Wild West Exodus - Demo Evening at Titan Games

As recent readers are aware while at Salute this year I was lured into the Wild West Exodus stand by the offer of free stuff and left with a two-player starter set...as did two of the people I travelled there with. One of those people has the thankless task of being part owner of a wargaming store called Titan Games and after some discussion with a gentlemen at the stand arranged to have some of their representatives pop over and give us a demo.

They bought their own 2' x 2' demo table with them as well as some beautifully painted models and what turned out to be approximately version 1.9 of their updated rule-set. The cards and decks they bought were only photocopied versions as play-testing is still underway but they were more than adequate for demo purposes.

Myself and another store patron had the honour of the first demo and were each given control of a small posse consisting of a 'Boss' character and ten 'Hired Hands'. Five of these were geared for close combat while the other five were equipped for long range. I took control of Dr Carpathian of the Enlightened faction and his ten Constructs while my opponent used General Grant of the Union and ten of his Line Guards...

Editors Note - This was the first time either of us had ever played this game and a lot of other people were firing questions back and forth during the game so it's entirely possible that we interpreted some of these rules incorrectly while our guide was distracted...

After a brief world overview for my fellow demo participant who hadn't read any of the background stories we were given a basic explanation of the most basic of the stats we'd be using during the demo. As mentioned earlier the cards we were using weren't anywhere near final production versions (obviously) but I've done a close-up anyway to give you a rough idea of their current thinking on format. These were the forces at my disposal...

The majority of tests are done by rolling a d10 with 1's being critical failures and 10's are critical successes (auto-fail and auto-pass respectively). The other disadvantage/advantage of criticals is that they prevent re-rolls so you cannot use your 'Fortune' to re-roll a 1 and your enemy can't make you re-roll a 10. Fortune is a stat that certain models possess that gives you a number of re-rolls. Interestingly these replenish at the end of the models activation rather than at the end of the turn which does prompt some interesting tactical choices about model activation order...Other than that the system uses a simple and easy to pick up 'target number with modifiers' mechanic which we picked up with only minor early prompting....

 We were then introduced to the two card mechanics that would decide initiative, action points and objectives. The 'Action Cards' as well as deciding how many actions each of our activated models would get also had a number in the corner for Initiative (highest having the option of going first or not) though each model also has a Limit (L) Stat dictating the upper limit of actions available. Some actions could also be taken multiple times though the Action Point cost went up for subsequent ones. The second deck contained an objective for the turn in order to score Victory Points (Glory) or could be used up in order to gain another advantage (usually additional Action Points, though a 'steal the Initiative' one came in very useful later on)...

Now having forgotten everything we'd been told about what any of our models could do we flipped a card for initiative and having won I foolishly let my opponent go first forgetting that we were on a 2' long table and his ranged models had a 24" range. An average Action Point flip of a '2' and several rifle shots resulted in only a single dead zombie construct due to the cover rules that we probably should have asked about before starting throwing lead at one another...

Each obstacle in the way increased the difficulty of the shot by one as well as increasing your chance of passing your Guts (G) test to survive by the same amount. Though you can shoot freely through the models in your own unit each one that's between you and the target still effects the difficulty of the shot. Fortunately for my zombies Constructs there was enough stuff in the way of the Union to alter the tests enough in my favour so I only lost one model. My own long-range unit was similarly hampered so scored an equally poor tally of the enemy. Perhaps it was time to try some actual moving about...

Movement is controlled by your Quickness (Q) Stat which dictates your maximum move in inches. This can be extended by D5" by expending another Action Point to turn the move into a 'Dash'. This was also worth remembering as we were informed that moving a greater distance had benefits when moving into a unit to engage it in melee. I decided to move my close-range unit up but having only two AP at my disposal could only move and dash after measuring the distance to the enemy (pre-measuring is allowed before you accuse me of cheating...). My opponent however decided that his Boss was having none of that and moved forward to teach them a lesson...which as when we were taught something else rather important...characters only have one wound just the same as the cannon-fodder...

Luckily there are certain rules in place that help to keep them alive in spite of this. Firstly a character can only be targeted within a certain distance (I think this was 12"...but I might be mistaken), secondly they generally have a higher G (Guts) score so have a better save and thirdly they can have other nearby models take those hits for them. Some also have special rules that help out as well enabling them to be stunned rather than killed though there are obviously penalties afterwards.

After some manoeuvring, exchanges of various weapon fire and laughing at each others uncanny knack to consistently roll ones things began to get messy...or fun as it's more commonly known...

After using the Suicide rule on my constructs to detonate the whole unit (well this happens a model at a time but models killed by another constructs 'Suicide' just die rather than explode so I spectacularly killed three of my four own models with the explosion giving me only two detonations in total) I thought I had caused Grants death only to discover he had the earlier mentioned "I'm stunned now not dead nah, nah, na, nah, nah" rule...I think it was actually called Steel Skin but I like my name better. My ranged constructs took out a few models before Dr Carpathian snuck around the building and used his Atomic Blunderbuss on the Union unit moving around behind it. The Atomic Blunderbuss is also now my favourite thing ever...

The Atomic Blunderbuss is a template weapon. The template centre-line bisects an enemy model and if this poor unfortunate is hit then every other model is automatically hit. It also has rules that force your opponent to re-roll successful saves...oh...and they have to make two per hit inflicted. unfortunately there are equivalent rules for melee weapons which is how Grant put a similar sized dent in my constructs as I put in his soldiers...

With both our Bosses stunned and rank and file models beginning to be in short supply we both decided to go in for the kill. Grant started the offensive by decapitation several constructs...

...Dr Carpathian then decided to unload his Blunderbuss at Grant despite there being three of his own under the template...

...amusingly he managed to kill two of his own and failed utterly to kill Grant or in fact harm him in any way. Seeing his chance to strike back, my opponent won the initiative and prepared to lop the good doctors head from his shoulders...unfortunately for him my objective card allowed me to interrupt him and steal the initiative...this time Grants luck ran out...giving Victory to the Enlightened...

...well...not really as we both realised we hadn't actually scored a single Victory Point as we kept using our cards to get extra Action Points instead...

In Conclusion

The game had a very cinematic feel and despite having a relatively limited knowledge of the background we both dropped into character pretty much instantly, lol. The basic target number and modifier mechanic was simple to pick-up and we were more or less getting on with the game ourselves by the second or third turn. Being in the majority a Malifaux player the lack of a wounds characteristic or equivalent made for a very different experience as suddenly I had very real concerns about the safety of my leader from very early on and making decisions about when to commit them became much more important.

On the back of this demo I've ordered the Enlightened Starter Set and a few character models while the subsequent demonstrations also resulted in several orders being placed by both observers and those directly involved...it looks like we now have a Wild West Exodus community at Titan Games...

Should you be interested yourselves the Wild West Exodus website can be found HERE and their official Facebook community lurks HERE.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.