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My friend and I fought a battle with the most "recent" version of Wastelands, "Wastelands Meltdown"
http://rpgdiehard.blogspot.com/2011/08/wastelands-meltdown-post-apocalyptic.html

It was my force of Repainted/Rebased Khamsin figs (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/376132.page) vs his mix of various post apoc soldiers. About 8-11 figs and 2 vehicles per side. I was trying to knock out his vehicles and he was trying to force a break test for each of two sides of my attack. I was soundly defeated.

Be sure to click on some of the pics in the battle report as they came out quite well and expand nicely.

A couple teasers.

pretty cool! I have always thought post-apoc a great setting for skirmish games, just makes more sense, you know.

I read this today on RPG Diehard but didn't realize you were on DakkaDakka. Neato.
Terrific looking report though and the combination of the desert table and Mad Max-ified vehicles really looks great. I dig the modern graybeard Bill the Tracker who looks like mostly Mordheim + Catachan parts. How did you find the rules to play (besides communal head-on collisions which probably cut down on the vehicle maneuvering afterwards, haha).

Thanks. I'm not exactly sure what he used to make Bill, but a few of his parts came from my bits box and list sounds pretty accurate.

The rules are a free set called Wastelands Meltdown. Unfortunately the site that hosts them is down. If you want the rules, PM me your email and I'll send them to you.

No worries on the rules I've read through Wastelands before back when they were starting out at http://s1.zetaboards.com/Post_Apoc_Wargames/. I'm more asking how did you find the rules? Fun and versatile? I'm always on the lookout for neat skirmish mechanisms.

Oops, I see.

We've enjoyed the rules quite a bit. It's still IGOUGO and quite stripped down, but it makes for a very fast battle.

Wastelands meltdown is refined in several ways from the previous Wastelands 1.2.

1)No more hit points. Wastlands 1.2 had hitpoints. Meltdown doesn't. Instead there's a roll against a stat that determines if you've hit with sufficient power to kill the target.

2)The number of different types of figures has been reduced. This doesn't mean much since many of the types were quite similar anyway.

3)The Vehicle rules are greatly expanded. This is what we liked best about Meltdown. Rather than functioning like a regular model, vehicles now have some nice basic mechanics like constant speed, and it's effects on turning impacts. The game does seem to favor vehilces a bit and they are very tough, but they are fairly expensive in points so it's probably fair. It seems that Meltdown is trying to make it possible to have mad-max type vehicle battles if one desires.

Wastelands is pretty much our club's go-to skirmsh ruleset for post apoc. It would probably also work well for small near-future sci-fi skirmishes where you don't want a squad-based ruleset.

For most Sci-Fi though, I prefer larger, squad based battles, and WarEngine/Shockforce rules.

Interesting observations, and it does sound different from the version of Wastelands I had tried (definitely less of a focus on vehicles then). Even with full rotating turns instead of model by model activation it sounds fast to play. Not having to track hitpoints is always nice, which is why I was such a fan of Necromunda's "Flesh Wound" or Mordheim's "Stunned" approach.

Vehicles sure seem hard to get right; sort of a balance between full on Car Wars and too simple of a version to make it feel like they are truly cars.

Pretty cool though, and again great job on the look of the game. Having a nice set of painted figures sure helps immersion.

bosky wrote:Interesting observations, and it does sound different from the version of Wastelands I had tried (definitely less of a focus on vehicles then). Even with full rotating turns instead of model by model activation it sounds fast to play. Not having to track hitpoints is always nice, which is why I was such a fan of Necromunda's "Flesh Wound" or Mordheim's "Stunned" approach.

Vehicles sure seem hard to get right; sort of a balance between full on Car Wars and too simple of a version to make it feel like they are truly cars.

Pretty cool though, and again great job on the look of the game. Having a nice set of painted figures sure helps immersion.

Yep, it's a really fast playing game. It's probably the "lightest" sci-fi game that we play, and that's in a club that plays mostly rules-lite skirmish games. Glad you enjoyed the look. Our club only plays with painted miniatures! It sounds a bit legalistic to some, but it really benefits the feel of the game and we make up for it by making a point having enough painted figs to share with those who don't.