To Infinity, and beyond, to another 28mm sci-fi skirmish game!

The Nerds at the Regiment have all had a blat at Infinity over the years, and we played the RPG at the end of last year and loved it. Infinity is an awesome universe to play in and Corvus Belli have been making some of the best 28mm models on the market right now. But we've also hit the same problems as well - the Rambo characters in Infinity are a pain and the special rules bloat works fine in the RPG but is hard to manage on the tabletop without a lot of practice.

As a result, we've all mostly parked our Infinity collections. When fellow Nerd Pelarel discovered the Zone Raiders Kickstarter and, more to the point, the First Encounter demo rules, we decided to give it a go because a lighter version of Infinity is something we're keen on. The demo rules are 50 pages long with some fluff, some rules, 3 scenarios, a basic post-game and a QRS! Hell yeah! Props to Fractal Basilisk for a cool company name (!) and a great introduction to what they're working on.

What's a Zone Raiders? 

Set in the Matrioshka, a domain built on lost technology, Zone Raiders are teams who scavenge the layers of the Matrioshka, avoiding the perils of the zone as well as other crews to eke a living out of the actively hostile environment. It's miniature agnostic and is written to allow players a super-flexible way to play a character driven, sci-fi skirmish campaign focused game.  From what the website and Kickstarter suggests, the complete rules and extension funded will include more factions, rules for robots and hacking and giant armoured suits and stuff - all the cool stuff we want to use.

How did our game go? 
Quickly! It took maybe 90 minutes from set up, play through, end game and pack down.

Pel took the TechNomads and I took the NthGen Robots. Pel's crew (based on our game experience!) was heavily armed and armoured and highly mobile. Mine was equally heavily armed, less well armoured, but led by a very high quality leader. Pel's crew quality was even across the board, my best model was noticeably better and the quality declined quite quickly.

We played the first mission from the First Encounter - a scavenging run. There were 9 scrap tokens on the board worth 2VP each and an irradiated zone dominating the centre of the board. The idea was the first person to loot 5 counters and extract them wins.

We spent the first couple of turns running around grabbing the easy counters and extracting them. Suddenly, on turn 3, we discovered shooting each other and it all went downhill very quickly. Pel took out one of my robots and I dropped his leader in response. The shooting mechanic involves hitting, armour saving and then a damage roll. Pass and you take a wound (which impacts your ability to take actions in subsequent turns). Fail and you are down. The first four casualties all did that.

Over the turns 3, 4 and 5 Pel shot down another of my robots while my leader, the best shot on the board, rode his luck to take a couple of aimed shots to take out two of Pel's TechNomads while my weaker robots moved to get the last couple of loot counters. When I knocked out the fourth of Pel's Nomads, he elected to flee so we could do the post-game.

What do we like?

It looks like a game of manoeuvre and from the get go, that's how it was. Being able to wall run, leap and grappling hook around the board is cool!  We genuinely wondered if, after 2 turns of looting the board, we were ever going to engage each other. Then Pel worked out that as each counter is worth 2 VP and since there were 9 on the board, and three of those were in the middle, we were going to have to fight eventually.

Being shot at is genuinely bad. We managed, between us, to pass one armour save and one damage roll. Our dice were dire, but neither of us were all that well armoured. My boss man topped out at 17. Pel's dudes were in the 10 - 12 range and mine were 10 and below.

A couple of cool things stood out. Characters can 'summon' an extraction zone and in our scenario, they could throw their loot into that extraction zone to confirm the VPs. That was a cool little thing given that going down or bottling out meant you dropped your loot. It looks like you can also drop your dudes into that zone and be extracted from the game, which is probably a good thing in a campaign if you're wounded but not downed. Armour Piercing rounds destroy your armour in this game too. Given that your mobility especially is dependant on the suit you're wearing, that's really problematic!

Any downers?
None to speak of.

Our dice today definitely made the armour saves and damage rolls feel a lot worse than they probably are. Pel was failing 10 or less rolls on a D20 routinely. TBH, given the game is intended for campaigns and in the post-game, your characters who are down are not dead, merely badly wounded or incapacitated. They play no part in the post-game but they are not dead. Super important in a game that intended for campaign play.

Verdict?
Excellent. We'll both pick up a copy of the game when it comes out. The Kickstarter was very well funded and seems to be moving on really quickly. I'm genuinely looking forward to working out a) how to use some of my cooler Pan-O Infinity models that I've never put on the park in Infinity because they weren't good enough to make the cut and b) playing a more fulsome game and campaign.

Next Week
Some more painting! I'm working on a Command Squad for my Imperial Guard and, if I can get off my butt and finish fixing up the turret on a very old Chimera I've been trying to un-wreck, you might get to see that too.