Fallout #3 The Water Treatment Plant

After I did those 2 tutorial games of Fallout over Saturday, I decided to finish the mini-tutorial campaign included in the 2-player starter set. I knocked out a quick and dirty player aid, printed them out and I'm now in the process of painting all 12 minis. They are in various stages of completion.

The last time I played was the Fort Davis scenario way back in March 2019. The next scenario on the list is The Water Treatment Plant.

The Survivors set up in the middle and need to activate the water pumps or the generators to pump 30,000 gallons of water by end of turn 6. The AI Super Mutants need to capture 4 settlers or prevent them from pumping the required amount of water.

Things didn't go well for the Survivors at first. One was down by turn 2. 

The Survivors returned the favour by taking out a Mutant Hound (courtesy of Dogmeat).

Then it was a game of cat and mouse as the Survivors needed to activate the pumps/generators as well as evade the Super Mutants while taking them down (if they could). It was tough because the Survivors had to stay around the center of the table. The Super Mutants like to close in for face-to-face melee, and also that's the way to fulfil their scenario victory condition.

In the end, Dogmeat was the MVP. The human Survivors could hurt the Super Mutants... but not take them down, especially since the Super Mutants closed quickly into melee combat. The Survivors are very weak in melee (naturally). They want to stay at long range, but it's very difficult to do so in this scenario. Maybe I need more walls.

But Dogmeat... man, he can cover distances fast, has a melee of 8 and rolls a lot of effect dice... he basically finished off all the 3 Super Mutants. It didn't help that the AI objective for the Super Mutants was to capture 4 settlers, meaning they would ignore Dogmeat as the Objective Target in favour of the humans.

There was just one last hurdle to Survivor victory as I miscalculated the amount of water needing to be pumped and had the Tech guy run off in the wrong direction!

Thankfully he had better than normal movement and was able to correct his course and the game was won on literally the last die roll on the last turn of the game!

AAR: After teaching 2 games and playing this one... my initial feelings about the game hasn't changed. It's very fun and thematic... hurt by some overly complex rules and those fiddly tokens. Lots and lots and lots of tiny smaller-than-your-little-fingernail-sized tokens. Having the player aid helped a lot. And the BGG forums helped in terms of clarifying the timing of certain effects and their triggers.

And since the 2-player starter contains lots of scenarios, and I've already started to paint the minis, I'll continue playing. I'm just not sure if I want to expand the factions in the starter... or start a new faction (Raiders, anyone?) that can be used for Zona Alfa... or just leave it alone as it is and concentrate (financially and painting-wise) on other games.

The good news is, there are folks interested in continuing to play FOWW. At least three of us in the gaming group own the 2-player starter (including the co-owner of the FLGS). He plans to stock more models to help the game take off. Bad news: I'll be tempted to get more models!