AAR: Xenos Rampant

 Mark came over for a game of Xenos Rampant yesterday. It's been a couple years since I played last and he'd never played. I had a bunch of models that I finished up last summer that have never seen a tabletop that needed a chance to get out and play. We played an orbital drop mission in which my Cultists and Nightmare monsters were defending against Mark's United Planetary Federation troops. Both sides had 24 points of troops.

Commander Mark

The yellow markers are the six drop points. All three of the pre-game orbital bombardment requests failed, meaning I got away with things early. Mark's forces generally clumped up around two drop point on what's the left side of the board in these pictures. Only his heavy drone was elsewhere, coming in right atop the bunker that was the objective of the attackers.

My Greater Demon, Ol' Skinny, sets her sights on the heavy drone atop the bunker.

My Necrobeasts (the GW Ghoul models) used their infiltration ability to close with the big group of invaders appearing at the far end of the table. They were in Wild Charge range right out of the gates, just the way Daddy likes it.

Chomp chomp! The battle begins in earnest with a furious charge by the Necrobeats into the UPF light infantry. In case you're curious, the green and blue space ork fellow is just a "commander's unit" token.

After some ineffective return fire, those rampaging hordes smash into the well-equipped Swarm Infantry, the UPF's heavy infantry.

Ol' Skin-And-Bones commits crimes against IT support staff, ripping into the heavy drone.

Meanwhile, I had a unit of Biles (heavy infantry with gimpy 12-inch range guns) slogging their way over to more light infantry and some recon drones. One good round of shooting was all it took to convince the goblinoid troopers to run away!

After another round of Dancing with the Swarms, my Necrobeasts were done, content to take their fresh-off-the-bone lunch back to their cave instead of slaughtering more invaders! Dang. At least I had also run off one of the Swarm infantry units.

The slow crawl of my mechanical support unit was nearing an end, getting into a position to start blasting enemies! You can also see my cultists hanging out in the bunker atop the hill.

The mop-up grind begins. My Biles head toward the remaining Swarm and light infantry. Ms. Purple Demon had finished with the heavy drone (although she'd lost two of her five strength points in the process!).

DANCE WITH ME, MY PRETTIES!

The Biles join in, forcing the Swarm to run and hide.

Purp was compelled to attack the Swarm infantry again. She pulled the head off another as she winked out of existence, back to whatever plane of existence she calls home.

The Biles do the thing. The recon drone's communications back to the orbiting ships is nothing good.

My cultists kicking it in the bunker. They took quite a few casualties but had terrific courage results all game and simply hung in there. 

A fun outing and nice to put XR on the tabletop again. I think I need to tweak the UPF's force composition, their shooting is decidedly "meh" and don't quite pack enough of a punch. Of course the heavy drone getting laced into by the big demon right out of the gates took away one of their better shooting units in a terrible way. As always, looking forward to the next game, which should be Frostgrave Part III next Saturday. Be well and good gaming!

Clearing the Queue

 By no means done with the plastic mountain, but I've made some good progress knocking stuff out recently. First us, some drones / hover bots that came with the troopers I painted up a month and a half ago. Models are Warlord Gates of Antares range. They're kind of neat and I like how the came out, especially next to their two-legged kin.

It's always tempting to add a lot of oddball stuff to bases so I think just doing two shows a lot of restraint. 😁

"You take the low road, unit D-121 and I will take the high... brzzztt. Over."

And the other model I cranked out in the last few days was this beauty. It's a 1/56 (28mmish) Sherman VC Firefly for the zero of you who don't know. I got it from Mike a few weeks back when we were playing Blood & Plunder. It's a 2-part resin print (hull + turret) from Tina's Tiny Tanks. Mike sells them on his webstore here : Gator Games. I'm sure the markings are wrong, but it looks  close enough and that's all I'm concerned with. British tank + bigass tankslayer gun. 

Obligatory B&W photo of the WW2 vehicle. 

Painting And Stuff

 Finished up a bit more over the last week or two... Always like to keep the brushes moving! It's been sci-fi stuff recently with some secondhand Warmachine minis and Battletech.

Here are those Warmachine things. Ugly little monstrosities. Hideous demonic bile-spewing things. They'll be a wonderful addition to my evil Xenos Rampant force. I like the way the color shift paint turned out over the textured bases. It was certainly experimental and lends a neat demonic otherworldly touch. 

And then there are these five additions to my Battletech Fire Mandrill clan collection. It's the "Ad Hoc Lance" force box.

Certainly not "canon" mechs for Fire Mandrills but who gives a darn? A Kodiak is a bad mammer jammer and who doesn't need one in their collection? A pleasure to paint and a welcome addition for sure. I'm hoping to host a game of Alpha Strike next weekend and some of these might make the table.

My wife and I went up to Atlanta last weekend for a concert - Steve Miller Band, Journey and Def Leppard. It was a blast.

A view from the top of Truist Park. All the bands were terrific. Def Leppard was noticeably better from when I saw them in 2022. Vocals, sharpness... just better. 

Xenos Rampant - The Review

 There's been some curiosity about Osprey's new Xenos Rampant sci-fi rules. They're the latest in the Lion Rampant and Dragon Rampant family and the pedigree is obvious. I've played DR many times and it's a fine beer and pretzels light tabletop game that doesn't pretend to be anything more grand than just that. The frustrations are obvious to anyone who has played them though, most notably the notorious "Failed Action" roll.

  For those of you not familiar with the rules, on your turn you select a unit, choose an action (Move, Fight (assault move + close combat) or Shoot (ranged attack)). Depending on the type of unit, those actions have different adds of success.

Here's an example - Light Riders. Light cavalry, better at shooting than swordsmanship. You want these guys to move. Roll 2d6 and try to equal or exceed the Move rating of 5+. If you fail that roll, your turn immediately ends and it's on to your opponent. Anyone who has played has a story about repeatedly failing action rolls and getting trampled to death due to their inability to act. It happens. It's also, I feel, the single biggest failing in the rules. It sucks BAD to get on a bad run of the dice.

Xenos Rampant addresses this with giving most troops types at least one Action that incurs no risk of failure - a FREE action.

Here's the example, Heavy Infantry. They're very good for defending a thing and staying put because if you choose to activate them and order them to shoot, you can dispense with the activation roll and simply proceed to shooting their guns!

There are special unit upgrades that give troops even more reliability, such as Mechanoid, which is something you'd apply to robotic troops. Amongst other things it does this:

So as long as this unit is in decent shape, it's very reliable. Once the damage starts to accumulate, things will go sour but that's just part of the game.

In summary, the failed activation problem has been addressed. Maybe not cured, but certainly not ignored by the designers.

Another aspect of the Rampant series that some players may not care for is "lots of dice." I for one love "buckets 'o dice" but that's not for everyone. Whereas previous games required 12 dice to be rolled at a time, Xenos Rampant maxes out at 10. An improvement if that's important to you. Dice guy still gets to roll dice.

The last gigantic improvement that popped out at me was Morale / Courage. With previous games in the series, the total number of casualties the unit had taken throughout the game served as a negative modifier to a unit's Courage tests, meaning a heavily-depleted unit needed an Act of Congress/God to hold its nerve or quit running away. 

Xenos Rampant changes this to where only casualties sustained during the Courage test inducing event are counted as negative modifiers; the total number of modifier sustained during the game is more or less irrelevant.

This changes significantly after the unit is at or below half strength. At that point the unit only rolls ONE D6 instead of two. Most units have a courage of 4+, so the test is still passable, but certainly less so. A beat up unit that's running away or cowering can certainly get its act together and turn around at 50/50 odds. That's not bad at all and a welcome change.

Vehicles are an integrated part of the Xenos Rampant rules. They do not use different rules and armor/damage/etc is handled exactly as it is for any other unit. If you play by the book rules, you won't be able to have more than one in a 24-point army. They're easy to use and feel well-balanced. Tough tanks are going to be hard to kill, but that's to be expected. Vehicles that move may opt to fire as well, albeit with a to-hit penalty. A simple enough solution for sure. The other caveat is that the vehicle cannot use a "Free" Move action and shoot its guns; the player must roll an activation test to get the double-action.

 If you're looking for generic set of sci-fi rules that works well with 28mm and 15mm miniatures, Xenos Rampant is a fine set. If you've played Lion or Dragon and despise the activation roll mechanism, you want to skip this. I am very happy with the $25 I spent for the PDF and am looking forward to more games with it.

Xenos Rampant AAR: First Outing

 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.

Our 4' x 4' battlefield.

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)

They were opposed by a very steampunk force of automata and elite infantry as well as an armored transport vehicle.

Oh, I also had a Support Infantry unit in the guise of a small tracked vehicle.

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!

A second large group of automata disembarks from the tank. My big demon takes a prominent position and prepares to pounce!

The vehicle continues forward to engage my demonic horde.

The necrobeasts on the left / center are pounded on by mechanical men and a small group of elite infantry.

The big girl finally gets her act together and assaults the vehicle! Both took a bit of a beating to our mutual frustration.

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!

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!

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!

That was of course followed up by big purple's defeat at the mechanical hands of the automata. Feh.

Things pretty well devolved into a general retreat and more mayhem than can be allowed in a demonic cult army for me.

Witness the numerous Supressions and fleeing units!

My last necrobeast at least gave a good accounting of itself  smashing one last mechanical man before falling.

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!