See I caught ’em wit a right hook, caught ’em wit a jab
Caught ’em wit an uppercut, kicked ’em in his ass
Arnold doesn’t get a lot of page-time in the comics and comes off as more of a meathead than anything else but Axel, he is legit. Axel is one of my favorite characters in the series and it’s too bad we’ll likely only see one sculpt of him.
Well enough about them, it’s Pit night and so let’s see how these two do. Arnold ops for “age before beauty” so Axel is up first.
For both brawlers, I wanted to try to keep them the same so I have each with the Keepsake, Lucky Charm, and Bandages. After that, I customized their gear to fit their character. I wish the game had brass knuckles but maybe that is a really risky zombie-fighting weapon. I settled on some Makeshift Body Armour that Axel could have made at the prison and a Fire Axe, which should also prove common there.
The lights flicker on, blinding Axel as he gets to his feet. As his eyes adjust, the stark room comes into focus centering on the blood scrawled message in the center of the room: “SURVIVE.” Before he can even think about the cryptic message, Axel sees the walkers. With no discernible way out, the message becomes crystal clear as the dead start to notice they too are no longer alone…
Axel decides to play it safe and sneak over towards the first search token.
The Pit has other ideas though and the Herd event comes up, bringing damn near everyone on top of him. Luckily, Axel wasn’t caught in between a bunch of the walkers so the cop walker leading the herd brought them to her first.
And with that, Axel just Fire Axe’s cop walker in the head and takes her down. Axel might have some issues with authority helping to drive his fighting instincts.
Axel still has a gang of walkers nearby but overall, a very productive round.
Needing to get out of there, Axel hoofs it across the room to a different search token and gains the attention of Shane walker.
And down he goes! Axel really doesn’t like the authoritah.
In the next round, Axel sneaks over to the crate and finds some useless ammo.
He purposely drew on trucker walker but didn’t realize he’d pick punk walker as a stray.
IT DON’T MATTER! Axel goes into Beast Mode and uses his keepsake pendant take down two walkers. That is the first double-tap I’ve seen in The Pit. Axel is on fire now.
The Pit is looking a bit lonely!
Three rounds and four walkers killed is easily a record. Let’s see where Axel goes from here.
Axel sneaks over to the next stash, keeping a walker within the killzone.
Sure enough, Guts walker saunters over.
And Axel just doesn’t care. He obliterates the walker with a little luck. Five walkers down and two search tokens by round four is definitely putting Axel as the king of the Pit.
And then there was one.
Axel’s time is running out. He’ll have one more round before the nerves start to get to him.
Axel sneaks over to the last bit of loot and finds another mediocre weapon.
But gains a friend. Axel is feeling the adrenaline wain and isn’t quite able to bring it home.
Almost out of time but maybe there is enough time to finish the last walker off.
Axel passes his panic test with only the loss of one action so he engages the prone walker just as Pandemonium kicks in and draws in four new walkers. Luckily, they don’t engage so Axel is free to try and take out the downed walker.
With a final blow, Axel kills the sixth walker.
With the last walker destroyed, Axel hears a faint click and notices behind him that a door has opened, lancing the room with a thin stream of light. Without hesitation, Axel throws the door wide and barrels through into the blinding light…
So… I’ve had an ending for The Pit in mind since I started but didn’t really expect anyone to make it through, at least not until I started using some of the heavy hitting Survivors. Axel’s amazing performance forced me to outline the full rules of The Pit in a little more detail.
To clarify the rules a little more on The Pit, time had actually run out for Axel but I’ve been running the last several sessions where I let the rounds finish out even if they hit the full threat value. So Threat will end the session but only at the end of a round. Further increases to threat during a round are ignored.
Also, the Pit will end once a survivor has destroyed a number of walkers equal to what started in the Pit and searched all three search tokens. Most of the time, this will be 6 walkers at the start but that number may move up if I need to push a survivor to more than 75 points. More walkers can arrive and be killed but aren’t required to escape.
Axel – 1st Hall of Famer
- Result: Escaped…
- Threat Counter: 18
- Rounds: 6
- Supply Counters Searched: 3
- Walkers Killed: 6
Alright Arnold Greene, you’re up!
Arnold Greene has the same Keepsake, Lucky Charm, and Bandages but adds a Titanium Baseball Bat, Animal Catcher Pole, and Leather Jacket. The Animal Catcher Pole should be interesting as it offers a new action option and has some good control use.
The lights flicker on, blinding Arnold as he gets to his feet. As his eyes adjust, the stark room comes into focus centering on the blood scrawled message in the center of the room: “SURVIVE.” Before he can even think about the cryptic message, Arnold sees the walkers. With no discernible way out, the message becomes crystal clear as the dead start to notice they too are no longer alone…
Arnold comes in and uses the animal catcher pole to snare a walker and move her out of the way.
The first round goes off without a hitch and that close walker is neutralized.
Arnold gets to his first stash and gets some nice armor. This will do well if he has to burn his leather jacket in a swarmed attack.
Unfortunately, the loot came with some unwanted attention.
These walkers were no pushovers like what Axel faced but Arnold was able to fend them off.
All-in-all not a bad first couple of rounds. Threat is tracking through and Arnold is getting a decent search pull and some easy events.
Arnold goes after the next search token and finds weak melee weapon.
He comes up against another walker but has just terrible rolls and is forced to go through his keepsake and lucky charm to get his first kill.
With a bad event pull, the threat tracker has really shot up.
Arnold makes a break for the corner and it turns out to be lucky move as his nerves are shot. The walkers just aren’t going down easy and he let’s loose a roar of frustration, bringing in more walkers on top of him.
He’s able to take down the first walker but she just gets back up.
In the next round, Arnold uses the animal catcher to pull one of the walkers over to use as an obstacle. I don’t get a chance to review the rules to see if that will actually work because instead, it makes a nice opening for Arnold to escape through.
This pulls one of his “fans” but the event pulls over the other two and now he’s getting back into the same situation again. Arnold is able to beat this walker down but in all the excitement, he must be forgetting to go for the head. And this is all with his bat rerolls.
All this running around has eaten up a lot of his time and the panic is starting to set in.
Even though there is a nice opening to escape through, his fear gets the best of him and Arnold cowers back into the corner.
The Walking Dead event shows up and brings everyone to the party.
Arnold plays for the long game in the corner and even though he gets in a good swing, the two walkers are too much for him and he ditches his leather jacket to fend off a damage and bite.
The threat count was too much for the round and Arnold was out of time. The animal catcher was a bit of a distraction but also the dice just didn’t play nice for Arnold.
Arnold Greene
- Result: Threat expired
- Threat Counter: 18
- Rounds: 6
- Supply Counters Searched: 2
- Walkers Killed: 1
Russ Spears
Although getting a corner to protect your back seems a good strategy, that seems to be a good sign the Pit is going to win based on how things have been going.
All hail Axel, King of The Pit!
Although Horse lives on in the hearts of all…