After a long long wait, Xenos Rampant was released earlier in the week, the latest in the series from Osprey Games. XR is the sci-fi variant of Lion Rampant. I've been pretty excited about it for months now. I wasted no time putting together a couple of 28mm armies together from my collection. Ziggy came by Saturday evening for a first game.
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| Our 4' x 4' battlefield. |
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My forces were composed of cultist infantry, demonic necrobeasts (one might calls them ghouls) and a big demon (the purple flying beast off to the left there)
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| They were opposed by a very steampunk force of automata and elite infantry as well as an armored transport vehicle. |
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| Oh, I also had a Support Infantry unit in the guise of a small tracked vehicle.
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| The necrobeasts were on top of their enemies in no time. Being able to to move once before the game starts and a healthy 12" move allowance will do that! |
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| A second large group of automata disembarks from the tank. My big demon takes a prominent position and prepares to pounce! |
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| The vehicle continues forward to engage my demonic horde. |
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| The necrobeasts on the left / center are pounded on by mechanical men and a small group of elite infantry. |
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| The big girl finally gets her act together and assaults the vehicle! Both took a bit of a beating to our mutual frustration. |
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| My primary brain functions start kicking in and I start taking advantage of some neat ticks. The cultist infantry on the left acts as spotters for the support bot further back. This gives the support unit a "to hit" bonus which pays off, resulting in a dead elite trooper, even with their heavy cover! |
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| A shot of the battlefield. The tank had fled from big purple, but big purple was three hits down and at reduced effectiveness, hovering in front of a mighty gunline! |
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| On the fun side, the necrobeast's frenzy and hatred of the mechanical monster led to the tank's demise in short order. Good job fellas! |
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| That was of course followed up by big purple's defeat at the mechanical hands of the automata. Feh. |
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| Things pretty well devolved into a general retreat and more mayhem than can be allowed in a demonic cult army for me. |
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| Witness the numerous Supressions and fleeing units! |
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My last necrobeast at least gave a good accounting of itself smashing one last mechanical man before falling.
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Alrighty then... that was an entertaining first outing for sure. There were a couple of mistakes for sure, mainly mine but I don't know how much effect they'd have had on the outcome. I think the worst was that my Support Bot had the Mechanoid trait meaning I could have moved it forward in the early going and fired its weapons without having the rolls to activate it. It's nothing that playing the game more often and using the same troops wouldn't sort right out.
As far as Xenos Rampant goes, it's a winner. Enough tweaks have been made to keep things moving and happening, which is very important in a sci-fi skirmish game. Units typically have at least one "Free" action they can perform which succeeds without the normal activation roll. This means that melee troops can reliably move towards the enemy and gun-heavy troops can always be relied upon to shoot those guns. Vehicles are allowed to take a shoot action (with a penalty) after moving, because DUH. XR's a welcome addition to the collection for sure!
So does it still have the same basic core mechanisms of the other Rampant games in terms of troops types, activation rolls and buckets of dice in combat?
ReplyDeleteIn a nutshell, yes. That said, there are notable improvements that significantly reduce the frustrations of rolling poorly to activate units. The buckets of dice syndrome is still there, though 16.6% better - the most dice you'll roll at a time is 10 instead of 12.
DeleteI had a lot of questions on TMP about XR. I should put together a post to detail the game itself.