Let's Review: Zona Alfa

 What is it?:

Zona Alfa is a 25mm scale miniatures game published by Osprey Games, inspired by things like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. And Roadside Picnic.

 

The setting:

While slightly vague about the exact location, it's clearly suppose to be the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (like STALKER) in Eastern Europe in territory of what was once the United Soviet Socialist Republics. Also known as the USSR or CCCP.

This Zone is very fucked up. There's zombies, ghouls, hordes of vermin and wild dogs. To make things even worse, there's Anomalies. These warp reality and cause all sorts of crazy shit. If you've played STALKER, you know the basics.

The Zone is contained by a military force that should be keeping people out, but seem to be either easily bribed or evaded. Probably a bit of both. Inside the Zone, there's a half dozen groups operating inside, looting and pillaging whatever they can get away with for a variety of reasons. These groups can work together, ignore each other, or fight whenever they come into contact.

Inside the zone is a very dangerous place, so don't think that it's a place for the faint of heart. Only the hard, or the insane, are able to survive long enough to make enough money to retire.

 

The system:

The game uses both d10s and d6s, but most of the rolls you're going to need to make uses d10s. One interesting thing is that the game is a throw back in that you want to roll low, not high, and there's critical hits and failures.

Before I go much further, I'd like to point out the very Warhammer 40k vibe that comes off of this thing. The game also uses the classic WYSIWIG: What You See Is What You Get. That means that all weapons and equipment must me represented on the model. Or at least something someone can reasonably guess is that it is. That means a pistol is a pistol, not an SMG. Nor is an Assault Rifle an SMG.

Building your gang is rather interesting compared to most other games I've read. Rather than using points to build your force, you go by the experience level of the models. Sure, it's actually called Khrabrost' but it's just a way to get a balanced force. You get 12 Khrabrost' to spend on your group, however your leader has to a Veteran that costs 3k Khrabrost', you really only get 9k. And each level of experience (Rookie, Hardened, Veteran) costs 1k and is also the total number of actions the model gets, as well as how much equipment it can carry. If you want to make a horde, just roll with a bunch of Rookies and have at. If you want an elite force, roll with Veterans.

Another thing you want to figure out is what Faction your crew is a part of. There's the military, scientists, traders, and independent operators. There's also bandits and cultists that seem to worship the Zone. Each faction relates to the others differently. What that means is that you could end up in a mission where the other player's crew is an ally, meaning that you have to make a roll to fight them. The good thing is you'll split the rewards if you don't attack each other. Even if you're not best buds, you might not want to attack the other crew.

The models have a few stats, beyond their number of actions. They also have Combat Ability (which seems to be what is rolled when in a fight), movement (which should be obvious), and Will (which is rolled to get back into the fight and survive stuff). Weapons have Range, Firepower, and Damage. There's a lot of weapons. Not just melee weapons and guns, but RPGs, grenade launchers, crew serviced weapons like mortars and heavy machine guns, and thrown grenades, as well as so much more. I'm really happy to see all of this, especially with the WYSIWIG rule in effect. It also means that I'm probably going to be using my old Imperial Guard to build my crew. Or maybe Inquisitors or even some metal Sisters of Battle.

Models, with enough experience, get skills. There's not a lot of them but they do give each model its focus.

When it comes to playing the game, the rules are very much like most other skirmish games that I've played. Each model gets a set amount of actions based on their experience as I mentioned, so you have to be very careful when building that group. If you're going to go with a horde, you won't be able to shoot as much, even if you have a bunch of them. Because it's alternating activation, you might get screwed because you can never see the other crew, as they're able to stay in cover.

Models get to equipment based on their experience, so you have to keep that in mind, too. If you want to have a model that heals others, you probably want to have a more experienced model in that roll. Not only because of the number of actions they can take, as well as having skills that can help, but the ability to carry enough kits to do what needs to be done.

Speaking of healing, this is where things can get weird. When your model gets hit by a ranged attack, it can either miss, hit the armor, or actually do some damage. When an attack hits, but doesn't do damage, the model becomes pinned. Which you have to slowly remove with actions. Most models can take only one damage, but do remain on the table so they can be healed. They just lay there until someone kills them outright or the game ends.

Remember how I mentioned how much this reminds me of Warhammer 40k? Well, that's because it uses the old blast markers and flamer template. Thankfully, I have several left over from when I played. However, it doesn't use the old scatter die, instead you use the direction the “top” of the d10 is pointing when using blast markers.

In addition to all the rules to make your crew, there's rules for a campaign and leveling up your crew. You get points, and cash, from completing missions and getting salvage (oh, we're going to have a talk about the missions). You can use the cash to buy the stuff you need, including more models, or you can save it. Saving it is the name of the name, you see. During a campaign, your goal is to hit 10,000 in Zone Script (ZS) and retire. Of course, that might be easier said than done. When you select a faction, they give you discounts for buying gear or guys, but at the cost of 10% of the take during a mission. What happens if you don't bring home the bacon? They take 10% of your savings instead, so if you're almost to retirement, you will lose a lot of cash. There are some suggested ways of changing the end game but you'd have to discuss them with the other player(s) first.

So... Missions. Runs. What you do to actually play the game... Yeah. This is where things start to fall apart. There's no real rules for deployment. I saw some in the little campaign they have at the end of the book but no hard and fast rules, at least that I could see. They also say that the game can be played on a 3'x3' board, but with the weapon ranges they list, you're going to get smashed on the first turn if you didn't deploy in the right way. Not that you would know how to do that... If you really what to play the game, be ready to play on a 4'x4' board absolutely covered in terrain.

In each game, there's a “threat level” so to speak. The deeper you go into the Zone, the more Hot Spots you encounter. Roughly two per level with three levels. But there's no real rules on where to place these Hot Spots on the board. Plus, each Hot Spot and objective has a threat inside them. There's vermin swarms, zombies, ghouls, bandits, and mutants, with rules, but no real description of what they are or how big they should be. I don't know what the difference is between zombies and ghouls, as our modern version of zombies are more ghouls than traditional zombies. And these threats will move no more than 12” away from the Hot Spot and objective, so placement should be important. Also, Hot Spots are where you get Artifacts, which are very powerful, and therefore, very important. Since the game has a turn limit, you'll have to rush to these things, beat the monsters (and possibly opponent), and then make a roll to collect the Artifact. And then you'll have to roll to see what it does.

As for objectives, and mission types, there's a little table for What/Where/Why, which is cool but again, no rules for how that effects the mission. I'm not sure exactly what happened here but it just... Bothers me. Happily, there's only one objective per game so when you combine up the tables, you'll get a lot of different games out of it. Once you figure out what they all mean.

 

Is it worth it?:

I hate to say it, but... No, it's not worth $20. It's not a complete game. It's only ¾ of a game, which is a real shame. There's so much flavor text and atmosphere in the book, but it seems to be at the cost of basic rules you need to play it. I'm not sure if Osprey has an editor for these games but it looks like they need one. When I was reading over the game again for this review, I got the sense that the creator just ran out of room for the last few things the game needed and just assumed that players would figure it out. I think that might be because the creator is of the “old school” way of thinking where it's “your game, do what works for you.” There's nothing wrong with that, it just work for a lot of people.

However, I only paid about $12 for my physical and digital copies each, and if you're willing to do the work, it's not that bad at that price. I love the concept of the game and I think it has really good mechanics and setting, but I have to caution you if you're expecting a complete product.

My final note is that the book has a ton of fantastic art and great favor text that really gets you into the world of Zona Alfa. If they gave this book the “Hardback Treatment”, (like Gaslands) with rule fixes and expanded mission stuff, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, even at $30+.