Skirmish Outbreak has arrived!

After weeks of anticipation my copy of Skirmish Outbreak arrived in the mail today.

  The Postie had mistreated it a bit to carry it in his basket/pannier, but nothing that a good pile of books on top of the rules will fix.

Unfortunately I have to attend a function tonight, so I will have to use what part of the coming weekend I have to read the rules, but I will give my initial impressions in this post.

The book itself is almost A4 in size (a few mil wider and a couple of cms shorter) and is a soft back book.

If you don't like the colour yellow you are right out of luck, as most of the pages are printed on yellow paper. I don't actually mind this at all, as the yellow seems to be easier on my dyslexic eyes, making it easier to read.

It also helps that the font is of a reasonable size too, meaning I don't need to squint through my very expensive multifocal lens glasses that I had to buy this year (getting old sucks folks).

The book is laid out in a logical pattern and easy to follow, unlike some other rules I have seen, and all examples of the rules in action are printed in a dark grey box, making it easier to see where the examples are so that they are not lost in the main text.

There are plenty of drawings and photos to give you a bit of eye candy relief whilst reading, but not so much that you feel you paid for a lot of eye candy and no rules. It is a good balance.

Given that I have only glanced over the rules, the rules themselves seem very straight forward - there is no need to go to Uni to understand what you need to do, and after playing a game or two I feel sure that most players would have picked up on what they need to do, so that referring to the book would be kept at a minimum.

There is a campaign section! A must for myself, as any long term readers of my blogs would know. The campaign rules include gathering resources needed to survive and gaining experience to improve your survivors.

And before anyone asks, yes there is a section of the rules that lets the zombies be controlled by the rules so that you can have solo or co-operative play for your games.

Lastly the back of the book has all the tables and charts you will need, so you wont have to keep flicking through the book during a game to find information. I also believe you can download these charts from the Skirmish Outbreak web site so that you can have the information easily at hand for each player.

 At first glance Skirmish Outbreak is a well put together product.

 I will make some follow up posts on the various sections of the rules as I read them, and hopefully I will also post an AAR once I play a game.

My thanks and gratitude go out to Colin and Chris for sending me a copy for reviewing, and please check back on my blog soon for further updates as I make more in depth reviews of the rules.

Links (click them):

Skirmish Outbreak home page

Buy the rules

Downloads.