I was lucky enough two weekends back to head to a Prodos Games Day held at my local store. A whole bunch of images of their Alien Vs Predator miniatures went up and more importantly their rather awesome game dragged back from the past - Warzone: Resurrection. So began a rather cool adventure into the world of Mutant Chronicles. This is by no means an exhaustive review of the game but just how my experience has been with it so far...

"It was the Imperial Conquistadors on Pluto that first unearthed the so-called Steel Tablet, a careless act, which released the Dark Symmetry into the Solar system. And yet it was also the Imperial Corporation who designed the first Harrison Drives, which enabled travel through the spatial rifts and effectively saved mankind from despair after the collapse of so much of his precious technology. But then, in a repetition of history, and true to their inquisitive nature, it was the Imperial Conquistadors landing on the tenth planet Nero who unwittingly invited the Dark Legion itself into the world of mankind. And they are yet to redeem themselves for that catastrophic act."

If you couldn't tell above (or indeed you don't know about the game) I chose to take on the Imperial faction. These guys are very British in both look and attitude and I was immediately drawn to the miniatures. The look of trench coats and gas masks (shaped like skulls no less) was brilliant to behold and even though I fear painting that dreaded brown it was something I couldn't pass up. Add to that the rather cool looking Imperial logo (I even went as far as to remove the Scottish blue just in case you Highlanders leave us!) and I was sold. I didn't get to play British in Bolt Action so Imperials were going to be my best shot.

The Starter Set comes with two of these Imperial Officers both of which are pretty amazing. The miniatures as a whole are made of some rather amazing resin/plastic material that is incredibly easy to put together and indeed clean before hand. I have never put together models with super glue easier than these. I'm really proud of how these turned out (and my friends will tell you how much I love drybrushing) and I think I got the World War I feeling fairly on the money.

You also get your hands on ten of these Trenchers split into two fire teams of five with an awesome Chaingun as their special weapon. Once again some amazingly easy to put together miniatures although the chain guns bullet feed is a bit of a pain to stick on. It is also incredibly delicate so make sure it doesn't snap off when you're playing around with the sprue.

I used the same technique to paint these Trenchers as with the Imperial Officers and I think it works out well as a tabletop standard scheme. It's pretty simply drybrushing the entire thing brown, painting the armour in the military green, drybrushing the guns, working on the detail with dulled colours and then washing the entire thing in agrax earthshade (I love you agrax). It's by no means amazing but I think it worked pretty well on these chaps.

The box also comes with a massive stack of cards, some d20 dice (more on these later) and this Tankette called the Greyhound. You might think this looks a bit weedy but it fires a very nasty gas grenade that will reduce your enemy to choking piles of goo on the floor if they get hit by it. As an example I nearly wiped out an entire squad with one of these when it got a direct hit.

So how does the game play now I've done a bit of painting and had a handful of games. Well, the basic premise of the game is very easy. The system is based on d20 rolls where rolling low is good. You have a ranged skill of 14? Just roll under it and you've hit. Cover has various modifiers to this being -2 for light and -4 for heavy. If you hit then you don't have to roll to wound, the bullet hit and was meant to kill them! The opponent rolls an armour save based on his own armour value minus however many points of strength the weapon had over 10. Shooting and killing folks is insanely easy and you'll get the core rules very quickly. Even close combat, which I've not experienced a lot of, has the same set of rules in essence with modifiers from various effects but boiling down to rolling low and then lowering armour based on strength.

Vehicles are just as fun too and even though the Imperials come with the little Greyhound most of the others have some deadly looking walker that will be spitting death at you from afar. Instead of lowering the armour with strength you do it with the AVV value which shows your penetration of hulls and such. If the gun is a pea shooter then your tank or walker just gets to re-roll if they fail it. Vehicles have boxes of health a bit like in Warmachine and destroying each part of the vehicle has different effects. Just remember that if you aim you get to pick what you hit and this can make your Greyhound blow up in one shot from a rocket launcher (boo to Bauhaus for doing that!).

Moving on from the basics there are a fair few special rules and of course plenty of ways to tailor the force to your own needs. The Imperials (for which the PDF is free HERE!) have access to some rather cool campaign medals for troops and leaders. They range from increased range to special abilities and even different types of ammo. If you have medals from one specific theatre of war then your leader also gets a badass campaign medal which can make more elite troops common and allow you to field some sickeningly good models.

Talking of sickeningly good models I've got my eye on some of the Golden Lions and Blood Berets for my Imperials for a bit of elite fire power and close combat destruction. After looking at some of the hero choices I've also settled on Michael Farraday as my choice but his kit also comes with the options for Andrew Drougan too so I might make some kind of hybrid there to switch between the two.

I'm looking forwards to actually playing some properly pointed up games and getting to know the function of action cards in more depth. Currently they allow you to just gain extra actions in the basic game but we've been exploring 'turning to burn' (tapping) to unlock some of your special abilities. My local store is loving this game hopefully it will become a regular game for us to dive into. I'll certainly be picking up more Imperials and reporting back once I've got my claws into them a bit more!

As discussed in The Weekender Prodos Games will be at Q-Con this coming weekend (20th to 22nd) and Warren, I've filled in my base slots now!

Do you play Warzone: Resurrection and if so what faction?