Zona Alfa: Preparing for an excursion into The Zone

 

I got invited to join a group of scavengers and STALKERs to play the skirmish wargame Zona Alfa by Patrick Todoroff, published by Osprey Wargames.  What is Zona Alfa and what the heck is a STALKER?  Well, in very brief, the former is a Russian-themed post-apocalypse scenario featuring extraterrestrials and the reality bending detritus they left behind on Earth after a short stopover.  This area that the aliens visited that is currently suffering errors in reality as humans understand it is called The Zone.  A STALKER Is an acronym for Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers and Robbers.  Gentlemen (and gentleladies) that explore The Zone are called STALKERs because they often fit all of these categories depending on the situation and time of day. They are desperate people scavenging for alien artifacts in the mutant, radiation and Anomaly-riddled Zone for a massive payout. Assuming they survive unscathed. That’s a joke. No one survives unscathed.

Zona Alfa, The Zone and STALKERs are based on the 1971 novel Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It is a great piece of Russian speculative science fiction that spawned both the STALKER and Metro series of video games and ultimately the skirmish wargame I am playing.

So, I bought the Zona Alfa pdf from Osprey, and initially having no idea what I was doing because I was in a rush to play, I made a crew of STALKERs for a game after a few hours of knocking around the rulebook.  I was looking on the internet for advice on what equipment, skills, weapons and units synergize well together; and after not finding much help I decided to write this blog post with my initial assumptions and crew combinations. Subsequent blog posts will discuss my adventures, and retrospective analysis on if my setup and assumptions were worthwhile investing in or not.  Let’s put some equipment together and go on an adventure then, shall we?

When building a crew or squad in Zona Alfa you initially have two considerations. How much Khrabrost do you have to spend to assemble your squad, and what faction do you belong to? Khrabrost (Russian for ‘mettle, bravery or courage’) boils down to the number of actions collectively your squad has.  This is used as a balancing factor between opposing squads or squads engaging in campaign play. At any rate, I have 12 Khrabrost (K) to spend for my side.  I decided to take a Crew Leader (mandatory) and 3 veteran units, each having 3 actions per activation (or in other words, 3K per unit, for a total of 12K spent).  Now because actions per round are critical in this game, I’m looking for ways to enhance the number of actions I have.  There is an item called Electric Juice (Meth and Vodka) which immediately grants two additional actions, however only one action is allowed on the following turn. Because I want to be able to run a blitz with the number of actions I have if I need to, I stock every unit I own (4) with one Electric Juice item. 

Now maximizing my actions is fine and all but I also want to be able to hit when I use my actions for ranged combat.  That’s why I chose the faction I belong to as Military. Joining the Military faction gets you two Red Dot Sights and one load of Hot Load Ammo to be distributed to your units as you see fit. A Red Dot Sight gives you a +1 to the ranged attack combat ability roll at half the weapon’s effective range or less, and it can only be affixed to pistols, SMGs, Shotguns and good old Assault Rifles. Now I don’t want to stop there, so I give two of my three veterans the Steady Hands skill, which gives them a +1 to ranged attack rolls.  You see, when I shoot, I really really want to hit successfully. Most monsters and units in this game only have 1 wound so if you hit successfully with a ranged shot and the target misses their armor save, then they suffer a wound unless they have a Med-kit. 

Speaking of Med-kits my squad is a little vulnerable because with the exception of my Crew Leader (who has two wounds) each veteran only has one wound.  So, not only do I give one Med-kit to everybody, I make one of my veteran units a medic by giving him the Bone Doc skill.  The Bone Doc skill allows the unit to carry 2 Med-kits per slot and Med-kits are enhanced, a Med-kit can replace 1 wound with 1 pinned counter on allies and on self.  Non-Bone Doc users of Med-kits replace 1 wound with 2 pinned counters.  Pinned counters negatively affect initiative outcomes and are generally bad things to have, so I want as few of them as possible. I also give 2 smoke grenades to my Bone Doc veteran. My hope here is that Bone Doc stays out of trouble and uses the smoke grenades to set up a controllable field of fire for my two veterans with Red Dot sights and Steady Hands, you know the guys who can shoot real well, to optimize their killing field strategy.  Now this might be a liability because I’ve committed 3 actions per turn to reside in the Bone Doc, but this is an experiment in tactics, so we’ll see if I can manipulate the battlefield to my advantage with the tools I have deployed.

Will this combination of skills, units and equipment work? Only time will tell. The only thing for certain is that there is nothing for certain in The Zone.