ZONA ALFA: KONTRABAND

NOW AVAILABLE AT WARGAME VAULT and AMAZON

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KONTRABAND – More Salvage and Survival in the Exclusion Zone.

1. What is KONTRABAND?

Kontraband is a set of supplementary rules for Osprey Wargames’ Zona Alfa, Salvage and Survival in the Exclusion Zone. While built on the core game, Kontraband is better described as a variant than an expansion, and differs from Zona Alfa in three distinct ways:

A. It shifts from the traditional player-versus-player competition to a player-versus-the table effort, and as such is geared toward Solo and Cooperative play. 

B. It narrows the game’s setting from an open region with varying degrees of danger to exclusively high-threat locations.

C. It introduces new levels of detail to the player characters, equipment, and the mission areas, and as such, modifies some of the original core rules and introduces new game components.

2. What do you need to play KONTRABAND?

Kontraband is not a stand-alone game and so first and foremost, you need a copy of the Zona Alfa rule book.

Next, you need the standard fare for a table top war game: miniatures, terrain, dice (D10 and D6), a ruler/measuring tape in inches, blast and teardrop templates, a few tokens to mark a model’s in-game status, and printed character sheets for your models.

Additionally, you will need

• Scenic items, tokens or chits to mark the important Points of Interest locations on the tabletop, as well as ones for the strange and dangerous micro–rifts in reality known as Anomalies. Whatever you choose, they should be distinct and easily identifiable to all players.
• A full set of Point of Interest cards. These can be found at the back of this book. They should be printed and cut out in order to make an Incident Deck for each mission.
• A Zone Weather Chart to track any odd and sudden changes in the mission area’s atmosphere.  A sample one can be found at the back of this book.

Explanations for the above can be found in Section 2.

3. KONTRABAND Rules: Modifications and Additions

Kontraband retains the basic mechanics of the core Zona Alfa game; D10 dice, the model stat line, the weapon stat line, mission area Threats, Zone Hostiles, etc. Combat is still a major factor but with a new emphasis on exploration, artifact recovery, and solo and co-op play, Kontraband introduces a number of modifications and additions that accommodate more detailed and dangerous game play. (See Section Four for details on additional rules and tweaks) These modifications apply to three main elements: Characters, Setting, and Equipment.

• Characters.  With a focus on a single squad of individual characters rather than larger gangs or crews, Kontraband players can choose to venture in the Zone either as Stalkers or Scientists. Generally speaking, Stalkers are stronger at tactical skills while Scientists excel at technical ones. Details about each character class, specializations, and a list of new Skills can be found further in.
• Setting. All Kontraband missions take place in the dangerous and unstable Deep Zone, an area filled with mystery, monsters, anomalies, and artifacts. As such, players will control only Veteran level characters, each with three Actions, two Skills, and three Equipment Slots. Also, a player can field a maximum of four characters per mission, not including any NPCs added for narrative purposes. 
• Equipment. Kontraband not only changes some details on existing pieces of equipment, it introduces several new ones. It also adds a new category of gear, Weapon Accessories, which are separate from items that fill Equipment Slots. Details on Weapon Accessories can be found further in.

That’s all for now. More info soon.

Good Hunting, Stalker.