DEATHMATCH: Captain Rhodes Vs Rick Grimes

Participants: Captain Rhodes’ security detail plus armed civilian staff, Rick Grimes’ Crew
Location: Zombie-ridden city
Stipulation: Kill opponents

This will be a first in a series called DEATHMATCH.  Men and/or groups will face off against others from famous movies and/or TV shows.  The first showdown is going to be zombie themed, with Captain Rhodes’ group from Day of the Dead facing off against Rick Grimes’ ragtag crew from The Walking Dead.  In this hypothetical instance, Rhodes’ men will be air dropped into a zombie-ridden city, as will Grimes’ men, at opposite ends of the city.  Their aim is to terminate the opposing team.  Without further ado, let’s get down to business and weigh up both sides.

Team Grimes

Grimes’ team consists Rick, Glenn, Daryl, Maggie, Michonne, Tara and Sgt. Ford and Carl.  They are armed with irregular weapons.  Mostly sidearms and assault rifles.  Advantages include regular combat with both zombies and humans, including facing an attack from an M-60 tank-led group.  Disadvantages: Grimes is overly concerned with his son and may act harshly where his safety is concerned. Sgt. Ford is not impressed with Grimes’ leadership.  While a former cop, Grimes is not militarily trained and not a student of traditional military tactical acumen.

Team Rhodes

Rhodes’ team consists of Rhodes, five privates, a radio man, an armed scientist and pilot.  While the Grimes crew regularly change weapons and scavenge, Rhodes’s men are armed primarily with M16A1s, supplemented with IMI Uzis.  The advantages for team Rhodes are that Rhodes’ unit is military, with obvious military training.  They share the same weapons therefore the same ammunition, which cuts out hassle in reloading during a fire fight.  They also have a pilot and possible use of zombies as trained/domesticated biological weapons.  However, Rhodes is constantly facing possible mutiny from his armed civilian staff, as well as apparent discipline problems with his own troops.  Team Rhodes also spends more time holed up getting stoned, while his opponents are regularly fighting.

Deathmatch

Rhodes’ team may seem like a joke in DOTD, but they would not be pushovers. In Day of the Dead they have secured a base, easy enough.  They are unlikely to be unfamiliar with combat with zombies too, given how advanced things are by that point in the Romero universe. In Day of the Dead, Rhodes’ actual demise was decided by human treachery more than anything else.  If you have read my earlier post, why Captain Rhodes was the good guy, you’d remember that his civilian staff launched an armed mutiny, and caused the facility to be over run.  This would likely be his main problem here, insubordination and possible defection.

Assuming Rhodes’ civilian staff follow orders, his immediate advantage is aerial recon – he has a pilot with a fuelled chopper in his ranks.  Recon and aerial superiority will go a long way, Private Steele would have great fun taking potshots from the air.  Assuming his civilian staff give him shit, Rhodes simply opts for putting them under arrest or, better yet, summarily executing them.  Grimes’ men are seasoned survivors and even fighters, but they have not dealt with an intact military unit.

Rhodes is an officer and who knows, may have even been a Grenada or Vietnam veteran. Remember, while his men appeared ill-disciplined and rowdy in DOTD, their job was to enter zombie-laden cities, like a fireman must enter a flaming building.  Rhodes executes an L-bracket ambush, drawing Grimes into a carefully laid kill zone (possibly deploying Bub The Zombie as a drone/bait!) against the better wishes of the Sgt. in Grimes’ ranks.  Result: Military rips the shit out of ragtag group of civilians.

Winner: Team Rhodes