The Zeke Strategy on barrel maps

== The Zeke Strategy on Barrel Maps (by Jubjab) ==
This Last Stand strategy is taking advantage of Ezekiel's very powerful "Pretaliate" Leader Trait, which combined with a weapon forcing the enemy to end its turn early ensures that the survivor will never be hit. The basic idea of this strategy is to camp in a corner and kill the walkers by setting them on fire.
=== Prerequsites ===
The strategy requires that all the following are available on Last Stand's Expert Mode
* Ezekiel, any one Assault and any one Hunter (except Alpha due to her built-in Piercing trait)
** Ezekiel will be sacrificed early so can have any gear & support.
** The Assault must have a weapon with a 90 degree cone AND gold cripple (and no piercing), currently either Rick's Assault Rifle or Rosita's Assault Rifle. The cone of for example the Commonwealth Assault Rifle is not wide enough. The Assault also needs at least 34% lucky to get guaranteed cripple on bodyshots. Gold Primed is recommended although not strictly necessary.
** The Hunter must have a weapon with gold cripple and incendiary, for example the 7mm Harrier. In theory a weapon with Interrupt would also work (like Dale's Rifle), but it's not possible to get Interrupt to 100% as its base chance at gold is only 60%. The Hunter also needs 34% lucky. You also need a gold Primed armor to guarantee an additional shot on overwatch. If you use Daryl you can also use the Abbey Tromblon, which has guaranteed root.
** In theory a Shooter could take the place of the Hunter, but the shooters single target shot means it will be hard to prevent the map from filling up, causing the mission to auto-end (when there are 50 or more walkers on the map).
** For Supports you need walker Mike on the Assault and Dog on the Hunter. Dog is needed in some situations mentioned below, and can also be used to free the assault from a struggle. It will almost always be the assault that ends up in struggle.
** If there are many Goos on the map it can make sense to take out all damage & crit dmg badges (if you have piercing) to minimize your damage. This will prevent you from blowing up the Goos and risk stunning you. The walkers will die of fire anyway so you don't need damage.
** Your assault and hunter will rely purely on fire to kill all walkers. This means that if the map contains Commonwealth walkers, it makes sense to save Ezekiel until wave 40 to counter them, using a guaranteed interrupt weapon like the Skeggox. You will probably also need to use grenades and flares to take care of them, but as there are never CW walkers after round 40 you can then let Zeke die and continue with the normal strategy. 
* The map must have a barrel close to the corner so that two survivors can stay around them so that a maximum of 2+1 walkers can hit them. Currently it means the maps "3,2,1 Boom" and "Stashed". This strategy does not work on other maps (however see the section below for the exception).
* The strategy works with all kinds of walkers, but due to the low damage output of your team, killing Commonwealth Walkers will be difficult. Consider taking Shiva as the second support if CW walkers are spawning, and be ready to use flares to slow them down and grenades to kill them.
=== The Crippling Decimator ===
Note that if you own the Decimator with gold cripple (and you have enough Lucky to make it 100% cripple), you don't need a map with a barrel in a corner. This strategy will then work on any map. Just stand in any corner with the hunter in the very corner and the assault next to the hunter. The main risk here is fast walkers, so you need a crippling weapon on the hunter (or Daryl with a high level Heirloom) to cripple any approaching fast walkers that could bypass the Decimator's cripple radius.
=== The Basic Strategy ===
Start off the mission by killing the first several waves of walkers with the help of Ezekiel, until you are into guaranteed body shot territory (ASL +5 so walker level over 40, assuming lvl 30 survivors and 5 pink stars). After this, move into one of the corners and place the Assault at one "exit" and the Hunter in the corner. At this point you should let Ezekiel die. Keeping him around messes with the overwatch and can cause unexpected struggles. Note that this beginning part of the mission is the hardest! Once you get to wave 50 things become much easier so don't fall into the trap of thinking that the beginning is the easy part. It's the opposite! So play carefully this first part.
Below is shown the basic setup. Here Rosita is standing with the barrel on her left side. The walker directly below her will attack, causing Rosita to pretaliate with the RAR, crippling both it and the walker beside her, forcing both to end their turn. Hershel is in the very corner and can be attacked by only one walker, which he in turn will pretaliate and force it to end its turn. In this setup your survivors will be 100% safe.
During your turn you should do two things:
# The Hunter should try to ignite as many walkers as possible. Remember that Metalheads block the shot so try to find a good firing direction. The Assault does so little damage that it's not worth shooting. Instead stay always in overwatch to guarantee a predictable overwatch attack. The Hunter should never make charge attacks if the weapon has ensnare, as it may cause the walker next to you to be rooted (and then it will grab you).
# Stay vigilant for the danger situations, which are when there will be vacant spots in front on BOTH the Assault and Hunter. Note that it is very easy to spot these: only keep an eye out for the health of the walker beside the hunter! Only when that walker is about to die (less than 10% health remaining and on fire) you need to check if a danger situation will happen (it won't always). Otherwise you can confidently click End Turn. 
# At later waves (after wave 50 or so) walkers will start to disappear due to the +30 rule. As they disappear at the start of your turn it's not a thing to consider before pressing end turn, but it will at times cause danger situations. Just before that wave 50 or so (especially if the map has lots of Metalheads) the map will start to fill up. Make sure you don't go over the limit of 50 walkers on the map, as the mission will auto-end in that case. When the walkers start to auto-die (any walker under 30 levels lower than the highest level walkers on the map will be removed immediately), the game itself will make sure the limit will not be exceeded.
=== Safe Situations ===
In addition to the "normal" safe situation mentioned above with walkers in all the three spots directly next to your survivors, several other situations will also be safe and does not require any special action from your side.
* One walker is about to die and all other tiles next to you are occupied. This is perfectly safe. Both survivors pretaliate one walker, and any walker that moves into the one vacant tile will be overwatched and forced to end its turn.
* Two walkers next to the assault are about to die or those spots are vacant. Also this situation is safe. One walker that approaches the assault will be overwatch-crippled, and the other will be Pretaliate-crippled and neither can attack. However, if the walkers are of lower levels (under 50 or so), make sure that the overwatch/pretaliate attacks will not kill the approaching walkers, as that might allow a third walker to move next to the assault.
=== Danger Situations ===
The dangerous situations happen in only two circumstances:
# When at least one tile becomes vacant at the same time both for the Assault and Hunter
# When the overwatch / pretaliate attack kills the approaching/attacking walker, clearing the tile for a walker standing further back. Note that the risk of this decreases the higher the amount of Health the walkers get, and is really only a concern until wave 40 or so.
In the below picture, the tank next to Hershel is about to die, as well as the Spiked next to Rosita. When the walker turn starts, these two die. Next, Rosita pretaliates the tank (yellow), but not hitting the tank diagonally down and left to the barrel. Next, the armored at the top row moves towards Hershel, causing both Rosita and Hershel to attack it with their overwatch attacks (Blue), and it stops after moving next to Hershel. Now, however, both Heroes' overwatch attacks have been spent, as well as Rosita's Pretaliate attack, and the Tank (Turquoise) can now move one step directly right and attack Rosita without being interrupted. In these cases you should activate Walker Mike. If the spot is already vacant, it is also possible to use a blast grenade to push one walker into the spot so that you again only have one vacant tile.
Here is a similar danger situaiton. The armor next to Hershel will die, as well as the armored diagonal to Rosita. Both Heroes will overwatch the walker approaching Hershel, and Rosita's Pretaliate will be towards left, allowing both the marked Metalhead and Armored to move next to Rosita and attack her.
Note, however, that in case the walker that dies is directly in front of the assault, the situation is also safe, as long as everyone near the assault are crippled: Here the tile directly left of Rosita is vacant, and the tile next to Hershel will become vacant at the start of the walker turn. In this case, however, Rosita's pretaliate will end the turn early for any walker wanting to move into the tile next to Rosita (including that critical tile down and left of the barrel). Watch out, however, for any uncrippled walkers behind Metalheads, or fast walkers out of range of the RAR! In such cases, use Dog to cripple also these and prevent them from moving through the cripple-interrupter walkers.
After Mike has been used, the tiles will now be vacant and the danger situation remains. However, with the tiles now being vacant during your turn, you can now move the assault to the other side of the Hunter and create a safe situation again. In the picture below, Rosita can now move to the left of Hershel and you again have a safe situation, with only one vacant tile next to the Hunter. If a situation like this is not available, next check if you can place the assault so it can pretaliate diagonally, as that will stop walkers from entering the other free tile directly beside the assault.
Often, this situation will also arise due to walkers auto-dying, and you might end up with lots of free tiles. In this case, move the hunter or assault a few steps away (with a quick move) so you can activate Mike without it activating also on the Hunter, then move back to your wanted positions. The walkers will now appraoach and fill the gaps, instead of standing still like they would if both heroes were Miked.
In the picture below, none of the walkers close by are crippled, and there is a vacant tile both next to Hershel and Rosita, which is a danger situation. You have 3 options here: if you can use Mike, move Rosita two steps left and activate Mike there, then move to either spot beside Hershel. The walkers will then fill in the gap. If Mike is on cooldown, but the assault is charged, you could stun the armored next to Rosita. Both heroes would then be able to pretaliate the two walkers coming into the vacant spots. Or, if neither options are possible, you could use a blast grenade to push the Metalhead above the circled walker one tile up so that Rosita there is no vacant spot beside Rosita (or blast the reg close to Hershel one step right).
In the picture below you can see how Rosita has made a quick move before activating Mike, after which she moves back. The walkers will then close in on Hershel and fill in the empty gaps to create a safe situation again.
=== Example video ===
Check out this Youtube video for an example of real-time play (note that the supports were not perfect in the video).
https://youtu.be/MFxiUw-BEJ8?si=hq17fJrQGJjYzFOx
Good Luck Camping!