Tom, you are having far too much fun with this.
It’s awesome.
“So does that thing help,” Shieldwolf asks, nodding at Nixxter’s megaphone. They’re sitting in the shade of a tree where Shieldwolf cautiously invited them to sit on a bench. He stands a short distance off while Nixxter and Delta talk.
“I don’t know,” Nixxter says. “I’ll let you know once you decide whether you’re coming back with us.”
“It’s just strange is all. We’ve been hiding here for a few days. We didn’t see anyone and then this morning you come along like you’re running for office or like you’re on a cheerleading squad.”
Delta tries to exchange a glance with Nixxter, but Nixxter doesn’t return it. Did that guy just call them cheerleaders?
“We?” Nixxter asks.
“Did I say we?” Shieldwolf smiles slightly. “I mean me. I’ve been hiding here for a few days.”
“If there are others, they’re welcome as well. We can use as much as help as we can get.”
“You say you have a hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Almost,” Delta adds. “We almost have a hospital. There was, uh, a setback.”
“Look, the plan is to retake the city,” Nixxter explains, “to drive the zombies out. It’s going to take time. But we’re starting with a hospital.”
“You can’t drive them out,” Shieldwolf says. “They’ll keep coming.”
“We can. I’ve heard of other towns doing it. Setting up barricades, machinegun nests, hospitals, schools, provisional governments, looking to link up with other settlements. This is how we win. One city at a time. We’re inviting you to be a part of that.”
Shieldwolf regards them. He seems to make a decision.
“Okay, we’ll come with you.”
“So it is we?”
“Come on down, Jeansberg.”
In a tree overhead, a woman sheaths a large knife. She lowers herself from its branches and extends her hand.
“I’m Jeansberg. Pleased to meet you.”
“So do you need us to help you carry anything? Do you have any provisions or weapons? Do you have a gun?” Nixxter tries to hide the eagerness in his voice.
“Uh, not really. That’s not really an issue. We were actually out of food. We were just hiding from those bikers.”
“Bikers?”
“If you’re taking back the town, I figure we’ll meet them soon enough.”
As they walk back, Nixxter asks, “So are you two, uh…”
“Us? No.” Jeansberg says quickly. “God, no.”
“No,” Shieldwolf agrees.
Day 8 results:
Shieldwolf (leadership) and jeansberg (combat) recruited
The trader gave us +15 food!
Day 8 missions:
Shieldwolf and Delta each scout adjacent unexplored suburbs
Tim James and Jarrodhk scavenge 10 food from a farm (38% chance to find an item, 9% chance of mishap)
Kyrios on her second day of clearing the hospital of zombies
Ed Solomon still recovering
Nixxter and jeansberg defending the compound (22% chance of a loss if we’re attacked)
I’m really enjoying this, keep it up Tom!
I just played my first game on iPad so now I understand the mechanics better and what my poll choice actually means.
This is badass, I can’t wait for more!
Another attack? That’s three attacks in nine days.
Tim James and Jarrod return from a nearby farm with 10 rations of food and a brand new dog, which looks exactly like the dog they already have.
“I found him,” Jarrod announces.
“He named it Scamp,” Tim says. “Scamp.”
“For summer camp. I had a dog named that when I was a kid. Summer camp. Scamp.”
“I’m taking my dog back,” Nixxter says to Jarrod.
“Right, of course.”
“It’s not like you can take care of two dogs.”
“No, no, of course not. What are you going to do with the megaphone?”
“Here, Delta. You get the megaphone.”
“I’d rather have a dog.”
“You get the megaphone.”
Last night’s attack thinned out the zombie population in the North Mall. Have a look:
It’s no longer shaded red, because it’s down to only 14 zombies after last night’s attack. Time to move out! Jarrod (with Scamp), Kyrios, and jeansberg set out for a two-day zombie killing mission in the North Mall.
Day 9 results:
Found another dog (+0.5 scavenge, +0.5 combat), given to Jarrodhk to replace Rowlf, who is given back to Nixxter to help with defense
Cleared the hospital of zombies
Day 9 missions:
Kyrios, Jarrodhk, and jeansberg clearing the North Mall (9% chance of mishap)
Delta and Nixxter on defense (19% chance of losses if we’re attacked)
Tim James scavenging food from farm (12% chance of mishap, 25% chance of finding an item)
Shieldwolf starts building the hospital barricade to make sure no zombies get in during Ed’s last day of recovery
Ed Solomon rests one more day
I don’t get a dog? Damn.
To be fair, I finally loaded this thread at home instead of work (where the screenshots are blocked), and I’m still not sure what gender I am. I am very, very confused right now.
(To echo the others, awesome thread, keep it going, and stay alive!)
Nixxter, I hope you and your band of Cheerios have plan.
Tom, good stuff.
No, you get the megaphone.
I just realized… you’re nine days in and haven’t tried taking a territory yet? If I had any doubts, now I know I’m playing this game wrong.
He tried to take the Hospital, but his builder was wounded.
I missed that, my bad.
Still, I’m playing this game wrong, but looking forward to trying it other ways.
Playing on impossible really is a whole other game, Kent. I would love to get more territory, but without farms near us, the starvation issue is what I’m most worried about, so I’ve been devoting resources to bringing in food. Yay, Tim! This also means not being so eager to recruit, which means less manpower to expand the compound.
Also, I don’t know how typical this is, but we’ve had three attacks in nine days. Getting attacked every three days is a daunting prospect. And consider that every territory you add also adds more zombies to your “frontage”, which means stronger attacks that are harder to defend.
-TomThere is also a built-in timer pressure to expand though, isn’t there? The constantly growing zombie pop for one, but also stuff like the zombie religion seems to really present problems after a while. So, bunkering in and trying to turtle up resources isn’t a very viable option, is it?
Regarding frontage, is there any way to abandon sectors if you think you’ve over-expanded? I was wondering if there’s ever a point to do that, like to sacrifice a less desirable zone to reduce attack chance while you expand another direction.
Oh, I’m not advocating that. You’d never win, given what I know about the victory conditions (spoiler!). Like everything else in Rebuild, it’s a balancing act.
-Tom
iOS version is on sale for a buck.
This is why you need a hospital early on:
If we had a hospital, the message would have been something like “Jarrod got sick, but luckily, we have a hospital!” Jarrod would have then gone on with the zombie killing mission in the North Mall. Instead, he has to drop out of the mission. Does that make it more dangerous for Kyrios and Jeansberg, or is the combat rating set at the beginning of the two-day mission?
Who knows. We’ll see how it turns out tomorrow. In the meantime, look at the South Mall.
Zombies are like a file cabinet in a Three Stooges movie. You close one drawer and another drawer opens. Then you hit your head on it.
Day 10 results:
Tim brings back 10 rations of food
Jarrodhk is ill, will be incapacitated for three days. We furthermore lose 5 points of morale.
Day 10 missions:
Kyrios and Jeansberg continue zombie killing in the North Mall
Shieldwolf and Tim James scouting, hoping to find more places to scavenge food
Ed Solomon gets his butt out of bed and starts the four-day process of barricading the hospital
Delta and Nixxter on defense
Another zombie attack last night, which Nixxter and Delta handily repel. But then eight guys show up on motorcycles. Several of them have assault rifles.
“Brother Marcus?” says a tall bald man on the lead motorcycle. He’s wearing a priest’s collar.
“Yes, Father?”
“Show him that you have a full clip.”
“Yes, Father.”
The diminutive Marcus swings his leg around and gets off his motorcycle. He snaps the magazine out of his rifle and approaches Nixxter, holding it out to show the brightly colored brass casings of the shells inside.
“You know how many rounds are in there?” the tall bald man asks.
“No.”
“Enough to kill you and your friend and whoever you might have hiding in these buildings.”
The little man smartly slides the magazine back into the weapon but doesn’t return to his motorcycle.
“Brother Marcus?”
“Yes, Father?”
“Show him how many clips you have.”
“Yes, Father.”
The little man swings a leather pouch on his back around to his front. He lifts the flap and holds the open mouth of the bag towards Nixxter. It’s packed tightly with magazines, each with brightly colored brass casings at the top.
“You know how many clips are in there?” the tall bald man asks.
“What do you want?”
“The first thing I want is to make clear the balance of power in this situation. This situation here. This situation between us. Between you and your friend and me and my seven friends.”
“All right.”
“Now that I’ve done that, I can confess that I have ulterior motives. What I really want is to bring you the Word. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Matthew 16:18. Do you know what that means? Peter means rock. Not a rock like a place, a rock like a person. Get it? Peter was the first Vicar of Christ. After him was Linus, the Bishop of Rome. After him was Cletus, then Clemens, then Evaristus, so on. All the way down to Benedict the Sixteenth, who addressed the world just before they evacuated the Vatican last March. Do you remember that? He said just as Christ prevailed against death, so too shall mankind prevail against this new death. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church. But we all know what happened to that evacuation. We all saw it on the TV. And then the TVs went out, and telephones, and the internet, and electricity, and the world got a whole lot smaller.”
The tall bald man in the priest’s collar shakes his head sadly. For a brief moment, Nixxter wonders if maybe he’s just here to convert them.
“So now what Catholics are left wondering is this. Who is the Vicar of Christ? Who is the Church? We still have the Holy Word. We still have our tradition. We have the Trinity, which will always be with us. We have the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Brother Brad?”
“Yes, Father?”
“Show him the Eucharist.”
“What the fuck do you want?” Nixxter sighs after another little man shows him a silver pot with crackers in it.
“You didn’t let me finish my point.”
“Well, I’m guessing you’re going to tell me you’re the new goddamn pope and that you’re taking over.”
“There’s no need to blaspheme. And we’re not taking over. We just need half of your food. Have you heard of the miracle of the loaves and fishes? This is our version of that. You can think of it as a tithe if it makes it any easier.”
“So there was a pope named Cletus?” Delta mutters as the motorcycles and several days of Quartertown’s food disappear down the road. “How about that?”
Day 10 results:
Another zombie attack
Last Judgment Gang takes 19 food
Mall cleared successfully…
…leaving only 55 zombies in the vicinity:
Day 11 missions:
Nixxter and Kyrios killing zombies at the lab to keep the number down
Shieldwolf starts building at the North Mall
Kyrios, jeansberg, and Tim James scouting a motel, a McDonalds, and a farm
Ed Solomon continues building at the hospital
Jarrodhk still recovering
(Note that no one is left behind on defense, which means there’s a 34% chance of a loss if we’re attacked. But my thinking is that surely the zombies won’t attack two nights in a row!)
Um, right, zombies always do what’s expected of them.
btw, in my impossible games, I’ve nearly given up “scouting” and just straight-up scavenge. But that’s probably because each game consistently goes pear-shaped by turn 30 or 40.
Shh, don’t encourage them, grahamiam!
It seems like a waste of a turn to scavenge if you don’t know you’ll find food. But given that I’m wasting the turn scouting anyway…
Also, scouting extends your line of sight, which can be helpful if you ever get much momentum in terms of expanding your territory. If you ever get machinegun nests, you’ll want to have scouting territory to know where you can kill the most zombies.
I was wondering if it maybe helped you spot approaching hordes earlier, but I seem to recall spotting plenty of those deep in the fog of war.
-Tom