Prelude Part 1: Evil Mechanoids on the Northwest Frontier (A Xenos Rampant Adventure)

I am a big fan of Dan Mersey's Rampant series of games and currently own Dragon Rampant (fantasy battles), The Men Who Would be Kings (Colonial Battles), Rebels and Patriots (North America 1740 - 1900) and now Xenos Rampant. All of the previous Rampant books were in the 64 page Osprey soft cover series; with Xenos Rampant you get a hard cover, 192 pages of Sci Fi delight! Don't be put off by the page count! The majority of the book are army lists, ideas, how to tailor to different genres,  campaigns, scenarios, and "stuff" to play just about any Sci Fi battle you want.

Hollywood gaming at its finest. All of the Rampant books use similar mechanisms and rules of play; so, If you own one you can easily pick up the rules for any of them. For Xenos Rampant the biggest changes are that more unit types have at least one "free" activation type (Move or Shoot or Attack, etc.) plus the calculation of "hits" is done differently.

Essentially for "hits", both shooting and attacking (close combat), once you have your hits, add the total number of pips on those dice and then divide by the armor (armour for you Commonwealth types!) and that is the number of damage the enemy takes. I'll give examples in the battle report to follow.

Thanks to my friend Richard B., he told me that they use Xenos Rampant for Victorian Science Fiction battles. Huzzah! So here we go:

The Mechanoids. One of the beauty of Dan's rules is the way you can tailor the force; thus, the Xeno rules. The Xeno rules give you a variety of upgrades to recreate what you want. Well . . . I have a detachment of evil robots so of course they are going to get the Mechanoid upgrade. And it costs 0 points.

The Evil Mechanoids! Okay they are Necrons which is the beauty of a agnostic, large skirmish, miniature wargame.

The Mechanoids rules allow my robotic minions to:

1. Ignore the effects of Stun Weapons.

2. Each unit (because of programming) gets an addition Free Action from the following: Attack, Move or Shoot - but, they suffer a -1 modifier to any ordered activation tests.

3. Never test Courage! However, they become less effective quicker as they accumulate damage. If they are at 1/2 Strength points or below, they lose all Free Actions and count them as ordered activation tests. In addition, if you roll a double on a failed activation test the unit suffers a critical failure and shuts down - it is destroyed. 

Detachment Commander:

The Heavies:

The Metallic Swarm:

To Summarize:

1. Detachment Commander R37: 6 points.

2. Sentinels x 2: 8 points.

3. Hunter Killers x 2: 10 points.

4. Total Points: 24 points.

Next: The Forces of the British Raj!

"I say. Mechanical Men. Quite. Very Good. Prepare to Fire."