We’re proud to announce that Zone Raiders, a new open-model 28mm Scifi Campaign Skirmish Game is launching our compaign on Kickstarter on Feburary 5th! Take any model you own and form teams of survivors to tackle the challenges of a unique and deadly setting! For more information, read below and keep up to date at www.facebook.com/zoneraiders.

Introduction

Zone Raiders is a fast-paced skirmish game where small groups of hardened survivors battle against each other in an unforgiving post-technological world called the Matroshka. Within an unending world of inscrutable science, radiation storms and machines dedicated to exterminating life, players create narrative stories and rewarding tactical gameplay in an open-model skirmish ruleset.

Distinct in our design is an emphasis on mobility, vertical space, and accomplishing asymmetrical objectives before escaping to safety. Your tactical decisions and smart positioning will decide every encounter with the enemy. The world itself is lethal, but can you adapt your strategy, characters and exotic weapons to meet the challenge?

Why play Zone Raiders?

Combining inspirations from small-scale tabletop wargames, campaign skirmish games, RPGs and tactical turn-based video games, Zone Raiders is a fusion of what we love best about all of these.

We wanted to strike the right chord between tactical depth of play, narrative campaigns and character development along with a commitment to streamlined rules while maintaining sophistication. Combined with a stunningly alien scifi setting that is vast enough to encompass many themes as a player’s imagination can conjure, it’s a game meant to scratch an itch we’ve felt for ages.

Who are we?

Zone Raiders is a labor of love by a very small group who adore tabletop games headed by indie game designer Tony Xiao. Veterans of the game industry, top artists and model painters have collaborated to try and bring the experience we’ve always wanted to life. We wanted to explore new scifi offerings in the campaign skirmish genre, as well as to bring in new players with rich cooperative play. Zone Raiders is our way of doing just that.

Often, the need to drive a business around a game results in decisions that compromise part of the player experience. We want to get away from this, and simply deliver the most fun and lasting value for the players to enjoy for years to come as our passion project.

Open-Model System 

We are an Open-Model game, meaning that the rules and setting are designed for what miniatures you may have and adore. There’s numerous fantastic manufacturers out there, and many of us certainly have collections ourselves. Additionally, creating your own group and their stories is all the easier as inspiration can be drawn from all the beautiful models our greater gaming community has created.

Game Features

Zone Raiders has a mixture of elements veteran players will both feel familiar with, and refreshed by. In our ruleset, you will find:

•  Rich, Easy to Learn Rules – Combine easy to learn core gameplay with mechanics that reward tactical positioning, maneuver, and applied firepower to outfox your opponents. Practical rule design ensures that no decision is without appropriate consequence.
•  Tactical Team Skirmish – Build a Raid Team of 6-12 hardened survivors in your quest to endure. Equip each one with different weapons and specialized skills and watch them grow… or die.
•  Dynamic Movement – Feel the mobility of our unique Dynamic Movement system, where your Raiders can be equipped to parkour, wallrun, grapple or powered vault across broken terrain and lethal gaps. Smash opponents off tall ledges, or create forcefield walls to trap them in place!
•  Deadly Environments – Your opponent is not the only threat on the battlefield. Protecting ancient relics and scavenge are automated exterminator machines, psionic mind-scorchers, fierce nano-contaminant storms and radiation fluxes. When the lights vanish or unexpected snipers arise during a Dark Emergence Event, can your forces adapt?
•  Diverse Factions – Command 7 unique factions with engaging playstyles, from the regimented Reclaimers, the agile Technomads, cunning Zone Stalkers to the evolving robotic NthGen, each force is dripping with flavor and tactical options as well as unique researchable doctrines and equipment.
•  Campaign System – Lead your team beyond a single battle, but to victory in a campaign where your strategic decisions have great importance. Will you build up your team’s tech skills, or abort the mission to retrieve an ancient cryopod? Should your team construct a mighty industrial robot, or develop maps of the battleground for a tactical edge?
•  Asymmetric Missions – Winning a battle isn’t the same as winning a war. Players can elect  different goals during a mission, from capturing prisoners to hacking an automated train. Perhaps it’s worth it to cut your losses during a failed mission, or even change objectives mid game as a new, more valuable prize is discovered!
•  Exotic Equipment – Featuring over 100 different types of weapons, armor and survival gear, you will have numerous options on how to equip and defeat your foes.
•  Merciless AI Enemies – The Immunocytes are merciless machines that are anathema to all intelligent life. Destroy or outmaneuver their AI-controlled agents during battle, or perhaps even trick them to tie up your opponents!
•  Cooperative Play System – Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Join forces with other players to take on thrilling Cooperative Missions, where you must employ speed and stealth to defeat overwhelming numbers of AI foes to accomplish cinematic objectives as either single missions or campaign play.

Zone Raiders Sample Pages

Take a quick look into the rulebook with several sample pages, full of art, fluff and rules!

Why launch a Kickstarter?

This is the game we wanted to always play, and Kickstarter offers us the chance to connect with the rest of you. Together, we can bring out Zone Raiders in physical form and tell the tale of our characters and their quest for survival in the world of the Post-Singularity. With your help, this is your game, and your story.

*(Photographed models care of our friends at Hasslefree Miniatures, Miniature 13, Reaper Miniatures, Puppetswar, Spiral Arm Studios, Icarus Miniatures and RN Estudio. Painted by Tony Xiao)

For more information, check out www.zoneraiders.com and our group at www.facebook.com/zoneraiders/