BLKOUT review

Progress on new Horizon Wars content is slow and tortuous. Building and painting new minis and terrain for photography takes its time and I'm trying to get some decent playtesting of the missions and campaing in over the next few months to ensure it's as tight as I can make it.Meanwhile, though, as I was painting a lot of minis from Enemy Spotted Studios, I thought I'd give their main game, BLKOUT, a bit of a test drive.

For context, I first bought some ESS minis way back in lockdown. They were nice designs but, actually, just a bit tall for my needs. Also, they were printed minis and the quality, whilst good, couldn't match traditionally cast minis. So I largely put them to one side. Then they Kickstarted Killwager, which sounded a lot like Zero Dark in many ways, so I paid attention again. But Killwager failed to get much traction, despite a solid Kickstarter showing, and I moved on. But ESS also moved on... to BLKOUT.

Now, I'm not sure what the thinking was in ESS or why they essentially abandoned Killwager and its ultramodern follow-up, INX (pronounced "In Country"), but their next effort got the traction they were looking for.

BLKOUT is a near future sci-fi skirmish game between mercenary factions fighting to control the fate of humanity's first extra-solar colony, Abol, while being policed by a brutal UN. The metaphors in this game aren't subtle.Unlike Killwager, it has a stripped-back, minimalist rules-set but it retains Killwager's most defining feature: the lethality of combat. A single hit will kill most minis in the game.

The game released with two factions - Harlow and Manticor - before following quickly up with a third, the UN Raid Force. They subsequently added two mercenary unit options that could join any of the above, plus large mechs, called "dusters".

Following the game's development, it is clear that they are throwing shit at the wall and waiting to see what sticks, because the rules have been through several overhauls. The dusters came and have now gone, replaced by newer, smaller and more customisable designs. And the latest release - IMPACT - has added two new factions: the UN 3rd Battalion Reserve, and the Boone Task Force. Several other factions - Jackal, Impisi and Ibragim - are floating around in the fluff but haven't had miniatures since Killwager, so their status is unknown.After wrestling with my printer and buying a new laminator to get some of the print-and-play cards made, I managed to assemble two small forces using a lot of proxies (of which more later) and played a solo game to get my head into the rules before inviting a friend over to give it a proper test drive.

Dale took on the Harlow force with an assault team and a pair of Springbok robots, while I had the Manticor force, with a squad of Bratva and a single heavy armoured Cyka.

Army building in BLKOUT is very straightforward. Each force has a selection of units, each which its own card, with each unit comprising between one and four miniatures. You decide between you how many units your game will involve and then pick that many units from your selection. No points. No calculations. Just pick your units, put down the minis and get playing.

Each unit card tells you the unit's Skill, Move and Armour, plus the weapons they have and any special rules that apply to that unit. In addition, each force has its own special rule, plus access to an armoury and a set of battle drills, which are all summarised on the back of the force card.

In our mission, Dale's Harlow force is fast, whilst mine is heavily armoured. We are about equal in firepower, but I have a Data Spike that proves to be a decisive factor. The game is played on a 2'x2' table, with two objective markers that must be secured by having LOS within 4", but no enemy within 6". The other objective is simply to kill enemy units.

In our first battle, in which Dale was still getting up to speed with the rules, I won quite handily in less than 45 minutes which tells you how swiftly the game plays. We muddled about over a few of the rules I wasn't sure about (because ESS do keep changing the rules - I'm on my third copy of the rulebook), and calculating objective points wasn't always totally easy, but it was still a swift and deadly exchange.

After a break to discuss the learning points, we went back to the table with a better understanding of what we could do and tried again. I offered Dale to switch forces, but he decided to stick with Harlow despite feeling like Manticor had a decided advantage in its much better armour.

He made better use of Harlow's speed, moving up rapidly to try to secure the objectives whilst taking up advantageous firing positions. But I had set up a very dense set of terrain (using the new cyberpunk city set from Acid House Terrain) and it proved hard to get lines of sight.

However, he quickly took down a machine gunner I had positioned with a deadly kill corridor, messing up my main plans and forcing me to push down the main centre path to contest an objective.

His Springboks positioned themselves very well to pour on fire, but I spent a Control Point (a feature we had left off in the first battle) to use a weapon from my armoury that was, it is fair to say, quite murder-y, killing them both in a single blast template and earning myself an objective point. In response, Dale poured shot after shot into my Cyka as he plodded his way up the field but, improbably, the heavy armoured elite weathered the storm without a scratch (unlike all other minis in this game, the Cyka has a "damage track" i.e. could take up to two hits rather only one, like everyone else). And the Cyka continued to be the man of the match, using his machine gun and grenade launcher to reliably liquify one enemy after another.

The game was close to the very end, though, with Dale holding onto one objective while I held the other, the only different being my advantage from killing both Springboks. Had Dale managed to down the Cyka, the game would've been his. But ultimately the armour psycho stayed the course and Harlow paid the price.

It was a fun, fast game. Adding a third unit would be a good way to push things out a bit further, but I feel like it would get very crowded on a 2x2' board.

The Data Spike and Grenade Launcher both felt a bit too powerful - the former in the early game and the latter in the late game. The Data Spike allows the user to pin an enemy unit, with pinning basically halving their mobility - and for a fast force like Harlow that was decisive. The grenade launcher, meanwhile, targets a spot on the ground rather than a mini, making it able to essentially ignore cover if it can catch targets in its blast radius. And it does two damage on a hit rather than 1, so anything with only one armour dice (i.e. most of Dale's force) just dies immediately.

As both of these were on my side of the table, and I had the advantage of superior armour, it felt heavily weighted in my favour.

There are a few features of the game that I'm not a fan of. The inability to use cover more creatively, by being able to go prone, for example, or to hurdle obstacles without giving up 2" of movement in doing so. I respect the ease of army building, but worry that the forces aren't well balanced against each other yet.

As a very quick tabletop experience, though, this is a good game. Perhaps more importantly, it seems to be fostering positive values in its community in a way that similar games (coughBlackPowderRedEarthcough) don't. The Discord is active but not overwhelming and there's a lot of mutual encouragement over the hobby, helpful support with rules, accommodation (within sensible limits) for products that aren't made by ESS and plenty of engagement with the actual designers behind the game.

Overall, I would say that BLKOUT isn't finished yet, but it is nearly finished. Having gone through the initial release, and the Badlands, Wetwork and IMPACT expansions, I think there needs to be 6 months of letting players play before starting work on a master rulebook for release this time next year. This rulebook would not only incorporate all of the releases, rules and changes made so far, but would also tackle the game's frequently wooly wording which leaves a lot of unnecessary room for ambiguity. I respect a dedication to concision over legally-precise wordiness, but when there is a perfectly concise way to articulate a rule that is annoyingly nebulous, that needs fixing.

Basically, I still think Zero Dark, even with all its flaws, is a better game. But BLKOUT is indisputably a faster game.

Finally, a word about aesthetics. As most of you will know, I do love an ultramodern, near future aesthetic. And BLKOUT has this. But I actually prefer their earlier work on Killwager, aesthetically. If you love the feel of movies like Elysium, District 9 or Chappie, then you will be on board with this. The BLKOUT range is just a little bit smoother, more polished, more refined, more... scifi. It is Titanfall or Halo.

For that reason, almost all of my miniatures purchases for BLKOUT are actually Killwager minis. And these are sold on a different website to BLKOUT. You can get BLKOUT at http://blkoutgame.com, but the Killwager stuff comes from https://esspod.shop/. And to make things a little more complicated, they've put about half of the range behind a paywall called "The Pack". It's $5.00/month and not only do you get access to some of my favourite minis (including the light mechs pictured in this blog) but you also accrue points you can use to off-set the cost of future purchases. Is it worth it? Questionable. I plan to make one more order before I cancel my membership, as I'll have bought everything I could possibly want to have to play BLKOUT and Killwager and Zero Dark. I will consider that money well spent, but YMMV.