by iNano78
As implied above, I've grown accustomed to the power (and drawback) of cars in general. But my biggest problem with cars stems from a combination of number of dice thrown and assignment of hits. I mentioned this in the "Questions for Guillotine Games" thread and was quickly shot down, but to me, it's the least thematic and most counter-intuitive rule in the game - even when compared to ranged combat hitting your buddy (which I think is both balancing and reasonably thematic) and zombie mitosis (which is there to remove any decision making from the zombies).Consider the following common situation: 8 walkers, 4 fatties and 4 runners are in a zone outside. A car is driven through that zone. According to the rules, you roll a die for each miniature (16 in this case) and hit successfully on a 4+. The expectation value (e.g. average number of successes) in this case is 8 hits, so on average, all 8 walkers will die. In this case, any successes beyond 8 are wasted, since the fatties are immune to cars (effectively a 1-damage weapon) and runners hide behind fatties according to the ranged combat priority. Meanwhile, if these 8 walkers were alone, only 8 dice would be thrown and the expectation value would be 4; e.g. on average, only 4 walkers die. In other words, walkers are more likely to get hit by a car if they're surrounded by zombies that are immune to cars than if they're on their own.
For a more extreme example, consider 1 walker and 7 fatties in a zone being driven through by a car. The walker has a 99.6% chance of being hit. Meanwhile, 1 walker by itself only has a 50% chance of being hit. Why are walkers so much easier to hit in the presence of fatties?
Similarly, a survivor by himself is only 50% to take 1 wound if a car pulls up to him. But if that survivor is surrounded by a large group of zombies, the car will almost certainly kill him (2+ wounds). Compare this to ranged combat with a ranged weapon: Firing a shotgun into a zone with a survivor is no more likely to hit a survivor in the presence of 1 zombie or 10 zombies, because in the case of ranged combat with a ranged weapon, the number of dice doesn't depend on the number of miniatures.
The rules regarding cars would make a lot more sense if they said "for each miniature in the zone, roll one die; on a roll of 4+, the car does 1 damage to that miniature (only one; abominations and fatties are immune to cars)." This way, EACH miniature would have a 50% chance of being hit independent of how many miniatures are in the zone. Effectively, you would only roll as many dice as number of zombies (and survivors) that could be hit, rather than having dice for fatties and abominations that only increase the chance of hitting more walkers. An additional rule could state that runners hide behind fatties/abominations, if desired, to preserve making them difficult to kill.
Also, it would mean that a survivor can only take one wound from a car (and with only a 50% probability), making it possible to drive up to a survivor to rescue him/her. So in some ways it would make cars less powerful (effectively roll less dice, giving each zombie a 50% chance of survival) but in other ways more powerful (less likely to kill a survivor; more likely to hit a runner, since they wouldn't necessarily be able to hide behind fatties/abominations, unless otherwise stated in a revision of the rule).
Thoughts?