Full Spectrum Dominance launched five years ago, and is something of a success story among totally digital miniature wargames, with community organized convention events throughout Europe, America, and even China. But without any presence in retail - and with an original 6mm model range that, while gorgeous, can't easily be used as proxies for other games - there's always the risk that you'll print off an army and have nobody to play against. Publisher The Lazy Forger is hoping to remedy that with its new solo and co-op mode, Swarm Mode, which pits players' armies against waves of autonomous robots or alien bugs.
Swarm Mode's main addition to Full Spectrum Dominance is the new AI system and the custom Swarm forces it controls. The base game is a fairly detailed miniature wargame, and units have just got so many options for how they might activate that turning them over to AI control isn't feasible.
There are two new custom forces coming in the mode - the Detached, robots from the Tech network that have been separated from their controlling node and are now falling back on their most basic programming; and the crab coded alien Hive.
Both new forces, as well as the rules, will initially be available from MyMiniFactory via a FronTier crowdfunding campaign that launches on January 12. You can get a 10% discount by signing up early. If you happen to own the Tech Army Bundle already, you'll also receive the new Detached models for free.
Enemy Swarms are controlled via an AI system called the Collective. The player rolls a set of activation dice just as they would for their own force, and then assigns the results across a spread of activation cards for the enemy force, generating different AI behavior based on which dice they assign to each card. It's possible that a player can't assign all of the dice results they roll as slots filling up - and any unspent dice will cause new enemies to spawn.There's more choice than a regular AI system, as the player gets some influence over the trouble they face this turn.
The two Swarm factions play differently. The Detached may lack the controlling sentience of the Tech, but they're still a high-tech faction with railguns and jump packs. Conversely the Hive is - so far at least - entirely melee based. Also they're crabs, evolution's perfect creation - expect them to be fast and durable. If the crowdfunding campaign is particularly successful, the Hive will be expanded into a full army for the base game, albeit with "a very particular playstyle".
The campaign also comes with new wasteland terrain, for desert rocks, stranded ships and shipping containers, wind turbines and more. If you haven't seen FSD's terrain yet you owe it to yourself to check it out - it's simply sublime.
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