The coming of Wasteman

Some time back you may remember me mentioning a Kickstarter that was running at the time. Wasteman is the brainchild of Jason F, the man behind Thunderchild miniatures. The campaign was for Jason to fund the printing and publishing of the rulebook, to get a load of miniatures cast up and to get extras such as cards and tokens made. As you can see from the pictures Jason has come through fine style and earlier this month a embarrassingly big box of toys arrived on my doorstep. So lets have a shufty at what we've got.

First up, the rule book. First up it's soft back, 88 pages and full colour. That's the boring stuff out the way. Wasteman is a post-apocalyptic skirmish game that has the feel of an 80's kids tv show (think Jayce and the wheels warriors, Thundercats and Gummy bears) that has devolved through radioactive fall out and is mainlining some very strong psychotropic drugs. It's a game that has no intention whatsoever in taking itself seriously.

The mechanics are straight forward and use a D10. Each player rolls for initiative and gets to activate 5 individuals or units (3 or more similar figures with identical upgrades) before it's the next players turn. The usual move shoot and fight goes on in the turns with various weapons listed in the book. You the roll on an injury chart to see whats happened. Easy.

To add another level of complexity (and chaos) to the game each player gets a handful of M.A.D. cards that can be played during the game. The cards have all kinds of funny effects from being able to have an opponents figure abducted by aliens to causing robots to malfunction and go on the rampage.

The main combatants in the game come as pre mixed 'posse's' of five figures each with a theme of their own. I got Manglemen, Bandits, Militia and Cybjorgs which gives my a nice mix of armed freaks and muties. You can see that each pack also comes with a set of activation bottle cap tokens.

This is a the Bandit posse. As you can see the figures are all gorgeously cast in metal (Previous Thunderchild releases were in resin) and come with integral metal bases. The pack contains round plastic bases to glue them to, giving you a nice stable stand to play with.

As well as the figures, the bases and the activation tokens, each Posse comes with full colour stat cards for each of the figures letting you get straight into the game with no hassle.

In addition to that there are more packs of weirdos to let you build up you syndicates and add some muscle and extra firepower. Below you can see the Boomboys and BullyBoys packs complete with bases and cards.

There are also a load of individuals to add to the Posse's. Some of them are Kickstarter add-ons but no doubt Jason will have them available at Thunderchild eventually. A lot of these figures would be great as Cursed earth muties in Judge Dredd games and some wouldn't be out of place in a Rogue Trader game.

And thats the point. Jason has run a brilliant Kickstarter campaign. He's got the models out the backers, kept everybody informed at all times, produced a quality product exactly as he'd promised and used the campaign to get his product into his online shop and available to the public which, in the end, is the whole point of a Kickstarter. 

Go check it out http://www.tcminiatures.co.uk

And while you are at it check out the Wasteman page on FB https://www.facebook.com/groups/760530247399094/

Well done Jason. Round of applause.