So, are these Arisen Zombies with W 4, or normal zombies with W 10? Are they individuals or henchmen?

Because if they're normal zombies, that's Keila Cobblepot plus up to 11 Holtz zombies.

Just a tad more editing required to make some things throughout The Gathering Storm more clear ...

It's a few zombies from ToA (normal stats) + a few henchmen (at least the 2 that were already hanged rotting before).

To manage the numbers, fell free to have most as henchmen and only 2/3 at standard zombies if your group captured the whole family (from which at least 4 are henchmen when alive). I made the Girl + "musician" boy as henchmen, as well as Keila Cobblepot.

I had as normal Zombies : Reiner + Marie + Tristan (not a Holtz but sentenced the same) + Keila/Daughter/MusicianSon + 2 rustlers as henchmen (forgot to add 1 as the Watchman). The rest of the family was killed at the farm.

The end of TGS book stats are the Arizen Zombies for the Garden of Morr part, which are all explicitly henchmen, thus the W=4 (=Tou)

Thanks for the tips. The book has a bad habit of glossing over crucial details sometimes, I hope they get a handle on that in future publications.

I think the watchman zombie gets his head blown off by Brenner, by the way!

Actually I found an instruction on p36 to treate Kaila and the Holtzes as standard zombies, and the 2 rustlers as henchmen. Seems pretty full on though - if all the Holtzes were tried and executed, that's 13 full zombies with 10 wounds each, plus 2 henchmen zombies, in that fight!

UniversalHead said:

Yikes! Better hope the PCs have their Zombie Apocalypse in the Thunderwater Inn plans ready!

My players were not at the thunderwater Inn, but the Temple of Sigmar

That is why you need to customize the encounters, you can't run "as written" quite often because it may be too much or not enough. As GM, you'll evaluate the opposition for your group and plan ahead. The whole Holtz family could wipe out the town (about 5 watchmen on duty spread out, as much militia on the walls also spread out, 10+ zombies packed, it'll be a carnage before they can be stopped, and each time they kill someone, it rises the next round as a zombie ...)

Two of my players were in the Inn, another one at the Temple of Sigmar. I tried all zombies [6 of them] as normal zombies.

One PC died that night. Got his brains eaten by some zombies. Sebastian Brenner died too. Then, the rest of the PCs burned the other player's and Sebastian's corpse immediately fearing they might become zombies too. It was tragic I tell you.

hmmm....

My players chopped through those zombies like vegetables on the chopping blocks....

My players were out in the streets... don't ask why,

We had a pretty good chase scene as the mage apprentice legged it, and the archer climbed onto the roofs and picked off zombies from there. We had only six zombies in total and two player characters.... it was a pretty close run thing. I had set up a tracker which showed how long it would be for the city guard to arrive. They got there with the mage having been cornered, taken a couple of criticals and down to the last handful of hp.... tense times!.

My players took a beating and only survived because I held back a little and helped them out with an NPC (the Estalian Diestro) who turned up to take down some of the zombies and distract a few of them. And this was with a 5 man party... I don't know how the standard 3 man party is supposed to handle it. 3 of the PCs went down and the other two were each a single hit from going down.

Couple of things that I think a GM should throw in to help: the fight is supposed to be in the tap room of the inn, filled with tables and chairs, all bolted down IIRC. As such theres a lot of furniture in the way. I think that's good justification for the PCs to only have to deal with a few zombies at a time - limit the zombies to one attack per PC a turn. If one or more of the PCs are ranged attackers they can climb on to a table while the others surround them, making it easier to fire shots at the zombies (they don't count as engaged).