Hotzone, a heist skirmish board game

One Player controls a powerful Security Chief and a host of built-in board defenses, the other infiltrates with three unknown marauders, saving their talents for just the right moment to secure their bounties and get out alive!

Fast, fluid gameplay, beautiful artwork, multiple win conditions, and new potential every time you play! 

A WIDESPREAD AND DYNAMIC BATTLEFIELD

Each map tile in Hotzone is 5"x5", making a battlegrid with lots to see and lots more to find. Walls and obstacles force strategic maneuvering and un-flipped tiles leave opportunities for clutch discoveries. What's out there? You'll find out when you enter!

Each step of the game's setup is, itself, part of the game. No spending 20 minutes putting a layout together with no decisions; assemble the board with alternating turns to strategically place lanes and bounties where you want them. Draft your Operatives together while trying to guess each other's strategies. Pick equipment based on covering for weaknesses or emphasizing strengths. 

Will you stash critical gear for later, or invest in traps and personnel to serve as active defense? You're playing from the moment the first tile hits the table!

And, of course, the full color rulebook!

Beautiful full color human-drawn artwork permeates Hotzone. No AI was used in the creation of this product. Map tiles were constructed through a combination of human-made Inkarnate assets and manual painting, and the card art is the work of a host of amazing artists.

Let's break down the gameplay!

Begin by choosing the Attacker and Defender. With the sides decided, assemble the board together one tile at a time. The Defender looks at a tile before placing it face-down. The Attacker places the next one face up beside it. Continue until a 4x4 grid has formed!

Next, both sides will need Masterminds, which provide global modifiers to their team. They'll also need to build the teams themselves. The Defender needs one Operative to be their Security Chief, and the Attacker needs three Operatives to be their attacking team. Masterminds and Operatives on the Defending side are publicly known, but the Attacker keeps their team a secret until they're discovered in play!

Select a Stash; the biggest Bounty on the board. This gets mixed in with the other Bounties to become the gamble worth reaching for when the Attacker's agents are wearing down. 

Both teams need their equipment now. Passing the deck back and forth in a draft format, each team selects six pieces of equipment to either distribute onto the board or among their own characters. This, combined with the abilities of your characters and your Mastermind, is the foundation of your team's strategy.

With the teams picked and equipped, the Attacker gets to scout one tile on the board, flipping it over. Then they deploy from any of the designated infiltration areas. Collaborative setup is all done, now the operation begins!

The Defender goes first, beginning by picking up a Response card to add to their hand. Response cards aren't able to be played until later, but you can start forming your strategy around what you've pulled. Then they activate their security chief and mover them as they wish. Lastly, they can relocate any Guards or Bystanders they've placed on the board to an adjacent tile.

The Attacker goes next. They activate each agent one at a time and move them as they wish, typically toward the nearest Bounty Cache. When they encounter cards like Guards they'll need to react by hiding, negotiating, or attacking. 

This back and forth continues, with Attacking agents raiding Bounty caches and extracting with their contents. Every time 100 points leaves the board the Alert level goes up by 1, granting the Defender the ability to play Response cards on their turn in  increasing numbers. When all the Attackers are either captured or extracted, the game ends and both sides total their points for victory!

CHECK OUT MANY OF THE TEST GAMES THAT WENT INTO HOTZONE ON YOUTUBE!

Looking to get more people in on the excitement? With the inclusion of the Healthy Competition expansion, Hotzone instantly upgrades to up to 4 players! Three individual attacking teams each square off against the defender AND each other in a free-for-all race to the finish!

ADD ON's

Many years ago, in celebration of the launch of the first edition of Hc Svnt Dracones, I ordered a limited amount of beautiful metal toggle replicas. These things ended up vastly more expensive (and bigger) than I really bargained on, so they were never re-ordered. At this point not many still remain, and I rarely include them as Add on's. But Hotzone is a first step into a whole new realm for this franchise and I think it's time to put them back up here!

The corp-based poker chips have popped into many HSD releases since their debut and continue to be a great, inexpensive way to help out the product. At this point the exact number of each corp coin remaining is a bit uneven, so for this one you'll be getting them at random. Literally pulled from a sack. If you're ordering more than one I'll make sure you don't end up with duplicates!