Aliens Vs. Predator - Demo Day

Today a kind representative of Prodos Games named Lee popped down to Titan Games in Lichfield to give some demo's of the Aliens Vs. Predator miniatures game currently awaiting it's final approval from Fox before it can be packed and sent to the very impatient people awaiting their Kickstarter pledges, lol.

Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures of the model stats...or the printout of the rulebook but I'm kind of going to have to discuss some rules that we used...because we used them, lol.

Those of you who went to Salute 2015 would have already seen the board we used but if you're interested in the temple construction or the paint-jobs on the models then the process can be found on the gentleman responsible's blog here.

I'm sure most of those of you who have been following the progress of this Kickstarter have seen the models but just in case you haven't here's a few samples of the painted ones used in the demo and of course there will be many pictures of them 'in action' as we go...

The Demo.
The actual boxed game itself is set on board a space ship and has space hulk style tiles to fight on and subsequently the movement is done as T (number of tiles) but for our purposes they were given a movement value (5 inches) as we were using an actual table and we used the Prodos Games Mutant Chronicles Warzone Resurrection movement rules on this occasion.

The Aliens had overwhelming numbers on their side...

...and the Predators used the rule-books campaign style advancement rules to tool them up significantly and were given an additional...'blow themselves up to rob you of your victory' rule that will be familiar to any fans of the films...

The Predators started atop the temple and the Aliens started some distance away. This was more a cool way of showing off the models than a balanced scenario but looked like it would be fun regardless...apparently the Predators have only actually won once...without blowing everything else up as well that is, lol.

Beginning of Turn one.

The Predators were positioned to take maximum advantage of the benefit of having actual guns...

The aliens however were doing a lot of 'using both Actions to run' as they didn't have any guns...

Some foolishly got a bit keen and ahead of the rest of the horde...

They promptly got shot to pieces while the rest of their pals continued their advance...

These 'Praetorian' Aliens were a bit too big to balance on the stairs so we used a couple of Prodos Games wound counters to mark their actual location. The other Aliens were getting closer as well.

 They got killed by a torrent of rapid-fire plasma but their sacrifice allowed the 'Crushers' to get a bit closer...

 And not just the Crushers...

That's about the time it began to get messy...and the Predators had their first casualty...though they did significant damage in return...

The one remaining Predator attempted to use his turn to blow everything up...and failed...giving the Aliens their first victory of the day. We ran the scenario several times and the Predators consistently failed to use their fail safe...or win a game, lol. They did however managed to kill at least their points value of Aliens on each occasion so it was a moral victory at least...

We also ran a few various scenarios to try out the Colonial Marines including pitting four squads of five of them against four Predators. The Marines did surprisingly well but to be fair their victory was more due to the players ability to roll critical successes (a one in twenty chance) then any issues of balance. The Predators default weapons were somewhat less effective than the ones utilised by their upgraded counterparts in the first couple of scenarios though the throwing disc was a great deal of fun as it basically mangles anything in front of it, lol.

An Overview.
The Aliens bias was quite obviously towards close combat as they lacked any ranged capability and even their most basic models were very effective in this area and the higher powered models were a match even for heavily equipped Predators. The Predators themselves were highly skilled at both range and up close making the default ones exceptionally well balanced though it is possible to equip them for a very specific role should you wish and this will somewhat adjust the balance in one direction or the other. The Marines were pretty much focussed on ranged capability and once a Predator reached combat they were painfully outmatched.

The day has filled me with a fresh confidence in the upcoming product and reminded me why I pledged to the damn thing in the first place, lol. The Prodos Games 'Warzone Resurrection' rule-set that it's based on is extremely well balanced meaning that we know the rules will give us a balanced and enjoyable experience and I was also reminded about the high quality of the models. We are also talking about a game set in an extremely well fleshed out world so the background is easily able to support any number of future expansions.

Apparently the fine people at Prodos Games are just awaiting one final 'okay' from the 'gentlemen' at Fox and once that is given the game will be in our sweaty impatient hands within a few weeks from that date. I'm hoping we'll see the game at the UK Games Expo...fingers crossed every-one...

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.