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I kinda low-key detest Rampant, I see they're still using the old cop out of "want a giant monster, just proxy it with a profile of 12 infantry dudes and track how many dudes taht make up the monster are dead" to pretend you can use any model. It's skirting this weird line between having all its elements predefined and claiming it's a "you can do anything" system a little bit like GW Open Play.

I am liking what I am hearing in this video. I do enjoy both Dragon and Lion Rampant. This seems to add enough to make it seem like a very different game, but with enough of the same to make it familiar.

Not entirely bought into 40K with 8th & 9th, and now holding out for 10th, so this will be a stop-gap in the meantime. Also, I'm looking forward to giving the Rampant system a spin.

Thank you for the review link.

I've been eager to hear how this plays.

I like most of what I see in this review, not sure how I feel about units like Elite Infantry getting to roll a 5+ to shoot, get a free shot after that, and if shot at get to shoot back on a 7+?!

Makes me feel melee is not going to be very worth it.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I kinda low-key detest Rampant, I see they're still using the old cop out of "want a giant monster, just proxy it with a profile of 12 infantry dudes and track how many dudes taht make up the monster are dead" to pretend you can use any model. It's skirting this weird line between having all its elements predefined and claiming it's a "you can do anything" system a little bit like GW Open Play.

That's a great explanation of why I kept picking up Dragon Rampant in the store, flipping through it, and putting it back down.

Xenos Rampant aside, have we heard anything new about that Pulp game that's coming out soon? Like next month? I can't find anything more than the initial upcoming release copy on it.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
I like most of what I see in this review, not sure how I feel about units like Elite Infantry getting to roll a 5+ to shoot, get a free shot after that, and if shot at get to shoot back on a 7+?!

Makes me feel melee is not going to be very worth it.

Yeah we addedd a few unit types Like Elite Missile and War Machine and used 40k figures just fine in normal Dragon Rampant. I do like it was so flexible.

I am super inteested in Pulp too, but have heard nothing.

https://ospreypublishing.com/us/osprey-blog/2022/xenos-rampant-design-diary/

Rampant Xenos may give me another chance to resurrect my Badab War project.

Xenos Rampant as PDF is here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/415175/Xenos-Rampant?language=en

I got my physical copy yesterday. It’s a very well laid out and nicely formatted book, and the rules seem (for the most part) to be well thought out and polished. It maintains the fairly streamlined rampant design and feels like it would play quite smoothly. I also love the example armies and scenarios, rating to try those out.

That said, I have to mention that I am a bit disappointed (but not surprised) with *how* closely the authors stuck to the previous rampant mechanics and conventions. Especially with regards to the unit types - several of them still feel like medieval / fantasy archetypes with scifi options bolted on, but with stuff like wild charge still woven directly into the fabric of the game. I also can’t work out why some units get certain options and others don’t, even it would make sense (mechanically and ‘in universe’) for them to do so.

But, it looks like it will do what I bought it to do - give me and my group a quick and easy way to get minis on the table and have a laugh, so I’m going to stop being a grumpy git and go back to playing with the lists.

That video rather nearly demonstrates the main quibble I have with the game (which is otherwise fun to play - we’re on game three): there’s way too much RNG for what feels like the sake of it. I like a bit of chaos thrown into a wargame but the mechanics they’ve used just don’t feel like they add to the gameplay in either a ‘managing your luck’ way or a ‘crazy stuff might happen’ kind of way.
Rather, they seem to arbitrarily limit and constrain the players’ agency and take control away. including Random activation AND random turn lengths AND random commander traits that can hobble you before you’ve put your minis on the table feels like too much.
They can all be house ruled, but it makes me wonder what testing feedback was like.

Well, those are all core components of all the previous Rampant games as well, (Lion, Dragon, Men Who Would be Kings, Pikeman, Rebels and Pats) So, I am guessing they are using those tried and true mechanics.

It does sound like they adopted the "best practice" from The Men Who Would Be Kings to make activation a bit less random than Lion Rampant was.

My disdain for cross genre reskins started with Future War Commander, which was more or less Warmaster with lasers tacked on, and I always thought a medieval command structure made no sense in it. Same for Warlords of Erehwon, where it's blatantly obvious that you're trying to resolve an elf cavalry charge into a goblin pike wall in a system built for skirmishing riflemen mostly suppressing each other in bushes.

Roll Three Dice wrote:
That video rather nearly demonstrates the main quibble I have with the game (which is otherwise fun to play - we’re on game three): there’s way too much RNG for what feels like the sake of it. I like a bit of chaos thrown into a wargame but the mechanics they’ve used just don’t feel like they add to the gameplay in either a ‘managing your luck’ way or a ‘crazy stuff might happen’ kind of way.
Rather, they seem to arbitrarily limit and constrain the players’ agency and take control away. including Random activation AND random turn lengths AND random commander traits that can hobble you before you’ve put your minis on the table feels like too much.
They can all be house ruled, but it makes me wonder what testing feedback was like.

Yeah we house ruled stuff like random commander traits out almost immediately - happy with the command rolls but not - oh yeah I have a awesome commander and you have a rubbish one....nah thats not going to fly except in narrative scenarios

Seems like they added more than was needed - we played sci-fi stuff in Dragon are with only a few extra unit types like Elite missiles and warmachines

Roll Three Dice wrote:
That video rather nearly demonstrates the main quibble I have with the game (which is otherwise fun to play - we’re on game three): there’s way too much RNG for what feels like the sake of it. I like a bit of chaos thrown into a wargame but the mechanics they’ve used just don’t feel like they add to the gameplay in either a ‘managing your luck’ way or a ‘crazy stuff might happen’ kind of way.
Rather, they seem to arbitrarily limit and constrain the players’ agency and take control away. including Random activation AND random turn lengths AND random commander traits that can hobble you before you’ve put your minis on the table feels like too much.
They can all be house ruled, but it makes me wonder what testing feedback was like.

Random activation is actually a worthwhile addition to simulate chaos on the battlefield. You don´t act like an armchair general carefully considering your chess moves when you are in the thick of battle while bullets whistle past your head.

Edit:
One review mentioned the difficulty in fielding several MBTs as these units would break the game. Focus is on infantry and weaker armoured vehicles.

Well, we've finally gotten a review of Pulp! from Osprey:




and I'm very disappointed. Looks like another Osprey Blue Book system so generic as to be bland, with four or five tiers of hero/unit that you buy a few perks/edges/abilities for and some slapdash scenario creation rules and examples.

The biggest sin, in my eyes, is despite Osprey's book blurb reading, "Suitable for both solo and cooperative play as well as the classic head-to-head mode, Pulp! contains all the rules needed to game globetrotting escapades in this rip-roaring era," according to my pause-fu, it looks like the only allowance for solo is two lines in the introduction effectively saying that a single player can just play all sides to the best of their ability and rely on the dice mechanics to provide unpredictability. Which is, of course, the complete lack of solo support in game rules. You can play any game solo by playing both sides yourself!

I was hoping this game would give us at least rudimentary AI rules, which is the bare minimum expectation these days (especially since the pandemic) for claiming your game to be "suitable for solo play". I was hoping for this in order to give it an edge over Pulp Alley. (Pulp Alley solo rules provide a new deck to compensate for the lack of an opponent to play cards against you, but still rely on you to play the NPCs as if you were a second player.) But as it is, Pulp Alley provides more customization of your forces, more robust scenario support even in the corebook, and at least they go as far as publishing a Solo Deck to adjust the game for easier solo play.

At least this review saved me $20, I guess.

Cannot wait for someone to come up with a Tyranid list.

 Psychopomp wrote:


Well, we've finally gotten a review of Pulp! from Osprey:

and I'm very disappointed. Looks like another Osprey Blue Book system so generic as to be bland, with four or five tiers of hero/unit that you buy a few perks/edges/abilities for and some slapdash scenario creation rules and examples.

The biggest sin, in my eyes, is despite Osprey's book blurb reading, "Suitable for both solo and cooperative play as well as the classic head-to-head mode, Pulp! contains all the rules needed to game globetrotting escapades in this rip-roaring era," according to my pause-fu, it looks like the only allowance for solo is two lines in the introduction effectively saying that a single player can just play all sides to the best of their ability and rely on the dice mechanics to provide unpredictability. Which is, of course, the complete lack of solo support in game rules. You can play any game solo by playing both sides yourself!

I was hoping this game would give us at least rudimentary AI rules, which is the bare minimum expectation these days (especially since the pandemic) for claiming your game to be "suitable for solo play". I was hoping for this in order to give it an edge over Pulp Alley. (Pulp Alley solo rules provide a new deck to compensate for the lack of an opponent to play cards against you, but still rely on you to play the NPCs as if you were a second player.) But as it is, Pulp Alley provides more customization of your forces, more robust scenario support even in the corebook, and at least they go as far as publishing a Solo Deck to adjust the game for easier solo play.

At least this review saved me $20, I guess.

Couldn't agree more. My feeling when watching the video was I shouldn't be paying for what is the bare minimum of a framework for pushing minis around and rolling a d6 to see who hits who.

If you're into solo play, this is the game for you, it has a massive amount of content with meaningful crunch and is free

 Strg Alt wrote:


Random activation is actually a worthwhile addition to simulate chaos on the battlefield. You don´t act like an armchair general carefully considering your chess moves when you are in the thick of battle while bullets whistle past your head.
.

Yup, I get that - I’ve played many games of dragon rampant and the mechanic makes perfect sense there, albeit still far from perfect. My issue with having the same system in xenos is not that units may not get to act before the other side seizes initiative (I actually really like that, especially combined with single action per activation), but rather how it all too often plays out in practice e.g., one side ends up with an unlucky streak doing nothing while their opponent runs rings around them. It feels too swingy and I personally don’t think it represents anything especially realistic: soldiers in a near / far future setting may not be omniscient but they would still be better trained equipped, and adapted to autonomous combat than medieval rank n file. They might miss the odd opportunity but to have them effectively standing around gormlessly staring while another unit with equivalent skills and gear calmly trots up over two turns before blowing them full of holes is stretching it a bit: On one occasion a player had two lower (but not trash) quality units that did literally nothing the entire game. That’s not fun, regardless how many in-world explanations you cook up. And yes, there’s free activations, but that starts to stifle the creativity in tactical play.

But, again - personal gripes. Like the other poster mentioned, we immediately binned random commander traits (experimenting with a point buy version) and are tinkering with activation to keep the uncertainty but build in a little more control. One house rule we are trying out is that a unit that fails an activation still forfeits the initiative, but gains a marker. Every marker adds one to that units next activation roll (and is then discarded). It’s working out quite well, but one player prefers to use the optional rule from dragon that allows you to attempt to activate all your units without triggering a ‘turnover’.

Edited: wall pf text

The activation is the most controversial thing about the Rampant series of games.

Disappointed to hear that Osprey Pulp isn’t awesome. I’d been looking at picking it up. I guess Pulp Alley retains the crown yet again.

http://pulpalley.com/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UBkzCZ1AAM0

I ordered Pulp, Xenos, and Lion Rampant 2, along with Hard City the RPG.

Reviews will trickle out later this year. However, I am interested in what is in the hopper for the Osprey Wargaming Series for 2023. Have you enterprising Amazon and Bloomquist Publishing sites sleuths got a read on it yet?

Edit: I did find this.....

Osprey sent an email and I think posted on Social about their 2023 Wargames coming out. There were only 3 books.

1. The Doomed- Chris McDowall


- This looks like a game about hunting Horrors in a Post-apoc system. I guess it may remind me a bit of Kingdom: Death- Monster but I am not familiar enough with that game to know for sure. Seems geared to solo/co-op play against an AI monster.

2. A War Transformed - The Great War meets the horrors of Forgotten Folklore- Frederick Silburn-Slater


- A game of weird WWI! I am always a fan.

This is another "skirmish" game but with occult overtones from the era. The blurb also mentions an initiative bidding system.

3. A Bolt Action: Italy

4. With Hot Lead and Cold Steel- ACW Rules- Arthur van der Ster


A large scale, mass battles game in the Blue Book series.

This one surprises me a bit considering Osprey all ready has a three book hard cover line of ACW books.