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| Outbreak City at Eastern Front 2011 |
On Sunday 1st August this year Eastern Front, I made the decision to put on a display game of All Things Zombie at the East of England Wargames Show. The show was held at St Andrews Hall in Norwich.
After announcing here I was doing so, one of our fellow bloggers, Colin (cmnash) said "I might just try and get over to Norwich to see you there!"
I knew that Colin wasn't local and seeing as he's a gamer and a zombie gamer to boot and making he effort to travel I emailed him to say "Why not play?" A few emails later and, before you know it, a plan was hatched - we were putting on a game together.
Great news because, whilst I was happy to put on the game, I'd only actually done it once beforehand and certainly not alone.
So Colin brought his massive horde of zombies, a few survivors, some wrecked cars, street furniture and a few other goodies and I brought the Risks and Rewards Deck, the gaming table and the terrain.
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| Colin's rather impressive zombie horde. |
For a full report of the games we played, and bucket loads of pictures, check out Colin's post Eastern Front Game with Zombie Ad.
Humorously, Colin turned our display game into a full-on participation event with once quick question to a lady who scanned the board with interest, telling us it was the kind of game she and her husband could play together. "Cool, so do you wanna play?"
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| "Ooh, ahhh, that's how it starts. Then there's the running and screaming!" |
Colin and I exchanged glances and shrugs. "Errr...sure!" we replied.
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| Things turned ugly fast. Real ugly. |
It was great to meet Colin and our combined ability to teach others to play ATZ (with equal measures of us getting the rules right and wrong, the wrong bit being mostly me) drive the narrative and lead the players into as much peril as we possibly could, worked perfectly.
We were busy with people at the table all day long, I was told we had one of the busiest tables and, most importantly we, and everyone who either played or stopped to ask questions, seemed to have a great time. It was great to meet with everyone, discuss gaming, terrain and zombies. Thanks should go to Mike and Dug who both dropped in to say hello and an extra special thank you to Dug, whose photos are shown here. My other half had the camera for a day out she had with the kids and I only had a phone to get pictures on. Epic fail.
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| Local 'Irwins' capture the action from the roof of the cinema. |
One of the most amusing things was more than one person asking "So do you guys play a lot together?" to which we could only answer, "Actually we met a couple of hours ago."
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| The undead's clumsy ambush was no match for the cowgirl's firepower. |
Whilst the buildings had all been built long before the show, the street layout was new and reached the stage it was seen in these pictures in the wee hours the night before the show. It is not finished, there's tons of detailing to go and I'll share the journey of it's development in some future posts.
I'm sure I'll be putting on another public game at some point in the future and this time it will likely be a participation game from the outset.
Thanks Colin, awesome stuff sir!
