Fallout Sandbox: Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Elara trudged slowly behind Robbin as they made their way down from 'Rockwind Ridge' and towards an unpleasant sounding settlement know as 'Scrap Hill'.

Robbin was a scavenger and wandering merchant who had driven off the ants surrounding Elara and dragged her out of danger. He had nursed her back to health and patiently escorted her back to Vault 26, only to discover the door sealed, seemingly for good.

She suspected he had hoped to gain access to the Vault, but now seemed happy for her company and talked openly about subjects she had absolutely no frame of reference for.

Apparently, organisation known as the 'Brotherhood' had destroyed a group of raiders by the 'Old Road', which seemed to be good news.

As she listened and walked, Elara considered her options. With no home to return to and no idea what lay in front of her, sticking with Robbin seemed the best course of action if she wanted to survive in this strange new world.

***

As you have no doubt realised, after the last game, I decided that the passing stranger who wandered by Elara's fight with the ants was the best bet for keeping her alive, and I used most of the items she had gained to add a Scavenger to her party.

However, there was a cost to her failure with the ants. Elara has lost her damaged hazmat suit, which makes sense given the mauling she took.

I also decided how to proceed with my campaign. Having recently picked up the Into The Wasteland expansion, I am going to merge it with Five Leagues from the Borderlands (also from Modiphius).

Five Leagues from the Borderlands will provide the overarching narrative and campaign mechanics, whilst Into The Wasteland will help with scenario creation. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but I'm tweaking both sets of rules as necessary to make it work.

The first step was the creation of a campaign map:

Based on my initial rolls the area includes the formerly industrial Haven City, two settlements: Scrap Hill and Rustown, and a small outpost optimisticly known as Greenleaf.

There are several other areas of note. Rockwind Ridge is a mountainous region containing several cave systems along with Vault 26. To the east are the Rad Wastes, whilst to the south is the Wasteland and Mirelurk Lake (ominously named, I know, but I do have the models). Linking the settlements is the Old Road.

The Five Leagues campaign focuses on the eradication of three major threats. Based on my collection, my threats are: Raiders troubling the Old Road, Super Mutants lurking in the Rad Wastes and an Enclave detachment that has recently moved into the area. It's all very Fallout 3.

The Brotherhood of Steel are also at large, but not viewed as a threat, especially as the first 'News Travels' roll saw them reducing the threat level of the Raiders.

Travelling to Scrap Hill was largely uneventful and gained Elara and Robbin a Story Point, and the following day the pair met the locals and gained another. With no adventures immediately arising, I decided to spend a Story Point to purchase a Quest card - this is my adapted mechanic for Story Points, which can also be used to gain Explore cards.

I drew 'Revenge', which involves an abducted brother (probably Robbin's). Missing family members are in Fallout's DNA, and so I opted to immediately head out on patrol to begin the hunt at the family farm and ran smack bang into Super Mutants.

At least it's clear who has Robbin's brother and why.

The objective was clear. Eliminate any Super Mutants still around the farm and gain information on where 'Indy' is.

***

Despite the clear day, the empty mutfruit fields signalled trouble before they reached Indy's farm.

Robbin noticed immediately, drawing his weapon and indicating that Elara should do the same.

A terrifying roar echoed in the distance, as if something had spotted their approach.

Elara, however, saw nothing ahead and advanced into the ruins in the edge of the farm.

Noticing something glinting in the dirt, she spent a few seconds digging it out to reveal a small golden box. 

Having only recently learned that the local currency was 'caps', she figured she might be able to sell it.

A snarling sound caused her to look up.

She been to distracted and gone too far too quickly and looked directly into the ferocious eyes of some hugely muscled beast.

It looked dog-like, but she struggled to take in any details beyond the the massive slavering jaws.

The creature bounded over the rubble and was on her immediately. Elara's hands pushed desperately against its powerful neck, trying to keep those teeth from her face.

A shot rang out and the hound was momentarily knocked sideways. Glancing up, Elara saw Robbin, who had advanced more cautiously, with his smoking weapon aimed towards her attacker.

Seizing her moment, Elara broke away; the hound's knife-like teeth painfully dragging along her thigh, causing her to stumble.

Bringing up her pistol, she fired. The bullet thumped into the yelping beast's flank but failed to drop the hound.

The wounded hound once again leapt for Elara, but with it's attention focused on Elara, it failed to see Robbin charging. He brought the stock of his rifle thumping into its head and the beast slumped to the floor.

An exhausted Elara looked up and was horrified to see a massively muscled green giant bearing down on her. She scrambled away from the terrifying sight, firing wildl.

Elara now understood what Robbin had meant when he'd used the term 'super mutant'.

"You humans! So stupid and so weak!" bellowed the creature in a coarse grating voice, "could not stop Ravage taking farmer, will not stop Zap taking you!"

The mutant, apparently called Zap, barrelled into Elara, raining blows down on her. Again. Robbin attacked from the side but Zap seemed intent on smashing Elara into the ground.

As she fell beneath its mighty blows, Elara saw Robbin fighting for his life, managing at the last moment to connect his rifle butt with the mutant's skull, caving it in and ending the fight.

***

A victory. A narrow one, but still a victory. It got even more squeaky bum time when I rolled for Elara's injury and she died. However, Five Leagues from the Borderlands has a range of one time bonuses you can use, and so I used up my 'Lucky Break' and was able to ignore that roll. I am going to have to do something about her survivability and lack of caution.

I gained 3 Adventure Points for defeating some Super Mutants, and, using the Into the Wasteland rules for loot, I kept half of the remaining searchable counters on the board - gaining the Super Mutant's bolt-action pipe-rifle and board, and a minigun to go with the Flip Lighter Elara found in the dirt.

The 'News Travels' stage of the turn brought up a quest (the Five Leagues sort, not the Fallout sort) which I would need to travel to in the next two turns. It might make sense to kill two birds with one stone and combine this with the second stage of the Revenge quest cabrd in my hunt for Indy.

One thing that is certain is that that I've decided that the final part of the Revenge quest must involve Super Mutants and their leader Ravage. To make that happen, I might need to deliberately attack their camp in the Rad Wastes.

Which should be fun.

Fallout Sandbox: The Ant-enna

Elara stepped out, blinking  into the dazzling light, her eyes adjusting to it's tone, so different to that created by the luminescent strips of the vault.

She gazed down upon the wide open space before her and her head span. Of course she knew that the surface would have open skies and and no walls, but knowing and comprehending were very different.

She had lived her entire life in the close confines of the vault and now the whole world lay in front of her.

The intercom of her pipboy buzzed into life with the crackling voice of the Overseer, "Elara, if you head to the southeast you'll find the antenna. It should be easy to spot."

Elara could see the dish. It was easy to spot. However, the familiar shapes moving around its base might mean getting to it was not so easy.

"Damn. I knew ants live in colonies."

Welcome back to the second part of my sandbox campaign for Fallout Wasteland Warfare.

Having cleared several intrusive pests from the top level of the vault, Elara Vance (Sole Survivor: Day One) must now venture out onto the surface to repair the faulty antenna which had caused the vault door to open.

She is equipped with her trusty 10mm pistol, a pair of binoculars and is wearing a damaged hazmat suit, which given the nature of the mission, might prove crucial.

She also has a couple of items she picked up in the vault that might be worth something to someone at a later date. I intend to use items with a caps value as a method of levelling up, purchasing items and hiring companions. However, narratively, none of that made sense right now.

Unfortunately for Elara; there is a giant ant colony living around the base of the antenna.

I'm using the Radroach Swarm unit card to represent the ants and I've put four of them in play as it's a roughly equivalent caps cost to Elara.

I randomised the location of their starting points and placed three searchables should Elara feel like getting distracted, although that seems unlikely.

I decided to put a six turn limit on this mission based on the fact that my adventure in the vault dragged a bit due to having no pressure to keep moving. Also, it made sense that Elara would want to get the job done quickly and get back home.

Turn 1

As Elara surveyed the area she had a creeping feeling she was being watched. Glancing round, she couldn't spot anybody, but if there was a hidden observer, she knew that her bright yellow hazmat suit would make her easy to spot.

Turning back to the problem at hand, she saw that she had three viable routes to take. To the left there were pools of liquid that her pipboy was telling were radioactive, and through the ruined building was direct, but she wouldn't have clear lines of fire on the ants that were sure to swarm at her.

The third option, the road, seemed the wisest. The ants would surely still attack her, but at least she'd see them coming.

Sure enough, a six-legged shape came scuttling towards her as she moved past the side of the building, its pincer clacking together feverishly.

I should note that during the vault mission I was incorrectly using the armour values printed on the Sole Survivor: Day One card, which were changed in an update some time ago. To be honest, Elara would have died in her first encounter with a Feral Ghoul if I hadn't, so I look at it as the tutorial mission. In this fight, she only has the hazmat suit, which is convenient as the Giant Ants (Radroaches) only do radiation damage.

Turn 2

Elara reeled backwards as the creature scurried at her, desperately trying to bring her pistol to bear.

Her first shot went wide echoing through the silent landscape, giving the impression of distant gunfire and almost certainly alerting the rest of the colony.

Elara's second shot found it's mark, blasting the ant's head from its body, but as it slumped to the ground she looked up towards the ruins in horror.

The creeping forms of ants were crawling all over the rubble and rushing directly for her.

Turn 3

The eeire quiet of the creatures was only matched by that of her environment and, for a moment, the world seemed almost frozen.

Then they were on her, claws and manbiles scratching and scraping, Elara trying desperately to get a clear shot, but to no avail.

In retrospect, it would have made sense to adjust the Radroach Swarm Bite attack to be a single attack worth 2 damage, rather than 2 weaker attacks. In not sure it would have made any difference, but these are so ngle creatures, not swarms.

Turn 4

In the midst of her struggle, Elara saw that a neutral party had entered the battlefield. Has this been the hidden observer? Would he help her?

Before she could call out to him, the man had clearly seen danger she was in and started to withdraw. Whatever he wanted, he wasn't willing to risk the ants for it.

Even though Elara didn't interact with the stranger, I drew the card to reveal a Wandering Merchant. This Scavenger had clearly been drawn by the prospect of loot. He clearly thought better of it as the random movement on turn five took him back off the table.

With no help in sight, Elara decided to make a break for it. She may get overrun by these things, but she had to complete her mission to protect everyone in the vault from suffering a similar fate.

She could feel sharp bites in her calves as she ran from the ants towards the antenna, but to her horror, more of the creatures scuttled at her from that direction.

Surrounded, Elara began to realise with a heavy heart that she wasn't going to make it back to the vault.

Even if she fixed the antenna, there were just too many ants.

She was going to die here.

Turn 5

Whether it was the weight of this realisation, the emanations from the clearly radioactive pool to her right or the unbearable heat of trying to run and fight in a hazmat suit, Elara felt sluggish and slowed.

Once again, she dragged herself forwards, using every ounce of her strength to try to reach her goal. All the while, giant ants nipping at her heels.

Turn 6

As she scrambled to the antenna and flipped open the circuit box she found that one of the wires had corroded beyond use. Aware of the ants closing in behind her, she quickly replaced the wire with one she'd pulled from the desk fan and in lieu of a soldering iron, used Wonderglue to fix it in place. 

As the ants reached her, she pulled the switch...

"Elara? Elara? Are you there? The system is working, at least partially. Well done...There's a problem, though. The door still won't close because the system is saying that a vault dweller is outside and alive. That's you...Elara, please respond...Elara, I'm sorry. We can't risk the radiation and those creatures you reported. I need to purge you from our system so that the doors can close...Vault 26 appreciats your sacrifice...I'm sorry Elara."

***

Yep, she failed the skill test to fix the antenna and then was brought down by the ants. A catastrophic failure.

Don't worry. She's not dead, and I'm not just going to reload a previous save point and play through the mission again. If the Courier can survive being shot and buried alive, Elara can get out of this scrape, but there will be a cost.

More details next time.

Dressing Appropriately

Much as I like the 3d printed model I began with, when the heroine of my new solo campaign of Fallout Wasteland Warfare picked up a damaged hazmat suit, I knew I wanted to represent this in the tabletop.

Whilst Modiphius do have a hazmat suit available in their Institute core set, having not played Fallout 4, I currently have no interest in that collecting that faction.

Fortunately, I did have an alternative solution available.

As I've mentioned previously, I've had a copy of Star Saga from Mantic Games kicking around that I'd picked up cheap a couple of years ago, and I've already painted up the terrain from to furnish my vault.

The models are a little bit chunkier than the Modiphius Fallout range, but not offensively so, and I have already stated my intention to use some of them to supplement my Fallout collection where appropriate.

I had already thought about using the lab technician models from the game as proxy Enclave Scientists, and when I picked up the damaged hazmat suit, the thought struck me that, with the right paint job, the female lab technician could also work as Elara in my campaign.

I gave the model a hand swap to give her a pistol and put a hammer head on the stick that the lab technician was holding to make it look like a recognisable weapon.

Although not massively similar to the radiation suit that turns up in Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, the lab technician is not a million miles away from the prototype hazmat suit in Fallout 4, just with the helmet down.

There are versions of this suit that are different colours, but I definitely wanted this one to be bright yellow to at least evoke the Fallout 3 suit.

Painting was fairly straightforward. I began with a Ghoul Grey (Colour Forge's Grey Seer equivalent) undercoat and then dry brushed the model white before hitting the suit with a wash of Cassandora Yellow, which works really well as a yellow speedpaint over white. 

After tidying up where the bits I didn't want yellow, I gave them a coat of Basilicanum Grey contrast paint, which it turns out is a fantastic base for silver, which was learned when I picked out the metal bits of the suit.

A few colourful details on the belt, the weapons and the head were then finished off. I'm least happy with the face and hair, partly because Mantic models tend to have very shallow details in these areas, and so may revisit them.

Whilst I was painting her up, I added a small piece to my collection of post-apocalpyse scatter terrain, by cobbling together a few leftover bits from the Mars Attacks terrain I built for the same purpose years ago.

Here's where I need to be careful, because this is where my Lead Mountain accounting went wrong last year. The terrain pieces were not counted in my tally of unpainted miniatures, and so I need to make sure I only take one model off the Lead Mountain total, despite having painted two things.

It's exciting, isn't it?

Acquired: 6

Painted: 47

Lead Mountain: 721

Fallout: Sandbox - Pest Control

The elevator's speakers crackled back into life to life, repeating the message that had sent the Vault's population into a panic:

“CONTSINMENT BREACHED. UNKOWN LIFEFORMS DETECTED ON UPPER LEVELS.”

The elevator door opens onto the topmost level for the first time in generations.

As Elara stepped into the darkened corridor, Vault alarms continue to blare. She was here because there was no option. If something had entered the Vault, that meant that either the door had been opened or...well...something more catastrophic.

She hoped it was the former.

She had been equipped with a trusty 10mm pistol and tasked with three goals: clear out whatever had entered the Vault, ascertain their means of entrance, and fix it, ensuring the integrity of the Vault.

Elara briefly wondered why she had been chosen. The Overseer has been most insistent it was her.

Yes. I've decided to start a Fallout Wasteland Warfare campaign, and this time, I'm not rooting it in published scenarios (although I may adapt some), I'm being a bit more creative.

I say more creative, but I'm taking the traditional starting point of a character leaving a Vault. I'm not sure where this is heading, but I'm going to be using a variety of tools to come up with ideas and build my world.

For now though, I'm beginning with a very simple scenario. Elara Vance (Sole Survivor - Day One) must clear and unknown number of unknown creatures (the blue tokens) out of the top level of the Vault before heading to inspect the door.

Initially, I had laid out a number of searchables (the orange tokens) to help Elara get equipped, but as the game went on the Event 'deck' (the Vault chart from the Capital expansion) I was using three out several more searchables, and so you'll notice that most of the preset ones disappear towards the end as I didn't want her to be too tooled up.

As soon as Elara stepped out of the elevator, she could make out some movement in the darkness. Drawing her pistol, she advance cautiously.

In the gloom she could make out an imaciated form. Elara called to the figure, which turned and began to lumber in her direction and into the torchlight.

It's withered skin, spuless eyes and absent no's gave the figure a ghoulish appearance. A wave of sympathy wash over Elara. This poor person was clearly a victim of the irradiated wasteland outside, and was clearly a threat to the integrity and wellbeing of the Vault.

She opened fire.

The bullets didn't stop the creature, but they did slow it down as it advanced on Elara, its teeth bared. It made two powerful lunges at her and Elara though she was done for, but somehow she evaded its clutches and managed to pump two 10mm rounds into its skull, dropping it to the floor.

As she looked down on the poor wretch who has clearly once been human, her pipboy gave out the telltale click of radiation. Her suspicions had been correct. The creature was radioactive and she had been exposed to it.

(I actually forgot to apply the radiation damage at this point, but I did remember later. You will spot when.)

Pushing on in her search for more intruders, Elara wandered through rooms filled with equipment she had no clue as to the purpose of. What had Vault-Tec intended for this?

Amongst the debris she came across items that might be helpful should she have to mend or replace elements connected to the Vault door: an electric fan and a tube of Wonderglue.

Elara also stumbled upon an unused packet of Med-X. It looked like the painkillers had been dropped years before, when all the critical supplies were being moved down below.

She hoped she wouldn't need them and could just drop them off in the infirmary.

The eerie stillness was unsettling. These rooms must have been passed through by those first inhabitants of the Vault, who had descended below the Earth turning their backs on everything they knew which was about to be destroyed.

Elara wondered how that had felt, how frightened they must have been to shut themselves away.

She was grateful they had. She owed them her very existence.

Suddenly she heard something behind her.

Spinning around and shining a light into the darkness, Elara was shocked to see a six-legged from scuttling towards her.

She was momentarily baffled. She had seen pictures of these insects, 'ants', in books, but as far as she could remember they were usually tiny.

This one was massive!

(I used the Radroach Swarm profile for the Giant Ant, which is sadly lacking from the game.)

Again she fired, chipping its carapace, and she kept firing as it came on, taking chunks out of it until it stopped moving.

She paused for breath.

Didn't ants live in colonies? That was a worrying thought.

Pressing on, Elara found herself in some sort of crew office or storage room. On the shelves she found a pair of binoculars and a hazmat suit.

Although the hazmat suit was slightly damaged, she reasoned that both items would be more than useful if she were required to venture outside.

A sudden noise out in the corridor brought Elara back to the mission at hand. She needed to clear out the Vault.

Creeping out into darkness, Elara spotted another emaciated figure lurching towards her. Were these things common in the irradiated world? Had they 'survived' since the bombs dropped? Or were people living some sort of life out there?

The lurching figure bearing down on her brought Elara back to her senses. Fortunately this one seemed weaker and slower and seemed to missing limbs.

She opened fire, dropping the creature quickly, more quickly than the last one.

As the echo of the shots faded, Elara realised that the alarms had stopped. Standing in the darkness and silence, she realised that the first part of her mission was over.

As Elara moved towards the final door before the main entrance chamber, the intercom suddenly cracked into life with the distorted voice of Overseer:

"Elara, we've run diagnostics and determined that the fault is with the external sensors. A failsafe has tripped and opened the Vault door. You need to got out to fix them."

She had feared as much.

Reloading her pistol before struggling into the hazmat suit, Elara braced herself for the unknown outside world.

Well, that was fun. I learned a little about not putting too many searchables on the table and that I should also glance through the events table during set up to ensure that they won't unbalance the scenario.

I might also pick up the Into The Wasteland expansion which is designed to enhance solo play.

Anyway, expect more of this.

Furnishing The Future

At the start of the year I revealed a massive increase in the amount of models I still had to paint. A large chunk of this number comes from the Mantic Games sci-fi dungeon crawler Star Saga, which I'd picked up for £15 at a show.

The game is fine, but I had intended to sell it on and so never counted the contents of the game until it occured to me that the terrain that came in the game might look appropriate in a Fallout vault.

And so that's what I've done with it.

The terrain is basically the contents of two of the Mantic Terrain Crates, the Sci-Fi Doors and Sci-Fi Furniture sets.

As ever, these are always a mixed bag as they are robust and well detailed, but are prone to warping which sometimes cannot be fixed with hot water, as was the case with several of these pieces.

However, the doors set is pretty good. Made from hard plastic rather than the rubbery stuff that Terrain Crates usually come in, these are 10 totally useable doors with zero issues.

To save discussing this further, most of what passes for painting on all of these models is a sprayed undercoat of silver followed by a wash of Nuln Oil. Partly this is for expediency and partly to capture the brushed steel/aluminium look from Fallout Vaults.

The tables, crates and gun racks are similarly dull in their presentation, with only a few other details being picked out.

Here's where the warping and mould issues start to kick in. The table legs were sorted out with the hot water trick, although it remains to be seen if this holds.

However, one of the gun racks has a curve in it, which I've straightened out a little, but still isn't fjat as the other one, and one if the boxes is just frankly warped in it's moulding. I've used a knife to trim it down a touch so that it just looks damaged.

I had fun with the computer screens as I was able to use white on black washed with Hexwraith Flame technical paint to create the effect of the monochrome monitors that appear in Fallout.

To be honest, it's these screens that convinced me to use this set of terrain as I knew I could create this effect easily.

The lab equipment is a bit more involved, with books, test tubes, papers and other bits and pieces to pick out. The fluid tanks were painted white and given a coat of Nihilakh Oxide technical paint, before painting this section with gloss varnish to suggest glass.

Sadly, one of the desks is really warped with the desktop sitting at an angle on the drawers and this it a mould issue rather than anything that can be fixed.

This sort of thing is the reason that I probably would avoid picking up any more Mantic Terrain Crates, especially given their price. Having got the whole game massively discounted, I don't mind. But if I'd spent £25 on the Sci-Fi Furniture set to discover three unfixable issues, I'd be somewhat annoyed.

However, I do now have a range of scatter terrain for any Vault-based shenanigans in games of Fallout Wasteland Warfare, and I'm also expecting the new Five Clones From Alpha Complex book to arrive any day, and I feel this terrain will also work well in games of Paranoia.

After painting these 36 pieces of terrain, I still have to decide what to do with the 36 other miniatures from Star Saga. Some of them might find their way into Fallout Wasteland Warfare as proxy Enclave troops, some are almost certainly destined for Alpha Complex as well, and the rest will find themselves drafted into a range of other projects as I see fit.

There is certainly some work to do.

Acquired: 6

Painted: 45

Lead Mountain: 722