Xenos Rampant: Science Fiction Wargame Battles

Product Information

I was thinking the same, the one page larger rules are pretty good and well balanced from the times we have played it, but like Pete says the xenos rampant rules are familiar to a lot already. Lion Rampant looks really nice and it is actually surprisingly rare to have another solid historical rule set that looks really good.

As in the days before the widespread availability of plastic kits, armies consist of 30–40 infantry with maybe a vehicle as a centrepiece. Xenos rules include a set of psychic powers, rules for zombies or other brittle, mindless styles, zealous crusaders, high-tech weaponry or cloaking devices, force fields, powered weapons, robots and paratroopers. It could be played at 28mm in a grim dark galaxy, it could be used to cover near-future grounded combat, it could be just the rules you’ve been looking for to do the Weird War 2 campaign you’ve been thinking about, or simply to throw whatever you and a friend have to hand onto the table to crank out a fast, enjoyable and deceptively simple game. The plus side is that the options in the book do let you create lots of thematic units but it will definitely take some work to balance.The scale of army in Lion Rampant works in it’s favour as well; you could do this with a bag of the victrix Normans. No, I have no idea what a Thunderstrike Skysteed is either, but they sound like the sort of thing the Firestorm Plasma-Cavaliers, whoever they are, would ride). It’s not just the crunch, though, and Xenos Rampant also provides a campaign system and multiple example settings for you to explore. We’ve talked (at length) about activations on Goonhammer before, and many of our favourite games have some form of alternate activation system. And that’s really good because the systems do get a bit of a criticism for that and I can imagine you can get shut down a couple of turns in a row, which can be frustrating.

As it happens, it was Christmas and our Club was all nice and kind this year, so Santa gifted us with brand new copies of Xenos Rampant “Science Fiction Wargame Battles”, which we promptly decided to test and review.If the aforementioned options reflect a more “real life” and simple kind of special rules, then the xenos rules represent the science-fiction shenanigans you bought the book for.

This is something that Never Mind The Billhooks does as well: maybe like 100 models to a side, and that’s a nice little project.This is most notably seen with upgrades, such as heavy weapons or specialist melee weapons, which are abstracted to enhance the overall combat power of the unit.