PART ONE: GETTING STARTED
Chapter One: Know Your Team
The key thing to surviving any zombie problem is teamwork. Know your team, and use what you know. If someone can't aim, or wastes resources, they can be effective decoys, or spotters for watching behind the rest of the group. Every team should have at least one of these types of people.
Another important member to know is the demo expert. Trusting this member with pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, and other things that go bang, could save your life. A team with no demo-man won't last as easily or as long unless they have a decoy member or two to make up for it. Demo experts are often the first to grab a gas can, and will carry it until either attacked by a horde, or yelled at about holding the explosive material instead of shooting zombies when they probably should be.
A type of team member to try and avoid is an 'Alternative Idiot', or AI member. These types of people are notorious for wasting precious supplies, slowing teams down in a horde or Tank attack, more on those later, and complaining when other, smarter members get frustrated with them. First in the way and last to grasp a good idea, AI type members have very few promising qualities, and cause extreme frustration in a team. It's best not to get too fond of an Alternative Idiot, though having them fall behind as a protectoral, 'take one for the team' sort of set-up is always a good idea. The world will most likely have an unending supply of this type of survivor.
Brawler style survivors can be handy when ammo supplies are low, as they rarely pass up a chance to bludgeon, smash, or slice, any zombie within striking range. Though easy to catch in a spray of bullets, brawlers don't complain too much as long as they get to play with their favourite 'toy'. Though they are more likely to get incapacitated because of their methods, these survivors are incredibly useful against the more dangerous infected, such as Hunters, Jockeys, and Chargers. There are a few rare brawlers who are daring enough to out-right assault Witches or Tanks with melee weapons, and often have the scars and bruises to prove it.
An important survivor type to have is a strategist. Able to come up with impressive sounding plans on the spot, strategists are often the first ones to decipher how to deal with a Witch, be it sneaking past, or killing her. Most team member types get along with strategists, though this class and Alternative Idiots seldom find co-operation an easy thing to come by. Strategists also know when and when not to use medical supplies, another topic on which they and AI survivors struggle on seeing eye-to-eye with. Strategists are almost always the team leaders in apocalypse situations.
Just like infected, survivors can come in a classification I call the charger class. These 'lone wolf' team members frequently run off ahead of the rest of the group, and often wind up incapacitated, or in some cases, dead. Charger survivors often show little regard for the rest of their team, and are prone to getting into severe trouble because of it. Chargers can be divided into sub groups, as almost any class other than Alternative Idiots can produce a charger, though brawl-chargers are more commonly found.
A good example of another problematic classification would be the war-monger group. These kamikaze survivors are often the downfall of their team, as everything noisy, destructive, or otherwise horde-attracting, gives them incredible pleasure, even when the rest of their group begs them to be quiet. Strategists and war-mongers seldom get along, and the latter are disliked by many of the other classes as well.
Survivors who get a laugh at dealing with, or trying to deal with, Witches can be classified under the label of witch-hunters. Daredevils of disaster, these members deliberately seek out, disturb, and kill, or try to kill, any infected that cries and wails like a baby with a belly-ache. No matter what the rest of the team is doing, the witch-hunter can't help but bother any and every Witch they find. Though easily called dukes of hazard, witch-hunters have the uncanny ability to, for the most part, kill any Witch they disturb without being incapacitated by the wailing infected. Brawlers can be classified as witch-hunters as well if they notoriously seek out Witches. Witch-brawlers have a higher incap-to-death ratio than a regular witch-hunter, who's favored weapon is most often some variation or another of a shotgun, and cr0wning is a highly popular, and highly dangerous, sport among regular, shotgun-wielding witch-hunters.
Another class type is the worry-wart class. Protective of their entire team, this survivor type is an avid believer in the 'no man left behind' theory, and can get on the nerves of their entire team because of it. This class doesn't always understand the decoy/sacrificial theory, and will stay back to help the decoy until everyone is yelling at them to just get moving. It generally takes a fair bit of repetition to get the sacrifice concept into a worry-wart's head, but eventually they get the picture.
Finally, there are the sacrificers. This class of survivor will put themselves in every danger under the sun to protect the rest of their group. Any other class of survivor can be a sacrificer type member, and most will do it because they are going to die anyway, or are moving slower due to injury. Sacrificers often have issues with worry-warts, and Alternative Idiots.
Now that we've covered the classes of survivors, it's time to spend a while getting to know the enemy. My buddy Ellis was stuck on a burning building one time, and had to fight through five floors infested with zombies, and said that not all of them were 'normal'. So, in the next chapter, we'll take a look at the abnormal ones.
