By James Hewitt
Photography by Fatima Martin
Hello, wastelanders! James here again, back once again to give you more information about the gameplay in Fallout: Factions. If you missed the first one, you can check it out here - or, hey, why not head straight to the hub page, where you can see the whole list of published blogs, and sign up for the newsletter so you get the rest as we publish them?
In my previous post, I talked about how models can make Actions when you Activate them. Today, I want to talk a bit more about how those Actions work!
The Actions a model can make depend on whether it is Engaged with a model from the opposing crew. [1]
Most of the time, a model will be Unengaged, and it can make a Get Moving, Open Fire, Patch Up or Rummage action. If a model is Engaged, it can only make Brawl and Back Off Actions. Let’s take a quick look at each of them!
Get Moving
This is unquestionably the action you’ll use more than any other. [2] It lets the active model move up to eight inches [3] across the battlefield. Factions is designed to be played across a fairly cluttered battlefield, and this action also lets you climb up and down suitable terrain. (Obligatory plug for our incredible range of 3D-printable Fallout terrain - there’s nothing quite like playing across actual Nuka-World ruins!)
If you need an extra boost, you can get your model to Hurry. This lets it move up to 12” instead, potentially crossing half the board’s width in a single Action, but the model takes two Fatigue rather than one. Really handy when you need to do a mad sprint across open ground!
Oh, and here’s an interesting twist - when a model makes a Get Moving Action, you can give Movement Orders to other nearby models. Each one takes Fatigue, and also gets an 8” move (or a 12” move, if they take another Fatigue.) This is a great way to move whole chunks of your crew at once… but don’t put all your eggs in one basket, or a cunning opponent will make you pay for wasting your Actions early.
Open Fire / Brawl
Both of these actions are fairly similar, so let’s cover them together. In both cases, you pick one of the active model’s weapons and make an attack against a target enemy model. Depending on the outcome of a dice roll, you might Incapacitate your target (removing them from play), Injure them (check off one of their health boxes - if the last one’s checked, they’re Incapacitated) or deal them Harm. Harm is tracked with a token, like Fatigue; most models can take up to three, and if they take a fourth Harm, it is converted to an Injury.
Harm also has another, much more devastating effect: each point of Harm a model has grants a bonus die to any attack roll made against it. (We’ll talk about dice rolls in the next blog.) This mechanic allowed us to make Super Mutants and models in Power Armour [4] feel suitably impervious to small arms fire… while still allowing a crew to focus their fire and bring them down.
Patch Up
This action lets an unengaged model recover up to two Harm. This lets you keep an important model in the fight and stop the enemy from getting all those tasty bonus dice when they attack it, but it comes at a steep cost; as it’s an Action, the model is effectively trading two Harm for one Fatigue, and halving the number of useful things it can do in this round. Like a lot of things in Factions, this action is a gamble, and a shrewd player will think carefully about when to use it.
Rummage
When you think of Fallout, it’s a safe bet that one of the first things that comes to mind is the idea of scavenging for useful items in the Wasteland.
At the start of each scenario, a number of Search tokens are placed on the battlefield. A model within 1” of one of these tokens can use a Rummage action to search it and see what they find. You might find some caps, which you can spend on your crew after the battle is over. You might find some parts, which you can use to modify your models’ weapons. Or you might get lucky and find some Chems, which give you special one-off bonuses!
Back Off
Finally, there’s the Back Off Action, which lets a model move up to 2” out of Engagement, freeing them up to make some more useful actions. It’s not flashy, but it’s essential!
So there you have it - a rundown of the Actions that models can make in a game of Fallout: Factions. Hopefully you’re enjoying this series - make sure you don’t miss the next one, where I’ll be talking about how dice are used in the game. In the meantime, stop by the hub page if you want to sign up for the latest news, check out the game in action, and learn more about the awesome Nuka-World starter set!