What is it?:
Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse is a 30mm
post apocalyptic skirmish game published by Osprey Games. It is
designed for two players each running a gang of survivors and trying
to avoid or eliminate zombies.
The setting:
The setting of Last Days is
intentionally left vague and up to the people playing. I don't know
if people think it's good or bad, but I think it's nice. Especially
since you're probably going to be playing with a nerd bag who wants
to argue about the “reality” of zombies. Yes, I can be that nerd
bag...
Personally, I'm going with the World
War Z (novel, not film) version of the zombies when I'm designing
groups.
The system:
The system is a very simple one,
requiring only one (sometimes two) d6s. Models have several stats
which are used for combat, mostly. I'll get into the other stuff in a
bit.
Models can engage in ranged combat and
melee combat, rolling to “meet or beat” either a number or the
enemy roll. Damage is also rolled, with stats adding to it. There is
a bit of math required when it comes to taking damage. One stat a
model has is Endurance. When a model takes damage, you divide the
damage by the Endurance and then take that much actual damage. I have
to say that I'm not a fan of this because I am terrible at math and
this is going to screw me up more than anything else. A minor
complaint, sure, but I still wanted to express it.
When it comes to building your group of
survivors, you first pick your leader and their “morality.” You
choose between Selfless, Trained, and Selfish, with the point cost
and complexity of changes increasing with each one. The morality of
your Leader effects what kinds of survivors you can take, as they
also have these moralities (there's also Neutral survivors). For the
most part, you can take up to 50% Neutral and 25% from another
morality, with the rest coming from your Leader's morality.
This is important, as most of the smart
folks and healers are Selfless. Police and military are (of course)
Trained. Gang members and cronies are Selfish, as are survivalists.
If you want to go gun heavy and elite, your best bet is Trained. If
you want to have a balanced force, Selfless is the way to go. If you
want a horde to fight the zombies, as well as be the bad guy in some
scenarios, then you're a Selfish bastard.
As you're buying your group, you need
to equip them. You only get to have a few really good guns (unless
you're Trained) and a few other pieces of equipment. Since you only
get so many points, you have to be very careful with what you pick.
One other thing you need to do is pick
your Refuge. Now, they want you to do it after you pick your leader,
but I find it's best to do after you've figured out your group. As
the refuge can only hold so many models, you should probably know how
many you want to take before you pick it. In addition to the model
limit, each refuge gives you some things for campaigns. We'll get to
those.
When it comes to playing the game, you
have several sequences. Now, there's a few interesting things here.
In most skirmish games I've played, each model moves, shoots, fights,
etc and then you move to the next model. Having each phase handle
each model the way they have it set up is new to me. One thing that
is familiar is that there's alternating model activation.
The first one is where the zombies get
to turn up and act. You see, zombies aren't controlled by one player,
they're there to screw both players up. They go after whoever is
closer, so you can have the other player make the rolls when one is
trying to chomp on your face. One thing is that zombies are pretty
scary and may make it so you're going to be stuck trying to fight
them off than run away.
Next, you get to preform your basic
actions. Moving, climbing, running, etc. You can also ready a run to
pop off when someone gets close.
Then you have the shooting phase. Now,
when you roll initiative, you get to choose it you want to move and
fight first or if you want to shoot first. If you're rolling with a
lot of guns, you probably want to be shooting first. Because shooting
is usually very effective in the zombie apocalypse... However, if a
model or a zombie was able to lock you in close combat, you're going
to be doing that and not shoot. Shooting also makes noise that has a
chance to attract zombies to you.
Then you get to the fighting. This is
where the other guy gets to go first, from that initiative roll
earlier. They pick a fight, do their rolls, and then the other player
picks a fight and does all their stuff. This continues until the
fights are done.
The game ends when one group has been
eliminated, all the Salvage tokens have been picked up, or one group
breaks and runs. There's no turn limit, but the longer you play, the
more zombies you'll have to deal with. While they cap it at 20
zombies, that's a lot of zombies.
And that's pretty much it for the
basics.
Now, there's only six missions and some
of them require special terrain. These missions are pretty basic;
fighting the other player, looting, defending your refuge, etc. Since
you randomly roll these, it's going to get old really quick. Plus,
the game is centered around the campaigns, so you'll want to keep
playing to get the good gear.
Want a chainsaw? Better hope you get it
in Salvage. Lusting for a minigun? Hope you roll well. Armor, gun
sights, better weapons and guns, and a lot of other things are locked
away behind campaigns and salvage and random rolls. As you might
imagine, I'm not exactly happy about this. In a mission, if one
player breaks, the other player collects all of the Salvage tokens
left on the board. So, if you have a series of bad games, you're
going to fall way behind the other player. It looks okay, but I
always get concerned when there's large disparities between the
winners and losers of games in campaigns. I'm not a huge fan of
seeing a bunch of gear I'd really like to use... But, I have to hope
and pray that I get the One Lucky Roll that gives it to me. Yeah, no
thanks. I'm fine with having to pay out the ass for some really good
stuff, but having it locked behind a wall is just teasing me. Might
as well have not included it, I think. The worst part is that some of
these are classic zombie killing weapons. I don't know what the
thought process was here. Honestly, this should have been left for
the expansion set.
Is it worth it?:
Yes.
However... I do think that $30 is a lot
to ask for what you get. Yes, it is a hardbound book and very high
quality. But, there's not a lot to it. If there were more missions,
maybe some sample groups you could just pick up and use, or really
just ANYTHING more, I wouldn't be saying this.
All of that said, the PDF is probably
your best option for a new copy. While I do have issues with the
game, it's probably one of the best, well balanced (in terms of how
the game plays) Bring Your Own Minis game involving zombies. If
you've got the minis, you'll get a lot of use for it.
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