TNT playtest: Attack of the Rad Bugs!

Last week the CSW crew gathered for a bunch of games, including another playtest of "This Is Not A Test" (TNT), the forthcoming post-apocalyptic game we've been following for a month or two.

For this game, we decided to put a bunch of rad bugs on the table and craft a scenario around eliminating the insectoid threat. I had a bunch of rebased Heroclix Brood minis that I'd been itching to get on the table for quite some time now. So Josh and I put together a tight, cramped urban battlefield, then put a big ol' drainpipe in the center of the table. This, we decided, was the objective: the first warband to lob a grenade down into the drainpipe and stop the outpouring of bugs would be the winner.

To start out, we scattered 8 bugs randomly around the board. Each one was attached to a particular terrain piece as its home base. As per TNT rules, these bugs would venture out from their home base to attack enemies, but wouldn't go more than 6 inches away.

On the flip side, the bugs that were going to be pouring out of the drainpipe (1d3 per turn, starting on turn 3) didn't have any such limitations. They were going to close with and attack the closest target in line of sight.

Beyond that, Josh and I agreed that our warbands could certainly fight with each other, but that our primary objective was to destroy the drainpipe and save our respective encampments from the bug threat. He was running a group of heavily armed Preservers (seekers of lost technology, represented in the game by relic weapons). I was fielding a group of primitive techno-scavengers using the Tribals force list. Here are our respective armies in action.

With those broad guidelines in place, we got the game started. We were playing at about 450 points, lower than the game's suggested threshold of 600 points, but more appropriate for our small, terrain-choked table space. (With the rest of the club playing 10mm sci-fi mass combat games, we were relegated to a 3.5 x 3.5 foot folding table.)

We started in opposite corners. Josh's Preservers moved to explore a ruined area and almost immediately came into conflict with a pair of bugs. For these smaller guys, we used the Giant Tick profile from the TNT rulebook. For the larger flying bugs, we used the Giant Mosquito profile. Both monster profiles seemed to strike the right balance of being more than just a nuisance but not so deadly that they'd wipe us out if left unchecked.

Across the table, I was positioning my Tribals to avoid contact with the bugs if at all possible. Instead, I sent them into the ruins where they could hopefully use their hunting rifles to pick off bugs (and Preservers) from cover.

The game unfolded well, with both Josh and I being fairly familiar with the rules. As before, we found ourselves using a variety of colored tokens to track conditions -- though not nearly as many as in our previous game. This was due to our reduced point level (450 points instead of 600 in our first game) as well as a note from the game's creator about a rules tweak that reduced the bookkeeping.

We battled the bugs pretty much exclusively for about 4 or 5 turns. Then Josh's warband leader (a singularly awesome figure who we took to calling Snake Eyes) fought his way to the drainpipe and hurled in a grenade. The ensuing explosion won the day for Josh, but it also frightened my primitive tribals -- causing them to turn their attention to the Preservers warband, which was still heavily engaged with the remaining bugs!

 

So Josh had to fight the bugs as well as the increasingly accurate potshots coming from my Tribals across the table. This he did, though things got a bit dicey at times. Eventually our two warbands killed all the bugs and fought each other to a complete standstill. We decided to call the game a draw -- we had defeated the bug threat, but our warbands were uneasy allies at best.

Once again, we had an enjoyable game of TNT that didn't result in too much rulebook-flipping. We agreed that it's a solid system and is easy to teach to new players. The playtest rulebook we have is just jammed full of campaign material, including random weather event tables, a currency-based barter system, and a big list of irradiated pests and predators ready to be dropped into your games. There are still a few holes where the author obviously intends to expand the book a little bit. But this playtest rulebook should be sufficient for us to launch our post-apocalyptic campaign in early February.

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Days Gone By: Post-Apocalyptic Campaign Kicks Off

Chicago Skirmish Wargames' post-apocalyptic campaign, tentatively titled "Days Gone By," kicked off last week with our first session at Games Plus. We set up three games, though I only managed to gather photos from a couple. For the rules, we're using This Is Not A Test (TNT), a ruleset under development right now and hopefully coming to a game store shelf near you sometime later this year.

In the first game, Terrence and I set up a scenario set at Installation JX-7, an abandoned military outpost on the edge of the wastelands. My bloodthirsty raiders had captured Captain Mal, the leader of Terrence's warband (a clique of big damn heroes modeled in no small part on a certain starship's plucky crew). He was tasked with infiltrating the raiders' base (centered around this fantastic bunker that Josh acquired on ebay) and springing his gang's leader from captivity before my gang made him into stew.

I set up my raiders (mostly converted Necromunda figures, though that big butcher at the top of this post is from Reaper's Chronoscope line) within 12 inches of the bunker, as per the scenario deployment rules. Terrence's heroes (a custom force designed by picking and choosing figure profiles from several different force lists in the TNT rulebook) moved onto the opposite board edge. Here they are, looking remarkably under-equipped compared to my raiders and their oversized guns.

The scenario rules meant that my raiders couldn't easily spot the heroes as they made their approach. I basically had visual range equal to 1d10 inches per turn...sometimes I'd roll well and be able to spot several targets, but other times I'd roll poorly and my big ol' machinegun-wielding raider in the bunker would just sort of stare at his feet for a turn or two.

Anyway, Terrence sent his more heavily armed heroes on a flanking mission through some ruins. Jayne, Zoe and Kaylee (sound familiar?) were met by a raider with a shotgun. The surprise encounter resulted in a brief firefight, then the raider realized he was in over his head and decided to wait for support.

Luckily there was another raider nearby, along with a mongrel. In TNT, mongrels are clearly meant to be feral dogs kept chained up and unleashed right before battle. As I didn't have any dog miniatures, my mongrel was ... a wild boar! Alas, I don't have a clear photo of him, but you can see him in the background of this photo. Close up, he looks like he belongs on the cover of a heavy metal album.

Anyway, the two warbands exchanged fire a few turns, with casualties mounting among the big damn heroes. Suddenly, the door to the bunker flew open and out sprang Captain Mal, prisoner no more!

Actually, the scenario rules said that Captain Mal could free himself at any point in the battle. He was sort of the x-factor to the game...I kept a close guard on that bunker for several turns, waiting for Terrence to have Mal break out, but in the end he got loose anyway. Alas, Captain Mal got within a few short inches of rejoining his crew when he was felled by a close-range shotgun blast. Several other members of his crew were casualties, too, and the raiders emerged victorious after 6 turns.

Afterward we spent about 15 minutes going through the post-game campaign bookkeeping. TNT has a well developed campaign system with individual steps that will be familiar to many gamers. First you roll to see what happens to your casualties, then you roll for income, then you pay your warband upkeep (based on how experienced they are), then you draw a card from the exploration deck. This last step is completely optional and can result in fantastic riches, lost tech, or your dudes getting eaten by rad muties. It was so much fun -- Terrence rolled quite well and ended up with a nice income haul. And even better -- none of his team (those big damn heroes) were permanently taken out of action. In fact, Captain Mal rolled so well on the casualty table that he actually received extra experience points to boot.

Across the table, Mike and Josh were playing through another scenario. Mike's mercenaries were tasked with escorting a prisoner through the Pestilent Expanse, a windswept wasteland of rock and scrub brush punctuated by the burnt-out shells of blackened buildings. Josh's Preservers were trying to intercept the prisoner, or kill him if necessary. Josh snapped two photos of his warband and Mike's, at the start of the game. Unfortunately that's all we ended up with. Too much time spent gaming!

And then, as these two games were taking place, something was happening on the third game table, where Tim and Karl were squaring off for their game. What was going on? Had some new threat emerged to menace the wastelands? Preliminary intel indicated a mutant incursion! Karl's forces were able to transmit one grainy scanner photo of the unknown threat before contact was lost....

Stay tuned -- we'll have more reliable info in future games!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member, with additional photos by Josh

Looking back on 2012

We're feeling retrospective as 2012 comes to a close, so we felt like it might be a good idea to look back on a year of gaming in the Windy City.

The year began with the club ramping up our first concerted effort to produce a series of blog posts on a particular topic. In this case, it was 28mm on the Cheap, a series that aimed to dispel myths about the perceived expense of gaming in 28mm. It's our favorite scale, and we've got plenty of tips on how to avoid breaking your gaming budget. The series actually began in late 2011, but it really gathered steam in 2012. It was also an excuse for us to share some of our favorite makers and manufacturers of affordable minis! We also expanded it to talk about cheap, DIY terrain and vehicle conversions. It's now a regular feature on our blog.

In February, we got our hands on a playtest copy of Apocalypticum, a post-apocalyptic skirmish ruleset under development by Ganesha Games, publishers of the excellent Song of Blades & Heroes. If you follow this blog, you know that CSW has a soft spot for post-apoc gaming as well as Ganesha Games. We enjoyed the game and look forward to its eventual publication.

By April we were gearing up for our second appearance at Little Wars, an annual convention that takes place in suburban Chicago. In 2011 we ran a straightforward Song of Blades & Heroes scenario. This year, we aimed a little higher: post-apocalyptic highway carnage! Check out the battle report from the game to get an idea of how epic it was.

Later in the summer, we launched our first club campaign: The Iron Isle, a Song of Blades & Heroes fantasy epic! That link goes to a description of our campaign world, as well as battle reports from the 20-odd individual games we played over the course of the summer. It was a fantastic series of games, and the campaign really inspired us as a club to dig deep into the hobby. We painted miniatures and built terrain all summer long, buoyed by the fantastic games we were playing in the campaign.

It was around this time that our recruitment efforts began to pay off. We had regular gaming space available at Pat's house and Karl's house, and our small group soon grew to number 6 or 7 regular players. We're very excited to see new faces at CSW's regular game nights!

By September, we were beginning to talk about our winter campaign. The consensus was that we wanted to try out a full-blown post-apocalyptic campaign -- after all, we had the miniatures and we had the vehicles. Time to put 'em on the table! With this in mind, the terrain bug bit a few of us that fall. Pat started knocking out various post-apoc ruins and rubble bits. Karl converted a bag full of plastic farm buildings into a table's worth of industrial warehouses. He also snagged an architectural tabletop model at an auction and reconfigured it as an urban wargames table. Tim churned out a great collection of modular modern office buildings, as well as a batch of foamcore ruins and some plaster car wrecks.

We took a break from all this post-apoc prepping to host our second annual Halloween zombie game at Games Plus. Carnage in New Chicago, the sequel to 2011's Escape from New Chicago, allowed us to really one-up our previous game in a lot of ways. We had more terrain, more zombies and most importantly, more players!

We closed out 2012 by auditioning a number of rulesets for our upcoming post-apocalyptic campaign. We tried Neutron York 3000, In The Emperor's Name and This Is Not A Test, a work-in-progress ruleset that we are helping to playtest. We're leaning towards TNT, though our recent game raised enough questions that we decided to have another go at it in early January.

Thanks to all of our readers who took the time to post a question or comment -- and bonus points to everyone who came out to game with us in 2012. Watch this space as we head into 2013! We hope to share more photos, battle reports, tutorials and gaming fun with all of you.

-- The Players of Chicago Skirmish Wargames

"This Is Not A Test" Now Available!

Back in 2013 our club had the opportunity to playtest a new post-apocalyptic ruleset under development. We had a lot of fun offering feedback on "This Is Not A Test" from World's End Publishing, and now we're pleased to see that the game is available for purchase.

The PDF is available right now, and plans are afoot to produce a printed version. There's plenty of discussion about TNT (great acryonym!) over on the official Facebook group.

Perhaps most exciting are the miniatures that World's End Publishing has produced for this game. Some, like the Peacekeepers, represent official units in the game, but so far the line is generic enough that they'll work well on a variety of sci-fi, post-apoc, modern and pulp battlegrounds.

Doubtless we'll build some warbands this summer and try our luck in the irradiated Tri-State Wasteland!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member