WWX – The Wargaming Bear

WWX – Widowers

First batch of WWX models painted. the frankly bonkers Widowers…

Undead spider walkers with gun arms…Sure makes perfect sense

https://www.flickr.com/photos/docbungle/43318128564/in/album-72157699850285264/

WWX – Reavers

https://www.flickr.com/photos/docbungle/26507605088/in/album-72157692879201714/

First time I have managed to paint up some of the WWX models, admittedly these are the older v1 models not the newer set up from Warcradle.

I have struggled to decided on a scheme for them, as didn’t want anything too outlandish. Hopefully I can push on and get the rest of the faction up and running.

Wild West Exodus Overview & Thoughts

Blog posts, Other, Soapy Bearbox

James (AKA @belverker) is back with another round of fun with WWX. You can see his first post HERE

First up I will say I have only had a couple of games and they were basically starter set games (Starter set and one additional model), and I lost quite convincingly both times, so take that into account when reading the overview (and let me know of any glaring mistake I make)

Alrighty, the first thing that you need to get your head around is that a +1 to your roll is bad and a -1 is good…this is because the number printed on the character cards is the target number so if you needed 5+ getting a +1 to hit means you need a 6+ to hit.

Otherwise the stat card is pretty standard if you have seen stat cards for other games (War Machine in particular)

The basic turn structure is determine initiative (who activates first), activate models, then maintenance (again pretty much the standard)

Before determining initiative each player needs to determine their Influence Pool, this is the total of the Influence stat of all of your models. The Influence Pool is used to allow you to reroll any dice for the turn, basically before you roll you can put some Influence points to the roll and if you need a reroll you use one of the assigned points, however even if you don’t use any Influence to reroll any that were assigned are gone for the rest of the turn. This was one of the really good features of the game as it made you put influence into rolls you really didn’t want to fail but had to balance that with the chance you had of succeeding anyway.

Once initiative is worked out the first player for the turn gets to activate between 1 and 3 models (more if you use gang actions) each model has a certain number of action points they can use per turn, and they are used for things like moving, shooting, fighting in combat, aiming, going on the lookout (overwatch) etc.

Shooting and close combat are straight forward, shooting uses true line of sight and basically if they are in any cover you get a +1 to you hit roll, you get as many shots as the Rate of Fire of the gun per action point spent, and if you have 2 of the same one-handed weapon you get shots equal to the rate of fire x the number of weapons.

Melee is basically the same as shooting if you are engaged (an enemy is within your halo) you get to use an action and get as many rolls equal to your strike stat x the number of the same close combat weapon you have.

As you would expect this can lead to a lot of attacks from some of the more powerful models.

Once you have determined if you hit the victim gets to do an armour roll which is just the roll of a D10 plus their armour stat, this number is subtracted from the Power of the weapon and if that number is greater than 0 you suffer that much damage…

You continue like that until the game ends and work out who won based on the scenario played.

The game was very straight forward and very quick, I think we needed more cover in the centre of the table as, as soon as a model stepped out there they basically died, but even with more cover I could see this game still being very bloody early on, and I personally can’t wait to get some more games in, especially at higher points levels.

As he took so long James will be doing a couple more of these posts about other games 🙂 he has no choice.

Wild West Exodus

Blog posts, Miniatures, Other, Soapy Bearbox

Big thank you for James (AKA @belverker) for stepping up to help me cover some of the systems that I don’t have time to on here. So here I hand over to my new WWX expert.

G’day everyone,

Here I am, another poor sap suckered into writing content for the Bear :), so here I am writing about Wild West Exodus (WWX).

If you haven’t heard of WWX yet, it is a science fiction/alternate history setting, set in the late 1800’s mostly centred around famous people from the American western frontier of that time (hence the name). So you’ll have forces containing characters such as General Grant, Abe Lincoln, Jessie James, Sitting Bull amongst others.

First things first, I haven’t had a game yet so the main focus of this post will the quality of the Rulebook (I have the big one), the resin models, the plastic models, and my initial thoughts of the rules.

The Rulebook

This feels like a good premium product, a good solid hardcover, I was quite impressed with the overall look and layout of this book (I think I have the Kickstarter version as it has a different cover to the one on the online store).

After being impressed with the overall presentation I had a flick though and was a little disappointed in some of the art as a lot of it came across as very concept sketch like, this may have been a design choice though so as to fit the old style book they seem to be going for.

The first 200 pages of the 350 page count contain the fluff for the setting, this is done as a bunch of short stories and take you from the dawn of time to the period where the game is set.

(They cover this stretch of time to show you how this world is different to ours and what the motivations of the more hidden characters in the story are)

Overall the fluff was pretty good, not the best I have ever read but far from the worst. I like the short story style to set it up but feel it could have benefited with some different styles as well.

Next up we have the rules, these follow a pretty standard order and cover everything you need to know and I felt I understood how the game worked just by reading them through and not needing to flick between sections to understand terms and such. There are some nice reminder boxes and I didn’t notice any obvious mistakes with spelling or formatting.

After/as part of the rules section there is a section detailing the scenarios.

These are split into two different types, competitive and narrative. The competitive ones are similar in style to 6^th edition 40K, what I liked though is the map showing deployment also gives a sample terrain layout so you get a good idea about how much terrain you need for the game. The narrative scenarios are based around some narrative from the stories and looked like they would be good fun to play but would be considered not exactly balanced.

Then comes the Hobby section, this contains some helpful advice as well as a pretty good painting guide. I personally am not a big fan of the painting style but it did give some good hints for NMM and some other techniques. At the end of this section were a couple of pages of fully painted models from all the factions.

At the end of the book there was no index…this is poor form in my opinion…Though I have noticed a few games doing this and leaving the index for their mini rulebook.

The Resin Models

I currently have 6 resin models for WWX, two I got from their Gencon 2013 sale, two are part of their $5 model deal (they have a new one every month and for the whole month it is $5) and 2 are from the Warrior Nation starter box from Kickstarter.

First up I was very disappointed in the two models I got from Gencon (Kyle the Black and Marshall McCain). They had very soft detail and some pretty major gaps in the joins (and no bases but that was a packaging issue) this made me hold off getting some models for quite a while.

When they started their $5 model promotion I bought the first one (Alt pose General Grant) and when he arrived I was much more impressed with the quality of the detail in the model (haven’t built him yet so not sure on the gaps yet), The second $5 model I got was an alternate Dark Counsel model and again very happy with the detail (this is a single piece model so no gaps) and finally the two models from the starter box, Sitting Bull and Sky Spirit.

Both of these models look like they are good as well. Also the resin feels quite strong and not brittle so that is a big thumbs up here.

The Plastic Models

WWX

Look at how packed that sprue is, yes there are 10 complete models there, however there are no customizing options. The detail on these is great, on par with the plastic Malifaux models (although WWX seem to have chosen to do less cuts).

The only issue I have had so far is that there doesn’t seem to have been much effort put in to hide the joins, granted this is hard to do on Warrior Nation models as they have a lot of bare skin. But it is something I hope they look into going forward. As a bonus I will also mention the bases and the base inserts:

I personally love the base style as they add an extra style element to the models, the base inserts are really nice too, and being plastic the plastic models love being glued to them 🙂

This is a game that I am looking forward to playing and hopefully convincing some club members to get some models for as well 😉 After I have managed to get a game I will give an overview of that but from my initial reading it seems to have grabbed the best bits from 40K, Malifaux, Infinity, and Warmachine (are there good bits in this game…(now now play nice – doc)) and added a little bit on top as well (there seems to be a great mechanic to speed up large games, which I am looking forward to).