Zeo Genesis

What is Zeo Genesis

Zeo Genesis is “a scalable skirmish miniatures battle game of big armor suits locked in kinetic action.” It’s published by Best Hobby. The game lead is Andy Chambers, and the narrative lead is Gav Thorpe, both formerly of Games Workshop.

The armored suits are called Zeoforms, or Zeos for short. Each one is piloted, and each leads a small team of Supports: normal human-scale troops, drones and specialists. A Zeo and its Supports make a Zeo unit.

The setting is far in the future. Earth is lost, and humanity lives among a hundred star systems it can’t leave. Now a whole system has gone dark, and a shadow war between the corporate army GuardCorps and the forces of the Pact is turning into open conflict. A third force, the Orgh, has a playtest list out.

What makes it stand out is the plastic. Best Hobby spent four years building its own plastics capacity in the US, so the models are hard plastic made in-house.

How it plays

Alternating activations. Players take turns activating one model at a time. Each model has a number of Activation tokens, and when you’ve spent all of yours you take a Regroup turn to refresh them.
Pick an Activation Mode. Each time a model activates you choose Run and Gun, Aimed Fire, Charge or Fight, which sets what it can do: move twice and snap off a shot, stand still for an aimed shot at any range, or close in for melee.
Reactions. Spend an Activation or Impetus point on a model that isn’t active and it can react to certain enemy actions.
d10s. You roll ten-sided dice, plus a special Combat Die. A 1 always fails.
Impetus and Cohesion. Impetus gives you bonus activations to spend during the game. Cohesion is your force’s staying power, and losing it all loses you the game.
Scales up. The base game is one Zeo unit a side. It goes up to four units a side on a 3’ × 3’ or 4’ × 4’ table, and a game takes roughly 30 to 45 minutes.
Objectives and Structures. The Advanced Rules add Support models, objectives, and Structures you use to defend and exploit the objectives you’ve taken.
Campaign and solo. A separate playtest PDF (v0.6) adds campaign rules and solo rules, where you fight a force run by the game.

How to start

Download the rules. The Core Rules v1.0, Quickstart Guide, forces lists and campaign/solo rules are free on the official site. The Quickstart, Battle for Saber Ridge, walks you through three linked scenarios that add the rules a piece at a time.
Get the core game. The Gamefound project is taking pledges through its pledge manager. Battle for Saber Ridge, the two-player core game, is $150. The physical Core Rulebook on its own is $40.
Add Zeo units. Each Zeo unit is $60 physical or $25 as STL files. GuardCorps has the Perimeter Patrol Group, Asset Security Force, Aggressor Support Group and Citadel Response Squadron. The Pact has the Astrominer Shift, Crisis Salvage Team, OSU Blockade Crew and Direct Action Cell.
Or use what you have. The rulebook says the game has its own line of models, but you can use something else suitable.