The Doomed

Posted on 11/08/2023 by sho3box

I got home from a fun few days of playing Warcry last weekend, and found a copy of The Doomed waiting for me.

L to R: Probator “Von Sydow”, ogryn reality TRI-D dinosaur hunting phenomenon “Chompers“, Ordo Xenos Inquisitor “Verhoeven“, gun-slinging bounty hunter “Rosa “Digger” Stone” and “Glo-stik“, warrior of the “Boss Drum” tribe.

The Doomed is a miniatures agnostic, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, tabletop miniatures game with maximum, massive monsters and minimal, miserly measuring.

On the left are three “Nexus” models: tins of long-pig, an alien egg and potable water that the Horror in the centre – a “Devourer”, a manifestation of gluttony known as “Marjory” by its Scavenger “Minions” (on the right) – plans to consume.

The game belongs in the “groups of non-conformist, monster-hunter types take umbrage with other bohemians/dropouts/misfits with whom they share low value, monster-haunted real-estate” sub-genre of heavily-hyphenated miniature games. Things like Necromunda, Mordheim and Stargrave share a lot with The Doomed, but there are significant differences.

The design diary for The Doomed on the Osprey website explains all of the design philosophy, if that sort of thing interests you.

I used a 30″ by 22″ Kill Team mat and various ruined industrial terrain elements to represent the “Breakthrough Conflict” (scenario). Note the Nexuses and Horror in position.

There is a heavy push towards kitbashing miniatures in The Doomed book, although it isnt a rule or anything like that. This is absolutley fine, and potentially loads of fun. I may even kitbash a set of figures specifically for this game at some future point (like I did for Forbidden Psalm/Mörk Borg), but for my test game I decided to draft miniatures that I already had painted.

The ruins of Tetanus IV…

They were all prepped with precisely this sort of gaming in mind anyway.

Glo-Stik bangs rusted drums to draw the Marjory out: his tribal trousers will never be green again…

Similarly, many (all?) of the the various types of sci-fi gaming terrain that I have prepped over the years suit the dilapidated aesthetic being pushed in the book.

Rosa sets up a crossfire while Chompers enthusiastically plays the role of bait…

That said, if you wanted to play The Doomed in a more comic book, primary colour driven, raygun-gothic sort of Futurama-esque setting or a Star Trek utopia suddenly awash with monsters, then you could do that too without making any rules changes. The game is designed with broad strokes and archetypes, rather than specific ranges in mind.

…which works faster than anyone expected…

After that test game I’m looking forward to playing through a few fast and fun monster bashing games in the near future.

Credits
The game mat comes from gamemat.eu.
The ruins come from Citadel and Mantic.
Chompers, Verhoeven and Glo-stik are all old Citadel Miniatures.
The Scavengers are from Ramshackle Games.
Devourer/Marjory is an old Leviathan miniature, available from Scotia Grendel I think.
The Nexus items came from a Valquiria Studios.
The Doomed is published by Osprey.

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