Thrackdown Opens Its Ruined World to Players

Thrackdown, a miniature agnostic skirmish game from Wargame Geeks, open its doors and made it’s rules free for public playtesting earlier this summer, and have been updating and releasing new material since. For instance, yesterday (22nd September), saw a refreshed Quickstart Guide, six ready-to-play Quickstart Wabands, and a three-game route from Loot & Scoot to a full 200-Thrack warband all released.

Its core and faction rules are free, with six playable factions, scenarios and a browser based Warband Builder available for anyone ready to put a crew on the table. The developers are inviting battle reports and rules feedback as the game takes shape.

The battlefield is Nova Eden, onec a thriving human colony linked to Earth by enormous ships carrying settlers, medicine and replacement technololgy. Then the ships stopped arriving, supplies dwindled, the colony’s authority weakened, and a long Collapse followed. Unstable artificial intelligences, unchecked genetic engineering, wars and geological disasters broke the cities part. generations later communities survive among the factories, freight terminals and ruined housing blocks. Nobody controls much beyond their own walls, and nobody knows why Earth went silent.

Players command small warbands, usually made up of six to eight fighters, rather than armies. The factions range from the technology wary Iron Pact and the zealous Ashen Covenant, to free machines, gene altered predators, and salvage crews. Fighters activate one at a time, while campaign rules let survivors gain experience, equipment, and injuries between battles. You can also use the figures you already own, as the game welcomes converted or mismatches miniatures and homemasde terrain, which is quite fitting for a world held together with scavenged parts.

The six factions, or Banners, detailed so far are:

Iron Pact - A paramilitary order of survivalists and holdouts, fighting as disciplined fireteams to hold the line of a broken world.

Ashen Covenant - Warriors of faith, sworn to prepare the world for the Regent’s return.

The Splice - The legacy of fleshcrafting and uncontrolled mutation. Warped, unstable, and still changing.

Null Protocol - Extremist droid collective, united to claim Nova Eden for machinekind.

Crimson Veil - Gene-wrought aristocrats, perfected killers, and the thralls who die in their shadow.

Scavver Clades - Nomadic looters, tinkerers, and traders living off the bones of the old world.

Beyond the six great banners, countless smaller powers rise and fall in the wastes. Some are a single warband carrying on its own traditions and grudges. Others hold an outpopst, a scrapyard, or a settlement beholden to no one. Custom faction Rules will let you build your own banner’s identity, traits, and history from the ground up.

You can download the Quickstart rules, and so much more, on the Thrackdown website.