Good evening, wasteland warriors. Apologies for keeping you waiting; I can still make you out by the fire’s dying embers. I’m Mark, your guide to the Wastes, and tonight I’ll share the secret of victory. Throw another log on the ashes, and let me tell you how to win.
We’ve looked at setting up the game and putting your vehicles to work. Now it’s time to talk about winning. Every faction needs salvage to barter for essential supplies. The forces that gather the most can keep themselves fed and watered through many more days in the harsh wilderness.
The best places to find salvage are salvage sites: locations of technological importance left behind by a long-forgotten age and buried beneath the sands. Winds shift the landscape from day to day, sometimes uncovering a site with the promise of valuable technology. These places glint beneath the relentless sun, visible for miles—and you can be sure other wastelanders have spotted them too.
Capture and contest salvage sites
At the end of the game, the player who has captured the most sites is declared the winner. Four salvage sites are placed on the central tile at the start of play. As sites are captured, new ones appear in different locations, so there are always four sites to fight over.
To capture a site, a player must move a vehicle onto its token, which begins the game showing its red side. At the start of the next player’s turn, the token is flipped to green. If that player does not contest the site by damaging the vehicle occupying it, the token is awarded. If the vehicle takes damage, the site remains contested: flip the token back to red, and the next player gets a chance to challenge it.
A vehicle stays on a site until it moves away, the site is awarded, or the vehicle is destroyed.
New sites, new opportunities
At the end of a turn, all green sites are awarded to the forces occupying them. Those players also receive a salvage card for their efforts—we’ll get to that next week.
The final task for the player is to place new tokens to replace the captured sites. The tile for each new token is determined at random, but the player chooses its position within that tile. You might put it somewhere easy for your vehicles to reach on the next turn, or make it harder to get to. You could even place it within the enemy’s reach to tempt their vehicles away. Every option is a valid tactic.
With four sites always up for grabs, the battle keeps moving and fresh opportunities to collect more sites keep opening up. Will you have the most when the dust settles? Will you become champion of the Wastes? Only time will tell, my friend. Whatever the outcome, I can promise you’ll have a good story to share around this very campfire.