Fallout Factions was one of our standout wargames of 2024, a slick and quick skirmish wargame dripping with Fallout flavor that packed months of campaign play into one box set. Production delays meant the Battle for Nuka World starter set arrived late, and the game didn’t land with the nuclear bang that we expected. But, as we learnt in this interview with new lead designer Evie Moriarty, the team has moved past that misfire with the enthusiasm of a Vault-Tec scientist, and they’ve built something pretty incredible from the wreckage.
“It was brutal to experience in real time”, says Moriarty, who heads up both Fallout Factions and the related Fallout Wasteland Warfare wargame at publisher Modiphius, “there was so much enthusiasm building and then there was that big delay”.
When Wargamer eventually got our hands on the starter set we were incredibly impressed – as you can see in our full Fallout Factions review – but the delay did not help sales.
The Battle for Nuka World starter set has everything you need to play a varied skirmish wargame campaign in Fallout universe, focused on the Nuka World amusement park that appeared in the Fallout 4 DLC of the same name. While it’s a great, self-contained miniature wargame, there’s no denying that Nuka World’s unique raider gangs aren’t the most memorable part of the setting.
Enter the new core rulebook, written up by Jack Caesar and now available to pre-order from Modiphius. While the core game rules remain the same easy-to-use system we praised in our review, there are now full rules to build crews of the Brotherhood of Steel, Super Mutants, Vault Dwellers, and Raiders. And let’s be honest – when you think of gang fights in the Fallout universe, you’re probably thinking of the Brotherhood or the Super Mutants.
“This is our single point of truth for the rules going forwards”, Moriarty says. “I don’t think it’s a big secret to say that there are likely to be other starter sets in the future that tackle different places, regions, and settings, as entry points for people to come into the game”, they add. But nothing is going to supplant this core rulebook, at least for this edition of the game.
Thanks to Modiphius’ other Fallout wargame, Wasteland Warfare, you can already buy extremely detailed resin figures for all four of the core gangs for Fallout Factions. But if you don’t like working with that material, “there are four absolutely fabulous hard plastic miniature sets that are going to come along to support the crews in that book”, Moriarty sets, “they’re all going to have hard plastic multipart kits”.
“I have had hands-on with the Wasteland Raiders,” they say, “and my goodness is that a beautiful miniature set”. That kit is up for pre-order at the moment, but the others aren’t yet on show. “I don’t know exactly when those are going to be released”, Moriarty adds, “but I’m really hopeful in the next few months”. After the production delays with the starter set, their caution is understandable.
The plastic kits in the Nuka World starter set are well made and characterful – our only real issues with them are the original Bethesda designs they’re based on. If Modiphius can bring the same quality to the much more interesting Brotherhood or Supermutants, we expect great things.
While Fallout Factions has only just left the Vault, Wasteland Warfare has been roaming the wastes for over a decade, and has a stacked miniature range. Since the release of the starter set for Factions, Modiphius has released supplements and beta rules to let you use more of the Wasteland Warfare range in Factions.
“We wanted to integrate robots and animals somehow”, Moriarty says, “But for me a crew in Factions is a group of intelligent people – or near people – trying to do the best they can, to a certain aim, and a lot of the campaign structure just doesn’t make sense if you have a gang of mirelurks”. So complete crews of beasts or ‘bots were out.
The free ‘Companions’ PDF supplement was their answer, “so you can have a Protectron or a Mr. Handy, or your Wasteland Raiders and their captured Deathclaw can go to battle with the neighboring crews”.
Fallout monsters get a lot bigger than Deathclaws, of course, with things like Supermutant Behemoths and Fog Crawlers lurking in the wastes, and so do Modiphius’ models. That’s where the Goliath game mode comes in, another free supplement released last October. “You have two people playing a normal game and a third person controlling an enormous monster that is rampaging through the middle of the board”, Moriarty says, “that’s a real good time”.
The new core rulebook also adds rules for Legends of the Wasteland to join your gang, characters you’ll recognise from the videogames. The initial roster is focused on the characters associated with Nuka World, including the fatman-toting King of the Park, and an enraged Bottle and Cappy robot. Some fan favorites like Nick Valentine and Paladin Danse sneak in there too.
“Expect many more of those”, Moriarty says, “They’re way too fun not to have a whole bunch”.
And more options are coming. Modiphius is working on a printed folio book which will “be a compilation of all of the crews that aren’t in the core book” – that will include updated rules for the three Nuka World gangs, the cult of the Mothmen and Zetan aliens (which currently have free PDF rules), “plus a few more as well”, updated and expanded. Some extra companions will also appear in this book, too.
Aside from the new crews, the other major change in the core rulebook is a new campaign system. This creates a shared wasteland for players to battle over. Players each control a home turf with unique characteristics, giving their gang advantages between campaign missions, and even changing the battlefield when games take place on their turf.
Players can upgrade their turf with new facilities, raid one another’s bases, and even take control of them – it should seem pretty familiar for anyone who has played in a Necromunda campaign before.
The campaign system in the Battle for Nuka World starter set is a little more abstract, and doesn’t require anyone to track a campaign world. This allows players to manage their own warband progression without an external campaign administrator, something we praised in our review.
“We’re not abandoning that”, Moriarty says, “in future when we release a new crew as a PDF or in a rule book or whatever, you’ll have the options to play in both campaign formats” – though this isn’t fully implemented yet.
And if you don’t fancy campaigns at all, there’s now a way to play Factions as a strictly competitive game. “The C.O.M.P. kit for tournament play has been released now”, Moriarty says – this month’s Goonhammer Open is the first event to use it.
That has “new rules for warband creation, letting you point buy perks and upgrades to have a more elite crew from the word go”, plus “eight scenarios designed for symmetrical competitive play”.
Fallout Factions core rules are as crisp as a freshly pressed Vault-Tec jumpsuit, and it captures the flavor of Fallout like an iguana on a stick. It’s good to see that its tricky launch hasn’t turned into a catastrophic misfire.
If you’re interested in great skirmish game experiences inspired by other media properties, we’ve got two recommendations. Star Wars Shatterpoint is a kinetic and incredibly atmospheric game of high octane duels – our Star Wars Shatterpoint review gives the full rundown. Or if you want something a little simpler and a little more knockabout, Halo: Flashpoint captures the fun of multiplayer FPS gameplay remarkably, and is particularly good for people moving from board games to wargames.
Source: Wargamer
