Xenos Rampant

    Me and Mitch had a first game of Xenos Rampant last night. Mitch pitted his IG against some rebel human types that I had from way back when since we played Future Wars and its Pulp campaign. We used some of the scenics from that as well which are now at the club for other Xenos games.

    The long and short of it is the unit upgrades are very broken in parts and that is just the standard ones not the xeno ones which we already knew were questionable.

    It was nice to have all the figures and scenics out again but it needs some serious consideration to make these rules unbroken.

    I think Andy is going to open a thread and we'll start to put ideas in there.

    Meanwhile here's some pix of the skirmish in downtown Deadsville including Mitch's really nice Orgryn unit getting lost in the narrow passageways and the best restaurant in Deadsville that serves in Iguana burgers.


    It was a nice set up, but the guard couldn't withstand the withering fire power of the rebels. Seems like the villainous scum had found a cache of armour piercing ammunition and butchered the Ogryns and commander who led a valiant charge to get the last mole rat burger in the diner.


    The base units are fairly cheap but as Pete says when you add in some of the basic upgrades they can become very powerful, especially with the shooting range which I think is one of the parts of the game will need looking at most.


    The plus side is that the options in the book do let you create lots of thematic units but it will definitely take some work to balance.

    Its a good question Craig. I think there are pros and cons.

    We mostly all have armies we could use for 'sci-fi' type games so its just what rule set to use.

    40k can be unbalanced and min maxed and is biased towards what minis GW want to sell. One page rules gave decent short games but I'm not sure about the bigger version of those.

    We all mostly know the Dan Mersey base rule mechs and their variations and we don't need 1000 minis a side to play them (or 'official' minis - GW).

    On the negative side the list building part needs a lot of limiting setting in it and that's both standard and xeno.

    I think it's worth doing because the basic rule set is good but I'd be equally happy to try other rules and it really depends what the consensus is.

    They can't even have play tested these for a couple of games as if they had they'd see how unbalanced forces easily became unless everyone just maxed out everything when they play tested it and it balanced somewhat by that means.

    It represents a truly poor effort to take all this time to put them out in this state.

    Maybe that's why it kept getting delayed, and they just couldn't fix it in the end.

    Judging by how late it was and how many preorders they'd taken maybe they just had to publish it, broken or not?


    But then I do like a good conspiracy theory.

    I was thinking the same, the one page larger rules are pretty good and well balanced from the times we have played it, but like Pete says the xenos rampant rules are familiar to a lot already.


    For me I think one of the important parts to consider is scenario, a straight forward attack defend scenario leads to a tendency to build a power force. Scenarios that require capture of objectives work better as your force needs to be more balanced, has to move rather than shoot and so for me results in a more balanced game.


    Looking at all the options in xenos rampant, you can basically mirror any 40k unit, and I think that has been their aim, however because of that you can easily create unbalanced forces.


    I was going to bring some forces on Friday so perhaps we can try the one page rules and then compare the two?

    Having thought about it some more I think also the biggest issues are unlimited range and ap, especially against units or forces that are designed for charging.


    I would say a couple if simple fixes could be limiting range to maximum of unit and ap only works at 12", this would in effect mean the AP works simular to close order in rebels amd patriots but without the restrictions on arc of fire and movement and not lost at half strength.


    I will have some orks and imperial guard today if we have chance to test the rules out some more.