I love the post-apocalyptic genre, and I love auto combat games dating back to my youthful obsession with SJ Games’ Car Wars. So I’ve been following the progress of Aberrant’s new game Warlands with considerable interest.

Frankly inspired by the Mad Max films, Warlands is a tabletop miniatures game in which motorized gangs mounted in various trucks and buggies do battle for posession of gasoline and other treasures from the pre-Ruin era. Combat uses a simple engine that involves rolling (usually mutiple) d6s versus a given target number

Damage to vehicles is fairly abstract, essentially revolving around hit points, though there are critical hits to spice things up a bit. From the brief demo in the video it seems that there is a lot of randomness and luck in the game, which will likely thrill some people and dismay others,

The game as it is now is basically just a quick-start set of rules. When the full rulebook is eventually released things shoudl really heat up. Expect infantry, motorcycles, wind-surfing “sand boards”, experience and advancement systems for gangs, tons of vehicle customization goodies, and a whole lot more.

The game as it stands seems pretty fun, but I can’t help but look forward to seeing what the designers can do with a bigger canvas on which to paint.

Things are apparently going pretty well already. One of the Aberrant crew told me that they’ve had to triple the originally planned run of the starter boxes to keep up with the demand from distributers and direct customers. If it can maintain that kind of momentum without wipping out, Warlands just might take the checkered flag.

Popularity: 13% [?]

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