Tau Sept Colours

Following my acquisition of the new Codex for the Tau Empire last weekend I am again in the mood of playing Warhammer 40K and more importantly of painting further my Tau army.

I have some models I got second hand and I just got 12 Fire Warriors more and a Hammerhead with removable and magnetized parts which looks very nice, it is almost assembled and not even primed.

My idea so far is to keep the models which are well painted as I will not be able to do such a good job even if they are either in the usual Tau light brown or in a kind of camo pattern based on grey and green (five metal  Stealth suit models) and try to remove the paint from the others and choose a colour pattern myself. I am still not sure which colour combination I will prefer but for sure not Tau brown, maybe something like the urban colour schema that you can see in the new codex or in the White Dwarf issue 400.

However, one thing that is really important for the Tau, more that the colour schema of the armour is the Sept colour. This colour is present as geometric motives or lines on the armour and is common to all the Tau soldiers from a specific Sept, so it sounds like a good idea to have a list of the colour of each Sept so that you can know which one to use or to choose.

The new Codex includes the colours for some Septs but not for all of them, this is the list I was able to compile so far with the reference where to find the information, the names of the colours are Capitalized as on the source:

1st Sphere

• T'au - White Scar (White Dwarf issue 400); old codex (2006), page 59, Skull White
• Tau'n - new Codex (2013), page 87, dark grey
• D'yanoi - new Codex (2013), page 89,bright blue; old codex (2006), page 59, Ice Blue 
• Bork'an - Sotek Green (White Dwarf issue 400); old codex (2006), page 59, Hawk Turquoise
• Dal'yth - no information available
• Fal'shia - new Codex (2013), page 89, unnamed colour, looks pale yellow
• Vior'la - old codex (2006), page 59, Blood Red 
• Sa'cea - Troll slayer Orange (White Dwarf issue 400); old codex (2006), page 59, Fiery Orange 

2nd Sphere

• Au'taal - new Codex (2013), page 89, bright green; old codex (2006), page 59, Scorpion Green (now Moot Green)
• N'dras - Abbadon Black (White Dwarf issue 400)
• Ke'lshan - new Codex (2013), page 89, yellow; old codex (2006), page 59, Golden Yellow
• Elsy'eir - no information available
• Tash'var - no information available
• Vash'ya - new Codex (2013), page 89, unnamed colour, looks lila or pale purple
• T'olku - new Codex (2013), page 89, unnamed colour, looks emerald green

3rd Sphere

• Ksi'm'yen - no information available
• Fi'rios - new Codex (2013), page 87, unnamed colour, looks very pale green-grey

For the Great Good - Tau first two battles

In a previous post I told you about my new second hand Tau army, today I will speak about their two first battles or glorious defeats :)
The first one saw only infantry involved as we are trying to get the rules step by step. My opponent got a starter set and was having the Space Marines ready for the game. There were two squads, a big one with several Space Marines, one of them armed with a nasty heavy weapon and blast effect, and a second one of 5 guys in Terminator armour (2+ saves).
For the Tau I was fielding two Fire teams (each with 12 soldiers) and a 12 members Kroot unit.
We did not check for the balance of points as our intention was to try the rules and see how the game mechanics worked, winning or losing or any army points consideration were left aside. Although we were pretty sure that the Tau were "under pointed".
Anyway, we set up a table on the long, so that the Tau were pretty far away from the Space Marines and were able to enjoy the 30" range of the Pulse rifles, however the one Space Marine with the heavy weapon with range 36" also got some Kroots dead.
The good thing was my initial great rolling as the Tau Fire Teams managed to kill 3 of the 5 guys in Terminator army in the two first rounds of the game.
The Game, by the way, was decided to be played on 4 rounds, with a central primary objective worth 3 points and as secondary objective were First Blood (1 point) and Line Breaker (1 point).
All the Tau were in the back basically all the game shooting from the distance and trying to stop the guys in Terminator armour who were advancing towards the central primary objective. The rest of the Space Marine forces started the game in a corner inside a ruined building, out of their weapons range (except for the mentioned 36" heavy one) and were "tasted" by the Tau pulse rifles, but later moved carefully outside of the ruins and under cover of a chemical reactor and some walls tried to move towards the primary objective. The Tau were waiting for them and the first one that showed his ugly face from behind the chemical reactor is still looking for the insides of his skull on the battlefield. The rest just hunker down behind the cover and let the guys in the Terminator armour control the central objective.
The Tau were not able to get clear fire lines to the two surviving Terminator armour guys and were trying to maneuver into a better firing position, that leaded to the dead of more Kroots who actually managed to fail a Morale test and Fall Back out of the board and giving the Space Marine player the First Blood secondary objective.
At the end of round four, the guys in Terminator armour were still there, controlling the primary objective and  not scared at all of the fire of the Pulse rifles.

The second battle was against an Ork army. This time we agreed on 500 points and at least a vehicle to try the rules further.
The Ork fielded a kind of open truck, a unit with three bikes, a heavy unit with three guys and a very impressive leader again in 2+ armour and a normal unit full of orks (a lot of them).
For the Tau I field a Hammerhead with the Rail Gun configuration, a five members stealth team, all of the with the Burst Cannon, a unit of 12 Kroots (they should have been 14 o 15 to be close to 500 points but I forgot to check the number of Kroot on my bag and I was short of points again...) and a team of 10 Fire warriors with Pulse rifles.
This time we used the long side of the table for deployment, so we were having only 4" to deploy and the central 24" as battle field.
Again I lost the roll to see who decided to start the game and I deployed first, which upon reading now again the rules should have made me the first one in activate my units but actually my opponent deployed after em and activate before me... Well, next time :)
Anyway, I deployed the Hammerhead in the left corner, behind a very low hill, the Fire team on the right corner, behind a slightly higher hill, the Kroot to the left of the Fire team, just behind a broken wall (forgot they were able to infiltrate...)
My opponent deployed the normal ork unit in front of the Fire team and the rest of his troops mainly on my left side, so in front of the Hammerhead.
I deployed the Stealth Team in the open, in front of a container, to the left of the Kroot and a bit deeper into the battlefield. I was counting on the 4+ save given by the stealth armour.
The battle field was having an impassable swamp in the centre of the table, some wall, a container of each deployment side (from the AT-43 game), a chemical reactor close to the hill on my right, the one with the Fire team and a ruined building also on that side, but on my opponent deployment zone.
Primary objective with 3 points was controlling the reactor, secondary objective again First Blood and Line Breaker.
This time we decided to have variable game length, so rolling on the 5th and 6th turns and ending on the 7th the latests.
The heavy orks started inside of the open truck which was also a transporter but it was not able to move more than 6" to be able to disembark the orks, so my opponent was a bit disappointed with that. Anyway the truck moved around the container on his deployment zone a disembark the heavy orks who moved closer to the central swamp. The bikers joined them there and the normal orks tried to approach the chemical reactor. As the frontal armour of the Hammerhead was impenetrable to their fire weapons nothing serious happen to it, however the stealth team in the open lost one member (bad roll in the save and good rolls in the attack)
The Fire team moved on top of the hill and fired upon the normal orks, the Kroots moved also to the left to have a good view of the same orks and fired also against them, together they kill enough to force a morale check, but they past it.
The stealth team jumped on top of the container and got one of the bikers but the hammerhead was not able to get any one of the heavy orks. As in the first game, those 2+ armours were a problem for the Tau.
In the next round, the ork bikers and the heavy orks killed two more stealth guys, the remaining Tau failed the morale test, and fall back and eventually left the field, again First Blood for my opponent,
The hammerhead was again not able to score any casualty to the enemy, but the Kroot and the Fire warrior finally decimated the ork unit, leaving only two guys to fall back. They managed, however in the next round to regroup with a double one (!!)
The biker managed to get close to the hammerhead and assault and destroy it with four penetrating hits.
After that I was ready to concede the game as no one of my troops was able to stop the heavy orks, but we play a turn more, wherein my Kroot moved to be able to fire a half range against the heavys but without any success.
The counter attack of the heavys killed enough Kroot to made them fall back and the bikers were able to approach the Fire team on the hill.
This time my opponent was convinced of the Tau defeat and we finish the game.

With only two games and a very imperfect knowledge of the rules I can not say a lot about the future performance of the Tau. I need to learn my army before I can talk or criticize it with any rigour, but one think is clear, I need to field people able to hit 2+ armour with a certain amount of dices To Hit. The Hammerhead has an Armour Piercing (AP) of 1 but it is "only" a Heavy 1 weapon, so basically you roll one dice against a unit of 4 heavys and will Hit one with a 3+ (Balistic Skill is 4 for the Hammerhead). This does not sound to me a too much, it is like flipping a coin. After that you need to Wound but the enemy can save (Cover, for example).
Reading the Tau codex I was thinking about the plasma rifle with AP 2, 24" range and rapid, which will roll two dice below 12", but for that I will need to field Crisis battlesuits.
Also the Stealth teams can field a Fusion Blaster, AP 1 and range 12".
Don't know yet, need to re-read the rules again and see what can be done.
Now, I see the Hammerhead as too short on To Hit dices but again, I still need to learn how my army works.
More soon....

Star Wars X-Wing Miniature Game - Unboxed and 1st impressions review

Well, after listening to the d6generation podcast I was were enthusiastic about this new game, so I ordered the basic core box and this is what I found inside :)

Three very nice ships: two Tie fighters and one X-wing. Contrary to what I was told, the material allows for deformations of the models and actually the X-Wing four cannons are not perfectly straight but I can life with it.
The ships are supposed to fit into a plastic peg which goes into the base. Those pegs are cylindrical and with the corresponding holes for the fitting, which are not round but have wedge shape so that the pegs do not rotate when mounted. This translate in that the ships can also not rotate over the base.
This should no be a problem BUT the X-Wing is not perfectly aligned with the orthogonal position, so any person will instinctively try to fix it right by turning (when we try the game, after assembling the ships it was precisely that what my friend and opponent for the game tried). Luckily he knows how delicate this join points / pieces are and did it carefully and realized his error on time, but imagine the opposite and you have a broken ships or peg. The second is not so much of an issue, the first, well...
I think this is a particular bad design point of the ships, which on the other hand look very nice and detailed.
I do not see the need of a fixed peg which can not rotate. I think this complicated the components without offering any substantial advantages

Further components:

 And all the pieces on the table :)

1st impressions

The rules:
They come in two sections. Basic and Advance rules. The basic rules are really basic. I would not play with only them, they are too simple and the game offers nothing in terms of excitement or tactics at this level.
The advanced rules are a bit more complex but not very good. I will explain.
The ships can not collide with each other. The movement is performed using templates which fit into the base of the ships and it is very fluid and easy, however if two ship bases overlap at the final position of the ship moving, nothing really happens except that the moving ship "breaks" and stays just before the other ship, in base contact and they can not declare themselves in attack.
On the other hand, there are rules for obstacles, such as asteroids, whereas if you fly through the obstacle (the template overlaps with the obstacle) or you finish your movement in the obstacle, the moving ship get an attack of 1 dice.
The reasoning for the non-collision of ships is that the space is 3D and big enough for the ships to maneuver so that they do not collide, this reasoning seems not to apply to the obstacles.
I see the point of the obstacles as an interesting feature of the game (and needed) but then, why limit it to other obstacles and not extend that also to ships.
Maybe I would like to ramp with my Tie fighter the insidious X-Wing. But, this is alas not possible with the actual set of rules.
Also, the game is supposed  to represent 3D combat, however the rules are totally 2D. There is no indication of different levels of altitude, so all the ships are flying on the same plane.
I know this game is based on the previous Wings of Glory, but I cannot recall if that game was having altitude rules. If not, why no one bothered including them here ? If yes, why they removed them?
I know that it is very difficult to represent 3D on a 2D board, but this game not even tries to do that, it just ignores it.

The Core box:
Not enough. Just so simple. The box is 30 €, it is true, but with three ships it feels a bit short. We got the impression that at least another core set would be needed to start to enjoy the game and to see some tactical challenges.

The Missions:
We play the first mission, the escort of the Senator twice, changing sides.
The scenario is very neat in terms of winning of losing it, as the movement of the Senator ship and the attack of the Tie fighter are borderline in terms of who will win. Actually in our game, the Rebel won once and the Imperial the other.
However, the X-Wing which escorts the Senator is pointless. It has more shields and hull that the Tie fighters, so it is very difficult for the Imperial player to destroy and for what reason? The objective of the scenario is clear, destroy the Senator ship. So, the Imperial player will launch both Tie fighters against the Senator and disregard the X-Wing.
If the X-Wing makes a wrong turn it would be out of game as it takes ages for it to turn back into the combat and obviously, the Senator ship would not wait for it as two Tie fighters are just pounding on him.
So, basically the Senator runs forwards at maximum speed and the X-Wing try to destroy the Tie fighters which by ignoring him can concentrate fire on the real target.
If the X-Wing destroys a Tie fighter and being honest, he can do one Tie fighter per turn with a bit of luck, nothing really serious happens. At the end of the turn, the Imperial player gets another Tie fighter as reinforcements coming from his boardgame side which is the same side the Senator has to go.
So, think about this, the Senator is running towards the direction from which one the Imperial reinforcements are coming !
Therefore if the Rebel destroy a Tie Fighter, another exactly equal appears in a better position as it would be directly in front of the target to destroy.
Now, tell me, why will the Rebel player try to destroy Tie fighters ? Just to avoid two of them firing to the Senator, yes, point given, but that would only be so if the X-Wing manages to destroy one Tie fighter, each and every round.

The second mission is Lucke Skywalker trapped inside of an asteroid field waiting for four complete round before being able to activate his hyperdrive and scape in the fifth round.
At the beginning I was very excited because we were using some of the characters from the movies with better stats, but it does not matter if you are playing with the core set.
In the first mission, the Tie fighters are on the hands of Academy pilots which are both equal and with pilot skill lower than the Red Squadron pilot of the Rebel player. So Imperial moves first and attack last.
In this mission, the Imperial have again two pilots with pilot skill lower than the Rebel pilot, only difference being that the imperial pilots have different skills and one goes before the other, but again both go before the Rebel pilot and attack after.
Yeap, true, they have special skills and so, but it feels a bit too short again.

My final impression ?
Well, I am disappointed. The reviews I read and specially the podcast crew, they were all very excited about the game, the rules, the scenarios and so on, and maybe they are right, maybe the game is great, but with the Core set you do not feel it so, or at least, I do not feel it so.
But, even if I would have two core sets, two advance Tie fighters and one Y-Wing, the 2D rules would be the same and I cannot see me expending around 100 € in miniatures for a rule set which is below optimum.
Maybe if there would be a More Advance Rules, then maybe...

Also, the FAQ is already there and a lot of people apparently were discussing what my opponent in the game calls "millimetre discussions". That is, when you start arguing about the relative position of a ship based on an accuracy which is far beyond the experimental error of the game.
You are moving not so heavy items over card board templates with your hands !
Of course it is not possible to make machine precision movements. Of course, it would be never possible to move a ship in a crowded area of the board without disturbing the others, specially when the template has to go over those other ships.
Therefore I found funny that one of the FAQ was about how to use the range ruler, if its broadness was used for the measurement or not, so that you can add one or two more millimetres to the arch of fire of the ship. I find this ridiculous.
In the first game we play, after two movements, there was one situation where a Tie fighter was dubiously able to fire against the X-Wing. My proposal was to use a dice, my opponent says, "no, too much dices is no good, we will give the advantage to the attacker always". We could also have given the advantage to the defender. That is not the point, the point is that some people need a ruling about one millimetre (!?)
Anyway, it was not my intention to criticise anyone.
Coming back to the game.
It is a nice game, but with several shortcomings. The rules could be better and it looks like just an excuse to collect Star Wars miniatures. This last is not so bad if you are a Fan boy (which I am) but still.
Maybe I am just tired of investing money in games to which I never play...


Update: I almost forgot, I was so in a disappointed mood and maybe a bit depressed too that I just decided to invest my money in people instead of in plastic and so I visited the Extra Life Charity Event under the sponsoring from Craig Gallant (from d6generation). Here the link just in case you decide to give away some money to help some Children's Hospitals:
http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donordrive.participant&participantID=34681

Landing Pad for 28mm - Final Update

Well, after some time without doing anything more on that project I think I am done with it :)
I mean, I do not intend to add more details.
As you can see in the picture, I painted two pairs of landing lights, two greens for the front, the approaching face and two reds for the back side of the landing pad.
The size is 23cm x 17 cm (9" x 6.7") which fits quite nicely with my Tau Devilfish and the two escorting drones ;)
Hope you like it.

Tau Army unboxed !

Yesterday I just got my new, second hand Tau army. How can an item be new and second hand at the same time ? Quite simple. I never had a Tau army, nor anything from Warhammer 40k, only long time ago I was the owner for a short time of a starter set of Warhammer Fantasy, I think to remember that it was the 3rd Edition, but maybe I am wrong.

Anyway, with the 6th Edition of Warhammer 40k recently released and after bothering and yammering all my gamer friends, finally some of them are decided to try to play a short of campaign of Warhammer 40k.

The only problem was that we were not in the possession of any army, except for two guys, each of them with an ork army.

In a previous life, exactly when I got the starter set of the Warhammer Fantasy I was talking about, the Tau were released by 40k, and I remember my thinking how nice they were.

However, I never played with my starter set of Fantasy and some time after that I just tried once the 40k but not really my thing at the time.

A lot of things happened since those times. I played AT-43 and developed an itching for painting scenery. So far I have not painted any figures, only a vehicle and some walls and similar stuff (some of then are in this blog somewhere to see).

So, I decided to get a Tau army from the web, a second hand, assembled and painted. Therefore, new for me, old for the guy selling it :)

On ebay I found a pretty big army by a decent price and luckily for me I was the only one bidding, so I got it without too much trouble.

The army arrived just yesterday :)

In a huge box with a lot of protection material :)

However three models were broken during the transport :( but were easy to fix :)

Unluckily one of the metal sniper drones is missing :) and the seller so far did not reacted to me :(

However, a whole five members stealth team was included which was not in the pictures on ebay :)

So, in general terms I think we (me and the seller) are even.

Now, to the pictures: 

On the back, the stealth team, on the right some drones, half of them very nice painted the other half open  to my experiments :)

The two sniper teams, each with an observer and in theory three drones, but as said, one is missing. Also the Ethereal with the base on which it was needed to glue him back.

The Fire teams, 24 members, although two of them seem to be scouts or pathfinders or something different. Some are nice finished, others again open to my unskilled experimentation :) 

An the three vehicles. Nice painted. The Devilfish in the left allows for the back door to be open so that you can see the inside of the transport bay. Great detail.

Now we only need to read the rules and try them out. More (I hope) in next posts :)

Zombicide - Game Review and first contact

Cover Picture of the Game Box

Last week a friend from my local gaming club got his kickstarter copy of Zombicide (official web) so we got not only the basic game but some other additional stuff such as a nice lithography of the cover picture, two extra heroes and an extra abomination zombie.
What it is in the box:
The basic game includes a lot of zombies of three different types:

• Walker: very slow zombies, have one action per zombie round and can be killed by any weapon which inflicts at least 1 damage.
• Runner: they have two actions per zombie round but can also be killed by 1 damage weapons.
• Fatty: slow as the walkers whit only one action but can only be killed by weapons which deals 2 damage.
• Abomination: a Fatty with steroids, also one action per zombie round but can be only killed by 3 damage weapons.

The miniatures for the first two types of zombie are not identical, so there are different walkers and runners, for the mechanics of the game makes no difference which walker you place on the board but it is nice form a esthetic point of view.

Zombies as in the box

The board is done by tiles which are to be arranged to build the different scenarios.

Some tiles of the game

The tiles include buildings with several rooms and street areas. Also included are some tokens which represent cars (police cars and pimp mobiles) which are required for some scenarios.
Other tokens are the EXIT token, the SPAWN tokens, the NOISE tokens and some yellos arrows to mark the skills of the heroes in the corresponding cards.

The heroes

The heroes are the survivors of a zombie apocalipse and have to fight for their lives in this very hostile environment. Each hero has a miniature in a different colour and a hero card where its special skills are indicated.
The heroes are based in the geek culture, for example one of them is Dr. Seldon Copper, other is Machete, another looks like Bruce Willis in Die Hard and so on...

Nick - The bad cop

How to play:

1st you choose a scenario, the rules book includes several, the first one with the number 00 is an easy tutorial, so my group decided to jump to the second one with the number 01, City Blocks.

Scenario 01, City Blocks

In this scenario the heroes start in the middle of the game board and have to collect the five objectives, search for some food and run away by the EXIT.
The players choose the heroes they would like to play, and randomly give to every one a weapon. The initial weapons are a Fireaxe, a Pistol, a Crowbar and as many Pans as needed to complete the number of heroes which would play. Yes, a placer can play with more than one hero, and yes it can be that your initial weapon is a Pan.
Afterwards every player checks the special skill of the heroes he is going to play, some have extra actions but other can have extra equipment, the hero get this equipment for free.
In our game I played with Wanda, which has the special ability of moving two zones pr movement action.

Wanda - the rollerskating waitress

At the beginning of the game each hero has zero experience points. Those point are recorded with a moving arrow on the upper part of the hero card. The colour of the experience bar of the hero with the higher amount of experience points determines the Danger Level. From zero to six experience point, the level is blue, the initial level.
The danger level is used to determine how many zombies and which kind of zombies spawn at the end of the zombie round. Obviously it is wise to keep the Danger Level to a minimum. Important to remember is that if one hero is in yellow and to other in blue, the Danger Level will be yellow as the Danger Level is the colour of the higher experience ion the game. If this hero is killed the Danger Level could decrease if the next high experienced hero is a level below :)
A first player is chosen and given the token of first player. This player acts with his heroes, each hero has three action (plus any extra action given by the hero card) and if the player controls more than one hero, first one hero act and when it has completed his/her actions, the next hero gets to act.

Part of a game

As Actions a hero can:

• Move: a zone can be moved per movement action. A zone is defined as a room inside a building or the space between two pedestrian crossings in the streets. In the picture above, the heroes in blue and lila are in one zone (bottom of the tile) and every one could move and joint the grey hero on the zone to their left (bottom, left corner) with one movement action. Special consideration is needed for the case that the zone wherein the heroes are is also occupied by zombies, for example, on the centre, top, Wanda (green colour) shares the room zone space with a zombie, to be able to left the room, she will need to make a movement action to move and expend another action due to the presence of the zombie, so in total she will need to pay TWO action to be able to move normally. So, for EVERY zombie in the zone the hero is, the hero needs to pay that amount of extra actions to move out of the zone. But, remember that every hero has only three actions, so be careful where you finish your movement.
• Search: one per turn, the hero can search a room zone or inside a car. Ned has an extra search action, but that only means that he can search for free and still have three OTHER actions, the limit of searching once for turn is absolut. Search allows you to take the upper card from the items deck. There is an item, the torch lamp, which allows you to take two cards ;)
• Opening a door: to open a door the hero needs a weapon/tool able to open the door. This is indicated in the item card by the corresponding icon. Some weapons make noise (like the fireaxe) other are silent (like the crowbar). Making noise will be indicated with the noise marker (in the picture above there is one in Wanda's room).
• Inventory: the player can reorganized the items in the inventory, you can equip only two items in your hands but you can carry another three in the backpack, by reorganizing the hero can give items to ONE other hero in the same zone, this other hero can reorganize immediately its own inventory for free.
• Taking an objective: in the upper picture, in the top, right corner, the red hero is in the same zone as one objective, so this could be taken by expending an action. Taking an objective gives the hero usually 5 experience points.
• Making noise: by doing so, a noise marker is put on the zone the hero is.
• Attack: using a weapon the hero can attack foes either in the zone the hero is (weapons with range zero) or in adjacent zones (weapons with range one or more). The game ignores diagonals for both movement and vision, so only orthogonal zones are considered. From the street into a building or inside a building the line of sight is limited to the next adjacent zone. On the streets the lini of vision is unlimited. Melee weapons allow the player to chose the target of the attack, so specific zombies can be targeted, for example the Fatties, whereas the ranged weapons (except if equipped with a scope) cannot chose freely target and MUST shot the possible tagets following this orden: other survivors, walkers, Fatties and runners. Yes, you read well; if you fire a ranged weapon on a zone where other survivors are, first you assign to the survivors as many hits as you can, once there are not more survivors to take any more hits (they are dead) any remaining hits are assigned to the walkers and so on. Therefore it is not a very good idea to fire in a zone where other friendly people are. Other consequence of this is that it is very difficult to hit a Runner who is sharing the zone with other zombies as first you need to clean the area of Walkers and Fatties  Curiously enough the Fatties require a weapon of 2 damage to be killed, the pistol for example is only 1 damage, so even if you score multiple hits with it, you will never be able to kill any runner in a zone wherein a Fatty is also present as the Fatty will take all those 1 damage hits BEFORE the runner takes any of them and being 1 damage hits, they are not going to kill it and therefore it would be as if nothing has happened at all. Nice, isn't it ?
• Cars: in certain scenarios you can move inside a car and with the car.

What Zombies do:

• The Walkers, Fatties and Abomination have one action each, so if they are in an empty zone (no heroes there) they will move towards the survivors they can see. If they cannot see any survivors they will move towards the noisiest group. Important to realize is that a survivor count as a noise token, so a group of three survivors amounts to three noise tokens and will be preferred over an alone survivor who used his gun and got one noise token.
• If they start their turn in a zone wherein survivors are present, they will attack the heroes in the zone they are. Their attacks are automatic success. The hero receives so many wounds as zombies attack him, but two wounds mean that the hero is dead. Also, being wounded by a zombie causes the automatic lost of an item the hero is carrying. So, if your hero is brand new and in a zone with a zombie at the beginning of the zombies turn, the hero will lost one item and get one wound, bad enough but still alive. If instead of one zombie, two happened to be there, well, bad news, you are dead. Zombie do overkill, so if there will be three zombies and one hero in one zoe, the hero is dead, the three zombies kill him and stay there.
• Runners have two actions, so they can move towards some survivors and if they reach them attack them, or kill ay hero in their zone and move to an adjacent zone.

How zombies move:

• They need one action per zone as the heroes, but if at any moment a group of zombies has two equally valid options, such as two identical long routes to a hero or group of heroes or is able to see two different zones with heroes on them, it will cause the group of zombies to split in equal numbers (!), which means that if the group has an odd number of a type of zombie, another one is add. So, if three Walkers has visual to heroes in two different zones, two groups of two Walkers will split and each one will move towards the one survivors group. Yes, zombies do replicate out of thin air, bad news, very bad news.

Spawn:

• At the end of the zombie's turn or when a building is open by the very first time, new zombies spawn. To do so, the first card from the zombie deck is revealed and the indicated amount of zombies corresponding to the current Danger Level is added to the board.

How was our game:

• Well, out of five players, only two have played it the day before, out fo the three new guys, two were dead pretty soon. One of them wandered alone to one corner of the board and was eventually surrounded by zombies coming form the street in the building were he was and eaten there. The second one was crowded by zombies in a crossing and died fighting there.
• I was the last one without previous experience, but got lucky a few times and survived the game. I was playing with Wanda and was wounded in the second round of the game, but later on managed to prepare a molotov cocktail and drop it just on time upon a group of zombies, including an abomination, which gave me 14 experience points, more than enough to put Wanda in the orange danger zone but also to give her the Slippery ability which combined with her extra movement capacities muted her into an unstoppable running machine :)

The best of the game? The molotov cocktail, without a doubt. It destroys everything in the zone you throw it, and by everything I mean it. Survivors and Zombies, but all zombies, also abominations are destroyed. Great, great thing :)

The more curious thing of the game? there are two, at least for me, the multiplication of zombies when they split odd numbers and the noise mechanics. It is possible to make noise and guide the zombies to one area so that other heroes can do something somewhere else. However, the game has so many zombies that this tactic can only be used at the beginning of the game or by precise synchronization of the players.

In the d6generation podcast someone commented an optional or variant rule wherein the players can only talk to other players if they heroes are in the same zone and that this produces noise tokens in that zone. We did not try this but I think it can awesome :) :)

The game is great and with nice mechanics however there are something in the rules which could have been better written, for example it is not said what happen when the item deck runs out or as now, it is perfectly legal for a group of survivors to make a hero to attack twice with one weapon and pass it to the next player on the line, so that a group can use the same weapon all the round.

But I do not think those points to be too serious, without doubt the FAQ and the forum will deal with them and with other similar issues in the future.

In short, a nice game, elegant and simple, based in scenarios, so some will be better than others and with a lot of zombies :) :)

La Abadia - restaurant review - Madrid

This nice local is located on the street called Ancora, a perpendicular to the Paseo de las Delicias. It has a semi-open terrace on the same street with plenty of space between the tables. The food is very good and not so pricy. The portions are generous even in the so called Menu del dia which at this moment cost 12€.
The service is friendly enough except for one waiter who looks like he is mourning someone.
In short, good food, not expensive, relax atmosphere.
Insider tip ;)