Four player 'Fistful of Lead: Tales of Horror'...

So after a fair bit of scheduling misalignment, I managed to shang-hai a bunch of my work mates into another Fistful of Lead game this Sunday at Darwin Tabletop Gamers. FFoL is our go-to game for multiplayer schlock-action fun. 

It helps that it's the kind of game where crazy, crazy stuff happens, but no one blinks an eye-lid because it makes for a Hollywood style of game.

It's simple to teach and easy to learn on the go. It's got variable turn sequencing, and a lot of 'take-that' card play that keeps people engaged. Moving, shooting & taking damage is simple, and it's got a real DIY ethos that I just love tinkering with. I've made character stats for all our games. All the character traits are in the rules, you just pick and choose.

We've played 'Saving Private Ryan' scenarios, a modern 'Anti-Insurgent' scenario, and a few zombie-survival style games using the 'Tales of Horror' FFoL expansion.

Yesterday's game had the humans searching the remains of the town looking for fuel to start the town's only generator. There were a bunch of obstacles and things to find. Spare ammunition, a few flares, a jerrycan, a jerrycan of fuel, and keys to unlock the abandoned cars & trucks. 

There were also a few decoy counters and a few Zombies hidden amongst the buildings and sheds. 

I also added an element of chaos by adding three giant wolves that moved and attacked randomly at the top of each turn.

The Zombie player had the old dependably slow-witted but tough horde, as well as one 'Necromancer' character we called, 'The Zombie Lord'. This guy had skills that enabled him to 'Shadow Walk' and cast so much fear into the humans, that when effective, could render them immobile or flee the scene.

The humans had an array of shotguns, rifles, chainsaws, flare guns and axes and managed to cause a bit of mayhem. The flare gun was especially powerful when targeting bunched up zombies.

We all had a really good time. There was a fair bit of trash-talk, a bit of take-that re-rolling, a few dodgy rolls, and close calls. Players fled up and down flights of stairs, kicked down doors, jumped walls or fell over or missed crucial last minute shots. The Zombies were knocked back or blown to bits, but kept on coming, just like they do in the movies.

I think it's the measure of a good game, that by 7 turns in (of a 10 turn game), my two characters were dead, but the game just hummed along without me having to remember fiddly rules or dive into adjudicating problems. 

All in all it was a pretty fun experience, great when considering that one of the players was completely new to the system.

In the end, the game went down to the last turn. The humans could have won the game on 'High-School Becky's' last roll. She managed to pry a full jerrycan of fuel from her dead comrade's hands, drag it - whilst nursing a bad wold-wound - across a derelict front yard, scale a fence, jump some barbed wire to reach the shed, only to find a zombie waiting for her there.

She then fought a brutal gangrene-to-axe battle with a hidden zombie, only just managing to eject the undead-foe from the shed. This gave her just one chance to roll a ten (she had two wounds and a shock marker by this stage) to start the generator.

Which she did. On the clubhouse floor.

Re-roll.

She rolled a three.

The generator couldn't be started, the lights never came on. The CB radio inside the farmhouse sat silent. The Zombies roamed listlessly.

Good times.