Combat Zone is a 25mm skirmish game of corporate-vs.-gang warfare in the near future. The background storyline is like something lifted from a William Gibson novel: the mega-corporations slowly take control of the Internet, broadcasting services, news media, etc., in an effort to increase their hold on their consumers. As poverty and crime skyrocket (presumably because the corporations are taking in everyone's money -- call it the Wal-Mart Effect, if you like), the corporations decide to create safe havens for their employees, walling off areas of the major cities and protecting them with their own private armies (known as Troopers in the game). Those on the inside live the good life; those on the outside struggle to survive. This struggle has led to the increased militancy of the Gangs, which control the areas outside the corporate havens. The fluff in the CZ rulebook presents them as Robin Hood-esque figures, scraping together what they can and stealing from the corporate barons to feed the people in the streets. If you’ve seen the movies Robocop, Escape from New York, or Soylent Green, you already have some notion of the atmosphere of the game.
As a CZ player, you control a skirmish-level band of one of these two sides (or possibly more -- more on that later). Players command between 5 and 15 combatants (Troopers or Gangers, with individual Heroes mixed in), armed with everything from knives and pistols to anti-tank rockets. Although point-cost army building is possible, the game seems more geared to scenario-driven play, and certainly this provides a greater degree of drive and motivation. In fact, the scenarios can get quite creative; you could possibly have two players controlling squads from rival corporations and a third playing a gang element which decides to exploit the corporate infighting for its own gain.
The basic rules cover everything you need for basic skirmish – small arms, heavy weapons, melee combat, movement, panic & morale, etc. The free online e-zine, Combat Zone Chronicles, has updates for using vehicles, power armor, aliens, and a myriad of other details to keep the game fresh, and being free, it’s considerably more affordable than, say, some other company’s in-house magazine (and I am purposely not mentioning dwarves of any color here!). The boxed set includes thirty plastic minis (15 Gangers, 10 troopers, and 5 robots), dice (4-, 6-, and 8-sided), rules, cardboard walls for terrain, die-cut markers and templates, a beginner’s guide, and record sheets. Not bad for $25, which is what I got the game for from an online retailer.
The minis are a unique “snap-tite” system that could allow you to interchange weapons and whatnot, if you were so inclined; I preferred to glue mine, but that’s a personal choice. The quality of the minis is decent, better than anything I could sculpt, but not quite as elegant as, say, the plastics from Games Workshop. On the other hand, they are cheap and easy to put together and paint up, and you can use any minis you want in the game; I’ve supplemented my Troopers with a squad of Cadian shock troops and my Gangers with a sprue of Catachan jungle troops, both from Games Workshop. I also have some Shockforce minis that I’m painting up to use as Troopers, and am looking at some of Copplestone’s excellent dark-future minis to use as Gangers.
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As with some other game systems, the characters in CZ have Action Points to spend doing stuff – shoot, move, communicate, or take special actions. Higher quality figures have more AP than lower quality figures – for instance, Green figures have 5 AP while an Elite figure has 7 – which challenges the players to plan their tactics accordingly. An action must also be thoroughly completed before another is begun, so you can’t stop a character midstream to change actions; again, this calls for careful tactical planning.
Combat in CZ is fast and fairly simple. In ranged combat, the firing model makes a roll to hit a target, incorporating modifiers based on the usual elements – range, movement, figure quality, morale, and so forth. A successful hit requires a Wound roll, which will tell you if the target is dead, panicked, or routed (I am simplifying things just a bit here, so bear with me). Melee combat is conducted using an opposed dice roll – both players roll dice (again modified for weapon type, troop quality, etc.), and the winner gets to roll a Wound against the loser. Pretty straightforward and fairly quick to resolve. One of the nice features is that the system is balanced enough that even a Green housewife has a chance of taking down an Elite commando – hey, lucky shots happen! This alleviates the problems with some game systems wherein regular troops are rendered worthless because they can’t possibly harm the other player’s Champion, whilst said Champion slaughters a dozen enemies at a time using just a chainsword and pistol.
All in all, the game system could be learned in about an hour. Without painting, you could conceivably play a complete game of CZ on the same day you buy it, which is a wonderful change from some of the more complex systems on the market. There is an expansion booklet of scenarios available, and EM-4 has released three more squads of minis – a heavy-weapons squad for each of the factions, as well as a command squad for the Troopers. At around $5 for 5 minis, it’s an affordable way to grow your games very quickly, without breaking your budget. With the vehicle rules available on the CZC website, you can convert 1/48 or 1/35 scale plastic models for use in the game as well, and your old Space Marines can jump in using the power armor rules.
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-- A squad of Troopers must escort a technician to repair a blown conduit somewhere outside the walls, but they don’t realize that the conduit is in a gang’s back yard.
-- Two rival squads of Troopers (from different corporations) get into a fight, and a host of Ganger’s decides to help them along, the better to loot the bodies afterwards.
-- A group of Gangers sets an ambush for a lost corporate courier, not knowing that there’s a squad of Troopers in the back of that little panel truck.
And so on. It’s really only limited to your imagination and what the players can agree on. All in all, I’d say that this game is a good way to spend an afternoon, and is well worth the money. Enjoy!
Links of interest:
http://www.em4miniatures.com/
http://www.combatzonechronicles.net
http://www.tindictator.com