Wild West Exodus: Unfinished Business Components Preview

I have not as of yet had an opportunity to play Wild West Exodus. I have been reading over the rules in preparation of getting some games in. I may not have a chance to play for a few months however as Iron Painter starts tomorrow. Iron Painter will take precedence over everything but doctor visits, but I am going to try to get at least one Warmachine game each week as I can pick almost any day of the week and have a decent chance of finding someone local to play with. This post is me sharing my initial impressions for the contents of Wild West Exodus before I get too busy to do so.

Warning: this post is on the long side and is mostly me whining about many insignificant details.

The Book

The set came with a mini rule book. This rule book includes the contents of the free pdf available here. There are some differences to the pdf so I will mostly discuss those.

One bonus to the book over the pdf is that the book contains a table of contents. Altogether there are roughly a dozen pages in the print mini rules book that come before the rules presented in the pdf. There is no index. I am uncertain how much that will really matter as the Contents page gives a word or phrase to cover almost every page in the book. There are 64 pages altogether.

The book is printed in graescale with a full colour cover. This is fine for the text portions, but some of the pictures are difficult to clearly make out what is going on. There is a map of the United States at the front of the book that is particularly hard to read as the text on parts of it blend into the background and the tonal values for who controls what regions are similar between a few of the factions. All-in-all, this should not affect the ability to play the game, but some of the extras suffer slightly for this decision.

Content wise, I suspect this mini rule book was taken directly from the big rule book with the references changed to the new page numbers. I do not have the big book to compare it to so I can not confirm this. There are references to things not in the mini rule book such as printable templates being in the back. Most of these references are fine and keep the rules consistent across printings. The one that stuck out to me however was reference to scenarios not found in the mini rule book complete with scenario names and a random generator for playing them. The mini rule book includes three competitive scenarios, but names another eleven narrative scenarios not found in the book. I dearly hope they include these scenarios for download in the future.

I can not speak to the sturdiness of the book. I am a bad judge of such things until I have put a book to the test. It appears to be fine for now. The inner margins are quite spacious without wasting a lot of space. The book should take well to spiral binding if one wanted to do so.

Rules

I have not played yet. There are some things I want to see in action before really commenting on them.

Something that sticks out to me is stats in relation to dice mechanics. There are two ways they are handled. With some stats, higher is better. With others, lower is better. This is easily identifiable because the ones where the lower stat is better are presented as #+ and where higher is better the stat block just has #. A bonus or penalty is applied directly to a stat however. This means that a -2 is a good thing with some rolls, and a detriment to other rolls. Mathematically speaking, they could have gone with one method or the other and keep it consistent across all stats. It probably will not impact someone familiar with the game, but I can see it confusing new players.

The default table size is 4' x 6', and goes to 4' x 8' with larger games. Those sizes feel kind of large to me considering the model count involved compared to other games on the market which tend to use a smaller play area unless discussing games which require a larger model count. On the other hand I like having space to maneuver. I will need to get in some actual games to see how much of the table is actually used. I think the reason for the decision has to do with weapon ranges, but again, without actually playing some games that is just a guess on my part.

Models

The models come in two different materials. They are injection molded polystyrene, and resin. The polystyrene comes on a sprue and is of a quality similar to what is seen out of companies like Wargames Factory. It appears to be a two part mold and has good details.

I have less experience with resin. Most of the resin I have worked with has been what some people call "restic" which I believe might actually be PVC, but I do not know for certain. Both Privateer Press and Mantic games use restic. The other resin I am most familiar with is Games Workshop's Finecast. The WWX resin is better than restic. It is cleaner and retains detail much better. There were no miscasts with the pieces I received, and unlike early Finecast, there are few to no air bubbles. I have seen none upon inspection, but I have not done a thorough cleaning of the models yet so there may be a couple of small ones I missed. The resin is bendable. You can actually bend it back into shape without using a heat source and have it stay there.

Cards

The game uses cards to keep track of the statistics of individual models. The only cards which came with the kickstarter were part of a stretch goal and for models I do not own. I knew this would be the case before the kickstarter arrived, but the decision was made public after the cards would likely have already gone to the printers. The cards the company provides for print are busy and not printer friendly. They will look good if printed on some cardstock with a good printer. I have a cheap inkjet printer which does not work great for this. I personally feel the better option is to type out all of the information from the cards into a document as simple text with maybe a couple of tables and print that out to play. It should prove to be much more readable if printing at home.

One piece of information I wish was on the cards but I could not find was what base size the model is intended to be on. Also, the rule book does not give a breakdown of the cards themselves. All of the information on the cards is talked about in various sections. At no point do the rules state where on the card to look. It is not complicated to find the information if you know what you are looking for, but taking some space in the book to give an overview of a card's anatomy would have been nice.

Bases

WWX uses 1 1/2", 1 3/4", 2 1/4", and 4 1/2" bases. Their bases are shaped like plinths. The base size is unusual in that most games size their bases in metric. I only received bases of the smallest couple of sizes. They come to roughly 31mm and a smidge for the smallest and 45mm for the medium. This is cool if people like to create their own basing. There are a lot of manufacturers out there which design detailed bases in the standard metric sizes and many gamers use those. I doubt any of them are going to design bases in a size that only one game uses unless that game is one of those that sees a lot of play. I do not believe that WWX offers sculpted bases or inserts at this time. I know people to whom this will not matter, and others where it might be a deal breaker so I though it was worth mentioning. The bases are taller than most other bases of a similar width so may be fun to hollow out to do some water effects or anything where you might want a slightly deeper base to work with.

The bases in the kickstarter were loose. This led me to discover that some of the models on their web site list the wrong base sizes. This should not be an issue if buying models individually. It may be worth double checking the base sizes with another source if one were to proxy models for the game before buying in.

Extras

The kickstarter package I received came with a novel, some tokens, some precision measurement widgets, and a blast/spray template. The tokens are a fake brass plastic material. They seem really useful. I will probably brush on some airbrush primer to keep the material exposed in some areas, but be able to paint others so that the text on the markers is readable at a distance. I have not read the novel.

The template is very good. It incorporates a 3", 4", 5" circular template along with two differently shaped spray style templates with measurements for different sized templates on one of the sprays all in one useful tool. The template itself is completely transparent except for lines for the edges of the templates, the name of the game, and the game logo all being in red. This is one of the better templates out there in my opinion for seeing what exactly is underneath it and the exact position of the template. There are little nubs on the underside of the template which I imagine were put in place to help the molding process. These are completely obscured and all but one line up with the points where various lines on the template meet. The exception is one of the nubs is dead center of the circles. Like the other nubs, it is completely clear. It is also underneath the name of the game. I personally would have preferred to not have the name of the game on there, have the nub moved to the top, and colour the nub so it can be used to center the template with precision. Alternatively, the logo of the game could have been centered in that same location instead of placed where it is. This is very minor. In my opinion this particular template is great and seems like it will be a joy to use. It is just shy of what I would have considered the best template for any miniature game both now, and probably well into the future as well.

There are two measurement widgets made of the same clear plastic and red writing as the template. One measures 1", 2" 3", and 4" while the other is 1/2", 1 1/2", 2 1/2", and 3 1/2". I checked them against a metal ruler and they were spot on. I may use these in other games as sometimes it is easier to get precise measurement with a widget than with a tape measure.

One thing I wish was included is some ten-sided dice. The game uses these exclusively. Each player will likely want multiples. Many tabletop gamers own d10s, but they are not all that common among tabletop wargames specifically. Also, most of the gamers that own d10s probably have them in pairs for percentile rolls where one die is the tens place and the other the ones place. What's more, because they are usually seen in pairs chances are they will be mismatched. There are other games out there which use multiple d10s, but unless the player is already in one of those games they probably will not have multiple d10s that match. Again, this is one of those minor touches that could have helped tie the whole kickstarter package together, but is something most people can get rather easily.

Closing

I realize this blog post is full of negativity. The kickstarter I received is unplayable using just the contents of the package. What is missing (dice and stats for models along with appendixes) is fairly easily obtainable. The pieces that would prove difficult to get are all there and in good condition. There are minor missteps. Those missteps add up however. Parts of the contents feel rather clever, and there are parts where it feels like not much consideration was put into those areas. The kickstarter package I received falls down in some of the little details. There is nothing majorly wrong with any of it. These quibbles should not impact the game in the end. I look forward to seeing if the game itself is any good because that is what really matters.