Zone Wars – Mutant: Year Zero

On By The OneIn Games played, Mutant 1984

At the end of last year a Kickstarter caught my eye and got me really excited – this was of course the Zone Wars – Mutant: Year Zero Multiplayer Skirmish Mayhem (link that will take you to the kickstarter, that was fully funded and will probably have a late pledge option once they get the pledge manager up and running. Go and check it out).

The game is based on the Mutant Year 0 universe, and the computer game with the same name, and offers 4 factions in the full pledge of 5 miniatures – these are basically mutated animals, mutated humans, robots and psionic users (PSI mutants back in the day).

As you might be aware I have been a hardcore fan of the Post apocalyptic Scandinavian theme since the Mutant RPG (the predecessor to Mutant Year 0) in 1984. I have done a number of projects with this as a theme over the last few years, if you explore the blog.

The Kickstarter will no be delivered until the end of this year, however it is possible to try out the rules as an early version of the ruleset, with cards and markers, is available to download here (link to a Free League Drop box folder as of today 03/01/23). It required as little bit of work to cut our the cards and to make the markers, but since we were looking for a Christmas Game I thought it would be worth making the effort, and as will be revealed later we had a blast playing it so it was worth the effort.

Further I decided to make a few gangs based on miniatures I had instead to seeking proxies to the models in the actual game at least for this test run of the game.

I created the following four gangs (details on stats etc provided at the end of this post). Are they balanced? – maybe not but hopefully balanced enough.

The Mutants – Top a model from the Aftermath Kickstarter by Mark Evans (I guess you could contact Mark and see if they are still for sale if you are interested), second row a Black Scorpion Mad Jim Jones model (still for sale) and another two models for the Aftermath Kickstarter. Finally a model from the Wargames Illustrated Giants in Miniatures range, looks like it is OOP, it is a of course a model of the amazing Captain Klenzendorf from Jojo Rabbit.
The Feral Farm – All models apart from the Koala are from the NoMAD Kickstarter (look for them on Kickstarter and perhaps you could get some if you are keen). The Koala I do not remember where it originates from.
Heavy Metal – I have no idea where no 1 is from, the second is from the NoMAD kickstarter, the third from CP Models and no. 4 from the first edition of Space Hulk and the final model I have had for some time and not sure where he is from.
Psykers – all thse models where made from the Stargrave crew II set of plastic miniatures.

Also went to town creating some jump off markers, including a flying stand for one of the many memorable beasts of the RPG rules from 1984.

Of course we are talking about the blood eagle that is a model that Mike Hobbs gave to me when I was looking for a great eagle for a project – it works brilliantly for this role and will circle the battle field.
The Jump-off bases
What happens in the Zone stays in the zone.
Some home made counters and I used my Mutant Year 0 Dice.
The bag to draw activation markers from
Activation markers for each faction and red ones for the zone marker – the zone has as many goes as each player.
I have a lot of terrain that can be used for the Zone.

As for the game, it was a blast and we laughed and had a jolly good time. The basic premise was to pick up a number of old tech items and return with these avoiding to get killed by other player or as we found the zone itself. The Zone is more than capable of making life hard for the players in a wonderful way, the zone activates once a round through a marker and normally introduces a potential bad thing of some sort. In addition, as the the game progressed there is a build up of Acid Rain cards that works as a countdown mechanism – as the fourth card is played all the models on the board not returned back to their jump off point dies.

Here are a few pictures from the game:

Set up with Des starting in the upper left corner, Shaun in the lower right corner and I in the lower left corner
I was playing the Feral Farmers – they ended up doing really badly but I had really fun in my suffering.
The table with the Artefact tokens being spread out, each hiding an artefact from the Past – ranging from useless to the magic of Gaffer tape.
The Land Shark attacked early and then remain pestering the players for the rest of the game.
The Old Space hulk model scared the brown out of my throughout the game
Good view from the old truck
Some close range fighting
The Swedish Tiger was another surprise offered by the Zone
As was the Giant Beetle, another classic monster…
Good times with even better friends…
The winning hand of artefacts recovered – well done Shaun.

In summary good fun…

All the best and keep toysoldiering on!

We will continue exploring the zone with some further stuff in the making.

Bloodworms
More flyers

Here are the models and stats we used on the day (apart from the Psykers as we were only three playing):

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