Earth Reborn - Tips & Strategies

At the outset, this can seem like a very difficult scenario for NORAD player to win, having only one character to start and eventually gaining one more who is **** at Close Quarters Combat. But there is more than one way to skin this particular cat.

There are three important things to keep in mind:
– The only NORAD objective is for Vasquez to safely exit the south edge
– Vasquez is ridiculously fast
– It is possible for a character to destroy a wall with CQC

Franck is great for pounding enemies in the face but with the advantage of numbers, the zombie player will likely try to flank you and attack with more than one character at a time. If you find yourself getting penned into one room, try and dig up a Level 3+ melee order (you probably need a 4) and have Franck punch out a wall. Then assign a Level 4 move order to Vasquez and have her burn around the outside of the building. Unless the zombie player was VERY thorough in covering all avenues, you have a very good chance of being well out of his reach.

You’ll want to hoard a Level 4 move order for Vasquez, in any event. At a speed of 6, that gives her 24 movement points which will take her at least 3/4 the length of the board in a single move. You have to be ready to hit the afterburners the first time your opponent leaves her an opening anywhere. That should bring your chances much closer to even.

I listed this as a strategy, because I don’t really feel it’s a house rule, just a method to make learning the game and the rules more enjoyable.

The first set of learning scenarios has a wonderful storyline and really adds to the theme and depth of the game. However, I’ve found that in terms of gameplay, it’s a dull and tedious way to start the game.

When we first started playing, there were games where we didn’t even use the rules that were supposed to be demonstrated in the scenario (for instance, when dueling is introduced). The maps take a long time to set up – sometimes even longer than the gameplay, and the scenarios didn’t seem all that fulfilling.

After going through about 3 scenarios in order, we decided to simply sit down and read the rest of the rules for the game before playing another round. It took a little while to get through everything (about an hour per person), but afterwards we were able to skip to the final scenario and practice most of what we had learned. Using the scenario generator we then played 2 practice rounds to make sure we got everything down.

I personally went back and read the storyline from the first set of scenarios, because I felt that it connected me more to the game, and added more to the depth and theme of what is already such a rich game. We’ve since shared this learning strategy with a number of other players and it make the learning curve seem less daunting for them as well.

This idea might not be the best for everyone, but for us, it saved a game that we probably wouldn’t have come back to otherwise.