Wargames dev at Modiphius Ethan Heywood discusses all the ways you can use the Automatron Card Expansion Pack to upgrade your Robots in Fallout: Wasteland Warfare.

Over the holiday season the Robots of the Wasteland received an upgrade in the form of the Automatron Card Expansion Pack! The Automatron Deck is a marvellous tool featuring countless ways to customize your robots into characterful, wacky and murderous machines. It's quite easy to use the rules to make your own Automatron so let's see how it works.

The basics of building an Automatron requires a number of robot component unit cards as each Automatron is assembled using bits taken from a variety of pre-existing robots. For example, we could take the head of an Assaultron and weld it onto a Protectron body fitted with Mr Handy legs. Using this contraption in game is rather simple; place a Head card, then a Legs card, and then a Torso card going left-to-right so the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes are aligned. Voila, we have our most basic Automatron, a functioning bucket of bolts. Now we need to arm it.

Unless the card says otherwise, Automatrons can take any Robot Weapons you wish even if the Robot its been taken from is not apart of the components that make up your Automatron. Although remember, a Robot may never have more than 2 Robot Weapons. As we have an Assaultron Head, we’ll take the Assaultron Head Laser. In addition, we give our Automatron a Hand Vice Grip as a melee option.

Our Automatron looks ready to charge into unsuspecting wastelanders, firing its head laser then attacking with its Vice Grip. Let’s see how we can Mod our Automatron to make it even more efficient. At killing (or hacking, but killing’s more the aim with this rusting beast). The Assaultron Head Laser is a primed weapon that requires its user to move before it can be fired, so let's add ‘Sub-Routine: Quick’ to let our Automatron spend any Action Points it generates as additional Quick Action Moves. Like Robot Weapons, robots can only be modded twice. For our second mod lets add a ‘Processor Overcharger’, enabling our Automatron to generate even more Action Points, albeit taking damage in the process.

Caps cost of assembling your Automatron too high? Making your contraption Clunky could be the answer. A Clunky Robot’s Caps cost is the cost of the entire Robot (including any cards equipped such as Mods, Weapons, Items, etc.) reduced by 20%, but you pay the price in other ways. A Clunky robot is not a reliable, and could malfunction during the heat of battle.

This is but a taste of the maniacal contraptions you can create using the Automatron. So grab yourself a copy of the Automatron Card Pack and some Robots, rip ’em apart (the models… not the cards) and create ridiculous and crazy combinations of your own!

Check back soon when the Wargames Team give us their favorite Automatrons!

By Ethan Heywood

You can pick up the Automatron Card Expansion Pack here.

You can browse our selection of Fallout: Wasteland Warfare Robots here.