Zeo Genesis Preview - Big Mechs Small Scale Great Designers

Earth, our birthplace and cradle is lost, swallowed by millennia and cosmic vastness. Our ships cannot pass through the Limit, confining us to a hundred heliospheres. We see the greater universe but cannot touch it. Are we imprisoned or kept safe?

Zeotech brings us technological marvels. But no matter how far we travel, how far science advances, our shortcomings follow. One hundred suns and we yearn for more. Some must seek further, delve deeper, uncover secrets no matter the warnings that their curiosity will bring disaster. Others are never content with a fair share, needing to dominate and control. History’s lessons are ignored. Mistakes of the past hound us.

Humanity struggles to find meaning, ever at odds with itself, and now a whole star system has disappeared. Dread and paranoia threaten to tear us apart. Previously clandestine powers vie brazenly to control humanity’s future, undeterred by the growing crisis. Across more and more battlefields elite zeoform pilots lead their specialist support teams in swift, dynamic combat. Limited, covert raids give way to open conflict as we stumble towards all-out war.

The One Hundred Suns

Welcome to Zeo Genesis, an upcoming skirmish miniatures game from Best Hobby, featuring game and lore design from industry veterans Andy Chambers and Gav Thorpe. The sci-fi setting sees rival factions battling it out with Zeoforms, known as Zeos. The various factions that populate the worlds aren't at outright war, but that doesn't stop covert operations, small skirmishes, brawls, and grudges from being settled.

Zeo Genesis currently has a preview page on Gamefound, and the playtest rules are also available for free on their webpage here. We've been sent a 3D-printed demo set to preview here, and while the forces should reflect those included in the first 2-player starter set, the material the miniatures are made from will change. The rules may also develop between now and the games' publication.

Mechanical Skirmish Mechanics

I won't take you through all the rules for Zeo Genesis, as you can read them in full here, but I will highlight some of the mechanics that make it stand out for me. The first is the turn sequence, which consists of players taking alternate actions until they run out of actions. This won't sound uncommon for wargames used to alternate action games, but what stands out is that Zeo Genesis only has a single game turn. Once players run out of actions, they take a regroup action, which refreshes all of the action points on their units but doesn't let you activate that turn, with play passing back to your opponent, meaning you will miss that activation.

The second mechanical element I like is the action/reaction system. Each unit has a number of action points available to it, and these can be used to enter an activation mode when it's your turn to activate or to react when one of your units is targeted. When you activate a unit, you pick an activation mode, which then allows your unit to complete a small series of actions, like the Melee activation mode, which gives you 2 move actions and a melee action, with additional melee actions for each unused move action. This allows you to either melee 3 times with a unit you're engaged with or any combination of move and fight actions as required. Or you could take the Charge action, allowing you to take a snapshot shoot action, followed by 2 move actions, and a melee action if you're able to get into base contact with an enemy.

It all combines to give Zeo Genesis a system that feels like a cross between Infinity and Bushido (2 of my favorite wargaming systems), with no slow down for turns as you just keep taking actions, tactically timing your regroup action. The Zeos are also pretty durable, so the action-reaction system works very well as your units won't just be deleted with one hit, and there's no slowdown, it just feels like one epic action phase.

Two Tribes Go To War

At launch, and the demo pack we received, features 2 factions from the Zeo Genesis universe. The first, Pact, are a freeform gathering of explorers and thinkers, a group that pledged to aid each other. Their force in the demo set is led by the towering Amaroq Masterform Zeo, armed here with the Meson Canon, which increases its damage stat for each hit scored, and the Hivestream, which fires multiple rockets into a blast area, but it has several other weapon options depending on how you equip it.

Supporting the Amaroq is a Bokujin, a drone controller and 4 drones of 2 types that can capture objectives, draw enemy fire and disrupt attacks, and to provide heavier support, the Skerpskutter, armed with either the low attack, high damage AZ Lance, or the Beamer with 4 attack that increases damage with each hit.

The other faction are the Guardcorps, the police enforcers of a powerful private enterprise group. Rather than a single powerful Zeo, the Guardcorps are led by 2 Stormer Zeos that we had multiple weapon options for. We opted for 1 with a Gulo Assault Rifle and the other with a Claviger Battle Rifle. Both weapons have high damage for targeting the Amaroq and the option to fire smart rounds that don't need line of sight to fire.

Backing up the Stormers are 3 Troopers, 2 of ours are armed with short-range, high-attack carbines, and the other with the longer range higher damage rifle. Further support is added with the Tech Ops unit, who can keep the Zeos in the fight, and Hyane Pursuit Drones, who are great at taking down enemy support units or can remain close to your Zeos and take damage for them.

Zeo Genesis Demo Kit Final Thoughts

I had an absolute blast with Zeo Genesis. The core rules and army lists are still in development, but I already love the flow of the system and how it feels with the big mechs, supported by the ancillary units. The armament options and the current variety of units gives a lot of flexibility in list construction, and I like how the system scales well as the points go up and the amount of Zeos you field increases. The printed miniatures we got aren't the final material, they'll be multipart hard plastic when the campaign delivers, but the sculpts are great, and the setting gives infinite flexibility in how you paint your team. There's a lot we haven't talked about in this preview, which we'll save for the full review, or you can discover for yourself by testing the playtest rules, but this is one to watch for sure, and its success at crowdfunding will only make it better and expand faster with more units and factions.

The demo products of Zeo Genesis used to produce this preview were provided by Best Hobby.