Have you ever wanted to play a campaign where your chosen Fallout characters wander the wasteland and run into random creatures and enemies while trying to scavenge a living? If so, then Into the Wasteland is a rules supplement that you’ll likely be interested in.
This supplement is available both digitally (which includes digital cards for you to print) and a physical copy which has physical cards as well. I purchased the physical version and so the pictures below come from that.
Before I jump in and talk about the contents of Into the Wasteland, I want to preface my review by saying you will enjoy this supplement more if you have a deep and diverse collection of miniatures and terrain. What you will face in a scenario is randomized and as you might expect, the smaller of a collection you have, the less randomness you will see. The battlefields are made up of 1×1 squares and you can get some unusual shapes like a battlefield in the shape of the letter Z. While having some 1 foot by 1 foot tiles would certainly make this easier, you don’t necessarily have to them to play. You may end up needing to put a border on the battlefield or use terrain creatively to create those borders. The larger terrain collection you have, the easier this will be. A little bit of creativity and prep work will go a long with playing Into the Wasteland and I think it is meant for people who have a medium to large sized collection.
Into the Wasteland provides rules to do the following: Generate a random battlefield shape and size. Generate a random objective for your scenario. Generate the type of environment (city, rural area, coastline, etc.). Generate random enemies, including some that stay hidden until you approach them. There is an emphasis on creatures in this supplement and there are rules for creatures that only recently (as of early 2023) received a miniature. So a small bonus to buying this supplement is you get the item, AI, and stat cards for creatures like Yao Gai, Swan, and Deathclaw Matriarchs.
There are also rules for determining behavior and the starting location for opposing forces. Each unit may have a different AI such as roaming, protective, hunting, or fleeing and it is easy to generate a variety of enemies on a given map.
One thing that was a little surprising is that there are suggestions for what types of items you might find in a particular environment (as well as which ones would likely not be found there) but you’re otherwise on your own for picking what cards to include for a specific scenario. As a result, I would recommend using Astoundingly Awesome Tales alongside Into the Wasteland since it provides ideas for what items could be found in various environments.
There is also guidance on how you can use these randomly generated scenarios in settlement mode. While you don’t get a caps reward like most other scenarios to buy new units or equipment, instead, you can use the scavenge objective and keep whatever items you can grab as part of a scenario. This seems like a fun and thematic way to handle that part of settlement mode to me and is a bit more thematic than earning a set number of caps for a particular outcome.
The typical Fallout Wasteland Warfare AI is tweaked in Into the Wasteland in an interesting way. Since you have a lot of creatures or roaming enemies like Raiders and Super Mutants, this supplement has rules for natural behavior that creatures can follow. They can break out of this AI under certain circumstances but in general, there is AI for grazing for generally passive creatures as well stalking and hunting AI for dangerous creatures like a Deathclaw. Certain actions like being shot at or charged in close combat can change whether an enemy is following their natural behavior or are trying to defend themselves so this does add a little more complexity to the AI system but it seems manageable and it should give your games extra narrative flavor. It looks like it will work like the video games which is always a good thing.
Another addition worth noting is the legendary creatures which are especially dangerous and may show up in a given scenario. There cards and stats for such creatures as the Nukalurk Queen and a Yao Guai. While many threats in Into the Wasteland are mundane like molerats and radroaches, when a legendary creature shows up, you’ll certainly want to be cautious in taking them on.
Into the Wasteland closes out with a campaign using the random scenario generation system. The story hook is that The Institute has raided your town and made off with some captives and you’re trying to hunt them down. What’s interesting is that models that are removed as a casualty lose their items (unless you recover them before the end of a scenario) and you start off with extra equipment other than whatever default items a unit has. These rules sound like great additions to campaign rules and will make earning items on the battlefield feel good. Interestingly, if you get wiped out in a scenario, its game over as well so the stakes are higher than usual for your typical Fallout scenario.
The campaign consists of playing either four random scenarios using the Into the Wasteland cards or semi-random ones provided in the book (the enemies are the main thing that’s randomized and not the map layout). And then the final scenario focuses on you assaulting the Institute base and freeing the captives. It sounds like a good setup for a campaign and I look forward to playing it in the future. It seems like something that would have a fair bit of replay value too, assuming you have plenty of enemies available for random generation.
So that is the supplement itself but there are also cards included. Many of the cards provide either stats for new creatures, behavior for said creatures, or help you generate the shape and type of battlefield as shown previously. The item cards all are “equipped” by the creatures so there isn’t a lot of new cards that you’d use in other types of Fallout games. As you might have noticed from previous pictures, these cards have to be punched out. I’ve seen complaints about previous cards getting damaged during this process but I didn’t have any trouble and the cards are overall fine in quality compared to the previous releases. It is probably worth getting some sleeves for these cards because the edges of them are not smooth like a typical card is. Outside of that, I can’t think of any other potential trouble these cards might pose and its nice to get the cards alongside the rules too.
All in all, I think Into the Wasteland is an impressive looking system that expands the boundaries of Fallout Wasteland Warfare nicely. The new campaign rules and randomly generated scenarios look great and as long as they’re balanced, they should provide lots of fun for Fallout fans. As I alluded to in the beginning, this supplement is not ideal for newer players as it requires a larger collection of miniatures and terrain but outside of that, if you’re interested in campaign play this is an excellent purchase.
Kuribo's Painting 
That’s really interesting! Not a fallout player but always on the lookout for interesting things to adapt to my games and the odd shaped boards and AI for different types of creatures are super cool. I could see picking this up even if you don’t play the game
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Same here!
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I’m glad you found it interesting, Nic! I would have to agree that the supplement could give you ideas for homebrewing rules for other systems. I don’t know that I said it directly in the review but this supplement offers the kind of options that every gamer wants for their chosen game(s) which is always a good thing.
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I grabbed this as part of a recent Humble Bundle sale in hopes I can use parts of it for helping create some home brew rule modifications for other games I intend to play. The price was too good to resist. Thanks for post8ng the review to help me better understand it.
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I remember the sale and I’m glad to hear it. Someone creative such as yourself could take some of the ideas here and apply them to other games for sure. You’re welcome and thank you for giving it a read!
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Great review Jeff, and it sounds excellent, with something for everyone, I especially like the random monsters, as I’ve been doing that in my own games for many years now.
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Thanks for giving it a read, Dave and I would have to agree on random monsters being a good thing. Its rare to see products that seem like a winner all around but this is one of those rare cases. Now I just need to get to a position to actually play this. That’s the part that takes a lot of time and work! 🙂
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The random monsters reminds me of Frostgrave, where you often want to have a variety of minis to cover them. Though you could just place a Lego brick on the board and say “That’s a Troll!”, if you wanted to.
The random shaped boards is interesting to me. I think most skirmish games use a 3×3 board and off you go. But the odd shapes, made me envision a setting where there is a great wall blocking a side, or maybe that’s a beach cliff, or perhaps they are in the bottom of a ravine? Lots of possibilities to explain why the characters can’t move off the sides of a non-square map.
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That is cool to hear that Frostgrave is similar. And you’re absolutely right on using a stand-in for a miniature you don’t have. I can’t do it because I’m a snob and demand well-painted miniatures and terrain only but you can play a lot more games if you aren’t like me!
I really like your ideas for the strange battlefield shapes. From what I’ve seen, people generally don’t try to come up with a strong narrative reason for the shapes but I think it is a great idea to do so. I know that would be my preference when I get around to playing this in a year or two or three.
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Frostgrave is one of the few skirmish games I’ve actually played, I imagine there are lots out there that probably have similar rules. Though I know most big game companies aren’t keen on miniature agnostic rules! 😉
Yea, I prefer to have good minis for our games. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t delved into Stargrave yet, because I still need to get stuff painted and some terrain done. At
least I know that I like Frostgrave already, so I doubt Stargrave will be a disappointment. Even if it was, I’ll use those SciFi minis for something else.
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I think Frostgrave has “inspired” a lot of other skirmish games too though I haven’t played that many myself either so what do I know!
I thought you might think the same on good minis being a requirement for gaming. I would be willing to bet that you will enjoy Stargrave then. And now you’ve got me wondering when you’ll be painting some more Sci-Fi stuff for the game! 🙂
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Consults magic 8-ball “Will Brian be painting any SciFi stuff?”. “Too early to tell!”. Haha! I’m getting close to meeting my goals for Fantasy minis.
After that, I imagine more SciFi minis and/or Blood Bowl will be in the works.
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Of course, with a Magic 8-Ball you can always shake it again for a different result! 😉 In all seriousness, that sounds good. Get your goal done and then you can go in whatever direction you want!
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With some if those shapes of the battlefield, use your containers and do a non-random junkyard battle.
Interesting concepts in this supplement.
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That is a good point! Hopefully that will motivate me to get even more of those done because I’m pretty sure I should have about 10-20 shipping containers in my collection to do everything I want with them. I don’t necessarily look forward to making that many of them though at the same time.
I would guess that a supplement like this for Battle Companies would be pretty popular in MESBG. With that said, I don’t think it will ever happen unfortunately.
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Meant to ask – anything from Warhammer Fest strike your fancy?
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That’s a great question! I might just discuss it in my next update. Not sure if I have time to get one finished today but I think its likely I’ll post something by tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest.
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Enjoyed the review, Jeff! 🙂 Even though I don’t play Fallout it all made sense! It’ll be interesting reading how you get on when you try a campaign!
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I always try to make these things easy to understand to a lay person or maybe someone just getting into the game so that is always great to hear, John! I need to get back to painting up Fallout so I can get myself in a position to try Into The Wasteland for sure.
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Nice review. I have all of the one Fallout game under my belt but I think the setting is very suitable for a campaign (which is just what the video game probably is; lots of FPS fit that. 😀
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Thank you, Stew. You’re on your way to becoming a Fallout pro! 😉 While the game looks like an FPS and shooting a gun feels similar in the video games, Fallout is a bit more like an RPG where your level and weapon stats matter more than reflexes do. I think that plays into the campaign system well like you wisely point out.
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Great review mate.
Sounds like a good addition to the Fallout family.
I’m determined to resist and stick to playing it on the PC!😉
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Thanks for giving it a read, mate! It sounds like I better redouble my efforts and find some more Fallout stuff to tempt you then 😉
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Nice writeup! If I had someone I liked who was local and keen I’d get into it. As it stands, I’ll just have to be like TSM and keep my Falling-outs mostly Electronic, with maybe a bit of flavour added to something like Xenos Rampant or that “Stalker” Osprey game…
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Cheers, mate! I totally understand that. Its not possible to play all the games, even if we want to. You can always dip into the minis and use what you like in a Stalker game as well.
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I’d be tempted to, but they’re not cheap (being licenced) or in HIPS, and the ones I’d most be interested in like Power Armour and Super Mutants are those least likely to be discounted.. 😮
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Super Mutants are all pretty old and in resin but… here is the first HIPS release in Fallout and look what it happens to be: https://modiphius.us/collections/fallout-wasteland-warfare/products/fallout-wasteland-warfare-brotherhood-of-steel-heavy-armor-t45.
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