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I've got the book on the way after reading some discussions. I like the look of it - relatively base agnostic, totally figure agnostic and very flexible.

I saw some discussion of Elite Infantry being a bit OTT but I think that could be fixed easily by thinking of them as more like Terminators/Crisis Suits/Meganobs/Guard Command Squad and less like normal Space Marines, which should maybe be beefed up Heavy Infantry? If everyone has like a single squad of Elites I think it's more feasible.

I also saw that it's fairly limited in terms of vehicles, which is probably also a good thing. Though I think I would make Walkers using the normal unit rules so you could have a walker and a vehicle, and I'd probably be open to lifting the cap to two vehicles for both players too if we felt like it.

Anyway, interested to hear any experiences with the game because it'll likely be a little while before I get to play it!

I too would like to know... I like Dragon rampant if that is any help...

This chap has a bat rep
https://tabletopstories.net/language/en/2024/03/xenos-rampant-review-and-test-game/


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This chap has the standard objection to 'rampant' games which is the activation system.
https://brushesbayonets.com/xenos-rampant-rules-review/
You will either appreciate it, or not. I like it 9and like games like warmaster of which this is a more extreme form), a lot of 40k players do not.

I've got Dragon Rampant on the way as well. In some ways I expect that to be the better game. I play a lot of LOTR SBG and I really enjoy it, but I found Age of Fantasy was too simple and bland for fast-playing larger battles and Warlords of Erehwon needed too many markers and special dice.

I'm hoping Dragon Rampant will hit a sweet spot of flexibility, ease of getting stuff on the table and getting games done while also providing an interesting game.

Xenos Rampant I got because although I like Grimdark Future, I start to crave a little less predictability in my games and I also want some sort of more developed suppression mechanic. I am also going to try out Mantic Firefight, but that game is very much "these miniatures on these specific bases with very specific abilities" which is fine but I'm interested in the flexible nature of the Rampant games to let me use whatever I want from my collection.

I think I'm just getting too long in the tooth to want to be told by a game exactly which miniatures I need to use.

IIRC I was turned away by weird mechanical cop-outs

Like not actually having rules for monsters, they just tell you to play a monster as a regular unit proxied as a single large model, and you track virtual casualties to know how many attacks the dragon can still make.

I mean in principle it's not that different to how monsters usually work, is it?

But it's definitely a marmite kind of game. It took me a long time to come around to these "properly" miniature agnostic games, as I like having units and so on ready to go and a DIY system can always end up feeling generic. I think the activation rules are the thing that puts most people off, and I'm very interested to find out how that plays out for me. I think I'm in the mood for that kind of chaos in my games - the predictability of set alternating activation has gotten a bit stale for me.

I got my book today, really nice to look at anyway. Lovely seeing a variety of manufacturers and scales in there - a few more big battle shots would have been cool, or some dramatic terrain set ups. I'll have to set an evening aside to sit down and make a list for something like my Tau collection to see how I feel about the list building.

One of the blogs we follow gave it a good write-up:

https://wpggamegeeks.blogspot.com/2025/09/xenos-rampant-30k-battle-report.html

That was a very nice post - lovely miniatures being used.

Had thorough read of the rules and I like what I've seen in theory at least. Looks like a decent level of complexity without getting too into the weeds - stuff like vehicles sacrificing movement for turns and some of the intricacies of cover, morale and reactions give you a game with a few more factors to consider than say Grimdark Future but without getting into the more complex and granular rules of older editions of 40k.

I'm very curious to see how it plays in practice, especially with the importance of positioning and actually being able to do things like screen units effectively or draw out return fire with weak units and so on.

And probably the biggest thing - it's a game that says "Just use what you have". It's maximum flexibility for using the collection you already have, and no pressure to buy anything new. I recently bought both Firefight and Deadzone and although I'd built reasonable forces for both games, I could immediately see how I might want to add an extra squad here, some extra special weapons there to make a better list.

This game approaches things from a fundamentally different place - what are the figures you have, and how are you going to have fun with them? I really like that.

I have this book and wrote a quick review of it here:

http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2023/02/review-xenos-rampant-osprey-games.html

That said, I have not played it enough to give any useful feedback beyond what I wrote in the review. Therefore, I am interested in seeing how other folks are doing with it.

Yeah I'd actually read your review when thinking about buying the game.

As for playing, it'll be a few months on my end, as I've got a baby and a toddler at home at the moment. Feels a bit selfish to leave my wife alone with all that to get a game in, but I am getting a lot of painting done in the evenings.

It’s a fun game that imo blends just the right the level of abstraction in its core mechanics vs interesting unit options to allow you to play with pretty much any set of miniatures in almost every scifi genre variant.


It does have some niggles for me, although these are easily fixed with some house ruling and (imo) worth the fiddling about because the flexibility of the game makes it so attractive

What are the niggles out of interest? I had seen that Elite Infantry is very good, and so had resolved to stick to one unit of Elite Infantry per detachment when building forces.

Off the top of my head, with the caveat that this is what worked for my little group and not meant as a critique:

- a bad run of luck with the activation mechanic can leave units doing nothing for way too long (especially if you didn’t stack up on elites)
Fix: we simply lowered every unit’s success threshold by 1. We also tinkered with lowering the success threshold for attacking which made the combat way more bloody - this worked well in built up tables but less so in open battlefields…

- Elite infantry is undercosted for how much it out performs other units. We didn’t want to restrict the unit count because it hampered people being able to build small elite forces
Fix: We increased the unit cost to 8. There was some debate it should go higher (10) but we found with the increased activation across the board the disparity in performance felt less grievous

- Assault units being lumbered with Wild charge felt a bit out of place. Xenos rules offered a way to remove this by paying 2 points to get a ranged attack but didn’t feel exactly right
Fix: pay 1 pt to remove wild charge

- support units had no way to be less squishy, which didn’t sit right for the space marine players
Fix: pay 2 points to have +1 armour

Probably a few more I have forgotten, we haven’t played since November

Edit: (re)reading Easy E’s review reminded me that we all loathed the random warlord traits table (well, all of us except the guy that always plays orks, but he’s odd ) so we gave them points costs and removed any that felt nonsensical / imbalanced as a result (e.g. . the one that gave you more points to spend). Honestly this is the one that needs the most work.

I was gonna ignore the warlord traits completely, never liked that sort of stuff in any game I play.

The rest seem like reasonable changes, I'll probably play it vanilla for a while but I'm fine with making Space Marines heavy infantry (maybe with increased squad size but still using 5 guys to make it seem tougher). I will keep Elite for stuff like Command squads and the like.

It's true about the Wild Charge and squishy Support Infantry though - I disliked that it was hard to build a bit of a "calmer" assault infantry.

The second editions for Lion and Dragon did away with the random traits as a baseline so if there's a 2nd ed for this in the brews that's gonna happen here too.

I like Dragon Rampant 2e so I'm def picking up this game at some point too. I do hope they can cook up a slightly better name than "Xenos Rampant" but I guess it's hard to port the "rampant" model into ages that just don't use heraldry that way.