Given that I’m more of an tabletop RPG reviewer, this is going to be something of a first for me. I’m reviewing the newly released Mutant year Zero: Zone Wars skirmish miniatures game from Free League Publishing!
Set in the post-apocalyptic world of the Mutant Year Zero RPG, this is Free League’s first foray into skirmish miniatures wargames, and they’re doing it in style. I was lucky to find it on sale in Amazon a little over a week ago and placed an order for the core set. Fast forward to yesterday and it arrived well ahead of the estimated time of arrival, much to my surprise!
The Game and the Setting
Zone Wars would probably be best categorized as a rules-lite skirmish game. The full rules come in a slim booklet of 24 pages, and already contains movement, combat, cover and concealment, and rules around the various horrible threats of the Zone. While sparse on visuals, the rules themselves are elegant and easy to understand, and it took about twenty minutes of skimming to get started playing.
The conceit of the game is that the players take control of teams of Stalkers fighting over resources and artifacts in the Zone. The Zone itself is dangerous and unpredictable as many threats exist outside of other Stalkers, and the unpredictability of it forms one of the best parts of the game.
There’s a random element in the game that allows for either player to suffer unforeseen incidents in the Zone, whether being swarmed by rabid Zone Rats, to being subject to horrible, burning Acid Rain or even being hounded by a Land Shark. These Zone Events lend a sense of tension with each turn, and no two games will play the same way.
The Components
The production quality of the game it amazing, and the hefty core box comes with the rules, a 90cm x 90cm playmat made of what feels like laminated paper, 3 sheets of sturdy cardboard punch-out terrain, rulers, tokens, dice, cards and 10 highly detailed miniatures with a “Sundrop” coat of paint.
The miniatures are made of good quality hard plastic, with some minor deformity in some of slimmer bits (such as a sniper rifle) but are otherwise excellent. I’m honestly on a crossroads here because I want to paint the minis, but at the same time I’m a little terrified to cover up the amazing detail that’s already there.
That said the bases do look a little bare and could use some sprucing up.
A little something for everyone
In addition to the default gameplay, Zone Wars goes a step further by providing options for Solo Play and Campaign Play, as well as rules for custom characters by translating characters made in the Mutant Year Zero RPG.
Impressions
I got this box yesterday, and with a little bit of pestering, I was able to get my wife to try it. She has no prior experience to miniatures gaming, but took to it like a duck to water. The rules were accessible, the components helpful to keeping track of the important bits, and she loved the random nature of the mutations and Zone events.
Our first game took a little over an hour, but that was with a lot of rules look ups and even punching out and setting up terrain for the first time. Overall, we had a boatload of fun, as the sheer randomness of it all and the occasionally overpowered nature of some mutations when paired with certain characters made the game swingy without feeling unfair.
Conclusion
Overall, Mutant Year Zero: Zone Wars is a fantastic package: approachable rules, amazing components, hilarious gameplay, and capital “M” Mayhem across the game makes it memorable every time. The Solo and Campaign play modes add a lot of value, and fans of the RPG will have a blast playing (and dying) as their player characters in Zone Wars.
I heartily endorse this game and I’m already looking to expand my purchase with the Robots & Psionics expansion as soon as I can.
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For those interested in picking up their own copy, you can find it over at Free League Publishing’s website for $66.62
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