Fallout: Factions – a truly S.P.E.C.I.A.L. miniature wargame

Fallout: Factions is a quick-playing skirmish wargame for two or more players, set in the irradiated wasteland from Bethesda’s Fallout videogames and the recent Netflix series. This review of the Battle for Nuka World starter set is based on a half dozen playtest games over the course of months, evaluating the starter set components, game rules, and campaign system.

Modiphius provided me with miniatures and a PDF of the rules some months ago, as well as STL files for terrain. I held off writing this review until Modiphius could provide a copy of the starter set to evaluate the quality of the components. The nicely painted 3D printed terrain in the photos comes from a Modiphius press event.

There are plenty of skirmish wargames with campaign systems – here’s how Fallout: Factions fares against the best miniature wargames in the genre.

What is Fallout: Factions Battle for Nuka World?

Fallout: Factions Battle for Nuka World is a self-contained starter set with (almost) everything you need to play skirmish wargame campaigns in the Fallout universe. Players control gangs of wasteland raiders tussling for control of the Nuka World theme park, clashing with rivals in a struggle for caps, Chems, weapon parts, and control of territory.

Over many battles the gangs gain skills, Perks, weapon upgrades, and suffer long-term injuries or even deaths. Each gang is pursuing its own quest line, so as well as fighting to win the scenario you’ll have your own objectives to consider each time your rumble in the park.

Publisher Modiphius makes a large range of Fallout miniatures for the game Fallout Wasteland Warfare. Rules to use those models to create gangs from the Brotherhood of Steel, Super Mutants, and others are already available on the Modiphius website.

What’s in the box?

The Battle for Nuka World starter set contains just about everything you need to play Fallout: Factions. It contains:

• 10 multipart models for The Pack.
• 10 multipart models for The Operators
• 76 page softcover rulebook
• Paper playmat
• Punch-out cardboard terrain
• Tokens and markers
• Two crew roster sheets
• 12 D10s
• Miniature tape measure

You will need some hobby tools, at minimum a hobby knife and polystyrene cement glue to build the models, plus some miniature paintbrushes and paints for miniatures if you want everything to look nice. The minis are fairly easy to put together, with solid instructions, and can be built with a variety of different weapon loadouts. They have some small parts, but they’re not particularly fragile.

The two gangs have distinctive visual identities, each putting a twist on the Raider’s scavenger aesthetic. The Operators have 1950s rockabilly and mafia swagger with pompadour hairstyles and slick suits, while the Pack are all about animal masks and ritualistic plush toys.

Because all the minis are based on the totally standardised torso used for all NPCs in Bethesda videogames, the models in each gang all have very similar profiles, and their small, realistically proportioned weapons also look fairly interchangeable. While they look good, en masse they can be tricky to identify. Painting numbers onto the rim of the bases will help identify fighters during the game.

The rulebook is well thought out, with easy to comprehend writing. There are army lists for three different flavors of Raider, the two included in the box and the fanatical Disciples. There’s a good table of contents, but no index. I found at least one error that needs an errata: the starting power of the missile launcher in the Operator’s gang list is different from its listings elsewhere.

The card components are printed on luxuriously thick cardstock that will stand up to extended play. Having done most of my playtesting using makeshift tokens to track game states, I found that the official components did make things easier. The double-sided Fatigue tokens and Harm tokens, which are scalloped so they slot flush against the bases of models, are particularly good.

The cardstock buildings can make refreshment stalls or mock-up frontier buildings from the Western-themed Dry Rock Gulch zone of Nuka World, plus sundry little features like park benches and fake theme park tombstones. There’s enough terrain to provide a satisfying game, though they’re themed very closely around Nuka World, limiting their utility outside this game.

How does it play?

Each game of Fallout: Factions pits two or more gangs of raiders against one another, fighting over a small corner of the Nuka World theme park. Missions range from simple skirmishes to supply raids and computer hacking, and can be strung together into a campaign that will see your gang evolve over time.

Gang construction

Building your gang is simple enough. You have a limited budget of caps to hire a Leader, up to two Champions, and then a choice of raiders. Each fighter in the gang has access to a few specific weapon loadouts, depending on their type. Gang building is a lot less open-ended than Necromunda, but it’s also far harder to construct an extremely under- or over-powered build.

Since the gangs are all human raiders their stats are fairly similar, with the Operators favoring ranged combat, while the Pack is big on melee. Over the course of a campaign these moderate differences will grow more pronounced as you modify your weapons, pushing them further into their niches. Each gang also has two unique Ploys which you can use during a battle for a special effect – more on those later.

Activation system

The game uses an alternating activation system, with players taking it in turns to pick a model and act with them: moving up to 8”, shooting, rummaging through a loot container, healing up to remove some Harm, bashing someone in melee, or taking a mission-specific action. Each time a model activates it gains a point of fatigue, and you can either stop activating a model after one action, or push on until it’s fully Exhausted. Once both players have run out of fighters or passed, the Round ends, and everyone loses their fatigue.

Dice rolls

Fighters in Fallout: Factions have the same S.P.E.C.I.A.L. statblock used in the videogame. Though these stats were designed for an open-ended RPG, not a skirmish wargame, they make sense in this game. Each character has a number value for each stat, and when you need to take a test, you’ll roll a pool of D10s, aiming to get equal to or under the value on as many dice as possible.

However big your dice pool is, you will transform (up to) your Luck stat of the dice into Luck dice – the box set comes with a mix of red and blue D10s to help you differentiate. Rolling a success on a Luck die lets you roll an extra regular die. And when you’re making an attack, a success on a luck die triggers any critical effects of the weapon you’re using.

Combat

When you attack, you’ll check the weapons stats to find a starting dice pool and a specific stat that you’re rolling against. For example, an attack with a 5S Deathclaw Gauntlet tells you to roll five dice, aiming to get equal to or under the wielder’s Strength stat. Pistols and grenades tend to use Agility, rifles go off Perception, and both melee and heavy weapons rely on Strength.

Every success in an attack roll causes a point of damage against the target. This doesn’t eat away at hitpoints: instead, you’ll compare the damage you deal against the target’s Endurance stat. As long as you cause a single point of damage you’ll give the target one point of Harm, which will stick around and make them easier to kill in future.

If you equal or beat the target’s Endurance you’ll inflict a point of Harm, and a considerably more serious Injury. Basic mooks die as soon as they suffer a single Injury, but Champions and Leaders need two or three to put down. And if your rolls are hot enough to deal twice as much damage as the target’s Endurance, they’re taken out of action, no questions asked.

With the relatively small dice pools you’ll roll, it’s very unlikely that you’ll double out a target’s Endurance stat, and even inflicting an Injury is unlikely. But each point of Harm attached to a model grants anyone who attacks it an extra die on their roll – and if a model would ever gain its fourth point of Harm, it takes an Injury instead.

So the first volley is unlikely to take someone down, but each subsequent attack becomes more and more deadly. And Harm isn’t the only way to add extra dice to your attacks. Aiming a ranged attack grants at least one extra dice, or more for weapons like the Sniper Rifle or Needler. You get an extra die when shooting at a model standing out in the open, when making a melee attack against an enemy that you moved into contact with this turn, extra dice for getting a shotgun into short range…

You can also coordinate the activation of two or more models. When a model activates, so can another model within its Charisma value in inches. Both fighters gain a fatigue point. If the first model moves, the other model can make a move too. If the first model shoots, provided the supporting model is in range of the same target and armed with a pistol or rifle, they add a bonus die to the first model’s attack.

Hitting a model over and over again is the most reliable way to take it out of action, but there’s always the possibility of one-shotting an enemy if you can make a sufficiently swollen dice pool.

Weapon traits

Weapons have a variety of special effects which add further tactical wrinkles. For example, Area weapons roll to attack every model in the area of effect, but never receive bonus dice, making them great at opening the fight but worse at finishing it.

Many extra powers trigger when you score a critical hit, and there’s a lot of Fallout flavour here. The ‘Maim’ trait inflicts an extra point of Harm after rolling for damage, great for finishing off already-battered warriors, while the ‘Meltdown’ Trait (reserved to Plasma weapons) can turn enemies into green goo even after they survive a hit.

The last stat, Intelligence, has many uses. During the pre-battle setup the gang leaders roll off in an Intelligence test, whoever gets the most successes deciding which part of Nuka World you’ll fight over. When a fighter is taken out of the fight, any friendly fighters nearby must pass an Intelligence test or gain a point of fatigue in the panic. In the Retrieval Run mission, the attacker’s fighters need to pass Intelligence tests to hack computer terminals.

Ploys

Ploys are a system a little like Command Points from 40k or Age of Sigmar, though a lot less prevalent. Players start each mission with one Ploy token, more if they’re an experienced gang or facing a more powerful enemy. These tokens are spent to activate Ploys. Generic Ploys let you reroll all the misses in a dice pool, activate two models in a row, or reactivate an exhausted model.

Then there are Ploys tied to the part of Nuka World you’re fighting in – tunnelling worms boring up from under Dry Rock Gulch, or the lights suddenly going off inside the Galactic Zone and cutting firing ranges for a round.

Each Crew has its own theme-appropriate ploys; the professional Operators can Coordinate Fire to let models anywhere on the map support a ranged attack, or be Prepared for Anything and rustle up a bag of Chems at the start of one turn.

Final thoughts on gameplay

The game plays fast – I’ve literally been able to complete two games of Fallout: Factions in the same time it’s taken a game of Necromunda on the table next to me to finish. The biggest source of rulebook checking is working out the precise wording on a rare weapon trait.

While the rules are (mostly) streamlined, there are plenty of interesting choices to make, prioritising targets and positioning models for good shots or for a push forwards in a later turn. Luck plays a role, but it rarely undermines your tactical choices: when a model gets taken out with a single dice roll, it feels like a headshot.

Internalising some of the game concepts did take me and my opponent a while. The fact that attacks cause damage, which might result in instant death, Injuries (which is instant death for most models), or Harm (which eventually builds up into Injuries), is a slippery nest of nouns both I and my opponent found hard to cling onto. While each of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats makes sense, the acronym doesn’t put the stats into a convenient order.

Campaigns

When playing games as part of a campaign, your victories grant you loot and experience with which to upgrade your gang, while models taken out of action can be seriously injured or killed. That’s totally standard stuff for a skirmish campaign game, but Fallout: Factions has some smart ideas here too.

Experience is accrued for your gang as a whole, rather than for specific fighters, and while certain missions will give the winner bonus XP, you actually gain more from suffering setbacks. It softens the sting from a loss, and helps ensure the survivors of a losing gang have the XP to become grizzled veterans.

Between missions you can take Story Actions, which you use to actually turn XP into upgrades, spend Parts on weapon mods, use Credits to recruit more fighters, treat the injuries of your wounded champions, or gather recon on the rest of the park.

Each gang has a choice of three unique quest lines, each divided into three tiers of objectives which it will take you many games to complete. This might be causing ten casualties with ranged shooting, upgrading four guns of a certain type, or winning a certain mission on your home turf. Completing all the objectives in a tier and spending 100 caps will promote your gang, giving you a valuable extra Ploy token and moving them closer to retirement.

The quest lines are an inspired feature. They give players a way to measure campaign progress that doesn’t rely on a central administrator running the show – and a willing organiser is by far the most difficult thing to find when organising a campaign game. Each gang’s choice of quest lines really contributes to its identity, and lets you make progress even when a mission ends in total defeat.

The game also features an excellent balancing mechanic. For every fifty caps difference in gang value between players, the underdog receives a bonus Ploy token. Then, any remaining difference in value can be spent buying doses of chems you can use during the mission. A well-deployed Stimpack to heal a Champion, or Jet to remove fatigue from a figure after it’s activated, makes a huge difference.

Who is it for?

Fallout Factions is a self-contained wargame in one box, which you could play happily for weeks or months without need to add anything. The rules are easy to follow, presented in an easy-to-understand way, yet still lead to interesting tactical choices and tense gameplay. It would make a great first wargame for anyone – but it has lots to offer veterans too.

‘Skirmish wargames with campaign modes’ have their own niche. Necromunda is the big daddy of the genre, while Stargrave is probably the most visible indie entry, at least in the sci-fi field. Fallout: Factions sits apart from both of them.

Compared to Necromunda, Fallout: Factions is streamlined. The layers of systems and systems that Necromunda uses to represent hundreds of abilities and niche interactions just aren’t here. While you might miss the granularity and distinctiveness that comes from every unit having a stack of special rules, you can play Fallout: Factions in literally half the time, with far less time spent consulting the rulebook.

There’s a little more tactical crunch and a little less chaos in Fallout: Factions compared with Stargrave. Where Stargrave has a plethora of weird powers, gizmos, and monsters, Fallout: Factions’ core combat system is more nuanced and interesting in its own right – and it still has its share of hilarious weirdness.

The fact that Fallout Factions’ campaign system doesn’t need a referee, and has such excellent underdog balancing, makes it easy to get a campaign up and running. And if you don’t have one of those magical players who actually enjoy running campaigns in your gaming circle, that might be the only point that’s relevant.

If you’re a Fallout fan who has been eyeing up Modiphius’ gorgeous miniatures for years, but was put off Wasteland Warfare by its reputation for complexity, Fallout Factions is an easy recommendation. While the game doesn’t yet have rules for the full the Wasteland Warfare miniature range, get-you-by rules are available for the main factions, and we’ll be surprised if more don’t follow.

Source: Wargamer