS), shoot at current thread or go lock and load.

We've decided after this game, to park LD:ZA until the expansion Seasons is coming out, and then pick it up again.

Prisoner
We used a nice resin model from Ramshackle Games (part of a set of four) for the prisoner. I've painted the model on the day of the game (took 3 minutes) and made a setting neutral base on it.

Setup
We played on a 3'x4' setup. I've been wanting to try this setup of buildings for some time, so it was nice actually doing it. Worked really well. Check out the Modern Terrain Hub for step-by-step posts about most of the terrain used here.

My warband setup close, hidden behind containers and a large truck. Wanting to get in close while staying hidden.

A soldier on patrol around the gas station. Soldiers are Mantic Games Mars Attack marines.

A soldier was patrolling the roof, with a good overview of the battlefield - this was probably gonna be the guy to sound the alarm.

A couple of 3d printed humvees are parked outside. actually small Team Yankee vehicles made bigger in scale.

The brutal soldier leader (inspired by that guy in 28 Days Later) guarded the prisoner.

Second guard on perimeter patrol.

My opponent was so unlucky that the roof guard went straight towards him and spotted on of his guys. If the guard wasn't taken out, he would start shooting and alert the other soldiers.

Bai Wu's team moving in towards the gas station.

As planned I moved forward in cover of the containers.

Bai Wu had found a silencer in the previous game, a one use item. And firing a silent burst from his Military SMG, he managed to take down the rooftop guard. This was a perfect and hard shot, that prevented the soldier from shooting and raising the alarm.

Having a clear path to the roof, my opponent wanted to get up there. The roof had an ambush opportunity on the soldier guarding the prisoner and some supplies as well.

With great speed Sam the Firefighter ran from cover, wanting to bring down a guard with a swing from his fire ax, quickly to prevent the alarm from being raised. He was unsuccessful in his attempt and was now locked in combat with the soldier.

Dr. Hendricks sneaked up on the roof, trying to get a clear and close shotgun blast off into the soldiers heads.  He missed.

Both teams trying to get to the prisoner. My opponent going in through the roof and me aiming for the garage gate.

With all the shooting suddenly going on a lot of zombies started entering the battle field from all directions. We really rolled a lot of sevens. Soon we would be boxed in, and it would be a completely different kind of fight.

With my fire fighter and the soldier being locked in close combat, my opponent started firing a the too - bringing down my guy. He then ended in a firefight with the soldier.

My opponent brought extra fire power to the roof, trying to bring the soldier down, but he moved into cover.

Duncan Atkins being well protected in a suit of riot gear engaged and killed another guard.

Ian is trying to keep the rear clean, for his team to evacuate the prisoner - but more and more zombies came swarming in.

From my side zombies came in as well.

It turned into a small herd. Constantly we rolled 7+ on even the small noise rolls.

Frederick Lewis jumps through the roof window to end the leader of the soldiers.

Duncan Atkins jumps through a window, to aid his mate in bringing down the soldier through melee.

Seeing all the zombies moving in, and haven been beaten in the race for the prisoner - it was time to get out of dodge. No reason to risk my team attacking into a building. 

The Ace of Spades - to your face.

Lots of zombies closing in on Bai Wu's retreat route as well.

Time to extract the prisoner. As my team had retreated it was relatively safe for these guys to extract him. He joined up with the crew afterwards.

Retreating is requires a bit of tactic in the game. You can't shoot too much, as new zombies are entering from the closest edge - so they might show up in front of you. And carrying supplies some of your dudes will get slow. All my team managed to get out safely though.

After action
This was a very good game and using NPCs worked really well. Now we've putting Last Days aside until we have Seasons in our hands. Getting new challenges and rules in that will be very cool.

The survivor ended up joining my opponent - and poor Toto (the dog) was left as a house dog, staying at the refuge never to go on missions again. The poor dog had lost both action points through leg injuries and was traumatized (shell shocked) through action. So he really wasn't worth much anymore.

My team managed to find a Sarge nearby and hire him. Most likely this guy was marooned or ditched by the soldiers we were fighting. He'll be a nice addition to the team with his cool starting skills.