RB – Gameplay Overview

Hey everyone,

Thanks so much for your interest in the Reichbusters: Projekt Vril!

This update will give you an overview of some of the key gameplay mechanics that make up a game and give you a feeling for what it takes to be a Reichbuster.

RAID Missions are the core way to play Reichbusters: Projekt Vril.

Each time you sit down to play you’ll be able to choose from a range of interchangeable RAID mission cards to customize your game. The RAID mission cards are broken into different decks to allow you to either choose or randomly select, a Map (tile layout), a Mission Objective, and a Nazi Faction to face.

These combinations will give you a huge variety of RAID Missions to go on, bunkers to explore and Vrilmeister experimentations to take down.

The Reichbusters: Projekt Vril core box also comes with a narrative campaign comprising of 6 missions, designed to take the Reichbusters through the story of Projekt Vril.

During the campaign, objectives completed, sub-objectives found and actions taken will have an impact on future missions. So making the choice of whether or not to leave a Hero behind on a mission or taking the time to grab that extra intel can have a long-term effect.

Extra content such as the Kickstarter Exclusive “O’Reilly” mission, the Projekt X, and Not of this Earth expansion missions, will all add to the campaign to expand the story further.

For all missions, players will also choose a team card. This gives the Heroes certain bonuses and initial items. The combination of team, mission, and Heroes are chosen will define the available items, skills, and heroics points.

Team cards give players a great way to add extra flavour and to customize the approach of their Heroes for each mission.

Players have two basic actions they may take each turn. In addition, they may play as many action cards or feats as they want from their hand, and take one free action to donate an item to another Hero.

Basic actions allow a Hero to perform actions such as moving, drawing 2 cards, readying a weapon or item, opening or unlocking doors, and using items.

Each Hero comes with its own unique deck of action cards that define its particular style of play. The deck includes 2 feat cards, each of which has a single effect, and 10 action cards, each of which has 2 effects.

When an action card is used, the player must choose to use either the top or bottom effect. The top effect is always a free action or reaction. The bottom effect is always a modifier to another action (either a card or a basic action).

Action cards give players a lot of flexibility to plan their actions and while you can play with your cards hidden in your hand, we’ve found openly sharing the actions you have available leads to great communication and effective teamwork.

Players can play action cards before, between, or after taking their basic actions, offering a lot of strategic options. In addition, cards can be used to modify either basic actions OR other cards themselves.

Before the alarm goes off, players are able to decide the turn order, which means breaching rooms can be reasonably within their control. Each time the Heroes open a door to a new room, the Nazi spawn tokens in the room will be replaced with units by drawing a Nazi spawn card.

The potential danger of each room is shown on the green, amber, or red Nazi Spawn tokens, but what exactly is waiting for the Heroes won’t be revealed until they peek inside.

Once revealed, Nazi units will automatically become suspicious as they turn to look at the source of the sound. During this time, the Heroes have the initiative and can attempt to attack the Nazis before they can react. However, at the end of each player’s turn, the Nazi units on the board will activate and suspicious units will become alert.

Before the alarm has sounded, when alert Nazi units activate, they cause the Alarm tracker to move up one round (you don’t want this!). This means that Heroes need to eliminate those alerted soldiers and noisy experimentations before they rally the entire castle!

Inevitably the alarm is going to get raised and it can be triggered in one of two ways. Either the players reach round 6 by taking their turns as normal, or something causes the alarm to trigger early.

Making lots of noise, not dealing with Nazi units quickly, using “BOOM!” weapons, or just deciding to “go loud” early in the mission, will cause the alarm tracker to move up quickly!

When the alarm goes off, all Nazi spawn tokens which have not yet been revealed will spawn new Nazi units and the entire board will become a hive of activity, through which the Heroes will have to fight.

Due to the noise of the klaxons and fierce encounters, player turn order can no longer be chosen and is instead randomized. On the plus side though, players can freely use actions or attacks which cause 1 or 2 noises as these are not heard above the other activities going on.

Reichbusters: Projekt Vril comes with a whole host of different Nazi units, vril experimentations, and mechanical monstrosities and each will be designed to offer different experiences on the tabletop.

We’re looking forward to delving into the detail of these units in the coming days!

Victory or failure is decided upon the completion of the initial objective set out at the start of each mission. All Heroes will either win or lose together, you’re a team damn it!

If you’d like to read even more detail you can read find our Beta Rulebook at the following links: English – French.

The rules for Reichbusters: Projekt Vril will continue to be developed even after the Kickstarter is over and we will share updates with our backers regularly.

You can also check out the Let’s Play videos on the main KS page.

We’re going to have loads more updates to come including articles on Heroes, the Vrilmeisters, the use of Vril in the game, the Not of this Earth expansion, and more, so stay tuned!

Thanks so much for your support on this amazing launch.