Riding high from my win in the first Miles Behind Us scenario using my Hardcore rules, I decided to push on and hit Chapter 2: Leaving Wiltshire Estates.

edit: rules recap:

Hardcore Mode:

  • When a card says to move or select a walker, choose a survivor and select the closest walker to that survivor. That walker then activates or moves to the nearest survivor.
  • When walkers enter play, choose a character and place the walker as close to that survivor as possible per the normal rules (not within the survivor’s killzone).
  • If a character takes the Hold Your Nerve action, it is the only action the character can take that turn.

This time we have Rick and Tyreese sporting a Hatchet and Hammer respectively along with Chris and Julie.  The goal of this scenario is to get three survivors off the map in the upper left corner.  To start, you can only take actions with Rick and Tyreese.  To start activating Chris or Julie, you have to get in base-to-base contact.  Since both of those survivors are of Low nerve, I knew I needed to get down to them in a hurry.

With the Threat starting at 6, getting to Chris and Julie would be crucial.  I had Rick start out with his Stay Calm! ability and rocked a 3! result. Since I’m playing Hardcore, that is the only thing Rick can do. Feeling pretty good, I had Tyreese run down the edge of the board and take on a walker.

Since this scenario has the Endless Horde rule in play, Tyreese’s strength in killing walkers isn’t very useful as you immediately replace them.  Since I’m going Hardcore, those walkers are placing right around my guys (a Killzone away).  Getting into melee and the end of the round threat knocks me back up to 5.

We burn the next two turns running down around to the corner, taking out walkers along the way.  The threat by this point is at the cusp of going into Medium at the end of turn 3.

Rick stays behind and pulls his Stay Calm! ability but comes up with only a 1. Tyreese runs to the kids and gets into B2B contact with both of them, allowing them to now activate.  Since Threat is going to jump up at least two points (since Tyreese pulled a walker in running to them) and get into Medium, they both stay put and fail their Hold Your Nerve rolls. Thanks kids.

I run Rick to catch up to the group and since Julie is near Tyreese, she does a Hold Your Nerve, succeeding and dropping me back into Low threat.  Tyreese sneaks forward and Chris does the same.

The Event rolls through and walkers engage Tyreese and Rick but we kill them both and their replacements shuffle in behind Rick.  We did jump up three points in threat by the end of the round and so are firmly in Medium territory.

Julie is fine since Tyreese is around so I decide I need to pick up the pace and have her run ahead, drawing in one walker.  Tyreese follows her to pull in another walker (and a second once the event round starts).  Chris panics and runs. Luckily, the closest walkers are direct behind him so he dashes off to the corner of the board and his noise doesn’t draw anything his way.

Rick is on full-time threat mitigation duty, hoping to buy the rest of the group time to get out of here.  He whiffs his Stay Calm! ability again and gets a 1.

So, this happened.  I figured at the end of the round we’d be up to 11 with the melee and obligatory end of round threat increase but I pulled There’s a Storm Coming… from the events and got pounded with threat increase cards to rock us up to 15 threat. We’re in deep High threat territory and nowhere near our goal.  This is looking grim.

Rick desperately tries to Stay Calm! but again gets a 1.  Chris stays calm enough to get one action after the panic roll but fails his Hold Your Nerve roll. Julie screams, pulling in another walker and negating Rick’s attempt at holding the group together. Tyreese tries to also Hold Your Nerve and succeeds. We’re hovering on the brink with 14 threat.

Too Quiet my ass!  Walkers engage Rick and Tyreese in force but the Too Quiet event card shoots us up 3 more threat to put us at 17.  Melee begins and we go up another threat point to end the game at 18.

I finish out the melee with minimal fuss, just to see how that would have gone down but the survivors have lost all hope and scatter.

My first loss and it felt good! I was constantly fighting the decision to hold back and try to manage threat with pushing forward and even though the event deck really had it out for me, I thought it worked out well.  I know that others will have different experiences and challenges playing these scenarios but I feel like I have the challenge level dialed in for me with the Hardcore changes I made.

I’m pretty confident that I could have won this scenario if Hold Your Nerve was like any other action.  Stay Calm! + Tyreese would lower the threat about 2-3 threat per round while always moving forward until I could reach Chris and Julie.  Once everyone was involved, we could spam Hold Your Nerve and average 3-4 threat lower per round and could just walk on out.

All in all, it was the closest to the solo experience I was hoping for and has me wanting to try the scenario again to see if I can crack it.

Don’t worry Rick, we’ll get it next time. Next time.