Post-apocalyptic stories are steeped in violence. When civilization has fallen, it’s up to the survivors to protect themselves with whatever weapons they can cobble together. It’s the only way to make it through the radiation, strange monsters and rival warbands that populate these wastelands.
Free League Publishing first made their mark on the tabletop gaming scene by publishing Mutant: Year Zero in 2014. Since then the game has expanded with more roleplaying campaigns and into the realm of video games. The company recently released Mutant: Year Zero Zone Wars, a tabletop skirmish boxed set and sent along a copy to me for review.
What Is Mutant Year Zero?
This adaptation of a classic series of Swedish role playing games from the 1980s puts players in the role of survivors making their way through a devastated world. The first game, Mutant: Year Zero, has players create mutant humans who scour the aftermath looking for relics and other supplies that can rebuild the Ark that saved them from the devastation. The game was the first to use the Year Zero engine whih has gone on to power multiple award winning role playing games like Alien and Coriolis.
The first major expansion for the line came with Genlab Alpha. In this game players are animal experiments fighting back against their robotic captors. Instead of rebuilding their home, they have to balance the safety of their fellow prisoners with strikes against a brutal computer dictator running on programming from before the war.
Mechatron brings robots into the mix. It also puts players into a wickedly paranoid campaign setup. They are robots that have become self-aware who are tasked by their leader to hunt down any robots that have become self-aware.
The regular humans that survived appear in Elysium. This game features more intrigue and subterfuge as players represent the great houses of humanity from before the fall. They must put aside their differences to keep order or finally succumb to the chaos of the Zone.
Zone Wars Miniatures Game
Representatives from each of these games appear in Zone Wars. Players choose one of the four factions, select a scenario to play, build their team and head out into a dangerous world. Each character is equipped with basic weaponry, unique powers made for their character and random abilities drawn from their faction deck.
The game uses a stripped down version of the same rules engine from the role playing game. Players assemble a pool of six sided dice when they want to attack. For each six rolled they gain a success. They can choose to reroll any unsucessful dice once, but they run the risk of damaging equipment if they do.
Players secure artifact tokens that become cards worth victory points, upgrades to character abilities or both. The game uses a blind draw initiative system that factors in random events based on the chosen scenario. It’s challenging enough to get cool stuff in the wasteland, much less when a giant worm bursts through the ground and starts attacking everyone.
Zone Wars Impressions
As a fan of the Mutant: Year Zero setting, I found it easy to pick up the rules and play. It was about two hours from cracking open boxes to finishing up the first scenario. That’s roughly how long it takes to play a medium weight board game for me and worked wonderfully for a miniatures game.
The core Zone Wars box has two factions. Playing three or four players requires the Robots & Psychics expansion. All of the factions were appealing, though I chose the robots mostly because they cleverly named one of the robots Bender. The random character setup felt balanced though I imagine choosing more specific loadouts wouldn’t be too much more difficult.
The game does a great job sitting in the space between a board game and a miniatures game. Setup and play are easiy enough for board gamers to understand quickly. Miniatures gamers will enjoy the campaign rules and the tactical decisions that stem from the initiative draws and battlefield events.
Zone Wars is available directly from Free League publishing, online vendors and through friendly local gaming stores.
