The red of day gives way to the bright lights of night. In Night City’s Combat Zone, laws are scarce and conflict is common. Millions are packed in like rats, trying to survive to see the next bloody sunrise. ‘Cuz out here in the Combat Zone, there’s no help coming: it’s kill or be killed.
The world of Cyberpunk Red™ is set in the year 2045, during the reconstruction of Night City. Massive megabuildings light up the skies above the rebounding Corpo Plaza, while cyber-enhanced gangs battle in the shadows, each carving out a bloody piece of ground to call their own.
Welcome to Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™!
Become the leader of a gang torn from the pages of the Cyberpunk Red RPG and fight fever-pitched battles or sweeping campaigns. Equip your gang, hire your mercs, and build your street cred to dominate the hellish rubble of the Combat Zone and emerge as the new master of the streets.
The Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™ Core Game is the perfect entry point into playing battles across the urban sprawl of Night City. The Core Game includes everything you need to jump into the action: complete rules, over a hundred game cards, two full gangs, plus enough scenery to create a Night City battlescape.
Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™ is the first game to feature the new [RE]action™ system: an easy-to-learn set of skirmish rules with fast-paced, high-stakes tabletop action. Keep reading for more!
Monster Fight Club, in partnership with R.Talsorian Games, has created a stunning line of plastic miniatures to represent the gangs, edgerunners, and personalities you can bring to battle on your tabletops. Each miniature is sculpted with unique character and attention to detail throughout the entire design process.
The Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™ miniatures are high-quality plastic. We use a special plastic blend designed to hold the level of detail miniature hobbyists expect. We think they’re a real joy to paint. The plastic also has just enough flex to be durable during gameplay, without damaging the fine details.
If you’ve seen or painted any of Monster Fight Club’s Cyberpunk Red RPG miniatures, you’re already familiar with the quality and detail of the miniatures. If you’re not, we’ve got a growing collection of painting and assembly guides you can check out:
Edgerunner: Nomad Painting Guide
It takes more than a cult of personality to lead a warband of cyberpsychos and bloodthirsty savages. The Maelstrom have grown in size and influence across the heavy industrial areas of Night City and the Combat Zone, expanding their illicit activities to feed their addiction to new cyber enhancements. Sometimes more machine than man, these violent gangers find trouble with all kinds.
It’s been over 20 years since the first generation of Tyger Claws gangers hit the streets in and around Japantown. Since the end of the 4th corporate war, the Tyger Claws have been instrumental in providing stability and protection to the Asian community that inhabits the areas around Japantown. With strong ties to the Arasaka Corporation, these vibrant gangers have a penchant for blades, such as the expensive Mono-katana.
Initially a prankster gang, the Bozos have evolved to embody the worst fears of any who walk their turf. Bozos in the zone prey on the terror they delight in causing. Their wildly distorted, bio-sculpted features are nightmares made flesh. Armed with hilariously brutal weapons and tech, the Bozos stalk in the shadows, leaping out at anyone foolish enough to cross their path.
Combat Zoners have been making the hard life livable by banding together to protect their territory – and each other. In their world, the winners are the ones still standing at the end of a fight. Whether it’s running guns and chems, or shuttling contraband through checkpoints, you won’t find a more resourceful lot in all of the ‘Zone. These are the Combat Zone natives, born and raised, and they don’t just eke out an existence; they thrive.
Kids these days grow up under the Red Sky. Orphans and runaways fill the cracks in society left by the constant strife of the Combat Zone. This generation is savvy to new tech, adapts quickly, and is able to pull together in a scrap to survive. After all, no one else is looking out for them – the kids of Gen Red have to look out for themselves.
Outside of the walls of Night City, the Zone is a lawless battleground – but that doesn’t mean the law is nowhere to be found. Armed with some of the best gear and guns money can buy, the lawmen are brutally effective. When things get out of hand (as they usually are), the security forces of the corporations and the NCPD can drop the hammer. They don’t care whether it’s for the public good or corpo interests, as long as the pay is good.
Monster Fight Club is proud to present the first game to use our [RE]action™ game rules. The [RE]action™ system has been designed to balance easy-to-learn rules with engaging mechanics. We wanted to create a skirmish battles rule set where the action flows between players, without getting bogged down in phases and waiting.
The [RE]action™ System
Characters have green, yellow, and red actions. Depending on what color action you’re taking, you’ll roll a different size die or move a different distance. As characters take wounds, their actions turn red – and the red action dice is only six-sided!
When characters are wounded, they don’t just stand there and take it – they [Re]act! Counterattack, dodge, or use one of their special abilities. You don’t last long in the Combat Zone if you just stand around getting shot!
The Characters
Each character in Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™ has a character card with their skills, abilities, and gear. Some characters are fearsome fighters, some are technical geniuses, and others are brilliant leaders.
When your characters take actions, they add their skills to their dice rolls, so the higher their skill, the more chance they have of success when taking an action that uses that skill.
For a more detailed explanation of the rules, check out the “Detailed Gameplay” below, just after the Addons.
Four different pledge levels are available. Every pledge starts with the core game box. As you increase your pledge, you’ll also choose from additional gangs, miniatures and add-ons.
Once Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™ is funded, we have an opportunity to unlock more great content! As our funding total increases, more Unlocks will be available.
There are three types of Unlocks in this campaign:
- Daily Miniatures: Available to backers at the “Blood on the Streets” Pledge level and above, this collection of 21 miniatures will fill out your gangs and add lots of options to your collection
- Free Stretch Goals: included with all pledges including a Core Game set.
- Gang Sets: Each Gang set includes enough miniatures to play with that gang in games of Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™, plus all the cards you’ll need.
- Add-Ons: Items that you may optionally include in your pledge, for an additional cost. We’d love to make everything straight away, but every new item increases the production costs, so we’ll need to wait and see where the campaign takes us, to see how many things we can make right away!
Check out all the options for customizing your pledge! Part of the fun of Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™ is building up your own unique teams! In addition to your pledge, you can pick and choose from additional characters and teams to build your collection. If you want to add any of these to your pledge, just increase your pledge amount by the value of the add-ons you’d like.
Each Gang Set includes 6 or more miniatures. Each set also includes a character card for each miniatures, plus the veteran character card for every miniature – plus all the objective and gear cards you need to play.
Additional Core Game Gangs
Have more than one player in your group who wants to play Maelstrom or Tyger Claws? You can also include additional copies of the Core Game’s Maelstrom and Tyger Claws sets. If your pledge includes a choice of additional gangs, these are available too.
Veteran Edgerunners can be hired by any gang and are a great way to customize your team with specialists. When playing a campaign, you can hire Veterans after winning games – Edgerunners won’t work for unknown losers!
As featured on the stream series, GMed by Mr. Mike Pondsmith himself, Monster Team is a crack team of Edgerunners. They can be played as a Edgerunner team, or added to other gangs.
The best of the best, Trauma Team is occasionally found in the Combat Zone when a high-roller catches a bad cold (or bullet). The Trauma Team set includes a special Trauma Team scenario, or members can be added to other teams, for a price.
The Lawman arrest set includes two alternate Lawmen Leaders, 3 Perp miniatures, plus an additional Lawmen scenario that uses the perps.
Already a Collector?
If you’re already a fan of the Monster Fight Club range of Cyberpunk Red miniatures, in the pledge manager, we’ll have “Combat Zone Catch-up” sets for every faction. Each of these will include both any new miniatures for that gang, plus all the cards for previously released miniatures. For example, the Lawmen set would include the sniper, leaping dog, plus all the character cards you’ll need. The price for each set will depend on how many miniatures are included.
Scenery Add-ons
Expand your games with some terrific scenery! Scenery plays a key role in Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™. The denser your scenery is, the more tactical your movement and gameplay becomes: your characters need spots to climb, duck behind, and leap over to make your games as exciting as possible.
In addition, we’re also giving backers of this campaign a chance to include a selection of scenery addons from our Monster Scenery: Metropolis campaign. These sets make great additions to Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™ games. If you backed our Monster Scenery: Metropolis campaign and already have some of these headed your way, great! If not, you can add them to your Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™ pledge:
The game board included in the Core Game is sturdy paperboard, but these neoprene mats are a terrific upgrade for your table. They’re durable, spill and wrinkle-resistant neoprene: perfect for long nights of cyber-gaming. The neoprene mats are double-sided and is a terrific upgrade for your games of Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™.
The neoprene Game Mats are available in two sizes. The smaller size matches the size of the Core Game’s game board and the larger size is twice as big, when you want to expand your game – literally!
Character Cards, Skills, and Actions
The characters’ cards are the core of the Reaction system: they tell you how many actions that character has available, what their skills are, and what special abilities or gear they have.
Characters’ starting actions are usually green or yellow – but can change to Red after being wounded. When a character attempts an action that uses one of their skills, they get to add that skill to their dice roll. Any character can attempt any action, but if they’re skilled at it, their chance of success is much higher.
When a character takes an action, they roll the color die that matches the action they just used: taking a green action? Roll a twelve-sided Green Die. Taking a yellow action? Roll an eight-sided yellow die. The higher your roll, the greater your chance of your action succeeding (plus every roll has a chance of a Critical Success or Failure).
For example, a character uses a green action to attack with a rifle: they roll the twelve-sided green die and add their Ranged skill.
When you take Actions, you’re often targeting a rival – and they have something to say about it. You add your Skill to your dice roll, but your target also rolls a die and adds their skill. An Action is successful when your dice roll beats your target’s result. Not all actions are attacks, but successful attacks wound their target, turning one of the target’s actions red.
Example, continued: The target of the attack also rolls a dice that matches one of their actions and adds their Reflexes skill (if they have it). If the attack’s total beats the targets, the attack succeeds and the target is wounded.
[RE]actions
But it doesn’t stop there – If your action successfully wounds your target, your target will have a chance to React, if they have any unspent actions. You can react and counterattack, dart away, or use one of their special abilities. If they counterattack, they must target the rival that wounded them. Moving away after being wounded may prevent you from being wounded again before that character can act.
The Limiter
Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™ uses a unique measuring system: the Limiter. The Limiter is divided into three areas, matching the three colors of the action dice. When you’re taking movement actions, you can move along the color of the action you took. So if you use a valuable green action to move, you’ll be able to sprint much farther across the board than you could with a red action. Flip a GREEN action? Move a GREEN distance! Now that’s moving!
The Limiter is also used to measure the ranges of all your actions and attacks. Each action has a range pictured above the effect: your target must be within that range. Some actions, like firing a sniper rifle or rocket launcher, may require your target to be “beyond the limit” – meaning they can’t be closer than the length of the limiter.
Control of the Battle
At any given time, one player has Control of the battle. The character with Contol of the battle is the one who is currently taking actions with one of their characters. You lose control when your active character runs out of Actions. Characters can try to activate other friendly characters. When your rival has control of the battle, you can attempt to take control with a Reaction!
This creates fast-paced back and forth gameplay, where control of the game passes back and forth, without getting bogged down in phases, upkeep, and accounting.
Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™ Campaigns
Included in the core game are the rules for using your gang in a series of linked games of Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone™. You can take your gang from a fledgling team up to an elite force.
Each gang comes with a unique set of Objective cards. When playing a campaign, you’ll choose personal objectives before the game, in addition to the victory condition of your Scenario. Win or lose, completing Objectives unlocks upgrades and new abilities for your team. When you win a game, you’ll also have the opportunity to promote one of your characters to a veteran, which improves their actions and skills.
Completed objectives and veteran characters you’ve earned go into your HQ, which you can then use in future games. No writing, no erasing – this creates an easy, pencil-free way to track your gang’s progress through the campaign.
