The Epidemic Begins

I'd feel better with something on the board

My standard Tuesday game turned narrative.  I asked my buddy to bring 1250 points of his Death Guard, plus about 30 of the Guardsmen from his Imperial Guard army.  I brought 1000 points of Space Wolves (in power armor, of all things) plus 24 zombies.  I didn't tell him what we were doing, but I'm pretty sure he had a good idea about what was going down. 

The scenario involved him assaulting my guardsmen's positions with his zombies.  In true Imperial fashion, my Space Wolves were more than ready to sacrifice all of the guardsmen, if it meant wiping out the zombies.  The Death Guard deployed like it was a Pitched Battle, while the Guardsmen were strung out in defensive emplacements between 12 and 18 inches from their board edge.  The Wolves would walk on in turn one. 

Here they come!

The zombies were well screened, so the only target for the guardsmen's flashlights was the Daemon Prince.  They managed to put a wound on him against all odds, but that didn't do much to slow the advance.  Turn two saw the first of the zombies getting stuck in, while the Daemon Prince bypassed the initial line to charge the Grey Hunters and Battle Leader.  The zombies pulled down most of their targets and were well on their way to picking up a kill point.  The Prince didn't fare so well.  One hit out of five left a lot of swings coming back.  The Battle Leader did two wounds and the Power Fist stepped in to finish the job.  Meanwhile, my Lone wolves charged in.  You would think a raging werewolf in power armor would bring down a bunch of zombies, but apparently all my opponents good rolls were in his 5+ armor saves and 4+ feel no pains, because he couldn't kill a single one over several turns of combat.

They're in the building!

On the other end of the battlefield two of his Plague Marine squads tied down my Blood Claws and Wolf Priest while the zombies went to work.  They munched through two squads of guardsmen before charging into the marines.  In the bastion in the middle, another squad bit the dust as the zombies ran amok.  My counter-charge hit pretty hard.  The Battle Leader killed a whole squad by himself, while the Grey Hunters killed the zombies that the Lone Wolf proved incapable of handling.  As the dust cleared, one of my guardsmen squads had made it off the board alive.  The Blood Claws killed the reduced Plague Marines, while the Wolf Priest killed the last zombie (a secondary objective).  For the most part, we were both successful in achieving our aims. 

So what's next?  Well, we've discussed it and we plan on proceeding by taking alternating turns to tell the next part of the story.  We'll see exactly what he comes up with, but he mentioned possibly assaulting the laboratory of the Wolf Priest who took samples of the zombie virus.

Cleaning up

If you're interested in running the scenario yourself, the zombies had guardsmen stats with two close combat weapons, Feel No Pain, a 12" assault, and Slow and Purposeful when outside of 18 inches from an enemy unit.  The Death Guard's main objective was to acquire as many kill points of guardsmen by zombies as possible, while their secondary objectives were to protect the zombies and collect a kill point of a Space Wolf unit by a unit of zombies.  The Space Wolves main objective was to kill all the zombies, while their secondary objectives were to get guardsmen off the board and have the Wolf Priest take a sample of a zombie.  The Death Guard have 4 packs of six zombies, while the Space Wolves have 6 groups of five guardsmen.  The guardsmen weren't allowed to begin falling back until turn 4. 


Some optional rules we talked about included having the dead guardsmen added to the zombie squads, or possibly giving a few of the guardsmen some heavy weapons such as autocannons.  If you do give it a go, let me know what you think.