Brains: The Hunger

BRAINS: THE HUNGER

The game is designed to simulate skirmish combat between a group of college students (or high school football players, or whatever) who are partying in a zombie infested field (or woods, or cemetery) and the zombies that are infesting them.

Starting out

The players agree on a number of young adult victims err… heroes. This number times 1.5 equals the number of zombies that the zombie player gets. So for example a small game may consist of 4 humans and 6 zombies; a large game may have 10 humans and 15 zombies.

The player of the living gets to choose weapons for his guys. Up to 20% (rounded up) may have shotguns, up to 50% may have large tools or farm implements (shovels, pitchforks, large crowbars, etc.) The rest are armed with any type of weapon at hand (baseball bats (cricket bats if you are playing in England.) wrenches, broken bottles, etc.)

Terrain

Terrain is then set up, but has no real effect in game terms. The only terrain that affects movement are walls, large fences and buildings which are impassable. It is assumed that the humans are spry enough to ignore anything but very tall vertical structures while zombies stumble about in such a way that terrain may only help them in going in the right direction (see zombie movement below.) Models do need to see their target to shoot at them so woods and other impediments to sight will affect shooting when it occurs.

Combatants

All models have a stat line that contains the following:

CV S R

CV= Combat value, basically a description of how good the creature is at shooting or fighting, this is the number that the creature needs to roll on a d8 to hit it’s opponent.

S= (as usual) the strength of the creature and it’s ability to inflict damage

R= resilience, the creatures ability to tolerate damage

S vs. R determines what needs to be rolled to inflict damage according to the following chart

R 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. 5 6 7 8 8 8 8 8

2. 4 5 6 7 8 8 8 8

3. 3 4 5 6 7 8 8 8

4. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8

5. 2 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

6. 2 2 2 3 4 5 6 7

7. 2 2 2 2 3 4 5 6

8. 2 2 2 2 2 3 4 5

The stat line for a normal human being goes like this:

CV S R

6 2 2

Humans move 5” in the movement phase as directed by their player (see movement below.)

Zombies have the following for stats:

CV S R

7 2 3

Zombies have a more difficult time in ambulation. They don’t always go in the right direction (it is hard to move around when half of your brain has rotted and you have this crazy hunger for someone else’s brains.) Because of this zombies that are not engaged in close combat move 3” in a direction selected by the player and then 2” in a random direction. For small games it is easy enough to determine the random direction for zombies individually but for larger games you may want to determine the random movement of three at a time. Again there are no hard and fast rules about this, it is left to player discretion.

Turn sequence

Each player takes his turn moving his guys around. The human player always goes first. Any models that move into contact with each other are considered to be in close combat. After ALL models have moved any shooting that needs to happen takes place. Models in close combat may not shoot. However models may shoot into a close combat if they want (see shooting below.)

After shooting is resolved all models fight, humans always fighting first.

So a typical round would go like this:

The human player moves his models up to 5”.

The zombie player moves his models 3” and then rolls to see which direction they move 2”.

The human shoots with any models armed with shot guns that are not engaged in close combat.
The human player fights with any models in close combat.

The zombie player fights with any models in close combat.

Shooting

Any humans armed with guns can shoot. After determining the range (max 18” for shotgun) each human needs to roll to see if he hits his target. Since a human has a CV of 6 he will need to roll a 6 or more to hit a zombie. If the human hits compare the S of the shotgun (which is 3) to the zombies R value (which is also 3) on the chart. If you look on the chart at 3 vs. 3 you will see that this means the human player needs to roll a 5 to hurt the zombie. Zombies injured in this way are removed from the table.

If you are shooting into close combat roll to hit and then determine which model is hit randomly. For example, if a human is shooting into a combat involving two zombies and a human he would roll to hit, if he hits then he would roll a d6 and he would hit the human on a roll of 1 or 2 and the one zombie on a roll of 3 or 4 and the other on a roll of 5 or 6.

Close combat.

Humans go first in close combat as mentioned above.

The human rolls on his CV (6) to see if he hits. If he hits you compare his strength of 2 to the zombies resilience of 3 on the chart in the same way as you do for shooting. 2 vs. 3 on the chart yields a 6 so the human would need to roll a 6 or more to hurt the zombie. If the human has a large farm implement then he counts as having a S value 1 higher than normal, so an S of 3. Then he would only need a 5 to kill a zombie (if kill is the right word)

The sequence is then carried out for any zombies left alive in close combat.

Contagious

If a zombie kills a human in close combat then the zombie will spend an entire round eating his brains. After this round the former human is turned into a zombie and will set out to eat the brains of his former comrades.

More rules detailing Martians, soldiers and other neat stuff will be posted. Check back for updates.