Cyberpunk Combat Zone Hardcover Rulebook

I recently got into the Cyberpunk Combat Zone miniatures game. It's fast and thematic, a fast-paced little skirmish game between small gang forces. Things I really love about it are:

• The Setting. I'm an oldschool CP2020 nerd, so I'm hooked on the setting and its lore. I love the minis, and they can do double-duty for the RPG as well, which is a big bonus.
• Hypermobility. It's NOT a game where the dominant tactic is to stand back and do nothing, it's a lot more engaging than that. Movement is really flexible, and you're mechanically encouraged to set up multilevel terrain and maneuver all over the play area. 
• No one-hit kills. Each hit downgrades the target's capabilities, and most characters take 3 or 4 hits to knock them out. When your character takes a wound, they get to react immediately, so even if the enemy focus-fires on your favorite mini, you'll get to do something with them before they go down.

I've been painting up a ton of minis, and building terrain. I picked up a few Vehicles and Full Body Conversions, too. The rules for them aren't in the slim rulebook that comes in the starter set, but there are PDFs available of the beta versions of those. But there's also a big hardcover rulebook you can buy for the game, and it wasn't clear to me if it was worth sinking the extra money into the fancy rulebook. I looked online, but couldn't find any good details about what was in the hardcover book. How much did it compile? Was it just a reprint, or did it have major updates and errata? So I decided to take the plunge, compare it to the starter set rulebook, and post a summary online of what's new or different in the hardcover rulebook. 

Rules Changes and Additions in the Hardcover Rulebook for Cyberpunk Combat Zone

In general, the paperback rulebook from the boxed set is written with a bit more character, color and flavor. By contrast, the hardcover rulebook is more to-the-point and generally clearer. It's better organized, and often better explained in the main text. Surprisingly, though, it has fewer examples. 

The result is that the hardcover book is a faster read, easier to learn from, and quicker to look things up during play. But, in the rare instance where you do encounter a rule in the hardcover book that isn't immediately clear to you, the lack of examples can potentially make it harder to puzzle out the proper meaning. I prefer the hardcover rules text, but if English were not my native language, I bet the boxed set's many examples would be really helpful.

In Summation: If you're just getting started, I recommend you learn the game out of the slim softcover rulebook that comes in the 2-player starter set as it has lots of examples. Then, if you like the game and want to dive in deeper, it's definitely worth getting the expanded hardcover rulebook. Once you've got it, the hardcover book is the one you'll want to bring with you to game sessions and reference it at the table.

In Detail: These are the notes I scribbled down while going through the book, page by page in order. It is an itemized list of the many clarifications, and a few changes, introduced in the text of the hardcover rulebook. 

• When rolling against the Obstacle Die, the active player is now considered the Defender (instead of the Attacker as it was in the starter set), making rolls opposed by the Obstacle Die a good bit easier.
• The 2^nd Printing of the boxed set introduced the Purple Die. The hardcover rulebook doesn't talk about it as much as the boxed set does, but what it does say suggests the possibility there may be other unusual dice added in the future.
• The “Card Supremacy” section now makes it clear that card effects trump not just rulebook rules but also scenario rules.
• Some of the terminology of the Battlespace are better defined in this book. It's not a major change (or really a change at all), but it is presented early in the book and might potentially make some Scenario setup descriptions slightly easier to understand if you've read this section.
• The “Card Anatomy” section is a little more detailed, and specifically notes that “Veteran” versions of Characters have 1 Star and “Elite” versions have 2 or more Stars. It feels like that terminology change could be useful, but I'm not sure it actually sees much use in the book.
• The “Gear Cards” section includes a brief clarification on how Universal cards stack with faction Rarity.
• Gonks cannot use or acquire Gear. This isn't a change, I'm pretty sure it said that somewhere in the boxed set rules, but it is more clearly stated in the new rulebook on the page where Gonks are first mentioned. It's kinda buried in the softcover rules, and would be easy to miss it.
• It's clarified that you don't have to use all the actions of a Model when you activate them, you can save some for [Re]Actions or split them across multiple activations. This was heavily implied in the boxed set rules, but is far more clear in the hardcover rules.
• There's a short but helpful section on how it works when an Influence Action or other ability allows you to take control of a Rival model. If you've been arguing with your opponent about how that works, the hardcover book can clear it up for you both. 
• There's some clarification that there is a “clean up” step at the end of Inspire Your Team, and that's when you get to remove Hacked Tokens, refresh exhausted cards, and when Difficult Actions become available again.
• In the “Taking Actions” section there's a number of minor clarifications on topics and terms such as Free, Easy, Difficult, and how Exhausting a card works. Nothing that constitutes a change to the game, I don't think, but just better organized and easier to learn or look up this way.
• It seems like the Basic Influence Action “Command” might function subtly differently in the hardcover rulebook. Probably worth taking a quick peak at page 17. Hard to describe the difference, and I'm not sure it wasn't just me misunderstanding a bit of vagueness in the softcover rules, but worth a look.
• It clarifies that Influence Actions are resisted by Influence, and Tech Actions are resisted by Tech.
• Clarification on how Torrent targeting works when used as a [Re]Action.
• There's a nice little section on Trigger Timing and another on how Control passes. No major changes here, but they're nice little clarifications of corner-case situations.
• The hardcover rulebook actually states clearly that you can bend the limiter for curved movement. The boxed set rulebook shows this being done in one example, but never clearly states in the main rules text that you can do this. In this book it's crystal clear that this is allowed.
• Clarification that models are not allowed to voluntarily fall. They can't just hurl themselves off a cliff into nothingness. Instead, you'd use the climbing rules to go down, or you might potentially attempt a long jump that you're likely to fail, but if you roll well you're then obligated to clear the jump instead. This plugs a bit of a rules-hole where characters on upper floors could otherwise effectively get bonus movement by just falling off instead of climbing down.
• Climbing up can now expressly be done by using the Limiter at a diagonal. This surprised me, as measuring the hypotenuse instead of bending the Limiter up a wall allows you to squeak out a little bit of extra movement. They eliminated cheap downward movement, while encouraging cheap upward movement.  
• Edit: This is actually an even bigger change than I initially realized. In the boxed set's paperback rulebook, to climb a wall you must start your action at the base of the wall. So if you were two inches away, you'd have to waste one action getting adjacent, and then use your second action to move straight up. Now you can just diagonal the whole thing, saving you an entire extra action, as well as getting you slightly further along the upper floor because you didn't have to bend the limiter either. 
• Jumping Gaps also has a fairly major change. You can now jump further than you could in the boxed set, and if you are making a shorter jump the difficulty is somewhat lower. 
• There are numerous other minor clarifications in the sections on climbing, jumping, and falling. It's probably worth your time to read pages 24 to 25, including the examples as well as the main text.
• Attacking Into A Brawl has a clarification that non-attack actions don't get randomly targeted. So if you're trying to Command your ally, there's no chance you'll accidentally Command the Rival they are Brawling with instead. Seems like a sensible change.
• Weirdly, they changed an example in the section on shooting into a brawl on page 29, and the new example disagrees with the rules text of both the hardcover and the boxed set. I think it's just a goof.
• Netrunning now mentions that some Programs might have you roll a skill other than Tech, or might have the target resist with another skill instead. I think this is mostly future-proofing the rules.
• While most parts of the hardcover rulebook are better than the softcover boxed set rules, I will say that the Netrunning section is kind of an exception. The “Sample Netrunner Activation” section is missing, and I found it really helpful in the boxed set. Also, the “Drone” section is moved to a different part of the book (to the glossary of keywords) in a rare instance of the hardcover book being less user-friendly in its layout. It's not a huge problem, but it stood out to me.
• There's a new “Full Body Conversions” section, which is functionally identical to the FBC rules available as a PDF from the MFC website. It's nice to have it here in the book, but isn't a huge deal since these specific rules are available online for free.
• There's a new “Vehicles” section, and it is radically different than the Vehicles Rules Beta that you get as PDF from the MFC website. There's a full 8 pages of rules here, with many important functional changes from that PDF. If you've picked up any of the bikes or other vehicles that have recently released, this section is of great value. It fixes a lot of little rules-holes and corner-case situations that the PDF didn't address, and makes bikes and wheelmen much more flexible on the tabletop. If you're excited about the bikes and vehicle models, this section makes the hardcover book a must-buy.
• There's a new Beast keyword, with rules effects. I believe the dogs have been errata'd to have this keyword.
• When resolving a Blast, there is a clarification that the option to spend an Action to move out of the Blast radius is not technically a [Re]Action, so if you still end up taking a Wound you can also [Re]Act to that if you have another unused Action token available. So you can dive for cover and still return fire, if you've got 2 Action Tokens ready. 
• Pierce has an important clarification in regards to how it works when a Gear Card is providing your Armor.
• Torrent has a clarification and new example of how it works.
• New rules for another Campaign type are included, so you can choose to play a Starter Campaign, or a Legends Campaign,. They have somewhat different rules on how you build your warband, how progression works, and what Objectives you use. Strangely, despite this new mode, they neglected to put in this book anywhere the optional “Shared Market” mode from the boxed set rules. So if you have both the softcover and hardcover rules, you have 3 slightly different campaign modes to try out.
• The rules for team creation are collected in one place to make it easier. You no longer have to hunt down the rules for including mercs, specialists, robots, FBCs, universal gear, iconic gear, in a half dozen different places in a rulebook or PDF. I think this will go a long way towards preventing accidentally illegal gang rosters.
• New rules for Tournament play are added. If that's your jam, this is presumably really useful.
• Minor clarification that “Acting Model” and “Active Model” are not the same thing.
• And lastly, the Scenarios. There are so many scenarios in this book. How many...?
• 31 Competitive 2-Player Scenarios
• 14 Narrative 2-Player Scenarios
• 7 Vehicle-based Narrative 2-Player Scenarios
• 7 3-Player Scenarios
• 2 4-Player Scenarios
• 13 Prove Your Worth Scenarios
• A 3-Scenario Investigation Storyline
• A 3-Scenario Cyber-Up Storyline
• A 3-Scenario Revenge Storyline
• A 3-Scenario Block-Battle Storyline
• 5 Cyberpsycho Solo/Co-Op Scenarios (and a Cyberpsycho solo/co-op system for controlling unhinged NPC actions during play)
• Admittedly, 14 of the above 91 scenarios appear in the boxed set, and many of the Gang Starters have a Prove Your Worth scenario, and some of the other scenarios appear in PDFs on the MFC website, but clearly not all of them. Having this many collected in one place seems very useful and provides a lot of replay value to the game.

I found that the hardcover rulebook was well worth my money. It's got some important updates to the game, and tons of scenarios and campaign material. Some of it is available elsewhere, but collecting it in a single volume to haul to the game is really helpful. The expanded rules for vehicles are unique to this book, making it a must-buy if you're into those. 

Recent Gaming (spring 2025)

Lots of gaming lately. Here's some highlights:

My Amber Diceless Roleplay campaign continues to go strong. It's rolling on 5 years now, roughly twice a month, so we've recently crossed our 100th session with the same characters. Dworkin/Oberon's universe was destroyed, and the action now takes place in Corwin's universe and another universe that Fiona created, plus the occasional scene in the tiny islands of primal matter in the Abyss that were left when the old universe imploded. Those are basically the only place where Brand can exist without the "immune system" of the other universes trying to destroy him.

I just wrapped up my Feng Shui 2nd Edition campaign about a week ago. The players foiled a really major push by the Ascended to conquer 2 of the 3 Junctures they didn't already control. This caused a Critical Shift (the second one of the campaign) and after a truly epic battle we ended with the PCs stepping into a portal to a future they don't know.

For the same group (as played Feng Shui), I'm now prepping a Cyberpunk Red campaign. Scroll down to my last post, from earlier this week, to read about that. 

It was a bit of a toss-up among the group whether we wanted to do Cyberpunk or Pendragon, so in the next few months I'll be reading The Great Pendragon Campaign and the Book of Uther and doing bits and pieces of light GM-prep for that, so that when Cyberpunk wraps up, I'll have that in my pocket and ready to go. But, given that the last two campaigns for this group ran multiple years each, I'm not too worried about getting Pendragon ready in a hurry.

I'm also now playing in an RPG as well. A friend of mine is running Night's Black Agents, aka spies vs vampires. In NBA designs their own vampires and determines whether vampirism is supernatural or superscience or literally infernal demon hell-powers. Our campaign is taking place in the 1980s, so in the two sessions we've played thus far, we've had to sneak across the Berlin Wall three times now. Our characters have rescued a journalist, and the goons who were holding her captive had weird mysterious creepy stuff going on, but we haven't really connected that they (or their leader) is a vampire yet. There's one of them that makes us instantly nauseous when we get near them, but we haven't really figured out why. A different one jumped on top of our car and ripped the roof open trying to kill the journalist, but the roof-rider burst into flames when we shot the heck out of her. We're not at all certain what to expect, or what we're up against. Unraveling the mystery is pretty fun, and the uncertainty makes it easy to tap in to the fear and bewilderment our characters are experiencing. 

This weekend I got together with some friends and played the card game Innovation and the board game Thunder Road.

Innovation is really good, but kind of overwhelming the first time you play.I had really good early turns, or so I thought, as I was in the lead in points and achievements.  Unfortunately, in the mid-game I just could not manage to draw cards with any synergy at all. Well, really the problem was that I had a great hand, but I foolishly commented on it, so someone Melded a card that they could then use via Dogma to steal my hand. I didn't even know that was a possibility... but, duh, I should have, it's not like this is the first game to ever let you steal cards from another player. I just never recovered. Good game, but boy does it have a ton going on.  It's sort of a civilization-builder, where every card is an invention or cultural breakthrough. You start in the stone age, and end in the far-future. Every card in the game is unique, and they all have multiple unique ways to play them. So while I liked it a lot, I imagine its' not going to be good match for everyone.

Thunder Road is much simpler. Just good chaotic Mad-Max style shenanigans. Sort of like if Gaslands or Car Wars was a streamlined racing boardgame. We played with the Chop Shop expansion, which adds cool asymmetric super-powers to your cars via a drafting mechanic at the start of the game. I enjoyed it a great deal, and may end up buying the game and that expansion. Based on just one play, it seems like the core game without that expansion is very light beer-and-pretzels without much depth, but that expansion made every turn interesting and unpredictable. 

I continue to play the occasional solitaire-RPG or solo-skirmish miniatures game when I have insomnia. For the solo-RPG I've been mostly running D&D, with one PC (a Satyr Circle of Stars Druid) and a rotating cast of lower-level NPC sidekicks. When I started I had to lean a lot on the Solo Adventurer's Toolbox and its sequel. I'm a little more freeform of late, but that book is great for getting you started and comfortable with solitaire play.  

And every once in a while I boot up Cyberpunk 2077 or Baldur's Gate 3, but I have to be careful with those because man can I ever lose an entire evening just rearranging my darned inventory. When that happens, I feel like I've wasted a resource (my life, my time) that I'll never get back... and yet, I love both those games so much.

Meatwagon In The Time Of The Red

Starting a new campaign soon. It'll be Cyberpunk Red, with the PCs being the crew of an REO Meatwagon Combat Ambulance. If you've consumed any flavor of Cyberpunk, you've probably heard of Trauma Team, the premiere combat ambulance medical extraction company. REO Meatwagon is the low-budget disreputable version. 

I'm setting it up like an episodic TV show. Every session will have an A-Plot and a B-Plot. 

The A-Plot is "this episode's story" that's usually going to be an emergency call, where the PCs show up in the middle of a terrible situation and have to try to get their client out alive. Often this means going in guns-blazing, but sometimes it will be more of a puzzle or require subtlety.

The B-Plot will be a few roleplaying scenes around the edges of that, which tie in to one PCs backstory or personal arc each session, or perhaps advances "this season's simmering meta-plot" in the background.

I've done something similar to this in a one-shot before, and it worked great. Now I'm going to find out how well the idea holds up for a longer campaign.

Planning to assign IP a little differently than the books suggest. 

• Making any serious attempt at the A-Plot scores everyone on the team 50 IP, even if they fail. 
• If they save one or more paying customers, and deliver them safely to a Hospital (or other place the customer says is safe, provided the customer's not bleeding out or KO'd) the group +10 IP per customer saved. 
• Engaging with the B-Plot in any way (e.g.: not just hanging up on the NPC) scores an extra +5 IP for the team.
• If that B-Plot scene is a real dirty suckerpunch that seriously complicates the character's life, hits you in the feels, or someone's roleplaying really impresses the GM, everyone gets +10 IP bonus (beyond the usual +5 from the B-Plot)

The intention then being that the PCs gain 50 to 75 IP per session, which is a little higher than the average the book assumes, but not crazy high. Doing it this way to motivate the players to engage with the plots in particular ways, so there's just a little extra push to try to save a customer. Also to give you a reason to include NPC friends or family in your backstory so it's not just "I'm an orphan and a real loner" as many people seem to love to do with Cyberpunk. I find there something about dystopian futures that really make folks want to create dysfunctional lone-wolf bad-asses by default.