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Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster Unboxing

9 Minute Read
Apr 15 2013

Studio McVey and Coolminiornot’s joint venture: Sedition Wars, Battle for Alabaster has been out for general sale for awhile now.  Let’s find out what’s in the box.


Like so many gamers, I ended up backing this project on Kickstarter.  If you read BoLS often enough you might recall that I already had an interest in Studio McVey and Coolminiornot.  Sedition Wars began several years back with just a couple of cool sci-fi human characters.  While I definitely found these human soldiers of the Vanguard very interesting, it was The Strain, who started to show up a bit later, that really intrigued me. I’d never seen anyone go the bio-horror route in a minis game before. I kept my eyes peeled to see where it would all end up going. And that brings us to where we are now. 

Here is what you’ll find when you open up Battle for Alabaster.

The game comes with five different reversible map boards.

And two single-sided counter sheets.

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The rules are nearly 60 pages long.  But that makes sense since this is really more of a minis game than a board game.  In fact if all the units had their profiles listed in the book rather than on stat-cards, it probably would have ended up being closer to 80.

Here’s another picture of the rules.

And here are those stat cards I was just talking about.

 Now we finally get to the important part: the minis.  Shown here are all the minis from a base game of Sedition Wars. This game delivers a lot for its $89.99 msrp.

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One of the base game upgrades unlocked by the Kickstarter  campaign were these cool scenic bases.

You can snap these colored discs onto the bottom of them to track in game effects like shields and infection level.

These Samaritans here are the basic human troops for the game.  That beefy looking fellow on the upper right is a Reaver.  You’ll be equipping him with thet really big gun on the left in the image below.  The ladies to his left can be equipped with special weapons like the Fusion Lance and Bouncer MPGL(also shown below) or with the standard Sabre Kinesis Carbine; aka nifty space rifle.

I love these weapons.

Our first human character is Operator Akosha Nama.  She’s the team sniper.  Oh… you figured that out already.  She’s also mostly synthetic with just a flesh and blood brain left to qualify her as human. This turns her into a real terror during the strain player’s turn since those artificially enhanced reflexes let her unleash multiple shots against advancing enemies.

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Barker Zhosa is the only human hero in Battle for Alabaster with two different weapon loadouts.  You can send him into battle armed with the Azriel Heavy Fusion Lance, or the Lucifer Plasma Thrower.  The choice is a familiar one for a heavy weapon guy: a gun with blasts for lots of troops, or heavy damage to bring down something big.  If it makes choosing any easier, the Fusion Lance also shoots through walls.

Corpsman Morgan Vade here is the medic.  He does the usual Medic-y stuff like heal troopers, keep their nanospore infections under control, and shoot them in the head if they try to turn into Strain on him.

The last human member of team Vanguard is captain Kara Black.  She’s really best suited for large engagements due to her high point cost.  The reason for the high price tag is all the tactics counters she gives her force. Tactics counters are a strategic resource that lets the Vanguard troops do extra cool stuff.

The last and most points expensive member of team Vanguard is Hurley.  Basically a super computer with a nice gun, this guy gives you extra tactics counters, helps friendlies, and shoots the crap out of things.  He can also spawn three types of drones (represented by counters) that offer further help to your troops.  Perhaps the coolest thing about Hurley is his artificial nature.  Being a robot means he’s immune to Strain infection.  And as you’ll soon see, that’s a really big deal.

Here’s our first close up of one of the uglies.  Phase 1 Necro Forms like these are poor fighters.  But they are pretty good at infecting things.  And if you kill them they spew out a nice cloud of nano spores that will chase the Vanguard around trying to infect them or maybe heal a higher level Strain or evolve them into something nastier.  While all Strain can make a melee attack that will infect their victims, only these little guys spawn a spore cloud when they die.
 
 Here’s another Phase 1 sculpt.  It has the same rules as the guy above.
And another Phase 1 sculpt.

Phase 2 Strain like this Stalker here can actually fight ok.  If you couldn’t guess from that crazy hook hand of his, melee is where you want him.


If you can get enough nano spore going, you can upgrade the Stalker to the Phase 3 Scythe Witch here.  Or you can just buy her with army points as usual.  This nimble lass can jump around and hack things up with a flurry of blows.


The Quasimodo here is another Phase 2 exo form.  That gun he’s integrated into his back can do a little damage and maybe even melt a few targets at once. But he’ll mostly be using it to launch nearby nano spore counters at his foes.

The Quasimodo can be evolved into the monstrous quadrupedal Phase 3 Brimstone.  Or, again, you can just pay for him with army points.  That gun imbedded in his chest can shoot a beam that will hit all models along the same line as his target.

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Now it’s onto one of the really big dudes.  The Grendlr here is our first “meta-form.”  He can take control of Vanguard models under the right circumstances, spew nano spores at will, and eat guys whole – spitting them back out later as strain models.  To make things worse he’s just as hard to kill as he looks.  He even has a pretty decent gun stuck in his head.  All that and he’s still only a Phase 4.  In this game the Strain go all the way up to 5.

But wait – something’s missing from the picture above.  This guy’s supposed to have a big ol’ frikkin’ tongue.  I didn’t find any tongue in my Sedition Wars.


I was also warned of another problem with the Grendlr through a Kickstarter update.  Apparently this guys two halves weren’t going to connect properly.  This picture illustrates the problem.  But I was also given a solution: soak the pieces in hot water before assembling them. 



As you can see he turned out looking pretty sharp.  The water trick worked and I got my missing tongue after emailing a parts request to Coolminiornot.  Unfortunately it took two emails and about three weeks to get the tongue. My desire for a resolution on this issue put a pretty big delay on this article’s posting. Anyway the folks at CMON have assured me that delays on missing piece requests shouldn’t be an issue anymore. While the delay on my piece was definitely a nuisance, I’ve had other companies take longer and need more emails sent their way to get me missing pieces. And this guy didn’t actually need his tongue to be playable – although he just doesn’t look right without it. As for the problem with the torso, at least it was brought to my attention along with instructions on how to deal with it.  Dipping a part in hot water is far from the most annoying thing I’ve had to deal with to get a mini assembled.

Moving on, here’s a close up of some of the cool detail on the Grendlr.

And his arms too.

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Our last mini is the armored Cthonian.  The game’s only Phase 5 exo form – this guy does it all.  His ranged arsenal includes a Dark Matter Cannon that hits like a truck, and a Vector Launcher that can infect multiple targets at once. He’s extremely hard to kill and regenerates just to rub it in a little.  This is what happens when the a Strain outbreak goes unchecked.
I really like these minis. I’ve done my best to capture all that great detail with my camera. Hopefully it shows through. The only downside I can see is that they do have their share of mold lines – par for the course on anything using this type of plastic apparently. I’ve accepted that cleaning mold lines is an inescapable part of this hobby, so it’s not something that really bothers me anymore.

So how does the game play?  Well, the combat system is fairly simple.  To make an attack, you roll 3d6 and add it to your weapon’s MOD value.  If the number exceeds the target’s defense value you hit.  There’s no armor value; thick armor and fast reflexes are both folded into the same stat.  The game also has an exploding D6 mechanic.  That means any sixes rolled while attacking will grant additional rolls. But you only get one re-roll – no six after six after six after… I think you get it. This can make it a little easier to hit those agile Scythe Witches or heavily armored Cthonians.  Sixes are also key to another concept in Sedition Wars: Staging.  Each model’s weapon has a staging value.  You multiply a weapon’s staging value by the number of sixes you roll, and add that number to the damage you deal.  All weapons deal a fixed amount of damage.  For example, a Sabre Kinesis Carbine has a damage of 5 and a staging of 2.  So if a Samaritan makes a successful attack with one of these weapons rolling two 6’s in the process then that attack will deal 9 damage.

The two factions included have a very different play style. The Vanguard want to kill everything as fast as they can, using their Tactics Counters to help them do it. The Strain player can attack the Vanguard directly, or use their more insidious nano-spores to infect and herd.

The rules included in the game have 9 different scenarios you can try.  With different tile arrangements, objectives, and points values, each scenario is different.  In addition to trying to secure your objectives, you’ll also have strategic points to fight over. The Vanguard will want to secure things like Auto-Docs to help cure their infections while the Strain player goes for things like Gestation Vents. And of course you get twice the bang for your buck since you and a buddy can swap sides and try the Strain and Vanguard for both missions.


~ So while a few issues cropped up, I’m still a happy Kickstarter backer. If you want to see some painted minis or just learn more, go to Coolminiornot’s Sedition Wars page, or the official Sedition Wars site.

Ben Williams
Author: Ben Williams
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  • Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster Unboxing