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Sometimes you see a game that looks interesting and you read up on it, watch playthroughs and reviews before forming a solid opinion and buying it. And sometimes you buy it because it looks badass. This was the latter for me. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it. Was it good? Would it be worth the price tag? Well… Wreck and Ruin is a game by the small Glaswegian publisher Dream Big Games, headed up by the friendly Mark McKinnon. A Kickstarter project which leans heavily on Mad Max-inspired vehicular combat, the production is great for their first game and you can see how much love was poured into it.
The aim of the game is to earn victory points by capturing salvage points, important strategic locations in your fight for survival in the wastelands.
Setup
You set up your board according to the number of players then select a faction and a random faction ability from your deck, a great feature that keeps people guessing and adds variety to each unique game. Take a salvage card each and roll a dice to determine the start player, high roller being player one. First player sets out all of their vehicles on their chosen start tile. Take the amount of action points according to the number of players as set out by the rule book and get ready to ram your friends!
Gameplay - Let’s Get Wrecked!
On your turn your goal is to land on a salvage token to claim it. But it's not that simple. You have to remain there uncontested until the end of the next player's turn to win the tile. If you take damage or, more amusingly, get rammed off, you lose the opportunity to take it.
But what else constitutes a turn?
- Resolve any event card that is in play.
- Any “at the start of a turn” cards are declared and resolved in turn order, starting with the current player.
- Spend available AP by taking actions.
- Once all APs are used, check to see if any tokens are still green. Award any that still are and place new tokens.
- Turn any occupied sites to their green side.
- Play passes to the next player in a clockwise manner
Using Action Points
All actions cost 1AP, however some can only be used by a single vehicle twice, it has a 2AP limit. The following actions count towards the 2AP limit: Moving a vehicle, Attack a target within range, Ram an adjacent vehicle, Search a wreck for salvage. So you cannot move the same vehicle twice in one turn.
The following actions do not count towards that limit and can be performed as often as you’d like on a turn: Search the area for salvage, Attempt to repair a wreck, Bring a vehicle back on the board.
It gets interesting when you want to turn as you can’t simply rotate your vehicle and move, you need to pay AP to turn. This is particularly important when it comes to ending your turn as the direction your vehicle is facing dictates its firing arc, armour etc.
JUST TELL ME ABOUT THE ATTACKING
Settle down, youngster, I’m getting there. Combat is very Warhammer-lite. Roll some dice, compare armour and attack etc.
From the rule book, attacking is as follows:
Attacking costs 1AP to attempt, and is resolved as follows:
- The attacker declares who they are targeting
- They roll the number of dice equal to their attack value
- Deduct 1 from the target’s armour if you are shooting from a hex directly in the line behind a target, attacking its rear
- Compare each score individually against the target’s armour value: for each roll which is equal or higher the target takes 1 damage point (DP). Any other result is a miss.
- Any rolls of 6 not only cause 1DP, they also generate a free roll. There is no limit to the number of free rolls a player can make as long as they keep rolling a 6, so one hit has the potential to destroy any vehicle if you’re lucky enough!
Shooting is not the only way to survive in the scorch though, the other option is simply get in your big truck and drive straight into someone. Ramming is one of the best parts of the game because of how it can cause people to careen off in uncertain directions, often slamming into others and causing mass panic.
I won’t go into the how to play aspect of the ramming, suffice to say it’s a ton of fun to pull off. Destroying a vehicle causes it to crash and burn which is resolved by rolling a dice and moving the destroyed vehicle in one of 6 directions.
Damaging brings me to one of the best parts of the production. All of the highly detailed minis contain holes and whenever you take damage, you place a little flame peg into the vehicle to show people its “health”. Orange flame pegs show damage and the final hole will be filled with a black flame, showing that it has been wrecked. It makes assessing the game at a glance very easy.
Components
The miniatures are absolutely gorgeous. All 4 factions are unique and have great little sculpts. The boards, while not being overly flashy, are solid and fit together as well being double sided. The card stock is good and the game also comes in a great lidded tray, keeping everything where it should be. Some of the cards could use a bit of sparkle in their design but nothing that's awful.
Final Thoughts
If you’re into apocalyptic vehicle warfare and don’t mind reading a solid rule book, Wreck and Ruin is a great game. The rule book clocks in at a hefty 28 pages but there are a lot of images to explain various scenarios as well as some nice story pages which really set the scene.
I mentioned earlier that this was a bit Warhammer-lite and that will either turn you on or off to the game. On your first few plays there will be a lot of flicking back and forth in the rulebook but once you’re comfortably set, it just flows, especially with the player guides provided. For the price of this game, you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck!
