Finally! An XCOM Miniatures Games!

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Greetings, Commander. The Council of Nations has approved the reactivation of the XCOM initiative. Panic spreads across the globe. Humanity requires decisive leadership. You have been chosen to lead this initiative. To oversee a new tactical simulation, we need you, Commander, to evaluate Modiphius's XCOM miniatures game. The Council awaits your [00:00:32] Peachy: recommendation. Good luck, Commander. Sorry, done what came over me. That was weird. I'm Peachy, and this is Peachy Tips. So, XCOM. Fans of the channel will know I'm a big fan of XCOM. It's a miniatures game now, using the 5 Parsecs engine, which is also really cool. Because I like both those things. Now, I really got into XCOM back in 1994 when the first computer game or video game came out. And they've had all sorts of things in between then. So, you had Terror from the Deep. Then we skipped a few years, and then they had a bit of a revamp with the new XCOM anyone known. And then we had XCOM 2, Chimera Squad, even the weird sort of 1950s declassified version of XCOM, which was kind of cool. I definitely remember playing now. It's very different Area 51 style. But, always been a fan. Got all the games. Play them quite a lot. And I do like that kind of game where you get to customise your squad, add a little bit of identity to them, and then you just do some cool turn-based games and try and save the world. And it makes sense to kind of mix that with the 5 Parsec rule set. Because, again, I'm a big fan of those rules. It's a solo play game, which you can obviously do cooperative with your buds. But the whole idea of building a squad of elite soldiers to save the Earth, giving them their own little bit of identity, and then just seeing how it goes is very XCOM in its vibe. I even had this notion of doing an XCOM game myself, a miniatures game, and I don't think I would have done it justice. And I'm glad Modiphius have got the opportunity to work with Firaxis and make a really cracking game. Not sponsored. Just want to talk about it because, obviously, like I said, if you're fans of the channel, you know I like both those things. So it makes sense to talk about it. So I'm going to do a quick sort of overview of the rules. I've had a copy of the rules sent to me. It's not the finished, polished version of the book. I'll put some visuals up as well as I can. But yeah, I want to talk about it. And anyone that's a fan of 5 Parsecs, how that kind of relates and what differences there are, if there are any, which there are a few, but fun ones. And if you are a fan of the video games, you will notice there's a few little things in there that I find fun and relate very well to the computer game. Now, if you aren't aware of 5 Parsecs, I will quickly throw that in now. I have done a couple of playthroughs with a Star Wars theme called the Rambalorian. Takes the perspective of a smuggling crew, a bunch of scruffy looking nerf herders led by the warrior himself, the Rambalorian. And in that little playthrough, it's three episodes, I talk through the rules mechanics of the 5 Parsecs engine. There's a lot of things there that will work, obviously, with XCOM. So if you want to see like a little bit of a playthrough or have a bit of a feel on how XCOM would probably work from a rules engine point of view, be worth checking those videos out. And there'll be some differences, there'll be some tweaks like stats and stuff like that, but not huge differences, mostly like campaign related stuff and how you go about creating your squad and stuff like that. But all very same, but very different. But yeah, check it out if you want to know how the general game works as a whole. So much like XCOM, you will start with a bunch of rookies, not many, you only get six, and you've only filled four to start off with. As the game progresses, the campaign progresses, then obviously you'll be able to field more and you'll be able to hire more. But all your soldiers, they'll work their way through the advancements of different military ranks all the way up to colonel. And these ranks will give them different benefits, slight different rules adjustments or stat adjustments and stuff like that. So as you progress and survive and become more experienced and obviously get promoted, you've got more chance of surviving and dealing damage to those scummy little aliens that are scuttling around the battlefield trying to ruin the Earth's day. So yeah, big fan of keeping that vein of starting off as rookies and working your way through. The other great thing about XCOM as well that this rule system does is it allows you to pick the nation you want to do. You can obviously do this all yourself, you can decide what nation you want them to be. But much like the computer game, you randomly find out what country your characters are from, what their names are, what the call signs are, and you can do the same here. There's a whole bunch of tables that allow you to roll for those kind of things. But if you're like me, I give mine silly names or base them off actors. I mean, Bruce Willis has been there, Jason Statham has been there, Vin Diesel's been there. A lot of bold men. A lot of bold men. I like bold men. That's my vein for, yeah, just like an army of eggs. Now one of the aliens were freaked out when I kept winning the campaign. But I digress. The other thing as well, when you are creating your squad initially, you can roll to see if there's any signs of aptitude or anything like that. So you might get like a slight little adjustment to some of the stats of your rookies. So from a stat point of view, very much like five parsecs. So you get an initiative or reaction stat, you get your speed, you get your combat skill, you get your toughness, you get your will. But you also get morale. Morale is quite important because you guys might panic and hide, much like they do in the computer game, where sometimes things are just getting a little bit tough or the aliens are doing some weird magic juju to their mind and they decide to run out in the open and cower in the open. I mean, it happens to us all. Sometimes you just get shot a lot by aliens, see some of your buds get taken down, then you just have to run out in the street and just just just squat. Just have a little squat. Just, you know, have a little have a little menti bee. Another stat is armor. Very much like five leagues, you get armor in five leagues. That gives you some protection. Much like the XCOM computer game as well, you will be able to do research and manufacturing. So you initially start off with earth-like weapons like assault guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, light machine guns, and then eventually you like do some research and get yourself laser weapons, plasma weapons, alloy weapons, and it's the same with the armor as well. So if you've played the computer games and you know all the armor types, they're all in there. And I love that. I love that. I love the idea of being able to do research and manufacturing of like all the cool stuff you used to be able to get in the video games or still get in the video games if you play them, which is cool. You also get status effects. So sometimes in the games, things will happen again. If you've played five parsecs, five leagues, you can get wounded. You can get stunned. You kind of get those, but you also get panic. You can also be downed. The dead status is more for aliens because you're taking them out and obviously capturing and taking their bodies back for research and prodding and sticking things in. You won't know that for your crew or your soldiers until when it comes to the post battle sequence stuff. So you won't know if they're dead then, but you definitely know the aliens are dead or civilians. If you do like some scenarios where you have to like protect some civilians or a VIP and stuff like that. So from what I understand, Modiphius are going to do their own set of tokens that you can get, but you can just use anything really. A token is a token. If you want things down, wounded, dead, just lie your models on the table, unless you're concerned about scuffing them up, then don't do that. It's entirely up to you. Now, one of the big things in XCOM, which has become like a bit of a meme if you've played the game or you're aware of it. When your soldiers do shooting in the game, you have a percentage rating and that percentage rating usually gives you an idea of if you're going to hit or miss. So if there's like, I don't know, a muton hiding behind a wall and you've got a really rubbish rookie trying to shoot at it and it says like 12% chance of hitting, chances are you're probably not going to hit it. There is a chance you might. It's rare that happens. However, one of the things that is renowned in XCOM is the 99% chance or 95% chance to hit and your experienced Colonel with his shotgun at close range right in front of the alien misses. That has happened a fair few times to me and I'm pretty certain there's people out there that have had worse situations and Modiphius have added that in to the five parsecs or XCOM miniatures game rule set. So to kind of mimic that you have a combat skill ability, you roll a d10 and you basically have to equal or get less than that number. So if you are a rookie and you've got a combat skill of five, you've got a 50/50 chance of hitting. So as long as you get five or less on a d10, you've got a chance of hitting. However, as your combat skill improves, obviously you're gonna get higher combat skills. You might get six or seven or, you know, like nine, maybe. I don't know if you can go that high but there's a high chance of course there's bonuses as well depending on like how close things are where you are on the battlefield. So sometimes you've got that that chance like all I need is a nine or less on a d10 and you still roll a 10 and obviously you've done the miss and that kind of ties in nicely. I like this, it's kind of like done this percentage, you can count it as a hundreds instead of d10s. So like a nine is a 90% and an eight is an 80% or whatever. So having that little mechanic in there that kind of mimics the video game but also is just rolling to hit. And this is also a key difference with the XCOM miniatures game as opposed to five parsecs. Five parsecs you normally use d6s, here we're using d10s again to I guess mimic that wonderful percentage ratio of hitting and missing, usually missing because I'm awful at that. Just swinging back to the soldiers as well. One thing I want to point out is the classes that you can be. So if you've played the game you will start off as a rookie. Everyone starts off as that and once you've done the first game as a rookie then you roll to find out what your class is. Sometimes you might get ones you don't want so you can pick if you want to. I used to do that and there was mods that allowed you to change on the video game but obviously with the Modiphius game you can choose you can do what you want but it's kind of cool to roll to see what you get. So different kind of classes are the rookie like I mentioned. There's the assault which is the shotgun molding one or for the close encounters up close and personal kind of attack. Then you have the support which is a little bit of an all-rounder but they carry the assault rifle. Then we have the heavy which carries the light machine gun and other gear that you can probably get later on in the game as well. And then you have the sniper obviously a sniper gets a big old sniper rifle. And then there's the more sort of exotic things like the psionics so when you start to get like abilities like psychic abilities you can like pick that as a warrior class. And then if you've ever played the Enemy Within add-on that's also featured in the miniatures game as well so you get to fight the faction exalt which are a bunch of very smart looking alien sympathizers with red and orange accents to their suits. You also get the mechs from that game and also the gene modded troops as well as options to advance your troops as which is really really cool. So I love the fact there's so much stuff leaning into the video game and I'm very excited to get playing. I've got some models to paint I've not played a game yet I will be doing a battle report on that down the line narrative story so I'm very keen to do that. I'm also going to be doing some stuff with Modiphius fingers crossed so when I know more about that I'll let you guys know and then there might be some battle reports with Peachy playing against Steve who does a lot of the things for Modiphius's videos and playthroughs and stuff like that maybe Jamie as well. But yes very exciting very exciting. So much like 5 parsecs you have a bunch of activations or actions you can do so you can obviously move you can do a thing called a dash which is gives you a second move very much like 5 parsecs attack shoot your weapons smack people in the face with fists whatever you've got in your hands use that then you have use equipment so that could be like grenades charges those kind of things there's aid so you can provide medical support if you've got a first aid kit and so you can run to one of your wounded buddies and help them out much like the game. I love that. Overwatch that's a fun little rule as well so you can go into Overwatch and if any enemies run into the field so when they start doing their phase you can try and take them out. The cool thing with Overwatch is even if you get hit you can still do that action. Aliens can also Overwatch as well so be wary. Then there's secure interactive things you need to do on the battlefield and there's also usability so if you have like any special abilities whether that's a leadership one or a psionic one you can use those. Then you have lookout which I think is quite a fun little rule so if you have played 5 parsecs you roll a bunch of initiative dice to see which of your soldiers get to act first before the enemies get to act and then the rest do that after. If you do someone called lookout one of your soldiers can keep a bit of an eye out and that adds an extra initiative dice to the next battle round which is kind of useful so you've got more chances of getting some of your soldiers to do some actions before the aliens do so very very fun. There's a whole bunch of other rules I'm not going to cover everything but there's things like outflank, hover and you can block the scenery as well so if you like things are hiding behind walls or defenses you can try and blow that up so that's kind of cool again ties in with the visuals and the gameplay of XCOM Enemy Unknown. Now another fun rule which is very different to 5 parsecs is the blip counter rule so if you're fans of Space Hulk that might feel familiar you can only get 12 blip markers so only 12 aliens per battle so you'll only ever be 12 until they're all revealed so it basically means there's something out there and they start moving around the battlefield usually in the enemy phase sometimes they might get off the battlefield which could just be it was a false alarm or it could have just been a packet of crisps blowing in the wind but like I said you can only get 12 enemies on the battlefield during the campaign mission unless the mission states otherwise there might be more and that's another thing to bear in mind as you go through the campaign the blips get progressively harder as well so initially when you're getting aliens and coming across aliens it could just be like a couple of sectoids maybe a sectoid commander maybe the odd floater love the floaters such a weird name such a weird name but yeah there's a whole selection of aliens in XCOM that you have to deal with and so that progressively gets harder more of the harder ones will turn up and you get less of the easy ones so whether that is like I said you've got the sectoids which are quite easy thin men fairly easy to take on the poisonous gas can be a bit of a nightmare and then you get things like muton muton berserkers seekers cyber disks sectopods which are like the big mechanical versions that the sectoids ride if you've got a mech you'll be able to deal with that so yeah it gets harder um and obviously as it gets harder it means you're gonna lose some funding some of your uh council members are gonna like abandon you and I love this I love the fact that that mechanic is thrown in there into the campaign that you start off with a morale rating of eight so that's the council are all like yeah we're all we're all good XCOM is doing well and as the campaign progresses that will increase or decrease um depending on how well you're doing which then cuts funding depending on the country that's like dropped out once it gets to zero that's it you've lost everyone's given up the aliens have taken over and I guess we're moving to XCOM 2 um which is obviously the add-on to XCOM enemy unknown if you ever played any of those um I love the fact that XCOM 2 exists it's the what if the good guys didn't win um so I'd like to see that as a miniatures game at some point too as well but yeah let's stop talking about all the overview of the rules let's just get on and paint a figure um just a quick shout out I use the army painter paints here I'm a member of the factory team um if you want five percent off check out the link at the bottom pretty much all army painter related paints apart from the wash which is an AK one um but yes um if you want to use the paints that I use check out army painter uh these are all the historical ones with a few extra things thrown in like the odd speed paint here and there but yeah the aim is to try and make them look a little bit like the the guys on the video game and the box cover stuff done by Rosie and Callum uh from Modiphius so not quite the same but it's a quick way of doing it I also used Colorforge's green spray which is death rattle green to begin with if you don't have that just spray him grey or black or white or whatever and paint him green by hand if you wanted to it doesn't really matter whatever colour you want to do right let's paint a support trooper uh for XCOM now the first thing we're going to do is do some dry brushing and here we're going to use some medium drab so as always just wipe some paint off onto some tissue and then we're going to go all over our undercoated model now like I said I've used death rattle green from Colorforge here so all I'm doing is just going over quite heavily with that medium drab even though it's a slightly different finish it's perfect if we need to do any tidy ups later on in the painting process then I'm going to get some light drab and then just gently flick over that this is more of a tickle over the model and that's just going to pick out some of those extra extremities and for a nice little easy quick highlight as you can see then I'm going to get some grim black you can use matte black and thin it down any black will do I'm just using grim black because there's a speed paint already thinned down and all I'm going to do now is start applying this over a whole bunch of black details some details we'll get some other colours on it later but it's just easy to paint them black for now so like the armour pads knee pads elbow pads shoulder pads they'll get some other colours added to them but at this point it makes a lot of sense to paint it with some grim black so yeah work your way around picking out all the little details and again if you're making mistakes and you probably will because it's a a speed paint it will go onto some of that green so you can use your medium drab to tidy up if you need to and of course the gun I always like to paint my guns black first because it's just a lot easier especially if there's lots of silver details to pick out later on and then like I said I'm going to get some medium drab and just tie up any areas where the black might have bled into that green which is fine does happen especially if you are being a little bit slapdash with the paint like I was but yeah just wear your way around and pick out anything that you might want green again because you accidentally painted it black or whatever so next I'm going to get some burnt tuff this is a nice ochre tone so this is going to be my secondary colour so mostly for some of the armour details so I'm just going to go all the way around like knee pads shoulder pads again there's some details I'm going to leave black which is obviously the padding underneath or straps and stuff but yeah slightly thinned it down not a lot so it flows on the model a lot easier and it's not streaky and chunky so yeah not just the shoulder pads but I'm going to paint the body armour as well in the same kind of colour some of the other models might have like some differences to it but for the most part a lot of the armour is very similar but yeah just work your way around but you may want to do a couple of coats once you've applied one coat burnt tough a second coat will just add a little more brightness and punch to that ochre tone that you're aiming for oh yeah and I can't forget the little XCOM badge on the hat as well so yeah just picking that out and then it's over to do some silvers so what I'm going to do here is get some gun metal and start picking out some details on the guns I'm not too stressed it won't be identical to the computer game versions I'm just going to pick out bits that look like the working parts or just look great as silver and sometimes I do paint it all silver and then pick out some of the gun colours after so tell it to you and some other details on the model as well so I'm going to go around and pick them some little ammo bits on the leg strap as well but yeah a few little bits and bobs here and there some of the grenades as well I think that's a smoke grenade but there are some other fragmentation grenades on the models too oh and I can't forget the little stud bits on the boot laces then I'm going to get some paratrooper tan this is just for the very small section of skin on the head so one coat should be enough but if you need to do a second to do a second then I'm going to get some dark battle dress this is going to be my gun casing colour so I'm going to use this for all my guns as I'm just going to go around and start picking that out it's a nice kind of tone I really like it once I've shaded it I'll apply a second coat as a tidy up and it'll look fine for the hair I'm just going to use a little bit of dark olive whatever hair colour you want it's going to be dark olive then I'm going to apply some AK black knight it's a deep shade and apply it all over normally I do a dollop of the actual deep shade and then I just get a couple of dollops of water and apply it to the model as well and then just move it around just checking to make sure it flows in the right places and pull in unsightly areas now it's a matter of just going around doing some tidy ups and kind of highlights so if you're happy enough for the model as it is just crack on and base them and play games all I'm going to do is just get some light drab and start highlighting some of that green under suit or fatigues so just a couple of little highlights here and there you don't have to go mad it's entitled to you how you want to go about highlighting it but yeah just a little bit like drab does the job perfectly then I'm going to tidy up the armour as well so getting that burnt tuft again because we've done the shade all over it slightly darken it down so this second coat is going to look a little bit brighter and kind of gives it a nice highlight you could go lighter if you want to but I'm going to leave it at this kind of tone because I'm happy enough with it looked great perfect for what I wanted especially if I started some chipping and battle damage to the armour later on as well so yeah just go around picking out the edges you know a little bit here and there have some fun don't over complicate it then like I said earlier I'm just going to get another coat of dark battle dress after the shades dry the application will be a little bit more raised or a little bit more subtle so you get a little bit more transition from the darker tone version of it from the original base coat and then obviously the lighter one I'm doing now then I'm going to get some deep grey you don't have to do this step I'm just going to show it for completion but if you did want to highlight your black deep grey is perfect so I'm just going to go around and start picking out some of the edges and you don't have to go super mad with these doing some little scratchy bits as well makes it look a little bit more weathered or worn which is always quite fun but most of the time I just do lots of little tippy taps or lines or jaggedy highlights and it does the job you don't have to go mad as well like I said a few bits here and there you can also opt to do the boots sometimes I don't tend to bother with the boots and just do like some dusting and weathering but I'm just doing them here just for completion then for the tidy up on the skin I'm just going to use paratrooper tan again and just apply that again like all the other colours just picking up the raised bits extremities nose cheeks brows that kind of thing you could go lighter if you want to but I'm happy enough with the tone that this is doing so I'm doing it this colour in some places you might want your silvers a little bit lighter so instead of tidying back up with the metal you can go a bit lighter in here I'm just using a little bit of plate mail metal so it's a little bit more shiny a little bit more blingier just for a few select tones then for the eyes I'm just going to get a little bit of green black I'm just going to drop that into those areas because they're already molded and detailed I don't have to do much more with that and a little bit of poppy red just for the lips you can do on the cheeks as well if you wanted to now if you want to freehand your flags on the back of the armour I'm just going to do a quick simple Japanese flag here so we'll start off with a little bit of white and then just get a big dollop of red so this is berry maroon and just take my time and then just drop that on gives me a nice circle this is a nice straightforward bit of free hand obviously there's gonna be more complicated ones out there it's up to you then for a little bit of weathering or chipping I'm just going to get some dark olive which is the same colour I use for the hair and then just sponge that on sponge onto the gun sponge onto the armour you could do it like this or you could use a brush and do it by hand so a couple of little notches and flicks and chips here and there just makes the armour look a bit battered a bit warm because maybe these ones have been fighting a bit longer taking a little bit more damage or it's from a friend who died who knows so there we are the paint guide is done really enjoyed painting the Japanese warrior or the Japanese support trooper the jab I did the Japanese flag because it's really quick and straightforward to do from a freehand point of view I could have gone full on and done like the United States or like the union flag or something like that now one thing I'm going to add as a little link is a bunch of little flags that you can just cut out and stick on the back of your troopers little patches that they've got so it's almost looks like a velcro patch now I've got a bunch of variant sizes so depending if you want them slightly larger or slightly smaller it's entirely too if you want ones on the arms or whatever there's a few options there for you to pick from just slice them with a knife and just use a little bit of PVA and stick them on with that don't use super glue I did initially try super glue it just gets very messy so just use PVA it will harden as well um but yeah if you're not in the mood for doing like free handing flags just just use a little bit of printout I mean you can make your own you just get like a google word doc or whatever and just put a bunch of flags in there shrink them to a really tiny size but yeah all in all very excited for the game love the fact that you can do base building in it as well so much like the video game you can add on like rooms and stuff you can do the research you can do the manufacturing or part of the campaign which I'm really excited to see how that works um a lot of this is like I say it's an overview video with a bit of a paint guide thrown in because there's a lot to read but yeah the plan is to do a couple of playthroughs um and make up a fun team there'll be a peach in there of course there'll be a peach in there um but it has the same mechanics but there's a lot of differences so it is worth doing it as its own little playthrough much like when I talked about forgotten ruin um because I've covered how to play five leagues in the borderlands five parsecs forgotten ruins on the list and of course this will be on the list as well as playthroughs so you'll have like a nice selection of different rule sets to pick from but very very cool love how it's just so well tied in with the video games which I'm a big fan of um love the fact as well there's a little rule in there if you are familiar there's something called save scumming a lot of people would do this when they know they're going to get that 95% chance of hitting that alien behind the wall and they save just before it and they miss and they load again and they miss and they load again and they miss um you get that option you can get to do a re-roll uh it's called save scumming love that love the fact exalt are in there as well um I'd love to see some terror from the deep stuff I'd love to see excom 2 as like an add-on later on down the line um definitely want to see some exalt models um come out not got the hold of the aliens yet that gives me an excuse to do another video great can't wait um but yes there's a whole selection of aliens based from the game as well so really excited to see where this all goes um so yes excom the miniatures game by modiphius can't wait let me know in the comments what you think um what you'd like to see what you want to do what what plans you've got and what you're going to name your crew and your soldiers um and yeah what colors you're going to do as well you're going to get more modern day sort of like camo are you going to go a little bit more sci-fi or near future or you're not even going to do that at all and maybe make stargate oh it's a great idea yeah let's let's let's let's throw some jafar in there as well maybe the guauld have uh contacted all these other alien races and they're working with them and now it's down to sg1 and a few other key members to take on and save the world i guess that works quite well as doing the sgc uh initiative or program using the word initiative it's very excom of me yes as always thank you for watching love you all thank you to the patrons for your constant support like i said there's a bunch of links in the description if you're after like brushes with a discount paints minis so we print miniatures um do check those out if you are after like a little bit of a discount here and there but yes thank you hope you enjoy it peach cons very soon um so this is probably the last video just before peach con and there'll be another one after but it'll be like the weekend of um so yes if you are coming down i'll see you there let us know in the comments if you are going to peach con right catch you soon bye bye peachy out everyone's making noise today everyone is making noise we've got next door neighbors kids making noise we've got frankie making noise charlie's having the best time summer holidays folks if you hear noise in the background it's because of that and it's fine it's fine we're talking about xcom we're talking about aliens aliens yeah we're talking about aliens taking over the world ain't taking over the world when these loud little buggers are kicking off i'll tell you that we're leaving and we'll be like oh my god this planet sucks i'm going everyone's so loud