Run from the Dead: Sellswords & Spellslingers' Zombie Forebearer

Being October, it was time for the Second Saturday Scrum Club to play its seasonal horror game, a reprise of RUN FROM THE DEAD. Brains were eaten, good times were had...

In the summer of 2017, Andrea Sfiligoi of Ganesha Games invited me to playtest a set of cooperative miniatures rules on which he had been working named Run from the Dead. The timing was perfect because I had been preparing a zombie apocalypse game for a few months. I had already purchased and found lacking lots of rules in this genre, so I was excited to see some from the designer whose game introduced me to the wargaming hobby, Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes.

Although the rules and cards he shared with me for playtesting were not exactly complete and a bit disorganized (they were admittedly still very much in development on his end), even at this somewhat germinal stage the game combined Sfiligoi's hallmarks of simplicity and innovation that always attract me to his game design. I closely studied the rules and began to reorganize them in a way that helped me make better sense of them and identify some inconsistencies and holes that Andrea and I addressed in a blitz of daily messages back and forth in the 10 days leading up to my planned game day.

When the game did finally hit the table (recap from Oct. 2017), it was deemed a success by all of us who played (and it was my first large crafting project for a wargame, which was a confidence builder).

Color me surprised, then, when about three months later Andrea somewhat quietly released a game called Sellswords & Spellslingers, which used almost all of the same core mechanics from Run from the Dead but in a high fantasy setting.

I've been expecting an official release of Run from the Dead ever since, but Andrea has had a busy life this year. I hope it happens soon, though, because it's a great set of rules, perfectly matched to the genre, and with some neat ideas that distinguish it from Sellswords & Spellslingers (e.g., the way it handles wounds as well as the possibility of being "infected" and thus on a path to becoming one of the walking dead, to name a couple).

In the meantime, I wanted to run another horror-themed game this October, and since I hadn't had a chance to play another session of Run from the Dead since last year, I pulled it out to review the rules and pieces I made for it. This year I created some more terrain elements that I wished I had had more time to make last year, particularly for the military camp in the woods in the third scenario. Having acquired a 3D printer in the interim was a big help in being able to churn out these bits and bobs that added a lot of color to the battlefield (see photos below). I also reworked some of the Event cards and added a few more for the separate scenarios to increase the variety and further reinforce the narrative elements that this system can really accommodate beautifully if you put the time and thought into creating them. These included cards I made for things like meeting lost hikers in the woods who can join your band of survivors to army choppers buzzing through the small town wildly strafing the streets below. The playtest version of the game didn't come with any scenario specifics like those, and creating them was part of the fun for me and I think some of the most enjoyable elements for the players based on the post-game conversation.

Custom Card Decks

Below are the decks I designed and printed for our game...

This year I even made cards for all of the player characters in the game (last year I was running so short of time I had to hand write bare-bones ones an hour ahead of game time!). Each player eventually gets five PCs, introduced a couple at a time in each scenario, gradually building up their little band of survivors...that is, if they survive from one scenario to the next! 

New scatter terrain

While I had scratch built the barbed wire fencing for last year's game, this year I was able to add lots of stuff to the military camp, including tents, cargo containers, and sandbags. The files for all of these new pieces were found free on Thingiverse. The files were built for 28mm games, but I simply scaled them all down for my 15mm set up when I went to print them.

Game Day

I'll share my usual caveat that what follows is not a battle report that recounts blow by blow the action of our game, but rather a series of impressions from the game to give you an idea of what it was like.

This past weekend time allowed us to get through only the first scenario (last year we finished the first scenario and jumped ahead to the third, playing through far enough to see that our brains were not going to survive intact to the end). Of the Scrum Club contingent, John Sears, Walt O'Hara, and I were in attendance, and I invited a couple of other fellas to join in the fun, David Van Camp and Josh O'Connor, who we hadn't gamed with before.

You can read more about the scenario specifics in last year's recap, but the gist of scenario one involves a wedding in a small-town church being interrupted by a mysterious outbreak of shambling, ravenous undead. The players each start the scenario guiding a mother and father who were attending the wedding in a mad dash across town back home to check on their kids, pets, or elderly parents.

Most of the photos below were snapped by my wife Ellen, but a few were pilfered from Walt and John, and a couple are from my phone. (Click any of the below photos to enlarge.)

Walt's starting characters.

The periodic arrival of a chopper could be life saving or terrifying depending on whether the gun crew could distinguish you from the newly turned undead.

Both cars and gas mains might explode in the scramble back to your homes.

Be ready to put a lot of zombies on the board in this game. That's one of the reasons I decided to go with 15mm for the miniatures.

left to right: Walt, David, and Josh

Cha-Cha the cat decided that the town was in such shambles that it didn't matter if she went tearing across it mid-game. 

left to right: Josh, John, and I (looking more disheveled than the zombies in the game)

"This game looks neat. Can I play? You let Cha-Cha play!"

left to right: Joe 'Wild Man of Borneo' Procopio, Gigi the Cat ("C'mon! I've been sitting here patiently...When do I get a turn?"), Walt ("These pipe cleaners-cum-measuring sticks are kinda fun...")

My later-afternoon solution for creating a key to keep track of the various types of zombies that might enter play.

I didn't really need this stick to play, but it was fun and made me feel more like a field marshal.

John's two characters make it home, safely sitting on the roof.

"I didn't want to play your stupid game anyway..."

Fun with the Macro Lens

And here are a few final shots that Ellen took while I was setting everything up for the evening's game. As you might have seen from some earlier posts, she recently got a neat little macro lens for her iPhone and has been having fun experimenting with it on my miniatures. I really enjoy seeing these shots...

Final Thoughts and Parting Shots

Having five players this year definitely slowed the game down a little, but it's still a pretty fast moving experience. I'm hoping Andrea finds the time to finish the development and release this iteration of these cooperative miniatures rules because I bought several zombies rule sets last year, and this is by far the best I came across. (Hey, Andrea, I promise to send you some more playtest notes and all of my custom cards soon.)

I'd like to find a way to get it back on the table again before the Halloween season closes out, perhaps next time introducing some non-miniatures gamers to this type of gaming. It's simple enough to be a good introduction to the hobby, like many of Andrea's designs. And the fact that it is cooperative is a great way to get neophytes to give it a try.

Further Reading

Fellow Scrum Clubber Walt has posted his own reflections on our game at his great blog, Third Point of Singularity. I highly recommend giving it a read,too.

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