Xenos Rampant is a ‘large skirmish’ tabletop wargame, written by Daniel Mersey and Richard Cowen and published by Osprey Games.
Based on Dan’s earlier Dragon Rampant fantasy variant of his Rampant family of games, Xenos Rampant is a setting-neutral science fiction ruleset, meaning that models from virtually any range of miniatures can be fielded. The game includes several chapters of optional rules and suggestions for games set in Weird War One and Two, modern day Urban Fantasy and alien invasions, post-apocalyptic survivalism and Space Opera boarding actions.
Xenos Rampant detachments are typically composed of about 4-10 units from a variety of generic unit types, each of which can be further customised using ‘xeno rules’, which apply special abilities like force fields, teleportation and psychic powers.
The game was nominated for Best Miniatures Rules at the UK Games Expo 2023 and for the 2023 Charles S. Roberts Award For Excellence In The Conflict Simulation Industry.
Xenos Rampant contains examples of:
- Absolute Xenophobe: The Hatred xeno rule.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: The High-Powered Blades upgrade, along with the Mono-Molecular Blades xeno rule, the latter of which, if taken literally, is also Sharpened to a Single Atom.
- After the End: One of the suggested settings is the post-apocalypse, with sample detachments in various flavours of Zombie Apocalypse, Mad Max, Fallout and a cult led by a (possibly) literal angel.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The blurb for the robot sample detachment suggests that a lot of planets run by artificial intelligences are somewhat reticent to discuss what, exactly, caused their creators’ extinction…
- Aliens Are Bastards: Well, this is a science fiction wargame, so yes. This is made explicit with the UFO Scientific Team sample detachment.
- Alien Invasion: One of the sample settings, the War on Terra, is about various modern-day human factions defending against aliens and their human sympathisers. Once the setting becomes Space Opera, this can be played straight or inverted by the warring factions.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Orbital Drop scenario is an attack on an enemy headquarters.
- Ancient Conspiracy: One of the suggested Urban Fantasy factions is one of those occult organisations with libraries, magicians, automata and paramilitary death squads. In the Weird War chapter, although both the Schulers and the Handwerkers pre-date the rise of the Third Reich, only the Schulers claim to be ancient, descended from the priesthood of Thule.
Word of God says they’re lying; they’re actually a nationalist group of mystics from the spiritualist craze of the mid-19th Century. - Annoying Arrows: Primitive Infantry can be upgraded to carry missile weapons, but they’re not that effective against modern or futuristic armour.
- Another Dimension: Demonic units are available, representing trans-dimensional beings that don’t really interact that well with our reality.
- Anti Armour: There are two variant upgrades, each with a version for shooting and melee respectively. Anti-Tank/Demolitions is for weapons designed for penetrating vehicle armour, but provides no bonus against infantry targets, and Armour-Piercing/High-Powered Blades is for weapons such as rapid-fire autocannons or power swords, in that they slightly reduce Armour against all targets.
- Anti-Infantry: The expensive Fighting Vehicle unit can be downgraded with the Anti-Personnel Specialism, which removes the Anti Armour element of its ranged attack.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Swords and other weapons, sometimes technologically enhanced, regularly appear. The Unarmed xeno rule even strips a model of its existing ranged capability so that units can run around hitting things with swords.
- The Armies of Heaven: The Demonic rule can be renamed Celestial for when the demon in question has whiter wings.
- Armour Is Useless: Averted. Armour is a central part of the wound resolution system, where even naked savages have at least one point of Armour, representing all-round resilience and skill at not getting shot or stabbed. Troops actually wearing armour though are potentially very, very tough, with Elite Infantry being upgradeable to the level of light tanks.
- Armour Piercing Attack: The lighter and cheaper version of Anti-Tank is literally called Armour-Piercing.
- Artifact Title: The ‘Rampant’ is a reference to heraldry. The original Rampant game was Lion Rampant, about medieval warfare. From there, it spun out into the fantasy Dragon Rampant, and from there to science fiction as Xenos Rampant. Aliens very rarely appear on medieval European heraldry.
- Awesome Personnel Carrier: Transport Vehicles are, like most units, quite generic, but, again as with most units, with a few extra rules, they can be flying, invisible, psychic vehicles. Softskin Vehicles upgraded to have transport capacity have an even wider array of options, including bigger guns, but they’re quite a bit flimsier and arguably not really worth spending too many points on.
- Ax-Crazy: Berserk Infantry and Primitive Infantry (the latter only with the Savages downgrade) will attempt to charge any enemy unit that comes within range. Xenomorph units usually have the same rule, but they’re more bestial than berserk.
- The Bad Guys Are Cops: Aside from games in which one side plays a detachment of law enforcement officers, there are rules in the Urban Fantasy chapter for Non-Player Character police patrols responding to reports of gunfire. Since their reaction is to shoot or arrest any visible combatants, they count as ‘bad guys’ in the context of the game.
- Badass Army: It’s possible to create forces composed entirely of elite troops, although it’d be very small in size. One of the sample detachments is a single squad of five super-soldiers, split among three units of Elite Infantry.
- Badass Biker: The Mobile upgrade available to many infantry units is intended, in part, to represent this.
- Badass Crew: Elite Infantry are good at everything, but come with a points cost to reflect that.
- Bad Boss: The Brutal Leader rule allows for ‘morale-boosting’ battlefield executions, while several of the randomly-rolled Commander Traits are negative, lumping your Commander with poor administrative skills, cowardice, impulsiveness or other personality flaws. Fortunately, these can be bought off over the course of a campaign.
- BFG: The Artillery upgrade for Fighting Vehicles and Support Infantry, and neither unit was exactly sporting peashooters before the upgrade.
- Bodyguarding a Badass: The rest of your Commander’s squad, although this is really a subversion in that, with stats representing the abilities of an entire unit, whether it consists of one warrior or ten, the presence of bodyguards actually dilutes your Commander’s badassery.
- Boring, but Practical: Heavy and Light Infantry are your basic soldiers, with the former designed to hold their own in sustained firefights, while the latter are more capable of seizing objectives ahead of slower-moving infantry.
- Breath Weapon: Xenomorphs can be upgraded to have a shooting attack, allowing for Starship Troopers-style tanker bugs.
- Captain Ersatz – Several of the units described in the rules, and particularly the sample detachments, appear to be referencing specific settings with the serial numbers filed off. The degree of subtlety varies widely.
- Car Fu: Vehicles can attack in melee, representing ramming, although they’re not very good at it without certain upgrades, particularly Walker, which presumably brings arms as well as legs.
- Church Militant: There are several cults detailed in the sample detachments, including one led by a (possibly) literal angel.
- Combat Medic: An upgrade available to any unit, supplying a saving throw to nearby units that take casualties.
- Crapsack World: This being a wargame, each of the settings described is quite crapsack: Nazi and Allied troops fighting a secret war during and after the final months of World War Two; gangs of cultists clashing with police and each other in The Meanest Streets; the War on Terra is the midst of a worldwide alien invasion, where the superpowers have been decapitated and it’s only humanity’s dogged determination to survive that keeps the fighting going; the Post-Apocalypse is, well, the post-apocalypse. Only Space Opera games have a chance of not being crapsacky, if you go down the less Grimdark route.
- Critical Failure: Units with the Unstable xeno rule suffer damage on fumbled activation rolls, while units with Psychic Hazard suffer from failed psychic tests.
- Cult: Several, ranging from post-apocalyptic followers of an angel, through backwoods militiamen who pray to aliens, to demon-worshipping urban gangs. One or two of the War on Terra sample detachments could be used to represent the Taliban or ISIS as well.
- Death from Above: The Special Insertion rule often represents this, particularly in modern or historical settings. This trope is also the whole point of the Orbital Drop scenario.
- Decapitated Army: The Hive Mind xeno rule; destroy the brain and the limbs fail.
- Defenseless Transports: Not quite, but they are pretty rubbish in combat. Softskin transports that haven’t been given the Technical upgrade are assumed to have only whatever guns the driver is waving out of a window.
- Despair Event Horizon: If a unit rolls 0 or below due to modifiers on their Courage tests, they rout, being removed from the board in their entirety.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Being a large-skirmish/small-battle level of game, even the most powerful units, which can represent demons, alien overlords or god-machines, can be killed.
- Diesel Punk: The Weird War Werwolf setting has lashes of this, mixed with pulp adventure stories and Cthulhoid horror.
- The Dog Bites Back: Following the surrender of Germany in World War Two, the British made use of German turncoats as local guides, spies and foot soldiers in the fight against Werwolf. These turncoats were a mixture of anti-Nazi resistance and German soldiers repulsed by the horrors unleashed in their nation’s name by Werwolf. In-setting, these were the oppressed fighting back against their oppressors, and it can count in-game as well, if a unit of turncoats kills a Schuler or Handwerker commander.
- Dying Race: The Ancients sample Detachment represents an aeons-old species that left automated defences behind. They might still be defending something, unless their creators are actually extinct.
- Easy Logistics: In general, this trope is in force. However, there are optional rules in the After the End post-apocalyptic setting for ammunition shortages.
- Elite Army: Perfectly possible, since there aren’t any restrictions on Detachment composition beyond limiting the number of armoured vehicles.
- Elite Mooks: A common composition for an army is to include one hard-hitting unit of elite mooks (often Heavy or Elite Infantry), backed up by lighter, cheaper units.
- Empire with a Dark Secret: The Third Reich, but not just for the obvious reason. The two factions of Werwolf, the Schulers and the Handwerkers, are both dabbling in things man was not meant to dabble in. Arguably, the Handwerkers have the greater secret, in that they’re not actually super-genius mad scientists, but just reproduce technological concepts that they are given by their alien ‘patrons’ in return for handing over undesirables as research subjects. Considering that a Handwerker appears in the human Les Collaborateurs sample detachment for the War on Terra Alien Invasion setting, it seems the ‘patrons’ have a far bigger end goal than just helping a gang of racists take over Europe.
- Enemy Civil War: The Schulers and the Handwerkers were constantly struggling for supremacy within the socially Darwinist byzantine political structures of the Third Reich, with the Handwerkers dominant for much of the war (because who doesn’t like power armour and flying saucers?) and the Schulers taking the lead when Germany ran out of money and resources to pay for bloated, inefficient Handwerker projects. This rivalry did result, on occasion, in violence between the factions, even though they were both, theoretically, on the same side against the Allies.
- Evil Army: Several of the sample detachments are villainous, but dealt with fairly even-handedly: alien invaders might have benevolent motives, post-apocalyptic regimes might be trying to rebuild society rather than carving out empires for a warlord. The Werwolf organisation, however, is presented entirely negatively. The Schulers are horrific sorcerers and necromancers, trafficking with demons, while the Handwerkers are implied to be trading prisoners to alien ‘patrons’ in exchange for technology, rather than actually developing super-science themselves.
- Evil Empire: Name-checked in the more brutal, Roman-inspired Space Opera counterparts to the Star Trek style crew.
- False Prophet: One interpretation of The Angel. The alien ‘gods’ that lead several of the cults, or their demagogues, would also count.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Evil Empire Space Opera sample Detachment has its trooper ranks based on the Roman Empire.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Enforced by the Soviet Union when fighting Werwolf. No, those weren’t reanimated soldiers, comrade, because that doesn’t exist in a rational, communist universe. Nor can flying saucers exist, for the same reason. The NKVD enforces this political correctness by murdering anyone who argues differently.
- The Federation: One of the Space Opera sample detachments represents a landing party akin to a scaled-up Star Trek away team.
- Friendly Fireproof: Mostly. Should its activation roll be botched, the Fire Support upgrade can scatter and hit another unit near to its intended target.
- Frontline General: The Commander trait, added to a single unit in each Detachment, enhances the morale and discipline of nearby units. As such, it can make sense to apply it to a tough combat unit, but since that unit’s likely to take casualties and either become suppressed or be completely destroyed, averting this trope can also make sense, applying Commander to a small, cheap unit that can be kept out of harm’s way.
- Genre-Busting: Yes, it’s a science-fiction game, but alongside the usual lasers and hover-tanks, it also includes possibilities for playing games of Lovecraftian horror, weird war, steampunk, pulp Flash Gordon-style high jinks, grimdark future, post-apocalyptic survival (with optional zombies) and even not-at-all science fiction modern or historical squad-level skirmishes.
- Geo Effects: Terrain offers the usual defensive bonuses and movement hindrances.
- Greek Letter Ranks: Psychics are graded from Delta- to Alpha-class, with Alpha being the most powerful.
- Haunted Technology: There’s nothing to stop a player from applying the Undead or Demonic xeno rules to vehicles. As an example, the Schulers sample Detachment includes a possessed panzer.
- Hit Points: Each unit begins play with 5, 10 or 15 Strength Points. This can represent 1 SP per model in the unit, 2 or more SP per model for larger or tougher creatures, or all the SP could be concentrated into one creature, vehicle or badass warrior.
- Hive Mind: The name of one of the Xeno Rules, in which the detachment Commander has an infinite range on their influence bubble.
- Hive Queen: The Commander in an army where units have the Hive Mind xeno rule.
- Hollywood Tactics: Averted, usually, due to the small size of most forces. However, if you were to build a particularly large army, you might be able to make this trope work.
- Homage: Lots of them. Mad Max, Star Trek, Aliens, Predator, HP Lovecraft, The Philadelphia Experiment, John Carter of Mars, Starship Troopers, Terminator…
- Horde of Alien Locusts: One of the sample detachments is a wave of teeth and claws.
- It's Raining Men: One of the scenarios is Orbital Drop, where the attacker deploys all of their troops from orbit (or via parachute in less technologically advanced settings). The Special Insertion xeno rule allows units to deploy via It's Raining Men in other scenarios, and there’s nothing stopping your entire army from deploying this way.
- Jeanne d'Archétype: The Angel, although she’s possibly literally an angel.
- Jetpack: The Flying or Skimmer xeno rules, possibly with the Mobile upgrade for extra speed, can be added to pretty much any infantry unit, representing jetpacks.
- Last Stand: The name and outcome of one of the scenarios.
- Lightning Bruiser: Lesser and Greater Xenomorphs are both fast and powerful in melee. Their weakness is that they lack ranged attacks (although they can be upgraded) and are poor when defending against charging enemies (they much prefer to be the ones doing the charging). Units with the Mobile upgrade, which greatly increases their Maximum Movement stat for no drawback, can become this.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: Many sample detachments have the toughest unit in the army as their Commander, occasionally fielded as a Single Model Unit (i.e. one model has the stats of an entire squad).
- Loads and Loads of Rules: Averted. Everything’s in the one rulebook.
- Machine Worship: There’s a primitive cult of technology cultists in the post-apocalyptic setting.
- Mad Scientist: The Handwerkers are engineers, rocket scientists and other assorted geniuses, producing staggering scientific advances that could change the destiny of humanity. At least, that's how they see themselves. In truth, they might be some of the best scientific minds that, uh, Nazi Germany has to offer, but their inventions are shoddy recreations of hyper-advanced concepts revealed to them by aliens. Their projects are also grossly inefficient and expensive, so harm the German war effort as much as they assist it.
- Made of Explodium: One version of the Exploder Xeno Rule makes a unit detonate if it hits 0 Strength Points. (The other lets them explode at will.)
- Magic or Psychic?: Obviously it depends on the setting in which a given game is being played, but the same rules are used for the sorcery of the Schulers, the Strange Foundation and various demon-worshipping cults as for the miracles of the Angel and the mental abilities of various aliens, mutants and psychics.
- Mighty Glacier: Fighting Vehicles are slow (for vehicles), but hit harder than any other unit in the game (before upgrades).
- Military Mage: There’s nothing to stop you adding the Psychic rule to a unit proficient in combat, but since units can only take one action per turn, that’s a round of shooting or stabbing that’s been skipped to allow you to summon a demon or cloud someone’s mind. The Weird War Two setting in the rulebook features several literal examples as part of the Strange Research Group of the British Army, as well as a darker sorcerer in one of the German army lists.
- Mook Commander: The Commander trait is ‘always on’ (except if the Commander is dead or suppressed), applying bonuses to activation rolls and Courage tests for allies within a certain radius.
- Morale Mechanic: Units that come under fire or suffer casualties in melee must take Courage tests. Failure results in them becoming suppressed, which forces them to move into cover until they rally. A particularly bad failure results in them routing and the entire unit being removed from the table. Demonic, undead and mechanoid troops each have special morale rules, which emphasise those units’ lack of fear but replacing it with one of several varieties of Critical Existence Failure.
- More Dakka: Anything can be killed, although you might need to resort to this if you’re attacking a tank with Light Infantry. And the tank, which will probably be shooting back, already has more.
- Motive Decay: The Handwerkers were meant to be producing technology to aid the Nazi war effort, i.e. fighting for the supremacy of the Aryan race. Perhaps it was just desperation for safe harbour when the Reich fell, but at least one Handwerker ends up siding with their patrons, against humanity, during their later invasion of Earth during the War on Terra.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: You, that is, the Commander of your force, can be one of these, if you roll badly on one of the Commander Trait charts. Due to your incompetence, your army is several points smaller than your opponent’s.
- One-Man Army: Nearly. Units can be fielded as Reduced or Single Model Units, which have the same stats and Strength Points as a larger unit, but compressed into fewer models. As such, an army can be composed of as few as three models (i.e. the minimum requirement of three units, each fielded as SMU’s).
- Organic Technology: Presumed to be the case when Xenomorph units are upgraded to have ranged attacks.
- Our Angels Are Different: Or are they? Is the Angel an actual celestial being, a mutant or a genetic experiment gone awry? Her followers believe the former.
- Our Demons Are Different: They’re as likely to be alien entities as actual fire-and-brimstone hellspawn or fallen angels. Incidentally, angels also use the Demonic Xeno Rule, although it’s suggested they rename it as Celestial or Angelic.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Zombies can be represented by several troop types, depending on how staggery, shooty or resilient you want them to be. The zombie apocalypse optional rules also allow for NPC zombies to appear in various flavours, from runners to lurchers to flyers to tunnellers.
- Outscare the Enemy: The Brutal Leader Xeno Rule does this through carefully applied battlefield executions.
- The Paladin: The Crusader Xeno Rule. The Angel’s followers also include self-style post-apocalyptic paladins.
- Phantasy Spelling: The road warriors might fight for supplies of guzzoline for their vehicles, but that’s a nod to the source material (they’re a Mad Max homage).
- Planet Looters: Space pirates in the space opera setting and, on an Independence Day scale, the aliens in the War on Terra setting.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: They’re fighting occult/alien-collaborating Nazis, so I guess that makes the Soviet Union heroes in the Werwolf campaign? Taking the term ‘politically correct’ on face value, the Red Army Detachment are this, since it is politically incorrect in the USSR to believe in superstitious nonsense like, say, the witch Baba Yaga and her chicken-legged cottage… Guess which piece of Russian mythology is accompanying that detachment into battle? Also politically incorrect is Winston Churchill, who disbands the Strange Research Group at the end of World War Two, as he's concerned its colonial members might use the skills gained during their Military Mage experiences against the British Empire.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Werwolf are actual Nazis, so yeah.
- The Power of Hate: Hatred is a Xeno Rule that can be added to improve a unit’s eagerness to assault certain enemies in melee.
- Powered Armor: Several space opera forces, plus the Weird War Two Handwerkers.
- Private Military Contractors: They show up in several sample Detachments throughout the settings, but also have their own dedicated modern-day PMC list in the War on Terra setting. There’s also a Mercenaries Xeno Rule, intended for unreliable PMC’s, which has a random chart for how their unpredictability helps or hinders you, their employer, during a given game.
- Psychic Powers: Units can have them.
- Quantity Versus Quality: Being a points-build game, this is always in effect. Ignoring the use of Reduced or Single Model Units, some of the sample Detachments have as few as 15 Strength Points worth of troops, while others have 60+. On a competence-per-Strength-Point basis, the quantity lies in the latter, and the quality in the former.
- The Quisling: A Handwerker (ex-Nazi, now ambassador for an invading alien species) appears as the commander of the human collaborators army in the War on Terra setting.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Most post-apocalyptic forces, and several from other settings as well.
- Random Transportation: The Teleport psychic power and Teleport Jump Xeno Rules let you pick the direction, but you roll for the maximum distance the unit travels.
- Recycled In Space: Xenos Rampant is the science fiction version of Dragon Rampant, which was itself the Recycled In Fantasy version of the medieval Lion Rampant.
- Religion of Evil: The various urban fantasy cults that worship demons and aliens in the Meanest Streets setting.
- Sapient Tank: Vehicles with the Mechanoid or Demonic Xeno Rules are this. In the former case, it’s literally a vehicle controlled by an AI. In the latter, it’s possessed by a demon. Vehicles can also be Undead, but quite what that involves is up to the player (is it the crew that are reanimated, or is the vehicle organic?).
- Schizo Tech: Perfectly feasible in any setting, particularly when the players haven’t coordinated which armies they’re bringing to the table (Mad Max survivors versus Daleks, or extra-dimensional demons versus the Red Army), and essentially enforced in the Werwolf setting, as the Handwerkers have ray guns, power armour and flying saucers alongside their MP40’s and panzers.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Units that roll 0 or less (after modifiers, obviously) on a Courage test don’t just become suppressed, but rout entirely and are removed from the table.
- Separate, but Identical: Essentially one of the things that makes the Rampant series of games great at representing multiple settings. Based on the principle that two squads of power-armoured space knights are pretty much the same, there’s no point having two virtually identical unit entries with slight tweaks, when you can instead just have one.
- Sharpened to a Single Atom: Mono-Molecular Blades, obviously.
- Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Averted. Units with a weapon range of greater than 12” can fire at reduced effect at any targets within line of sight.
- Space Opera: The largest of the five genres covered by the sample detachments. Spaceships, however, are limited to the occasional shuttle or drop-ship. Or the entire table could be a space ship, and the game a boarding action.
- Space Pirates: A couple of the Space Opera sample detachments are for space pirates.
- Squishy Wizard: Because each unit only gets one action per turn, it’s often seen as wasteful to apply the Psychic Xeno Rule to units that you’d otherwise want to be shooting the enemy or attacking them in melee. Therefore, a lot of Psychic units are fielded as second-line units like Light Infantry or similar.
- Stealth Pun: The War on Terra, if that counts as stealthy.
- Straight for the Commander: A viable strategy, since losing your Commander triggers Courage tests across the army. Of course, since units that haven’t taken casualties rarely fail Courage tests and will probably rally next turn, so the results may be disruptive but disappointing.
- Summon Magic: Psychics have access to a power that allows them to summon certain units from reserve.
- Supernatural Fear Inducer: The Fearsome Xeno Rule can represent this, although it just makes it harder to pass Courage tests caused by the fearsome unit due to normal things like inflicting casualties, rather than inducing terror from scratch. Demonic units get the Fearsome rule for free, so are a more literal example of this trope.
- Supersoldier: The space opera setting has a sample detachment composed of supersoldiers. There are five models in the entire army.
- Take Cover!: Cover provides an Armour bonus, which increases the number of hits a unit takes before suffering casualties. Soft cover provides +1, hard cover +2 and reinforced cover (fortifications and the like) +3.
- Taking You with Me: The cheaper version of the Exploder rule; don’t destroy a unit of these troops in melee.
- Tank Goodness: Downplayed, as each Detachment is only allowed one armoured vehicle, either a Fighting Vehicle (a tank, basically) or a Transport Vehicle (what journalists call a tank).
- Techno Wizard: Psychics have access to the Machine Friend power, which repairs damaged Mechanoid and vehicle units.
- Teleportation: The Special Insertion rule represents this, as well as Death from Above or tunnellers or other ways of getting onto the battlefield.
- Walking Tank: Vehicles can be upgraded to become walkers, which makes them as mobile as infantry and better at melee (i.e. they hit or stamp on things rather than just drive into them).
- We Will Wear Armour In The Future: Well, the ‘toughness’ stat is called Armour, although it can also represent general resilience and determination to fight on.
- You Have Failed Me: Brutal Leader. In a campaign game, a Commander who loses too many Career Points due to defeats and other drawbacks can be removed from his post (and possibly executed or even eaten by his troops).
- Zerg Rush: Horde armies of cheap troops can do this.
- Zombie Apocalypse: There are rules for simulating battles taking place during one of these, as well as a sample army list for a zombie horde.
