Greetings and welcome to the first Battle Report from Potters Field. Let me give you the basic run down on the scenario. This is the first developmental playtest of the rules for Potters Field and as such I played solo (Mrs Grimey was wrapping our sons birthday presents so she wasn’t able to assist this time).

Our hero in this scenario is a figure from Hasslefree Miniatures, the terrain is a compilation from World Works Games comprised of the Streets of Mayhem, Mayhem Bits and Mayhem Armory. Finally our Zombies are a pack of undead from the game Zombies!!!

Some things you should know before reading are that Potters Field starts on a pretty even playing ground for all players. Every player has a stat called Resilience and Fatigue and all players start with equal points in each. Resilience marks your characters life force and ability to resist the disease/plague, when this runs out yer dead, but you’ll be back. Then again you could possibly be dead before your Resilience ever reaches 0. Fatigue helps us track how exhausted your character has become and can be used to force your character to perform beyond the normal allowance in their turn.

I created my Survivor, in a matter of 5 minutes. So my first and thusly only survivor is a man called Maddock. A soul survivor of the lower city, the slums of the Field. Luckily for Maddock it is one of the lesser populated area’s of Potters Field.

Potters Field thus far is played on a grid in which the each terrain tile counts as 1 grid area, as players progress through the grid the chance of encounter increases dramatically. All games begin in the bottom left grid, called a Free Zone. This is a picture of our intrepid heros backside.

(The Layout of Maddocks Mistake)

Maddock had been caught unaware by the onset of the plague, it had all happened so quickly he had no time to completely dress himself aside from his skivvies, a blanket, his fire helmet and trusty axe. Doesn’t leave our poor buddy much in the way of protection does it? In the madness of the dead rising from the grave and attempting to devoure the living, Maddock decides it would be a good idea to find himself a firearm and starts heading to the Armory.

As Maddock progresses toward his destination and enters another area of the grid we must roll to see if there are any Zeds about, and if there are how many are there? In the first grid there is a 40 percent chance that we will encounter something. We roll a 38 on a d100. Now we have to figure how many Zeds there are, in a 40 percent grid we roll a single d6 and divide the result by 2, there will always be at least 1 zed placed regardless of whats rolled. We roll a 2, so 1 zed and place him 8″ away from our brave survivor (any direction)

Maddock uses his turn to move and confront the Zed. All players are allowed 8″ of movement so Maddock can reach his intended target, however he wont be able to fight once he’s there. So Maddock states he will expend a point of Fatigue to swing at the lurching worm feast once he’s done moving. (we mark such on his stat card)

Maddock moves and swings his axe with the roll of a 6 sided die. He results with a 5 as his roll. Only a roll of 6 can “kill” the feind but with a roll of 5 the hit chart tells us “Target is pushed back, knocked down and disabled for remainder of the round”. The axe Maddock weilds has a push back value of 2 inches

End of the round, since the Zed lost its turn. Unfortunately for Maddock his mad dash to attack the Zed brought him through another grid area so we have to roll to see if we have any more zeds showing up. As he moved to the second row up and 3rd in his chance increases to 60 percent. We roll a d100 and result with a roll of 67, no more zeds….yet.

Round 3: 

Moving into round 3, Maddock can now see the armory just a few tiles away. He’s almost there, so he begins moving towards the armory, using his full 8″ of movement Maddock passes through 2 more grid areas. The first of which is a 60 percent area, we roll the d100 and result with a 51, which means Maddock has some company. On a 60 percent grid we roll 1d6 and do not modify the results to see how many friends Maddock will encounter. 2 Zombies lurch from behind a vending machine on the side of the gun shop. We also roll for the second tile, which is at 80 percent, our result is a 46. Another 5 zombies join the frey…To coming from Maddocks left and another 3 from around the building.

Maddock looks at his increasing number of opponents and decides to make a mad dash for the Gun Shop’s door, only 7″ away. Maddock expends another Fatigue point, rolling a check to see if the door is opened or locked, with a roll of 5 on the d6 we find the door locked.

The zombies begin closing in on our poor hero. Is this the end of maddock???

One of them strikes at Maddock as it hand’t expended all of its movement to reach him.

Round 4:

With his axe Maddock is only allowed 2 swings per turn. Definitely not enough to win this battle. However by expending 6 more Fatigue points he ups his swings to a total of 8. He rolls a 3,2,6,2,2,3,6,4 killing 2 zombies and knocking the third down.

Another Zed moves in and swings at poor Maddock, but misses. Another moves in and swings hitting Maddock with a roll of 6, Maddock looses a single resilience leaving him at 5. Fortunately for maddock the damage wasnt enough to warrant an infection check.

Round 5:

With his fatigue running low Maddock knows he is going to have to get inside this building pretty quickly if he wants to live. So he makes a mad dash for the buildings side entrance. Moving his full 8″ Maddock runs into another new grid area of 80 percent. We roll  a 66 on the d100. Another 4 Zeds enter the fray.

The zombies begin closing in.

Was it a bad move? A risky chance to run into the fenced in yard…. What if the door is locked? What will Maddock do?

Round 6:

Maddock runs for the door to see if its locked, rolling a 2 on a d6 he finds it open. Maddock expends another Fatigue point (3 left) to enter the building, hoping and praying that no more zombies will be inside waiting for him.

The zombies continue moving in for the kill.

Round  7:

Our hero locks the door, the zeds move in. We roll for the new grid area, another 80 percent which roll a 56 on. 9 more zombies are added to the board.

We leave Maddock inside the gun shop for now, but there are many questions left to answer… Will he survive? Will the zombies get in, or lose interest? Are there zombies in there with him already, or will he find the gun he seeks? All these are yet to be answered as I contemplate how to allow him to find things he might need and encounter hidden dangers inside the walls of the gun shop…

Conclusion:
Over all this game took about an hour, of course that was including note taking and some rule making…I would gather a game this small without note taking or rule making would probably have taken about 30 minutes of straight play. As you can see so far the mechanic of how we add zombies into play can trully overwhelm the board in just 7 rounds making the heart beat a little fast as you try to survive. So far I am pretty happy with the way it plays out. Feel free to post your comments and questions about Potters field.