Got together twice this last week to play Fallout with @robhistory We had a blast.
First game: 600 Points of Super Mutants. 300 Points of Settlers, 300 Points of Brotherhood. I had set up the table with some pieces I’d dragged out of my terrain box for another game. We decided to just run with what was already set up. Rob made a bunch of barricades for the road that he put on the table, and we were good to go.
We set up half the Super Mutants at and near the Church and the other half over the bridge like they were coming back from patrol. The idea is that the church was part of a small settlement that was wiped out recently by Super Mutants. Our models, a couple of Brotherhood units and some settlers, were there to wipe out the Super Mutants and recover a stash of supplies left behind by the former settlers. The game was somewhat one sided. The Super Mutants being run as AI while we both coordinated our efforts against them. In hindsight, we talked about how to do the scenario differently. We did balanced units, but we think we should have given the Super Mutants about 25% more point value, then set it up so that the patrol models only appear after we’ve collected the stash. As it stood, we didn’t even get to do much searching, instead we were in a shooting match almost from the start and when the dust settled, we were all that was left.
Now, this second game was probably the most fun one we’ve played. The idea was that we were a group of scavengers looking for supplies. Each vehicle/trailer was treated as it’s own search location for the sake of scavenging, and the search markers indicated additional places to look (Assuming those were junk piles or dead(?) ghouls to be searched.)
The game was brutal, we ended up finding 20 ghouls, and there was more than one time I was convinced we were going to get wiped out. When it was all said and done, we ended the game with only a single model on our side, and that model had only one point of life remaining, . . . . yes, it was that close.
Using the rules I have below, we were going from vehicle/trailer to the next, trying to be careful to trigger only one or two locations a turn so we wouldn’t be over run while scavenging. The camper trailers are those ones I mentioned a while back where I repainted them and tossed them on the table. Was really awesome getting to field that many of them at once.
This second game, we used a set of special rules I drew up for Feral Ghouls. It worked out really great. I’ll detail the rules at the end of this post.
The final setup we actually played twice. We built 500 point groups and faced off against each other. The idea was that the Brotherhood had a Knight go missing on patrol. The Knight was killed. A local settlement found the knight and decided to haul everything back to their settlement where they were trying to get the damaged armor open in the hopes of being able to use the armor themselves. The Brotherhood wanted their armor back, and the settlement didn’t want to give it back, so the Brotherhood came ready to take it back by force.
One of the first things we noticed was that the Turrets are VERY mixed as far as usefulness. Half of the Brotherhood models had better range than the turrets, so they just stood back and chewed them up. On the other hand, the couple of times they DID get to act, it was pretty awesome. If anyone wants to use turrets in their own game, I recommend setting them up in positions that people can only gain line of sight if they’re in the turret’s range. They’re worth EVERY point so long as they are well placed.
The game was pretty one sided. My Brotherhood force moving in and systematically wiping out the settlers. When the game was said and done, the only two models left standing were the two Knights in Power Armor.
Since we had plenty of time left, we decided to just swap forces and play the game again from the other perspective. The results were the same, only difference is that the two Knights took less damage the second game.
After talking about it for a while, we came to the conclusion that two things could have made the game a bit more even. The first: Better placement of the turrets, in both cases, we were able to hit those at distance with little risk to ourselves. The second: The Enslaved Techs can’t hit the broad side of a barn. With two of them on the settler side, we hardly hit anything during either game. We both felt that those points would have been MUCH better spent on something that had a better ranged combat skill.
Now, those rules I mentioned for Feral Ghouls:
The search markers, we allowed the players to search them normally. About half of them were blanks, but instead of having those be nothing like usual, we instead treated them as sleeping Ghouls. If you searched one, the ghoul was placed on the map in that spot and as soon as the character currently acting had finished their turn, the ghoul got to move immediately.
The small campers were treated as “Cars” for this game, and the semi trailer was rolled on the Trailer/Large chart.
All items on this chart was rolled on a d6.
Any model coming within Yellow of a location triggered a roll. The ghoul(s) was placed and the active model was allowed to finish it’s turn. The Ghoul went immediately after that before any other model was allowed to make it’s normal move.
Cars (And small structures.)
1-4 = 1 Feral Ghoul.
5 = 2 Feral Ghouls
0 = No Ghoul
Trailers (And structures larger than a car but smaller than a house.)
1-5 = Number of Feral Ghouls equal to the dice roll.
0 = No Feral Ghouls
House Exterior (And interior rooms.):
1-2 = 1 Feral Ghoul
3-4 = 2 Feral Ghouls
5 = 3 Feral Ghouls
0 = No Ghoul
Keeping in mind, we’ve only played using these rules the one time. 13 Car/Small search areas, 1 Trailer/Large search area, and 8 Search markers, half of which triggered a Feral Ghoul. On average, we should have seen around 20 Ferals, which is exactly what we managed to trigger. It was desperate, it was brutal, and after wave after wave of Ferals rushed us, we both thought the frantic rush of Ghouls felt a lot like the actual games. Because they didn’t all come at us at once, we were able to wipe out about 50% more points worth of Ghouls than the value of our own units.
Sorry I didn’t take more pictures, but I hope you all enjoyed the battle report all the same.
Until next time!
