Mutant Year Zero: Zone Wars is the year’s goofiest tabletop skirmish game

polygon.com:

Skirmish wargaming — traditional miniatures wargaming with a smaller footprint and fewer minis — is having a moment. Used to be there were just a few flavors available, but a new crop of games is suddenly giving all kinds of different energies. Grimdark Necromunda, futuristic Infinity, and stalwart Malifaux are all still around, of course. Their action remains brutal, and their rulesets fairly complex. Meanwhile, newcomers Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zoneand Fallout: Factions are becoming more established thanks to dynamic sculpts, bright colors, and most importantly, far more simplified rules. There’s also Star Wars: Shatterpointand Halo: Flashpoint, more refined games clearly built for brisk, competitive play.

Now comes Free League Publishing’s Mutant Year Zero: Zone Wars, launching today with anew Core Set. It feels like this one is bringing some much-needed comic relief.

First launched as Mutant in 1984, the Swedish tabletop role-playing universe has been many things over the years. Funcom’s Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden refocused the franchise on its goofiest characters, human-and-animal hybrids with bizarre special abilities. It also helped that one of the main characters looks like an up-armored Howard the Duck. All the while, Free League has been working diligently in the background to keep the modern version of the TTRPG in circulation around the world.

Zone Wars smartly puts our duck friend back on the cover, and this time he’s the linchpin of a powerful band of Stalkers, mutant soldiers who enter the dangerous, irradiated Zone to scavenge for artifacts. It’s a simple premise that opens the door to clever scenario-based gameplay and the potential for linked campaigns.

The most surprising part is the completeness of this starter set, which includes a few short stacks of unit and ability cards, loads of cardboard terrain, bits and custom dice, but also pre-assembled and pre-shaded monochrome miniatures. Setup took me all of 20 minutes, and just about 30 minutes