# Paranoia: Five Clones From Alpha Complex *Created:* 2026-01-22, *Modified:* 2026-10-18 ![[Paranoia - Five Clones from Alpha Complex (cover).jpg|600]] Alpha Complex hands you a squad of Troubleshooters, a stack of spare clones, and a standing order to trust your teammates — which is how you know the mission is already doomed. **Paranoia: Five Clones From Alpha Complex** (Modiphius, 2026; by Ivan Sorensen) is the newest member of the **[[5X]]** family — Ivan Sorensen's procedural adventure-wargame engine, on the **[[Five Leagues From the Borderlands]]** 3rd-edition chassis — re-skinned onto the one setting where "cooperative miniatures wargame" is a contradiction big enough to build a game around. The cover calls it **The Uncooperative Miniatures Game**, and it means it: the game is a procedural generator for anxiety, backstabbing, and bureaucracy, and no amount of requisition forms will save you. ## Setting Welcome back, citizen. You are in **Alpha Complex**: a domed city and subterranean utopia overseen by **The Computer**, a superior digital sentience that speaks to you through the **Cerebral Coretech** implanted in your brain. Everybody is happy and safe, and everything functions perfectly; anything that doesn't function perfectly is resolved by **Troubleshooters**, and any Troubleshooter that doesn't function perfectly is resolved by Security, other Troubleshooters, or random fatality. To disobey a command, defy your security clearance, work for a secret society, harbour a mutant power, or merely fail to be a sufficiently happy worker is Treason. The player characters are the Troubleshooters — freshly decanted from a stack of five clones, sent out to hunt the mutants, terrorists, and traitors that Alpha Complex is crawling with. The irony is structural: your Troubleshooter rolls a mutant power and draws a secret-society objective, so by the letter of the law you *are* the very thing you've been sent to find. You cooperate in the sense that a crab trap cooperates — completing the mission while quietly engineering everyone else's unfortunate accidents. ## Mechanics The game runs on the core **5X** engine — mostly D6, though it leans on D10s and D100 when the tables call for them. It turns the family's survival-focused solo loop into a competitive "bucket of crabs" attrition game. ### Resolution Every uncertain venture is a **skill test**: roll **1D6** — a result of **4 or higher succeeds**, a result of **3 or lower fails**. Modifiers (the book suggests keeping them to **±1**) shift the roll, and on any skill test you're allowed to attempt a **natural 6 always succeeds** while a **natural 1 always fails**, no matter the modifiers. ### Turn & Combat Each turn runs four phases — **Initiative**, **Player**, **NPC**, and **End**: - **Initiative:** roll **2D6** and lay them out as your Initiative dice. In the Player Phase, which is split into six **impulses**, you act on the impulse that matches your die (rolling doubles lets you act twice in that impulse, one after the other). - **Attacks:** a character takes an action, must be in range (Brawling within 1"), and needs a Line of Sight (Cover lets the target roll a D6 and, on a 4+, the attack strikes the cover instead). **Hitting requires a skill test** — a 4+ on a d6. - **Damage:** each attack has a **Damage rating**. For each hit, roll **1D6 + Damage** against the target's **Toughness** (Troubleshooters' is always **4**). A modified total **equal to or above Toughness** knocks off **1 Kill Point**; at **0 Kill Points** the character is destroyed. Saving throws — e.g. a mutant's 5+ Absorption save — can still shrug a hit off. ### The Paranoia Twist Where *Five Parsecs* builds toward long-term crew survival, *Five Clones* runs on attrition and betrayal. - **The Clone Stack:** death is rarely final. Each Troubleshooter begins a mission with a **stack of five clones** — one active at a time, the rest in reserve. When a clone is destroyed, the next one arrives at an elevator in the End Phase — losing its Traitor status and any mid-mission changes, but keeping the same starting mutant powers and secret-society objectives (and dropping its equipment, which may come out damaged). - **Treason & Secret Societies:** a **Mission Generator** sets the stage, then each player's conflicting **Secret Society objectives** take over — *unverified missions are Treason*. A Troubleshooter can only be attacked once they're an active Traitor, which leaves reporting, "accidental" friendly fire, and timing everyone's exposure as the real game. - **Mutant Powers:** **50 powers**, rolled on a **D100 table** — from Absorption and Absurd Luck to Teleport, Tough, and Varied Mutation. Using one in front of a witness is how you get caught. - **No Game Master:** the game plays **solo (Solo Mode)**, multiplayer, or in **Computer Mode**, where Friend Computer runs the NPCs. Enemies act in their own **NPC Phase** on profiles and behaviour, so the players are left to spend their cognitive cycles betraying one another. ## Editions - **Paranoia: Five Clones From Alpha Complex** (2026) — a standalone spinoff **wargame**, by Ivan Sorensen (Modiphius), authorized from the *Paranoia* line (© 1984/2016/2024, Eric Goldberg & Greg Costikyan). The newest member of the **[[5X]]** family, built on the Five Leagues 3rd-edition chassis (sibling **[[Five Parsecs From Home]]** shares the bones). The mechanical shift runs from Five Parsecs' crew-survival economy of scavenged parts and resources to one of clearance levels, requisition forms, and clone replenishment. *In the library.* It is not an edition of the RPG — it keeps Alpha Complex's lore, clearance levels, and satirical tone, then replaces the RPG's narrative, GM-fiat play with hard wargame rules. The RPG itself is **[[Paranoia]]**. ## References - [Official product page - Modiphius](https://modiphius.net/products/paranoia-five-clones-from-alpha-complex-book) - [Designer's announcement - Nordic Weasel Games blog](https://nordicweasel.posthaven.com/five-clones-from-alpha-complex) - [News and overview - OnTableTop (Beasts of War)](https://www.beastsofwar.com/modiphius/paranoia-rpg-wargaming-new-rules-minis/) - [Community discussion - Reddit r/ParanoiaRPG](https://www.reddit.com/r/ParanoiaRPG/comments/1ookw9l/paranoia_miniatures_game_from_modiphius_paranoia/) - [Retail listing and release data - Game Nerdz](https://www.gamenerdz.com/paranoia-five-clones-from-alpha-complex-hardcover)