Fallout: Wasteland Warfare

What is Fallout: Wasteland Warfare

Fallout: Wasteland Warfare is the tabletop miniatures wargame set in Bethesda’s Fallout universe, published by Modiphius under licence and designed by James Sheahan. It came out in 2018.

The rules call it “a tabletop wargame where you explore the world outside your protective vault, encounter strange peoples and creatures, and build up a motley crew to take on the Wasteland.” Fights are only part of it. Your models also scavenge, pick locks, hack terminals, and haul junk home to build up a settlement.

You pick a faction and play it out of the Fallout games. The rulebook opens with Survivors and settlers, Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, and the Institute, and the range has since grown to include Raiders, the Enclave, the NCR, Caesar’s Legion, Gunners, the Railroad, the Minutemen, and the Children of Atom, plus robots and wasteland creatures like Deathclaws, Mirelurks, and Radscorpions. The miniatures are 32mm, mostly resin, with plastic sets alongside.

There are three ways to play:

2-player Mode. Your crew against someone else’s.
Solo/Co-op Mode. One player, or a team of players, against an AI force that runs itself off cards.
Settlement Mode. A narrative campaign where you build a settlement between games.

Modiphius also publishes roleplaying rules for the game. RPGs aren’t covered here, so for those head to Alone in the Dungeon.

A second edition is on the way

Modiphius announced a second edition in June 2025. It’s built “solo-first”: you explore a procedurally generated wasteland with a hero, recruit a warband, and fight for survival, with co-op and head-to-head battles still in. Samantha Webb, Modiphius’s Head of Brand, said it still uses the existing resin miniatures at the same 32mm scale, “so if you have an existing collection of our Fallout minis you’ll be able to start playing straight away.”

Two second edition starter sets are on preorder now. Into the Wasteland is the solo starter, with four multi-part plastic Vault Dweller heroes, and ICv2 reports it will retail for $80. Warbands is the two-player starter, with 23 pre-assembled PVC miniatures (Survivors against Super Mutants), and will retail for $160. Both include the core rulebook. Modiphius’s store currently says Into the Wasteland is expected to start shipping in February 2027 and Warbands in June 2027. Until they ship, this page covers the first edition, which is what’s available to play today.

How it plays

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats. Every model has a unit card with the seven Fallout attributes: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. Each weapon type is tied to one of them, so a Super Mutant fires a heavy weapon off Strength and a settler shoots a rifle off Perception.
Roll under to succeed. Most things you do are Skill Tests. Roll the white Skill Die and you succeed if you get the attribute or less, or any symbol other than an X.
Colored dice for everything else. Weapons add Effect Dice to a roll: black adds damage, green improves accuracy, yellow cuts through armor, and blue triggers special weapon and equipment effects. The defender rolls a red Armor Die to see how much damage their armor blocks.
Range rulers, not tape measures. Movement, charges, and weapon ranges are all set by colored range rulers, and anyone can measure at any time.
Ready now, act later. Each turn you make one model Ready, then choose to use none or all of your Ready models. Holding back lets you build up several models and spring them together. At the start of each round, the player with fewer models left gets the Advantage Marker and decides who goes first.
Scavenging. Searchable markers hide loot. Models use their Expertise to search, pick locks, or hack, and a failure can mean drawing from The Wasteland, a deck of Danger, Stranger, Creature, and Item cards.
Gear and power armor. Weapons, armor, mods, chems, food, and power armor all come as item cards you equip your models with. Junk can be sold for Caps to expand your settlement.
An AI that plays itself. In solo and co-op games the enemy runs on AI cards. The free AI Handbook explains how to set the AI’s objective (Defeat, Go To, Use, or Protect) so you can build your own scenarios against it.

How to start

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Rules of Play (free PDF)

The full first edition core rules, from Modiphius's downloads page.

Read the free rules. The Rules of Play are free on Modiphius’s downloads page. If you’re new to wargames, start with the free Getting Acclimated booklet, a set of short tutorials that teach moving, shooting, melee, and damage one step at a time.
Print the cards. The unit, weapon, perk, power armor, mod, and reference cards are free PDFs on the same page, along with the current points costs and the errata and FAQ.
Going solo or co-op? Grab the free AI Handbook and Co-op Handbook. The full solo, co-op, and settlement rules are in the Campaign Handbook, sold as a PDF on the Modiphius store, and there’s a long list of free scenarios on the downloads page too.
Pick a faction. Modiphius sells plastic core boxes for Survivors, Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, Raiders, the Institute, the Railroad, and the Minutemen, plus a large resin range. Or wait for the second edition starters above, which use the same miniatures.

Community & reviews

Modiphius kept supporting the first edition long after launch. Its downloads page carries free rules packets for the Wave 10 Appalachia releases and the Wave 11 Far Harbor releases.