Zona Alfa: Salvage and Survival in the Exclusion Zone: 25 (Osprey Wargames)

Product Information

For those who want to dive into miniatures gaming, or have short narrative games with a low model count, the market for miniature skirmish games is in a golden age. There’s a plethora of rulesets and settings to choose from out there depending on your taste, but if you’re a fan of the S.T.A.L.K.ER. or Metro 2033 video games series, you can’t get much better than Zona Alfa. People who like slow Russian movies – like the ones that inspired those games! – can also apply. Troop Quality is the final support. To reflect varying expertise and experience, there are three kinds of soldier in the Zone: Rookie, Hardened, or Veteran. Each has corresponding ability to act in battle. There’s plenty of activity on the Stalker 7 and Zona Alfa Facebook groups as well, and nice ideas and scenery to look at. It may not be the next Necromunda, but it’s got a fun and dedicated following. The author is also a regular contributor and there’s plenty of stuff to find on his other games as well (which may get a review later). Meanwhile Ali’s search triggers a Zone Hazard – cobwebs. Ali avoids the effect of the Zone Hazard, collecting a sample and retrieves a Lithium battery, Med Kit and heavy weapons reload. He will need this for the grenade launcher next mission.

In Zona Alfa, players start by forming crews of 4 -12 miniatures, each with special gear, weapons, and abilities, with the intention of salvaging valuable items and artifacts in the dangerous and eerie quarantined area known as the ‘Exclusion Zone’. Game play rests on three pillars: Streamlined Game Stats, Alternating Activation, and Troop Quality Levels. These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher. The Searcher (Ali) has the scrounger skill so can search the POI twice, He secures rations, water and ammo which the crew will need for the next mission – in the game you have to think about the future as well as the present. Had the incident card been a bandit ambush, it’s likely that one or more crew members would have been out of action on turn one, unless crew members are on alert to take pre-emptive action. Zona Alfa draws inspiration from the crumbling, abandoned Cold War industrial heaps that you might find in the hinterlands of Eastern Europe. Players muster crews of stalkers, scavengers, and mercenaries and pit them against similarly motivated bands on the battlefield. But the Zone itself plays a huge role in each game … Zone hostiles can appear at any moment, and the very environment itself can suddenly erupt in violent fashion.C. It introduces new levels of detail to the player characters, equipment, and the mission areas, and as such, modifies some of the original core rules and introduces new game components. This card mechanic drives the action, and works pretty well. When playing solo, I’ve noticed that game turns fade away and you’re playing out the story. I expect when playing co-op there’ll be some tough choices as well. At this advanced stage of my hobby-life, I meet plenty of people who enjoy gaming but don’t have the time to invest in large, painted armies, terrain, or learn a complex rule set. They want fast and fun games with a high coolness quotient, lots of adventure, a bit of competition, and an excuse to hang out and eat pizza with friends.

Kontraband is the first expansion for Zona Alfa, and leans fully into the co-op/solo play. Instead of starting out with a starter band, you get 4 vets that either belong to the scientist or stalker faction. Each faction has its own types like smuggler, bounty hunter, field agent that have their own skills and specialisations. The reason you enter the Zone with a bit of a head start is that like Zona Alfa, Kontraband is just as deadly, and in some cases, very hard. Rookies have no place in the heart of the Zone.What was the biggest challenge in designing Zone Alfa? Were there any scrapped features you’d have wished could have been included? The Mission Objective was a cache of supplies in the old factory. There was a Six Turn Limit and no Visible Hostiles in sight. Here’s John’s hardened scavenger moving in to search a decommissioned air compressor next to a derelict pumping station. When you do hit, there are armor saves. Depending on what you pulled from a dead stalker or bought in the stalls, this will drastically improve your chances of survival. Some weapons or ammunition are also better at penetrating armor. If you fail this save, you’re down unless you have a med kit. If you do make the save, you have to take a Will test to see if you have to change your underwear after getting plugged with a 7.62.

Zona Alfa is not tied into to any specific game company or range of miniatures, therefore certain aesthetic elements like in-game hostiles are of the generic, mutated, post-apocalyptic kind. Feel free to use and substitute whatever figures you already have in your collection. There are guidelines later on for statting out different miniatures. Because Zona Alfa is miniatures-agnostic, t hese are intentionally broad and abstracted so players can generate values for the wide range of models in their collection, then select categories of body armor and personal weapons. As far as anything left out, no. Zona Alfa is meant to be a simple, reliable system. Over four decades playing table top wargames, board games, and RPGS, I never ceased to be amazed at the imagination and creativity of the gaming community. I felt the best thing I could offer would be a set of tools for people to stat out their miniatures, form salvage crews, and undertake their own missions in the Exclusion Zone.Four members of the Cape Cod Wargame Commission spent Saturday afternoon playing Zona Alfa. We decided on a Factory Raid in a Threat Level Two area – four Hot Spots plus the Mission Objective.