Tabitha: It has come to my attention that some of you dumb-dumbs took me a little too seriously in the past, when I warned you about the battle cattle! While battle cattle are indeed a dangerous foe, they are one that should be fought ferociously! Recently, I've heard about several incidents where some of you have been running away from a fight where battle cattle were involved! THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE! No self-respecting soldier of Utobitha should EVER be seen running like a scared little human! GRRAAH! I don't even know why I try! It's not like the dumb-dumbs are even going to understand this!
Rhonda: You heard her, Utobitha! Beware the battle cattle — but don't fear the battle cattle! More after this.
- Black Mountain Radio, Fallout: New Vegas
We loved Fantasy Flight's Fallout boardgame, and were delighted when the New California expansion was announced last summer. Obviously we got it, and have now tried it.
Mary Agnes Yerkes: Early in the Day in Desert Quiet (1965)
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New California comes with five new survivors, who are introduced in detail here. Of the five, two featured in our first game: the wasteland merchant, who starts with extra caps, has automatic access to the shop and can trade with other survivors over a distance; and a rogue Mr. Handy.
We got started with the co-op scenario in New California. Unlike a regular game, where players have secret agendas and everyone's trying to win the game for themselves, here the faction tracker is the only win condition: either we win, or the Enclave wins and we all lose.
That's one big map, by the way. New California comes with a pile of new map hexes (twelve, to be exact), and six scenarios: expanded versions of the four scenarios from the base game, and two new ones. The new scenarios are Rise of the Master, which is pretty much Fallout 1, and the co-operative scenario New California, which covers Fallout 2. The new tiles are only used in the new scenarios, but all the loot, assets and new survivors can be used with the original scenarios as well.
Early on, our ghoul player picked up Cait as a companion. She stays with you when she unexhausts if you've got drugs, but by a quirk of the loot deck, only the Mr. Handy had any drugs - which it couldn't use. Mr. Handy first traded some drugs to the wasteland merchant, and later direct to the ghoul; combined with the Mr. Handy player's penchant for charging into combat, we found we had a memorable drug-dealing murder robot in our party.
While the murderbot rampaged over the desert, I was playing as my favorite character, the Wastelander, and early on, I drew some kind of weird vision quest that let me travel all the way to the NCR. That's great, we thought: the next stage of the main quest can be finished with a difficulty 4 quest at NCR, and I even had a re-roll for it! I then proceeded to spend half the game at NCR, chronically unable to muster up four hits, and getting addicted in the process from an encounter card.
The trouble was, while all this was going on the Enclave were getting stronger, to the point where none of us had the weapons to stand much of a chance fighting them! We would have to advance our agenda by questing. Luckily New California comes with several nifty cards for getting rid of enemies, like the frag grenade and bear trap, both of which our ghoul used to great effect, and this beauty:
As it was, we spent several turns on a knife-edge where one single Security activation at the end of the turn, or any player character getting killed, would have cost us the game immediately. But we won; barely, but still! And we very much enjoyed ourselves.
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For our next game, I painted up the Mr. Handy and tried to paint the Wastelander and NCR Ranger, but the July heat wave destroyed that plan; hence the two undercoated but unpainted models in the pictures.
This time, we tried the expanded version of the Capital Wasteland scenario from the base game. Again, the map is pretty big, but that doesn't seem to make the game much longer. Above, you can see the NCR Ranger's special ability in use: she gets to flip over two unexplored hexes next to the starting hex and deploy in them. This, together with her getting three move points per action, makes her a really strong character, especially on the bigger maps. Below, we've opened up quite a bit of the map already.
My Wastelander is at Megaton, trying to beat up a Protectron to score an agenda card from the Brotherhood. I gambled and lost, getting killed by a super mutant; that worked out okay, though, because I then ended up back at Crossroads Camp, where the Brotherhood of Steel airship had just arrived. I snuck on board and stole a suit of power armor, which prompted a change of figure:
Because the Brotherhood airship sticks around, I'm genuinely considering getting a Squat airship from Space Marine and painting it up in Brotherhood colours.
Soon enough, the NCR Ranger won with three Freedom agendas. The rest of us were never really in it with much of a shot; I recognized early on that the ranger player probably had a freedom agenda, but the security quests were tough to reach, especially after I got killed. Luck does play a large role in the game, but to be honest, I don't think it really matters, because the game is simply fun to play.
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So, should you buy New California? If you liked the base game, then yes, absolutely. New California makes everything better: the new survivors are fun, the new loot and asset cards and so on all make the game better and deeper without introducing too much complexity. I can't think of a reason to not play the expanded versions of the base game scenarios once you've got them.
I think the bigger map actually makes the game objectively better; there seems to be more for everybody to do, and the game is a little less competitive and more fun.
Anyway I definitely recommend New California, and I hope Fantasy Flight make more expansions for Fallout! I'd be perfectly happy to pay money for an expansion kit that only came with a couple of scenario sheets and some new cards, because this is a really good game and it could really do with just a bunch more content. New California is an excellent step forward, but I want more scenarios!
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