Why I am All-In On Fallout Factions

Miniature skirmish games are an incredibly popular genre of tabletop gaming at the moment. Whether you are into robots, historical wars, or whatever topic, there’s a skirmish game for your interest. With a smaller number of models than an army-building game, they are way more accessible too. Only problem? Most aren’t actually fun. Hear me out.

I’ve played a lot of skirmish games and they have fun bursts when you pull something wild off. They can be enjoyable with a good friend or if you are super competitive. The moment-to-moment gameplay though? Not great.

It’s often a lot of maths for nothing as your opponent rolls to dodge, or for armour, or you just don’t roll high enough. You can spend minutes doing calculations only to walk away with nothing for it. Then you have to watch the other player do the same before your next go. I’ve seen players go off to get lunch while their opponent takes their turn.

Fallout Factions isn’t like that though. Instead, every activation – you take it in turns to activate a model – means something and is also fast to play through. Take attacking; melee or ranged. You roll dice equal to the dice given for that weapon. For each roll under your relevant statistic, it’s a hit. For example, 4P next to a weapon means rolling 4 dice aiming to be below your Perception stat.

More hits than an enemy’s Endurance, they take a wound. Most figures only have one wound so they’d be knocked out immediately. Less than their endurance and they take a Harm making it easier to defeat them next time.

You also have a number of ‘Lucky’ dice in your dice pool depending on the mini. If one of your lucky dice rolls lower than your statistic, it’s a critical hit and might add a special effect depending on the weapon. That’s it. Still plenty of tactical depth, just without all the back-and-forth faffing around. Then it’s their turn.

Or consider how cover, line of sight, and range are worked into the Fallout Factions system. Line of sight is ‘true’ line of sight – if a mini can see an enemy, they can shoot at them. Simple.

Regarding cover, if a mini is out in the open, you add a dice to your attack roll. Otherwise, you just get the dice from your weapon statistic. There’s no measuring half-height terrain or how high a mini is. If they are not behind something, it’s open season.

As the board size is smaller than many skirmish games, you are always considered in range. Yet, there are benefits to firing when in your weapon’s optimal range such as extra dice. Adding dice to make a pool of 4 into 5 dice is a big difference in practice while not overcomplicating or adding in multiple steps of calculation.

Knocking enemies out causes other nearby enemies to take Confusion rolls. Essentially, they roll against their Intelligence score to determine if seeing a companion turned into paste freaks them out enough to run away. This adds an additional risk to losing a character, an additional benefit for taking one out, and improves game flow.

When I demoed Fallout Factions at UK Games Expo, I was never sat doing nothing for very long. Activations are fast, easy to resolve, and have a clear impact or lack of. Either way, you aren’t sitting there for ages waiting.

With a complete stranger, in a noisy hall, not having any clue how to play the game when I sat down, I really enjoyed my demo game which shows off just how engaging a system Fallout Factions is built on. The demo team member told me that the design focus was on fast, frenetic fun and it shines through when playing. You could easily get in more than one game in an evening.

Most importantly, all these factors combined mean that each activation or turn is fun, and not just the end results. Fallout Factions doesn’t rely on its visuals or aesthetic to keep you interested, though it could. It’s such a cool style. Instead, the game is fun to actually play – which is why I am all-in on Fallout Factions.

…the game is fun to actually play – which is why I am all-in on Fallout Factions.

You can find out more about Fallout Factions here and check out the Quickstart rules here.

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