By Evie Moriarty, Lead Game Designer
Photography by Fatima Martín Pérez

 

At the heart of Fallout: Wasteland Warfare are the models you field on the tabletop. For the new edition, the rules that we use to describe those models have changed.

 

While we keep the core of what makes characters unique, we follow the trend of the new rules by expanding them in some areas and streamlining in others.

 

New Profiles

 

 

Here are the profiles for models available to you if you choose a Super Mutant warband. The roster will grow as we roll out expansion books, but this is what is in the core book. If you’re familiar with the first edition you’ll see a lot that looks the same, but there’s some things that have changed around, some things missing, and a couple of new additions.

 

Every model now has a type which is one of hero, companion or follower. Heroes are the focus of your warband, and you only ever have one hero if you’re playing a solo campaign. Companions are powerful models that can grow and change with your hero, levelling up over time. Followers are more disposable allies.

 

Models also have a fame cost which is how much fame it costs to recruit them into your warband. In short it’s a currency that you use to attract new models into your employ.

 

Then we have the familiar S.P.E.C.I.A.L. statistics, hopefully not a shock to anyone. These work very similarly to the previous edition, where when you attempt a test you use the appropriate statistic and try to roll equal to or under it with the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. dice.

 

What you might notice is that there are no skills listed, and that’s one of the biggest changes to the profiles. As we reviewed the feedback from many years of play and looked at how to optimise the experience, we realised that having specific named skills didn’t serve much purpose in the game.

 

Because skills weren’t tied to a specific statistic, and could move around from model to model, and those skills mostly were called out by weapons, actions and so on directly, we could just jump a step and have those references to be statistics themselves.

 

Now you don’t have a melee skill tied to a statistic for a model, but instead each melee weapon tells you which statistic to use (mostly Strength, but not always).

 

This helps clean up model profiles a lot without really sacrificing anything. We already knew going in from the feedback we’d had that we would be looking at tying skills to specific statistics, and at that point… why keep the skills around?

 

There’s now a Move statistic as well as the ones we’re used to, which is in inches since we’re moving away from the colored rulers you might be familiar with from the previous edition. That’s just how far they can move in a single action.

 

Finally there’s a list of perks that the model starts with. You can see all the Super Mutants are Rad Immune (making them immune to Radiation damage), and the Hound has a few other perks as well.

 

When you’re recruiting a model you’ll also pick some starting equipment for the model, from a number of options. But once you’ve done that you can jump into playing with them right away.

 

AI Profiles

 

One of the other big changes we’ve made is that if you’re playing against an AI opponent, the profiles they control look a little different.

 

As you can see these are a good bit simpler, but have slightly different information. Every enemy has a danger rating which is how difficult they are going to be to defeat on average. That’s used to populate opposition for combat encounters you fight in your campaign.

 

Enemy models don’t have a full set of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. statistics, because we’ve made the focus on you rolling for your models, not for enemy models. We’ll come onto exactly how that works in a future diary. They do have a Move statistic though, which again is how far they can travel in a single action.

 

Defense is a new statistic just for enemies, which is a rough representation of how hardy they are. You’ll need to do damage equal to or exceeding their defense to inflict injuries, but if you don’t manage it you’ll rack up shock on them instead, which makes future attacks a little easier. Armor/Resistance is the other side of their defensive coin, and reduces the damage of incoming attacks. We’ll cover how that works in detail another time.

 

Behavior is what we use to determine how the model behaves on the table when the AI is controlling them. We’ll do an entire diary entry on how the AI system works in the future.

 

Special Rules are the enemy equivalent of perks, and give them the special sauce that they need to stand out. We’ve kept the number of these as small as possible while packing in the variety, and we’re pleased that you can have a reference sheet of them without it being overwhelming.

 

When you generate an enemy to fight against you’ll also give them some weapons, and what weapons depends on which variant you face. You can read about that in another blog, but it lets you face off against enemies that are poorly equipped or packing serious heat.

 

Time to leave the Vault and get playing? Pre-order a Fallout: Wasteland Warfare Starter Set today! Got more questions, or ready for your campaign? Grab a (Nuka) cola and come and join us on our Discord.

 

Modiphius.netModiphius.us