a pursuit of fruitless endeavors and endless refinements

Walking Dead: All Out War Session – Ch. 3 Campfire Tales

In my comic sessions, I’d mapped out an order of the existing scenarios in the Days Gone Bye expansion to fit the storyline I wanted to create.  My goal in running those was to use the recommended set up so I could also follow the story and balance the designers were creating. In plotting our my own story, I couldn’t get one of the scenarios to fit so I decided to play it “straight” at the end of my 6 x 6 challenge.

Chapter 3: Campfire Tales is an interesting solo scenario that has your survivors broken into 3 groups:

Group A:

  • Rick Grimes, Atlanta Camp Leader with a Screw Driver and 9mm Pistol
  • Shane, Jealous Cop with a Browning Hi-Power

Group B:

  • Lori Grimes, Cynthiana Survivor
  • Donna
  • Carol, Recent Widow

Group C:

  • Dale, Atlanta Camp Lookout with a Smith & Wesson 9 mil
  • Jim with a Shovel
  • Allen with a Baseball Bat

Rick and Shane start in the upper left corner with a few walkers around. Dale, Jim, and Allen start near the RV and Lori, Donna, and Carol are in the bottom left corner surrounded by a lot of walkers.  The goal is to get the ladies to the RV without more than 1 survivor dying.

I decided to add the “Night Fighting” event card into play because it would make things more challenging and seemed thematic. Night Fighting is in the Wave 4 Made To Suffer expansion but the rules are simple: ranged weapons and abilities requiring line of sight all cap at 8 inches. In addition, you add one to the threat level at the end of each round (this stacks with the solo rules of adding one at the end of the round as well).  Made To Suffer also adds the concept of light sources but it didn’t come up even though the campfire would qualify. If you are familiar with the standard way the Batman Miniature Game plays, it almost the same concept verbatim.

Here is the opening set up in detail.  Before I get to go, the campfire’s beacon power triggers and has a walker come into the camp and promptly catch fire.

With that done, my first order of business is clearing out all those walkers around the ladies and managing threat, which starts the game off at 4.

Shane and Rick have firearms and Mayhem is the best way to crowd control walkers so he moves out to affect more enemies and shoots down one of the closest walkers. He’s able to pop her but fails his ammo roll twice (due to Reliable) and loses his weapon for the game in the first round.

This pulls most of the walkers close to Lori and the ladies and they get tangled in the trees trying to get to Shane.

The RV guys rush around the invading walker.  It should go without saying that everyone not using two actions in the round (ie. shooting and moving) is going to do the Hold Your Nerve to help mitigate threat.  Two of the Ladies have Low threat tolerance so if it jumps to Medium on me, they’ll start panicking.

By the top of the next round, the ladies used sneak to go along the edge of the board while the RV guys obliterated their walker and Rick joined Shane to take down their walker. With Rick’s Stay Calm ability and the other survivors getting good Hold Your Nerve rolls, we pushed the threat down to the minimum.

I decide to gamble and have Carol run out along the edge as we’ve pulled enough walkers to make a situation where all three ladies can gang up on the walker and come out unscathed.

The other part of the plan is for Dale to get out there and draw in more walkers to the middle of the camp with his gun. Even with the “Rookie” rule making him discard one of his dice, he still knocks down a walker. The Mayhem then pulls in a few more.

This allows Donna and Lori to run up and join Carol. I had forgotten about one of the walkers that Dale drew in and it also joins the fray.

I have to split out the combat so Donna takes a walker using defense while Carol and Lori go on the offensive and totally take him down with their bare hands. Impressive!

Rick and Shane had also made it into the middle of the board and are slowly getting into the action.

At the beginning of the next round, we have the ladies just outside the run range of getting to the RV.

Dale decides to shoot again to draw the walkers to him and let the ladies pass through.  The Rookie rule takes it’s toll and he isn’t able to knock it down.  Two walkers surround him.  Allen is busying constantly taking on any walker that shambles to the campfire due to the beacon rule so Jim comes around to help Dale.

With the way clear, the ladies sneak around the edge and get within running range to the RV.

The walkers have their day and defend or damage each of their opponents.  This is in addition to damaging Dale and Jim due to the rounds event card.  Dale isn’t looking so good at this point.

Rick and Shane join the RV guys to engage all the threatening walkers and the ladies are free to run to the RV.

With Rick and Shane’s help, they take down the remaining walkers and everyone survives to the end of the round and the survivors end the game in victory.


As I mentioned this was the 6th solo scenario I’ve run through and it went down like a lot of them- pretty easy. I even upped the difficulty by adding the Night Fighting card to double the threat increases per round and limit the shooting range but the big flaw here is with so many survivors and the ability to only do an action once per round, everyone just spams Hold Your Nerve actions and threat never becomes an issue.

I like the solo scenarios but think the balance is off as they typically don’t feel very challenging. I’ll take up this issue more when I recap all the games on my challenge list.

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2 Comments

  1. Andy

    While I personally prefer a full color paint job for my miniatures, your monochromatic paint scheme is excellent and lends itself exceptionally well to the verisimilitude of the “night fighting” scenario you’ve set up. Peering down from above over the bare trees and with monochromatic look verges on the edge of looking real. Nice job.

    I’m thoroughly enjoying your game recaps and the pics. It gives me something to gauge my own plays by. Thanks for all your work. Keep it up!

    • Christian

      Thanks Andy! I did it first as an experiment to see if can work and then I found the technique faster and easier than color so I haven’t gone back (at least for Walking Dead material). I agree that full color displays and set ups look amazing but the unique challenges the monochromatic style forces has been quite fun.

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