Can I Draw From the Boss Pile Using Xenocontainmentxenoshyft

I remember when this game was in pre-order, I passed because I just wasn't sure how deep the solo/coop experience would be. If they had put out the video linked below at the time, I would have jumped in immediately. In the video, Modiphius founder Chris Birch makes clear in the first minute or so that they want the game to be played in solo/coop mode; it's not just a hastily tacked-on ruleset.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_xKeW-xJNk&t=3978s

So far I am very impressed by the package. Rev, Luke, Bryan, et al, you really need to take a look at this game. It has huge potential. If you plan to jump in, you need to get the 2-player starter set. Core sets may look inviting, but they won't have everything you need. And by the way, the sets seem to be selling out fast.

I decided to get my feet wet by trying the scenario you can download from the Modiphius site, shown below.

One of the first things you might notice is that the game allows you to make use of whatever terrain you have available. The setup in the photo below contains items from Walking Dead All Out War, Mars Attacks and various bits and pieces I've picked up over the years. The 3' x 3' paper map comes with the game. They sell a neoprene version separately.

My survivors were in the bottom right corner. They had to push that giant cargo container (I don't have a giant red rocket) across the map to the upper left corner (our base) by the end of the 4th round. All our base belonged to the super mutants, unfortunately, and their objective was to destroy the container.

My plan was to have the sole survivor (with her hunting rifle) and one settler armed with a laser rifle provide cover while the other settler and the tech pushed to container forward. Dogmeat (the dog) would be in reserve, ready to charge if anyone got close.

Start pushing, boys!

The plan looked great on paper, but in practice it failed miserably. To push the container, the models had to pass a strength check. And while there was a lot of huffing and puffing, there ended up being very little movement forward (both had a measly strength rating of 3).

You begin the scenario by randomly assigning numbers to each AI model. Then each turn, you alternate model activations. For the AI, you flip a number token to determine which AI model goes next.

Each model type has its own AI card, which you use to determine what it will do with its activation. Here's the card for the regular super mutant. It looks very confusing at first but becomes second nature very quickly.

The first column is the result of a blue die roll, the next two columns shows actions for that result when the model has 4-6 health, and when it has only 1-3 health. Shaded boxes means the model acts cautiously (essentially seeking cover) while unshaded means reckless. Note the berserking mutants get more reckless the more damage they take. "O" means attempt to complete the objective (in this scenario, attack the container), "A" means attack according to the priorities in the bottom right and "M" is move. It all works very well in practice, but there are still times when you have to decide how best to interpret the result.

As far as my game went, as noted above I picked the wrong two survivors for stevedore duty, so it became pretty clear that we could not win by pushing the crate into our base. I was feeling pretty good about a minor win when we were able to pick off the mutants one by one, including one that burned to death after an amazing laser rifle shot by a settler...

...but as you can see below, those two blurry green images were super mutants firing their pipe rifles into the container, and they took out 7 of its 10 hit points. We needed it to have 4 points left for a minor victory, so it ended up being a draw.

This session was enough to convince me to order the Fallout: Wasteland Warfare – Brotherhood of Steel core box, so I'll have three factions to use in scenarios. Eventually I might add the creatures set so I can add in random encounters. And I haven't even explored yet the rules for setting up a campaign and building my own settlement.

Between this game and the upcoming Core Space, I think I'm going to have a fun end of 2018.

Can I Draw From the Boss Pile Using Xenocontainmentxenoshyft

Source: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/246401/solitaire-games-your-table-october-2018/page/2?

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