Fallout Wasteland Warfare: Commonwealth Expansion Review

At the time of writing, Fallout Wasteland Warfare: Second Edition is slated for release later this year. The upcoming release has propelled me to check out as many of the “First Edition” supplements as I can grab before they go out of print because I really enjoy the first iteration of the game. Since the Commonwealth Expansion may become harder to get in the future, I wanted to review it to share what this supplement contains and provide my opinion on the various parts. Of course, this is just one person’s opinion, but I hope you find it interesting to read all the same.

Before we jump into the contents, I should share a bit about the pricing and what you get. The retail price is $55 US, though it wasn’t hard to get the rules for well under for the past few years. I paid around $33 for mine with free shipping on Amazon. This is a paperback book that also comes with punch out cards for the Commonwealth Wave of Fallout miniatures. Essentially, you are buying the rules for the Railroad, Children of Atom, Gunners, and a few other creatures and robots. Of course, there is a lot more stuff contained in the book so let’s take a closer look.

When you first open the book, you might expect some artwork or beautiful photography of miniatures and a table of contents, but instead, there are actually a list of Achievements. More games are doing this these days and I’m generally really supportive of achievements as its fun to have goals to strive for. The Fallout Achievements can be used for bragging rights or they can provide a nominal Settlement Mode reward to whoever completes them. Obviously, its another thing to keep track of in a given game but I think it was a nice bonus for Modiphius to provide. I’m not sure if I’d use the Achievements in a Settlement campaign but I can certainly see them being fun to use as you work through the content of this book as many achievements unsurprisingly focus on the miniatures released in the Commonwealth wave.

After a brief introduction, there are new rules for scenery and how players can interact with them. There is a unique rule for each piece of terrain that Modiphius makes, including the objective markers, and most provide a benefit of some kind. When Fallout first launched, I’m pretty sure some of the terrain came with cards that provide rules but this is much more thought out and everything looks pretty flavorful as well. The terrain rules would be something that would be great to make copies of as you probably won’t want to have to reference this supplement repeatedly in a given game. There’s also two pages of more detailed rules for cars (which can explode!), radiation barrels, and turrets. Having more detailed rules for these makes sense and again, everything looks thematic. Of course, like anything else in Wasteland Warfare, you can use these or not. They’re something that look fun and easy to drop into a game and test out how you feel about the new rules.

To close out this section, there is a brief gallery of the terrain you can buy from Modiphius. I wouldn’t have minded if they named each piece of terrain here for educational purposes but otherwise, they’re nice images that give you a closer look at some things you might want to buy and paint in the future.

Next up are some new regional rules. These were first introduced in Astoundingly Awesome Tales #1, which I have already reviewed, if you’re interested. The regional rules add a thematic rule that might benefit or harm you and they provide some recommended cards for the setting. You can also can roll a dice to randomly pick a card instead of just drawing from a deck. I really like the idea of themed event, item, and danger cards when you’re playing a campaign or the setting is unique to a particular battle so these seem like a great inclusion. Between Astoundingly Awesome Tales #1 and this, most terrain settings you might have should be covered as well so I’d say Modiphius was very thorough with these optional rules.

Next up is a miniature gallery that features all of the new releases in the Commonwealth Wave. Just like with the terrain, these are nice quality images that might inspire your painting. There is a checkbox next to each miniature if you want to track your collection by writing in your supplement as well.

Another interesting inclusion is some assembly tips and painting guides. There are brief painting guides for Dogmeat, a female Settler, Nora, Preston Garvey, Brotherhood of Steel minis from Scribes up to T60 Power Armor, Super Mutants, Mutant Hounds, and finally, Enslaved Tech. Each mini has a list of paints used in the photos and not a detailed description of painting techniques. If you’re newer to the hobby, then you may get some value out of these. If you’re more experienced or confident in your painting, then it is less likely. It was interesting that Modiphius chose to focus on models not covered in this supplement and featured ones released early on in the game’s life. I wonder if they did this because they figured many people would end up wanting these minis in their collection, which is probably true, but it also potentially limits the usefulness of the painting guides because unless someone is new to Fallout, there’s a decent chance they’ve already painted some of these “essential” models.

If that wasn’t guides for you, there is a section of strategy guides for the following factions: Raiders, the Institute, Gunner, Railroad, Survivors, Brotherhood of Steel, and Super Mutants. That is a pretty comprehensive list and covers all of the Fallout 4 factions released at the time of Commonwealth’s release pretty much (only robots, creatures, and Children of the Atom are missing). The guides cover who the faction is, an overview of the faction’s strengths, and a brief section on getting started with the faction. One noticeable omission is that the weapons each might typically use is not mentioned at all. So you have to figure out weapons and armor yourself. The actual advice on what to field is pretty simplistic and tends to boil down to buy the Core Set for a faction and then maybe get one or both of the other boxes for that faction depending on your interests. This is somewhat obvious since and for some factions, those three boxes are literally the only options you have. I like the idea of including a strategy guide in this supplement but I think what’s here is a little too simplistic to be helpful. It feels a bit more like an advertisement for adding factions to your collection, instead of gameplay tips that might elevate your play.

That brings us to one of the last sections in the Commonwealth Expansion. There are six scenarios included that are inspired by the new Commonwealth models. The first three is a mini-campaign that revolves around Brahmin (two-headed cows in Fallout) rustling. I really like this idea and my initial expectation was that you’d use the Brahmin miniatures that came out as part of the Commonwealth wave in these scenarios. That is surprisingly not at all the case. You actually represent them with tokens because there are up to 8 Brahmin potentially in a given scenario. That would require four Brahmin boxes and you’d need to paint the two sculpts four times each to use them in the scenarios, which is pretty daunting, so I can see why they did not require the actual models. I think the models would make for a more visually striking game but even without them, I’m definitely interested in trying this campaign out in the future as it sounds like something unique and fun for Wasteland Warfare.

The next scenario has two sides trying to find information in Swan’s pond before their opponent manage to do the same thing. Swan is a hidden character in Fallout who is a fearsome Super Mutant. I never actually found Swan in Fallout 4 so this scenario doesn’t grab me straight away, though the model is certainly impressive. The Don’t Feed the Swan scenario does look challenging as I’m guessing Swan is pretty tough and can wreak havoc on either side in the scenario which is a fun scenario design.

The Mechanical Menace scenario has two sides stumbling across robots fighting in the Wasteland and essentially picking a robot side. If your robots win the scrum, so do you and the opposite is true if your robots lose. I’d have to try this one out to decide how I feel about it. Its kind of a game within a game which is certainly a unique scenario design as well.

The Shortcut is the final scenario which has a defending player in the middle of the board trying to prevent the other side from crossing the quarry and escaping. The twist is that half of the Defender’s deploy initially and then the rest join later. Once they’ve all deployed, then slain units can start to return too. This also sounds like an interesting one to try, even if the quarry setting seems like one that is a little hard to replicate with terrain.

Finally, there is a card list at the very back of the supplement which is a helpful inclusion. I haven’t mentioned the cards yet because they’re obviously must haves if you want to field any of the Commonwealth units and that’s probably the main reason you’re going to want the Commonwealth expansion. There are 171 cards in total which is certainly a respectable amount. The cards do have to be punched out like some of the previous releases and they’re a bit thinner than the initial card releases so they really benefit from being sleeved. Other than that, the cards are exactly what you’d expect and one of the most useful parts of the supplement.

The good news about the Commonwealth Expansion is that once you purchase it, you can field quite a lot of new miniatures in your games. The book also includes some fun-looking scenarios and other useful additions like new rules for terrain and regional rules to speed up and customize your game prep. These provide plenty of value and make the purchase worth it. Whether you enjoy some of the other sections like the galleries, painting guides, or strategy guides will vary depending on your taste and experience in the hobby. While I can’t say that most of them ended up being as exciting or useful as I thought they might be, they do add some value to the supplement and I applaud Modiphius’s creativity with the Commonwealth Expansion as well. There’s a little something for everyone here and that is not easy to pull off in a rule supplement.