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Walking Dead Wednesday: Today, Kids Pit Free!

Today is unofficial Walking Dead Kids Day. I just declared it for no other reason than the fact that I painted up a few more survivors and they are decidedly pint-sized.

I’d already painted up Carl, Duane, and the Twins so I decided to finish out the “Children of The Walking Dead” by working on Clementine and Sophia.

First up is little Sophia. Man, I really dislike this figure.

Not sure what the sculptor was thinking on this one as the model really looks like an adult with dwarfism.  All the other kid models seem to have child-like proportions but for whatever reason, Sophia misses the mark.  Ah well. She be done painted up now.

Clementine is another story.  Pretty cool little model and a good sculpt even when I lazily leave a big flash line on her base.  The only issue I had with Clementine wasn’t really Clementine’s fault. It was Tyreese’s.

See Tyreese comes with his iconic hammer and I was looking at it when it struck me just how puny that hammer actually looked.  It looked like Tyreese was walking around with a ball peen hammer or maybe even some toy.  Then I look over at Clementine and she’s sporting a hammer. A drive-nails-through-skulls hammer.

I decided I couldn’t leave that alone so I did a hammer-ectomy.

Not my finest work but each character’s hammer proportions seem more correct to me.

I couldn’t leave Tyreese alone either so I painted him up too. Of course, when I went to check out some images of Tyreese painted up, I found out something interesting.

What the hell? This is the figure image from Mantic’s site. Lo and behold! Tyreese’s post-Kickstarter model has an appropriate-looking hammer. Well, looks like I wasn’t alone in thinking the original dinky hammer was silly on Tyreese.

Ok, enough about Tyreese and my overcompensating customization.  Today is all about the children and what better way to give them “their day” than to throw wide The Pit gates and make it an “all-play”?


For today’s Pit showcase, I decided to throw in all the children.  This totaled 56 points and I was going to equip them with weapons but then I realized I have the ultimate weapon already available: a mother!

So here we have Lori Grimes, Caring Mother watching over her flock of Carl Grimes, Cynthiana Survivor, Sophia, Innocent Child, Duane, Billy & Ben, and Clementine. This puts me a point over at 76 points but I’ll do it. For the kids.


The lights flicker on, blinding Lori as she gets to her feet. As her eyes adjust, the stark room comes into focus centering on the blood scrawled message in the center of the room: “SURVIVE.” Before she can even think about the cryptic message, Lori 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…

Lori sees that Clementine might have some skillz so she tells her and Carl to help take down walker Shane.  The Twins and Sophia huddle in close behind while Duane makes move to grab some loot.

Unfortunately, Duane’s mom is none to happy with that and comes over to take care of the situation.  By eating him.  It’s how good walker parents raise their kids.

Five dice and the Grimes and Clementine can’t land a singe headshot.  Walker Shane falls down while Duane’s mom starts the nom-noming.

The kids are going to have to start doing better than this to get through the night.

The kids all break out into scavenger mode. Duane scores early with arguably the best pull in the Supply deck- the Tire Iron.

Sophia scores some Bandages.

While Billy & Ben grab a Metal Pipe. All-in-all, not a bad haul. Personally, I was hoping for more jelly-beans.

Carl and Clementine double team Duane’s mom while Lori goes to keep walker Shane down.

The walkers put up a valiant fight but Lori’s hate for Shane’s face and Clementine’s adaptability put down the walkers.  Two kills, now we’re talking.

The team is taking control with 2 kills and all 3 search tokens complete. The Bandages and Tire Iron are a pretty significant find too.  Hopefully, the team can put them to good use.

Duane passes the Tire Iron to Clementine and they engage old man walker in the corner.

Lori and Carl double team trucker walker while the Twins and Sophia try to hold their nerve with mixed success.

Unfortunately, The Pit has other ideas and sends two more walkers in on team Grimes.

Lori goes all out and hand-to-hands the brains out of her two walkers.  That might be the best double-tap kill I’ve seen- barehanded, using only her mother’s instincts with Carl nearby to rage kill those walkers. Carl just sits there and mewls pathetically.

Clementine’s new Tire Iron helps her and Duane take down old man walker.

With one walker remaining, it looks like kids night is going to be a great success.

Which is just in time as this is likely the last round before the youngins start panicking.

But Lori’s got them covered.  With Nurturing, everyone can get an extra action and with my hardcore rules for Hold Your Nerve requiring two actions, this will make sure survivors get the chance to all Hold Your Nerve and do another action.

After some item swaps and a slew of whiffed Hold Your Nerve actions, we have Clementine and Duane running over to help the Grimes double team walker Reggie.

Then The Walking Dead event is drawn.  Oof! It kicks the threat marker into Medium due to all the crappy HYN rolls earlier and brings a whopping five walkers into play surrounding Sophia and Billy & Ben.

This is really not good.  It’s a complete 180 of how things were going.  Lori’s nurturing nature to leave the weakest of her flock behind the wall of her stronger young actually set them up for ruin. Still it can work out.

Sophia rolls a respectable defense die.

But totally turns into walker chow.  Six red dice is never an easy thing to shake off.

Billy & Ben didn’t fare much better.

But they are still up!

And the Grimes family fails to take down their lone walker.  Just one kill away from ending this nightmare and they can’t even get a take-down.

But not to worry, Sophia is back. Well, sort of.

and Billy & Ben fail their infection roll so they’ll also be back. Eventually.

Two kids down and the board went from owning to owned in the span of one event card.

On the plus side, those kids would have likely just panicked anyway as we’re deep in Medium threat territory.

The team decides to regroup in the corner.  Carl takes on a walker but everyone is otherwise ok.

Except The Hunger event pulls in two more walkers.  Carl has walker Sophia and diner walker to deal with while Clementine gets to work on walker Reggie.

And Carl goes down to one life and is infected while Clementine knocks walker Reggie to the ground but without a headshot, it’s not a kill. Carl then fails his infection roll and dies.

It’s getting serious now as we hit high threat and only three survivors.

Lori goes into a berserker rage at the death of Carl.

Which fuels Clementine’s own berserker rage, getting near the other Diner walker and walker Twins.

Duane just quietly creeps up on downed walker Carl to try and end him.

The Hunger event card strikes again and with it, a whole host of walkers descend on berserker Clementine.  Walker Carl gets up just before Duane can coup de grace him.

Clementine makes the most of her berserker fury.

But 10 dice is just not realistically defendable.

Clementine is victim number four in this failing family outing.

These walkers have a taste for Grimes and bring Lori down to one health (after failing her infection roll).  Duane rockstars the situation and puts walker Carl down with his bare hands.  Finally, the sixth elusive walker kill has been achieved.

With the last walker destroyed, Lori and Duane hear a faint click and notice behind them that a door has opened, lancing the room with a thin stream of light. Without hesitation, Duane grabs the wounded Lori and stumbles through the door into the blinding light…

Brutal. I’m pretty sure Lori isn’t counting this as a “win.”


Lori, Caring Mother and Duane
  • Result: Escaped… (Carl Grimes, Sophia, Clementine, and Billy & Ben die)
  • Threat Counter: 18
  • Rounds: 6
  • Supply Counters Searched: 3
  • Walkers Killed: 6

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1 Comment

  1. Russ Spears

    I’ve said it before, but I still enjoy how these are written – it makes for a very entertaining read with my breakfast. And that pic of 10 die spoke volumes in itself.

    Now that Carl, Sophia, and Clem have escaped to join Axel, will he become their father figure on a future adventure? I would never plant seeds for things like that!

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