Zombie Dawn Use Me 15mm rules Review
Recently, I got hold of the zombie Dawn set of the Use Me rules by 15mm.co.uk.
Up till then I had been using a homebrew ruleset based on the old Fighting fantasy system, but as we kept playing them I had to keep making up rules on the spot every time my players needed anything out of the ordinary to allow them special actions and such while in play. I will eventually set everything down for that, but they are a little unpolished, so I thought it was time to invest in a simple set of zomer rules that kept the game going so we could concentrate on the action.
The little A6 print book is not fussy, and isn’t filled with uneeded fluff and just focuses on the mechanics of the sysytem.
The whole system revolves around the ELAN score, which is essentailly your action score for combat and any other action that the
model may use, initiative is worked out using the ELAN as a modifier to D6 rolls, as is shooting/melee. Movement is taken as any other action, of which you can choose two actions usually, so you declare what actions the character will perform in your turn (there are a list of possible ones as well as just movement, like hypertense and such) after all the players have taken their go, other than that there isn’t much more to it, I won’t go ito a full break down of the rules, but they look pretty smooth and understandable, and above all, Simple!
After reading it through a few times, I thought it was best to have a game to test it out in action.
We set up a simple scenario, with two players in two teams of three survivors against me playing all the undead I have availabe (about 45+) Even so there is a full even points system behind the rules, allowing even play, this first game would be a test, still my idea of zombie apocolypse type situations aren’t usually what I would class as fair! Part of the fun of the genre is the overwhelming odds of Zombies Vs Humans.
Anyway, the main set up was, the human players had come to the edge of the city parked the vehicle and then proceeded to loot the various shops/buildings for food and suppies, a gun fight had broken out, attracted more undead and now at the start of the game, had been stranded atop of two adjacent buildings, while the car (the only working vehicle on the streets, all the rest were either crashed, been syphoned of all the petrol, or just knackered!) was parked on the other street. As play began the players had to try and get to the car and drive away through the unblocked road way. Easy?
As play progressed, the first team suffered two casulalties just attempting to get off the roof! jumping 30-40ft isn’t wise when they could have just taken a couple of turns to get through a roof hatch or open window!! Player two fared better, loosing just one of thier characters to a zombie skirmish while the other two got separated and went in two directions. Player one’s remaining character managed to get to the car and pick up one of player two’s survivors. Instead of trying to pick up the stranded survivor, player one drove off in the car, leaving player two’s last survivor alone with the zombies, winged but unnoticed. Player two was a little miffed about the ordeal and a heated discussion ensued about the events, and yours truely decided it was time to end it there! This was provided that the next game we played was to take place directly after the events of this game, now dubbed “Chapter One”!
In all honesty, we all really enjoyed it, the rules didn’t get in the way of the action, and allowed us a smooth 2 hour game. Obviously we didn’t implement all the alternate rules in the book, and stuck to the basics, but it was a good game with plenty of options for more zombie fun in future “chapters”
At £3.50 for the rulebook, its pretty good value, and I will be investing in a few more of the other rulesets for other genres as well in the near future.
If you need a good and simple system for 15mm zombie wargames, you can’t go much wrong with it. Its cheap enough for the most tightfisted wargamer (and I should know, I’m one!)
Get your hand in your pockets and get a copy from 15mm.co.uk
TTFN
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The Grinning Skull 
sounds appealing. What are the campaign rules like?
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The campaign rules are scarce, but the whole game lends great to linked play, as well as narrative games as we found. Much more than a usual wargame, so it suits my purpose very well. There are some basic rules for downtime and a few campaign settings, but no doubt we will add more house rules for stuff we can’t find in the book (It’s only 32 pages long so, they did well to fit in all they did!) I can really recommend it if you need a set of really easy to play zombie rules!
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Seems like u actually fully understand a great deal
related to this topic and that demonstrates thru this
specific post, labeled “Zombie Dawn USE ME
15mm Rules Review | The Grinning Skull”. Thank you
-Kelly
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No hassle rules that are simple and fun…I’m sold.
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Thanks for your comment!
Yeah, the USE ME rules are pretty easy to learn and use, plus they don’t get in the way of the flow of the game! They are pretty much all i play now for 15mm zombie and scifi games!
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I was looking for some good sci-fi rules, something a little less complicated then Tomorrow’s Wars. Cheers!
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