Factions Focus: Cover

By Evie Moriarty
Painting by Callum France
Photography by Fatima Martín Pérez

Welcome to the first of a new series of articles we're calling Factions Focus. The development team has wrestled control of the website for these posts, and is going to be diving deep into one aspect of the game and talking through our thoughts on it. We might explain why a certain rule works the way it does, discuss our intention for how things will work going forward, or suggest variant or alternative rules for you to use in your games. For this first installment we're going to take a closer look at cover, and the role it plays in the game.

Fallout: Factions is a skirmish game that is intended for play on small tables with dense terrain. Though the source material we're working from sometimes has combat unfold in open wasteland vistas, that's not the focus for Factions. Instead we concentrate on the iconic cramped conditions of settlements, raider encampments, and other built up areas.

In game terms, Factions is a game that works best when the tables we're playing on have lots of terrain pieces. It's a relatively small Battlefield - just 24" by 36" - and that's really great in lots of ways. It means that you can get stuck in much faster, and the games are really quick to play and begin at the exciting part! One of the potential downsides however is that crews with great shooting can be overwhelming if a board doesn't have plenty of places to hide.

When we're building tables in the studio to play on, we're looking at covering around 25% to 50% of the board in terrain pieces. After hundreds of additional games we've come to the conclusion that it's hard to put too much terrain down. Part of that is because we want to make sure that models have to maneuver around obstacles, don't get clear lines of sight right away, and that those climbing rules get a workout!

Another reason for dense terrain setups is that the cover system in the game is very simple. That's fully intentional - getting a bonus dice if your target is wide open is just about the easiest way to represent cover imaginable, and it's incredibly quick to adjudicate. You'll almost always know right away if it applies or not. It's also turning something that's normally portrayed in tabletop games as a negative ("my target is in cover so I'm worse at this") into a positive ("my target is in the open so I'm better at this"), which can make the system feel more rewarding.

But one downside is that because there's only a one dice difference between a target being wide open or in cover, terrain that fully blocks line of sight is even more essential. Especially when your crew has a few games under its belt that one dice doesn't feel as much difference as it once did. That means that more melee-focused crews, or just those relying on shorter-range firepower, really need places to hide. That's where dense tables come into their own.

But what do you do if you don't have the terrain for a really dense table? Or if you're finding that even with it, your elite crews have polished their skill with firearms to the point where it's just not cutting it? We've tried to come up with a rule that's simple to implement and use, and dramatically improves cover without adding too many extra steps. It turns cover from a mild inconvenience into a more substantial obstacle to success - more of a halfway point between a normal shot and not being able to shoot at all.

This is the first of our Wild Wasteland rules. These rules are not intended for general use. We're not suggesting them as something all players should immediately adopt. They're an alternative that changes the game up sometimes in unexpected ways. 

These are instead intended for players who want to vary their experience, or feel like the system isn't working in quite the way they'd like it to. For those of you who choose to use this rule, we'd love to hear your feedback. Get in touch on our discord or via email and tell us what you think. You should only use them if you and your opponent (and the rest of your campaign group, if applicable) agree to use them.

It's possible that we might introduce rules first presented as Wild Wasteland rules as official optional rules in the future, or even update the core rules to make them the norm. But it's also possible you'll never see them again! We're taking something new for a spin here, so let us know if you like it or not.

This Heavy Cover rule makes keeping models tucked around the corner of buildings, or hidden behind walls, very important. It also pushes more of a focus on maneuver - you’ll need to keep mobile and skirt around terrain to get the jump on your enemies. It will make melee-focused crews more powerful on the table, as there’s an expectation that ranged attackers will have to do a lot more movement anyway. It also probably makes Fast weapons much less valuable - in a world where you’ll need to move to get a clear shot, there will be less opportunities to just blast away.

If that’s still not enough focus on cover for you, and you want to push things even further, you can try this alternative:

This really ramps things up aggressively, and it will probably be too much for more players. That said, if you want to hone in on movement and positioning as the deciding factors, this could be the option for you. It also may interact oddly with a few things elsewhere in the ruleset, so use at your discretion - you’ll need to come up with alternatives for any effect that alters the bonus that Wide Open normally gives.

Hopefully this gives you a couple of interesting alternatives for your table, and explains the thinking behind how cover works in the game. If you have a topic you’d like us to cover in the next Factions Focus, then please email with your thoughts, or contact us on the Discord.