Zona Alfa : Test Game

 

So here's a bit of a relic to pull from my archives. This game was played back in December of 2020 between myself and Chris 'The Fabricator' to test out the Zona Alfa rules, one of Osprey's Bluebook series of wargames. I can't say I can provide any sort of comprehensive blow-by-blow of the action on this one, but I can definitely tell you my thoughts and something of a retrospective.

The game is heavily inspired by the Ukranian videogame 'Stalker', which is itself heavily inspired by the film by Andrei Tarkovsky and novel ' Roadside Picnic' by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. The essential premise follows an abandoned zone in eastern europe, in which strange paranormal phenomina occur, the exact origin of this phenomina is dependant on which of the media you are ingesting but it ranges from Aliens to the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster. 

This strange zone is home to mutants, monsters and various factions of illegal artifact hunters from across the world, each vying for control to make their fortunes and also stay under the radar of the Russian/Ukranian army who is auspiciously supposed to be keeping people out of the zone. Its a unique fictional setting that plays on a number of tropes that I'm quite fond of, namely Modern Military confronting the paranormal. More rhethorically it explores fears of atomic disaster in the wake of the crumbling Soviet Union and the turmoil that would follow it.  

As a game its an enjoyable Ultramodern Skirmish shooter, with the Frostgrave/Mordhiem style of campaign progression for your team of Zone explorers.  We played it at 15mm, which is a great scale I think to showcase the loneliness and tension inhereant to the setting, but the game is scale agnostic, and if you've got a collection of 28mm Eastern European terrain its certainly very playable. The book, as is always the case with anything Osprey puts out is good quality, with lots of art and easy refrences throughout. 

Thank you for Reading!

-Your Favorite Madman-