Osprey's The Doomed

[Ultravanillasmurf]

The Doomed isn't remotely in the same genre as Zona Alfa.

Definitely agree, Zona Alfa is a lot more serious (but fun).

The Doomed is very over the top, the big boss monster is an opportunity to build your own horror.

The rules are light, but the scenarios make up for it. They look like they will play well solo as well.

[Mr. White]

Does this game work with "near future" post-apoc minis... like in Mad Max or Zona Alfa...or is it more far-future post-apoc?

[Hobgoblin]

Does this game work with "near future" post-apoc minis... like in Mad Max or Zona Alfa...or is it more far-future post-apoc?

You could play it with pretty much anything. This is the entirety of the background:

"We are a forgotten world.

The Company came with their ships and guns, then abandoned us.

Only the doomed and the horrors remain."

Warbands come in four flavours: essentially, humans, cyborgs, mutants and aliens (though none of them are explicitly described in those terms). Weapons have descriptive names like "piercer", "dread glaive" and "thunder hammer" (there are lots of melee options). So you could easily stat up a post-apocalyptic warband; equally, you could stat up a group of space orks or space marines or a Stargrave crew.

[Hobgoblin]

The author provides a pretty good summary here:

https://ospreypublishing.com/uk/osprey-blog/2023/a-doomed-world/

[Mr. White]

What’s the table size? Can this play on a ~2’x3’?

[Hobgoblin]

Yes - the recommended sizes are 2' or 3' square.

You could certainly play it on a bigger table: the main thing is to have enough terrain so that there aren't 'corridors' across the table. Like Rogue Planet, it's a game with measureless movement - so it needs lots and lots of terrain to break things up.

(It does occur to me that this thread should really be on the sci-fi board, as the game is much closer to Rogue Planet, Mutants and Death Ray Guns and grimdark 40K-ish games than conventional post-apocalyptic games.)

[Munindk]

...it's a game with measureless movement...

How does that work?

[Hobgoblin]

How does that work?

It's like most of those measureless games (e.g. Rogue Planet and a WW2 one - Crossfire?): you can move a figure any distance in a straight line until it hits terrain.

[Mr. White]

Yeah, looking over the four factions this appears more sci-fi than the traditional near future post-apoc usually discussed here.

I like the sound of the simplicity of the rules, but not sure my post-apoc models fit any of these gonzo factions. Can those factions be ignored?

[zemjw]

I cannot make up my mind about this game

I was looking forward to it, but the article from the designer in Wargames Illustrated put me off. The kitbashes have also been pushing me away from it, as they have gone down the Blanshitsu(sp)/Turnip route, neither of which appeal to me aesthetically,

Lovecraftian Horror does appeal, but I'm not sure that's enough to prise open my wallet. I have enough on my plate just now that it's failry easy to ignore it, but I reserve the right to change my mind at some point

[Mr. White]

I cannot make up my mind about this game

I was looking forward to it, but the article from the designer in Wargames Illustrated put me off.

As another one kinda interested, what about the article put you off? I haven’t read it… I don’t think. Was it just the aesthetic or is there more.

[Hobgoblin]

Yeah, looking over the four factions this appears more sci-fi than the traditional near future post-apoc usually discussed here.

I like the sound of the simplicity of the rules, but not sure my post-apoc models fit any of these gonzo factions. Can those factions be ignored?

The factions are just lists - the descriptions are vague and evocative, and not specific. So you could use just about anything. I wouldn't bother trying to mix and match from the lists: you can easily fit a band of models into any one of the lists.

For example, a 'blaster' could be a sub-machine gun or some sort of sci-fi weapon; a 'piercer' could be a bow, a crossbow, a needle gun or a laser gun. or just about anything else. 'Claws' could be a pair of knives (or one knife), and so on.


In our games, we've used a group of Stargrave troopers led by a space marine as the Inheritor Courts, and a bunch of kitbashed weirdos as a Warped Coven.

[Gunbird]

I cannot make up my mind about this game

I was looking forward to it, but the article from the designer in Wargames Illustrated put me off. The kitbashes have also been pushing me away from it, as they have gone down the Blanshitsu(sp)/Turnip route, neither of which appeal to me aesthetically,

Lovecraftian Horror does appeal, but I'm not sure that's enough to prise open my wallet. I have enough on my plate just now that it's failry easy to ignore it, but I reserve the right to change my mind at some point

Same feeling, went from Must have to Nah after that. And it's not like I don't have anything else to do....

[zemjw]

As another one kinda interested, what about the article out you off? I haven’t read it… I don’t think. Was it just the aesthetic or is there more.

I have (unusually for me) been tidy and thrown the magazine out From what I remember, it was little things. The background didn't do it for me, just a bit too vague. I complain when things are too specific as well, but I just felt it lacked a context, something to hang a game on. Aliens left the whole world in a big mess was just too little, and largely without any hope to fix things.

The design and artwork definitely put me off, just too Blanchitsu (checked how to spell it this time) and Grim Dark.

It just felt like he'd had an idea and made a game from it, but I couldn't see anything that really appealed to me. I know that's a bit hand-wavey, but there are some games I can see a use for and some I can't, and this one fell into the latter category for me

[Hobgoblin]

I'm the complete opposite! For me, the (very) lightly sketched background is a real attraction. The tiny bits of description that the book gives you are just spurs for the imagination, which can send you down all sorts of interesting and kitbashing rabbit holes. I much prefer that to any amount of 'lore' (I thought Mantic's decision to sell a KoW rulebook without any of the 'fluff' was a masterstroke - it means I never have to read it!).

I'd say the real attraction, though, is the gameplay. Although all the monsters/NPCs follow a simple, standard 'AI' procedure, each of the 36 horrors has its own response table (what it does at the end of a turn) and a set of behaviours as each of its 'nexuses' (links to the real world) is destroyed. And these are all quite different from each other.

For example, some nexuses are just passive targets (they need to be destroyed before the horror can be harmed). Others are active and dangerous gun turrets!

And then you have the 36 conflicts layered on top of that. So you've got 1,296 different scenarios, each with much more detail than you normally get in a skirmish game.

Also, you don't have to play with horrors - you can just play it as a straight one-on-one game. But I think the horrors, their minions and their nexuses add a lot to it.