War of the Worlds Survivors 5

 I played through the latest game in the War of the Wolds survivors campaign with Colin, Henry and Mark. Henry's party arrived late (emergency dental appointment), so Mark and Colin had a free hand to begin with.

This was a food gathering scenario, although there were a few points with something else useful might be found, scattered about.

A view across the table, the various crop fields represent areas that could be harvested to food.

From another perspective, there are several shades wandering about.

Colin more forward confidently, perhaps too confidently as he got close enough for a shade to charge one of this men , but he kills after a quick struggle.

Mark was a little slower on his advance, pausing to shoot at two shades in front of him, killing one and knocking the other to the ground.

Colin checks out one of the search points and rolls a 12! he has found some salvage, some food and a Random Weapon. A roll on that table and he has found...a sword! No bad, but not the best for someone short on firearms (because he keeps breaking them!).

Whilst some of his party starts harvesting, Mark checks out another search point and finds some salvage. Perhaps an improvised bomb-making session is on the cards for tonight?

Colin checks out another search point and finds another sword!

In the meantime a Martian scuttler turns up.

Mark's part of the table seems infested with shades. he didn't have chance to harvest much of the crops as he had to keep stopping a fighting off attacks. One of his men went down, out of the fight!

To make things worse a Martian stalker machine arrived, firing at Mark but missing.

Henry arrived at this point, and, seeing all the Martians had been drawn off after Mark, decided to take the opportunity to harvest as much from the closest field as he could, ignoring the rest of the table.

Colin did the same over the other side of the table, while Mark grabbed his fallen comrade and ran his men for cover behind a high hedge. He was able to get everyone safely into cover because I rolled appalling dice and only managed to activate 1 model in two consecutive turns!

After a couple more turns, a Martian hybrid arrived, right next to Henry. This was very bad news for the players, as it was armed with a "proper" heat ray, with a blast radius, rather than the lighter weapons carried by stalkers and scuttlers. Luckily for him, none of his PCs had strayed very far onto the table, so the were all able to escape before the Martian activated. Except for his leader, to duck down behind a wall. Just in time and the cover saved him from being fried by the heat ray. He then ran off the table at double time!

With the hybrid marching across the table, as well as the stalker, the scuttler and some shades closing in, Colin and Mark decided to cut their losses and run!

Except Mark could not resist taking a final potshot...at Colin's sailor!

He missed and the sailor charged him, hitting (and killing) his man, then ran off table! Forgetting he could have plundered the body and lifted his revolver! As all Mark's other PCs had already left the table, this meant the body was abandoned, which would make it harder on survival rolls.

At the end of the game everyone had restocked their larders, at least for the next couple of weeks, so the pressure is off for feeding PCs for the next couple of games. Mark had some useful salvage, as did Henry and Colin had more 2 swords!

Only Mark had PCs out of the fight, the PC he had carried off was wounded, so will have to miss the next game, but the abandoned guy was proper DEAD! So Mark lost the gun and other kit he had been carrying, plus his replacement comes with nothing, so will need arming out of Mark's existing stocks (but he still has at least a crossbow kicking around somewhere).

Thia should make the next game interesting (in the Chinese proverb sense!).