Core Space Purge Outbreak and Reinforcements Preview

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Core Space over here at TechRaptor, and as it was voted our Reader’s Choice winner for the 2019 Tabletop Game of the Year award, it’s no secret that you are fans of it too. If you haven’t heard of Core Space, it’s an adventure skirmish game from Battle Systems and you can read all about it in our On The Tabletop article here.

We’ve also previously had a look at some of the expansions available for Core Space, but we thought it would be a good idea to also preview the remaining expansion packs, as we’ve just started our own campaign and Battle Systems are about to get restocks of the full Core Space inventory.

In this article, we’re going to look at the Purge Reinforcements and Purge: Outbreak expansions and what they add to your games.

You can pick up Core Space and it's expansions from our tabletop sponsor, Firestorm Games.

Purge Reinforcements

Purge Reinforcements is a straight-forward expansion, in that it doubles the number of Purge miniatures from the Core Set. In 2 player games, the Purge contained in the starter set offers a challenge to all the crews, but in larger games of 3 plus players, you can run out of Purge miniatures during longer skirmishes. Adding in the second set of Purge levels the challenge in 3 or more player games, or significantly ups the challenge for 2 player games, as the Purge will keep flooding the board.

Reinforcements also contains 3 extra unique events cards, which also help to add variety into games. The event cards are Replicator, which as the name suggests, replicates the Purge entering in the Purge phase, Hidden in Plain Sight, which depending on the threat level, can flood the game with Live Ones or add a mini-mission to protect a civilian to the game and Increased Hostility, which fires up the Purge into overdrive.

Purge Reinforcements isn’t an essential purchase for solo or 2 player games, but it does give a great value return in terms of raising the difficulty. For 3 or 4 players games only using 1 Core Set, this is an essential purchase to keep games challenging.

Purge: Outbreak

Purge: Outbreak is a full-sized expansion for Core Space. Just like the Shootout at Zed’s and Galactic Corps expansions, it adds brand new enemies, scenery and a series of linked missions.

Outbreak adds in the powerful Purge Annihilator and also the gatherers with a Mother and 5 Spiders. These feature in a linked narrative set of 3 missions, but can also be added into games using the event cards that come with the expansion. The Annihilator has 3 slots on its card, the first is a pop-out objective that can be collected if it is defeated, the second is an upgrade slot to give the Annihilator extra abilities, or allow it to collect equipment to stop the players picking it up and the final slot is its stat slot, that is replaced as it takes damage. The Mother comes with her 5 spiders, and they collect bio-mass in the form of defeated traders, which means they're permanently removed if reached by the mother, with no chance of rescue. The Mother's 5 spiders swarm around her, protecting her and can be resurrected if defeated. The spiders also turn into mini-bombs when defeated and can be used by the Mother to hurt traders who get to close.

There is also some infested scenery, along with some new cell walls, an auto-doc, console and plasma reactor. The new scenery also comes with their own rules, like spreading infection and the auto-doc being used for healing. These are again used with the included missions but can be added to your own map designs for your own campaign.

Outbreak comes with 5 new event cards, linked to the contents of the expansion, which can be added to games to add the contents of the box, outside of the included missions. All the event cards are incredibly thematic.

Purge Outbreak is a fantastic expansion, adding in a lot of depth to games. The 2 new enemies are a great challenge, and very interesting to play against. The new scenery is as well designed as all Battle System products. If you're looking to add further depth to your Core Space games, then this is an essential purchase.

The Core Space Purge expansions used to produce this article were provided by Battle Systems.

Have you played Core Space? Which is your favorite expansion? Do you use a pre-made crew or your own crew? Let us know in the comments below.