You will never believe this!

New venue, new luck? Maybe.

The grown-ups (committee members) at the club have seen fit to move the club away from the suit-filled Bell and Compass at Charing Cross, to the cosier St Christopher's Inn at London Bridge. Both are on my way home, so it doesn't make it harder or easier for me to get to. The staff seem to be friendlier and understanding and their basement is somewhat closed off from inquisitive drunk grabbers. The food and the loos (while they are exclusively ours (or rather belong to the basement/function room), they seemed to lack soap and paper towels (maybe a small oversight)), are just as good. The room itself is not as stuffy and there is marginally a bit more space to navigate around the tables. Overall, I think people like it a lot more than the previous establishment.
So, back to the gaming. After the last game, where I had my arse handed to me by several fleet-footed zombies, I had gained more than 50% casualties leaving me with only five (5) gangers to pick from. The only way around this was to pick have a Shoot-Out with someone, I didn't particularly want to be outnumbered two or maybe three to one. It just happened to be my luck that I only get two ramdonmly chosen gangers while my opponent (Donald and his Enforcers) got four. To add insult to injury, my randomly chosen gangers both had Move or Fire weapons meaning that they couldn't really shoot while edging towards the enemy (I've just had a thought on this, wouldn't it be fair to say that these aforementioned weapons would already be loaded and ready to fire? They just wouldn't be able to reload if they moved next turn). It was safe to say that my two Ratskins lost the fight. After doing all the post game stuff, I could now go into my next game with a full compliment of Ratskins.
I had decided to replay last turns failed Exploration move. Having fought the zombies once before, I knew what to expect. Instead of playing for loot, I played for settlers this time. I had to rescue as many as I could as this would decide what territory I could get. The game started of at a good pace with Seeawee started off Frenzied (as opposed to every other game where he suffered from Stupity) and took the fight to the Zombies. The rest of my gang tried to sauntered up behind Seeawee, watching in amazement as they saw thier brother's violent streak for the first time! The first settlers were encountered, but so were the undead. The first two settlers showed that they didn't actually need rescuing as they both took down a Scavvie and a Zombie each. this was distraction enough for my gang to rush forward in packs and dispatch with the foe. With the zombies falling everywhere, the settlers actually managed to simply canter off towards my table edge (although the first settler actually died while escaping) handing me victory. It also handed me a Settlement for a territory, which I couldn't keep so I was forced to sack it. this was no bad thing as it gave me a shed load of credits with which to replace the losses in my gang.
Going into the game in groups of four of five proved to be really useful, a total opposite of the last time where the zombies ganged up on me. I didn't feel the need to to shoot first, which was a good thing as I don't really trust Handbows. The Rat of the Match award would have to go to Seeawee, whose Head Wound actually became useful for once, as he managed to polish off two Scavvies and three Zombies. Mostly everyone else picked up at least one kill each which is always good for experience. Post game saw a couple of gangers gained a stat increase and my leader gained Infiltrate. But then the gruesome would start to happen and there may be a few mutations due to the Campaign rules. And it is these Campaign rules which made Seeawee wander off into the depths of the Underhive, never to be seen again.
So, I won. At last. I'm so relieved. So maybe it is a case of New Venue, New Luck!

A Very Cinematic Loss

Tuesday night saw my Ratskins involved in a truly brilliant scenario. Despite losing (what a surprise!) I really had a fun game. I had chosen to go for an Exploration move as I needed to gain Campaign Points. The scenario was called "Left For Dead" and involved plenty of Zombies (I can't imagine how they came up with that one!). It started of with my gang facing 20 randomly moving counters which consisted of 5 Loot, 10 Zombies and 5 Scaly's). I wouldn't know what these are until I came within 8" of them. The object was to kill all Zombies and Scaly's or move off my able edge with all 5 loot counters.
The game started off just fine. Picked off a Scaly of two along with a couple of Zombies in h2h. I even managed to shoot one (there rules concerning shooting were if you took a shot, you had to roll 2d6 and add the weapons strength. If this added upp to 10 or more, it would alert all the undead on the table and even bring on a few Zombies per turn). Things were going great until I got brave enough to take a second shot. This one did alert the rest of the horde and all the remaining counters were revealed. I now knew where the loot was. All I had to do was barge my way past the undead. The zombies were clever and, in true b-movie style, started to surround my Ratskins. Several went down and out but I was determined to fight on. I managed to regroup my remaining warriors and push for the loot. I grabbed a couple of counters and could have grabbed more. the Zombies kept coming and picked off more Ratskins. This put me in a dangerous position as I needed to make a bottle roll. I made the first but, in the next turn, I failed the second.
As a result I lost the game. No loot or territory were gained and two of my men died. But it doesn't matter. The game played out just like a good (or bad) zombie movie.