Fallout: Factions, the new Fallout wargame from Modiphius, will launch in April with rules and new miniatures for three different raider gangs, each battling for control of the Nuka World theme park. Wargamer asked lead designer James Hewitt why the studio is leaving the most famous forces from Fallout on the sidelines when the game launches.
First up, Hewitt emphasises that forces like the Brotherhood of Steel and Super Mutants will get Fallout: Factions rules in due course. “We’d be mad to not get rules out pretty quickly for other factions”, he jokes. Modiphius already makes a huge range of Fallout models for its existing miniature wargame Fallout: Wasteland Warfare, that players will no doubt want to bring to the table.
Launching the game with just gangs of raiders is partly to ease new players in, and to provide a centre for the game experience. “The raiders are a nice starting point”, Hewitt says, with “varied stats, varied weapons, but they are roughly equivalent”. Famous factions that may be central to the fiction can still on be “the fringes and the weirder stuff” when it comes to rules.
The raider gangs do have distinct identities, as evidenced by the three plastic kits Modiphius has revealed: the slickly dressed Operators, feral Pack, and fanatical Disciples. As well as stat and wargear differences, the different flavors of raider get “unique one-shot abilities you can use in a game” in the form of distinct, faction-specific Ploys.
The Ploy system is a bit like Warhammer 40k Stratagems, or Gang Tactics cards from Necromunda 2017. Hewitt explains that each player starts the game with a token that they can spend to use a Ploy. There are generic Ploys – like taking two turns in a row or removing fatigue from an activated model – mission-specific Ploys like “opening fusillades of fire”, and then some Ploys are unique to a specific faction.
Hewitt explains that if you’re playing with the Disciples “if you kill someone in melee combat, you can use a Ploy to let all your people nearby regain some fatigue”, reflecting their frenzied and melee-centric play style.
If you want to start preparing for Fallout: Factions, you can already download the quickstart rules from the Modiphius site. If you’ve got a 3D printer you’ll find an awful lot of Fallout terrain on the Modiphius store to start building your battlefield.
Lots of the Nuka World rides are available as STLs, as are modular components to build a custom Fallout Vault – reason enough to check out Wargamer’s guide on how to 3D print miniatures.
It’s a good year to be a Fallout fan: our sister site The Digital Fix is hungrily scooping up news of the Fallout Netflix series, and new Fallout-themed MTG commander precon decks are the next big item on the MTG release schedule.