Zona Alfa: Salvage and Survival in the Exclusion Zone: 25 (Osprey Wargames)

Product Information

Turn Three and Four saw both sides scrupulously avoiding any more secondary Hot Spots, moving wide around them to avoid the triggering radius, and trading fire, trying to Kill or at least Pin their opponents. The race to the Factory was on. Characters. With a focus on a single squad of individual characters rather than larger gangs or crews, Kontraband players can choose to venture in the Zone either as Stalkers or Scientists. Generally speaking, Stalkers are stronger at tactical skills while Scientists excel at technical ones. Details about each character class, specializations, and a list of new Skills can be found further in.

For all the nasty critters that roam the irradiated wastelands, you can use whatever you like or have handy. Zone Hostiles are a fairly loose group of opponents that will try to disrupt your operations in search of Stalker Juice, so if you’ve got a lot of giant spiders or zombies you can go wild with those. I’ve got a bunch of GW Poxwalkers as mutants, Mantic zombies and some Nolzur minis as random spawns. The Zone event roll results in another Alpha predator arriving. Things are not good for Spassky. He takes the full force of the Zone emission, he’s pinned and wounded and it takes all his actions to recover. Nimzo gives him an action to go on alert. The rest of the team move round to deal with the Predator when it enters. We found that the rules for Zone hostiles were satisfying but not overly oppressive. This was probably because we were playing at Zone Threat Level 1, the “easiest” setting in the game. As you get closer to the Zone’s enigmatic center, the threats become much more dangerous. Near the perimeter, the Zone hostiles were just a nuisance. But those zombies definitely tied up Lawrence’s leader for a good portion of the game! When you do hit, there are armor saves. Depending on what you pulled from a dead stalker or bought in the stalls, this will drastically improve your chances of survival. Some weapons or ammunition are also better at penetrating armor. If you fail this save, you’re down unless you have a med kit. If you do make the save, you have to take a Will test to see if you have to change your underwear after getting plugged with a 7.62. This card mechanic drives the action, and works pretty well. When playing solo, I’ve noticed that game turns fade away and you’re playing out the story. I expect when playing co-op there’ll be some tough choices as well.These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher. Had the incident card been a bandit ambush, it’s likely that one or more crew members would have been out of action on turn one, unless crew members are on alert to take pre-emptive action. Kontraband is a set of supplementary rules for Osprey Wargames’ Zona Alfa, Salvage and Survival in the Exclusion Zone. While built on the core game, Kontraband is better described as a variant than an expansion, and differs from Zona Alfa in three distinct ways: This covers a better way of dealing with wounds than the original rule book, there are new weapons and accessories with better options for melee combat. Zone hostiles can be made more dangerous and the concept of fatigue and obsessions are introduced. In Zona Alfa, progression is covered from Rookie through to Veteran. In Kontraband, crew members can add sixth sense, extra toughness, and an additional skill after a number of survived missions. Zona Alfa is not tied into to any specific game company or range of miniatures, therefore certain aesthetic elements like in-game hostiles are of the generic, mutated, post-apocalyptic kind. Feel free to use and substitute whatever figures you already have in your collection. There are guidelines later on for statting out different miniatures.

This turn, the effect of the zone emission is negated because all crew members are in cover. Nimzo and Spassky go on alert whilst Sukova searches a POI, which reveals a mutant. The mutant spawns 4 inches away from the POI and is downed by Spassky. Sukova retrieves some ‘hotload’ ammo for the crew.Zona Alfa has optional Point Of Interest cards to spice up your game, and Kontraband expands on this to drive your game forward. You mark points on the board that generate events, and when searching the marker for loot, you flip the first card over. There are many effects this can have, some good, some bad, some weird, and mostly there’s loot to find. And you’ll want to salvage loot. Deep in the Zone you can’t trade at the stalls or with passing stalkers, and you’ll have to make sure you’ll scrounge enough food, water and batteries together, or else your stalkers will starve and their detectors and other equipment won’t work. You always have a chance to react to the events happening though, if you reveal a card you can shoot or run away (provided you get a good roll). Kontraband only adds to the fun, and while it’s not the most polished book in the looks department the content is great and adds more stuff, skills, artifacts and scenarios to uncover in the zone. It also lets you play without interacting with other people if that’s your bag or some sort of worldwide event has you sequestered at home. It’s also one of the only solo games I genuinely enjoy. Elsewhere on the battlefield, savvy players were using the distraction provided by the Zone hostiles to move forward and secure other objectives. When a figure searches a hot spot, the player rolls randomly to see what has been uncovered. Often it’s salvage worth cold, hard cash outside the Zone, but occasionally you’ll run across equipment or other gear. John gives a the low down on the Kontraband expansion for Zona Alfa, and a prize winning battle report on one of the scenarios from the book. The combat ability, which covers both melee and shooting, gets worse the greener you are. You roll under combat ability on a D10, so a Vet with combat ability 6 will have a better chance than a rookie with 4. A roll of 1 is a natural success, which should give hope to players like me, who shouldn’t really be playing wargames with dice.