Testing, Testing - Empire of the Dead AAR

With Halloween fast approaching, Gary asked Carl and I to help playtest some new factions for his big holiday-themed Empire of the Dead game. As we haven't had the chance to play the game in the past year, Carl and I were happy to help. 

Gary asked me to put together a "broken" Gentleman's Club list to go up against his pumpkin-themed Field of Screams faction. That wasn't exactly hard - Gatling Guns and Hunting Rifles accompanied by Heavy Pistols and Axes were passed around.

The Field of Screams list was close combat focused, with slow, shambling scarecrows with some magic and Unnatural Occurrences (treated as single-use abilities).

The mission was Fracas - simply kill enough of the enemy until they were forced to retreat. The game was played at night, so line of sight was decreased to 18".

I split my Gents into two equal groups - one Hero with a Gatling Gun, a Subordinate with a Hunting Rifle, and two Subordinates with pistols and axes.

The Field of Screams took a couple early casualties as my Gents had used EotD's overwatch action to wait for the approaching horrors to enter into gun range.

Carl decided to focus on the group of Gents on the left. One of the Gents was momentarily entangled by one of the Fields' Hero characters, but managed to break free. Another Gent got into close combat, but was only discombobulated.

The Gent who broke out of the entanglement was killed, but the Gent by the well managed to hold his own for the turn. Another Fields Hero couldn't make it into close combat, so he used his Unnatural Occurrence to put a wound on the Gents' President.

The last round went well for the Gents. Another Fields Hero went down and two more Subordinates were killed. At that point, the Field of Screams crew was below 25% and was forced to retreat.

We also played two other games. Gary adjusted some of the stats of the Field of Screams faction before Carl and I played a second game. The Field of Screams crew won, thanks in large part to getting into close combat sooner. Carl also used more of the factions Unnatural Occurrences, and some magic. It was a better approximation of the Halloween game, where there won't be so many guns on the table. 

For the last game, Carl used the Gents list I had written up while I used Gary's Death faction, which featured poltergeists, banshees, and even the Grim Reaper. We discovered that the faction wasn't great in close combat (and didn't have much in the way of shooting, either). However, because all the models in the faction were spirits, I had to make a Bravado Test whenever one was about to die. If I passed (which I did for all checks, save one) then the model lived. I managed to win via attrition. 

It looks like next week's games will also be testing for the Halloween game, which I'm looking forward to.