"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

The Dogs & the Dust Homebrew Sci-Fi

Last week Mattias and I huddled up in his apartment to try out The Dogs & the Dust, the homebrew sci-fi game that he is writing. Though it's still a work-in-progress, Mattias (pictured above) plans to publish the completed game one day in the not-too-distant future. The "alpha" version that we playtested gave a good overview of the main rules engine, combat and crew creation.

The game itself is inspired by any number of sci-fi and post-apocalyptic milieus where desperate fighters clash over priceless relics, ancient technology, territory, bragging rights, much-needed supplies or whatever else you could imagine. Here is Mattias's introduction from the rulebook:

The Dogs and the Dust is a fast-playing science fiction/science fantasy miniatures skirmish game. It is easy to learn, but satisfyingly crunchy (or it’s intended to be, at least). It is a narrative game, and the narrative can take place in pretty much any setting. The model count is low (but flexible). And -- this should go without saying, but whatever -- you can use any models you like.

In TD&TD you play as the leader of a ruthless Crew of scavengers, scrappers, enforcers, marines, assassins, aliens, robots, soldiers of fortune, vigilantes, space pirates, regular pirates, or anything else you can imagine - so long as what you imagine involves a small group of heavily armed and desperate men, women, creatures, and/or things fighting for survival in the distant or the not so distant future (or the recent or not so recent retro-future).

Before the game, he told me to bring over an assortment of sci-fi figures, which is exactly what I did ... a bunch of assorted Pig Iron, Shockforce and Necromunda dudes led by a Reaper Chronoscope commando. Mattias fielded his sci-fi punks, and we faced off on a dusty, windswept battlefield dominated by a big ol' shanty compound surrounded by wreckage, rubble and weird trees.

In TD&TD, you roll 1d6 for each figure in your warband at the start of the turn. You'll keep these dice together to form your activation pool, which is used to activate your figures throughout your turn. Each time you nominate a figure to activate, you must use one or more activation dice from your pool ... the higher the number, the more activations you get.

Since your activation pool is public information available to both you and your opponent at the start of each turn, there's a complex interplay between these two mechanics. Do you spend that six to get extra actions for your henchman? Or do you save the six and spend a lower dice so you can have a chance to react with your leader later in the turn?

The game has a reaction system not unlike those featured in Tomorrow's War or Chain Reaction (though not nearly as complex). The reaction system in TD&TD is robust enough to keep the inactive player on his toes when it's not his turn, lest he miss an important chance to react and swing the tide of the battle.

We played a typical "seize the table quarters" scenario, which turned out to be a great way to experience the game. Weapons in TD&TD have infinite range, but each different type of ranged weapon gets a bonus if it is within its "effective range," which encouraged players to get in close for maximum damage. In the pic below, my sniper was perched atop the shanty compound trying to pick off Mattias's armadillo-man.

He succeeded, but in doing so he neglected the flank, where Mattias was able to move up a pair of goons, one of whom killed this nice chap who was just sitting in the back of this wrecked truck, minding his own business with an assault rifle in his hands.

We improved and clarified various rules on the fly as we went along. One bit that we enjoyed was the rule for evades. These are special short moves that are imposed upon figures based on the outcomes of various dice rolls, mainly ties in ranged and close combat. Basically, the evading figure dives for cover, which can really impact your strategy if it happens at the wrong time. But it's a fun, realistic mechanic in a game that doesn't have a true morale system.

When a figure dies, the player is faced with a choice: he can "burn" an activation dice by permanently removing it from the pool he rolls at the start of each turn to revive a dead character. But of course this reduces the effectiveness of his crew for the rest of the game, and it begins to offer diminishing returns ... do you burn dice to keep your guys around, or do you soldier on with the remaining few and attempt to complete the mission? Both are viable strategies, as we found in our game.

By the end of the game, we agreed that I had squeaked out a victory by claiming one table quarter, while Mattias and I contested the other three.

The rules themselves seemed ripe for expansion. We imagined all sorts of special rules and abilities that could expand on the core of TD&TD, including rule for psychics or magic users! Mattias was taking notes as fast as he could for the inevitable update to the alpha rules.

We expect to play more games of The Dogs & the Dust in the future. It's a solid game that definitely fills a niche for quick-play sci-fi skirmish gaming. We hope to share more about these work-in-progress rules in the future.

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

More Musings on Nuclear Renaissance

Karl and I managed to find a free evening last week to play a second game of Nuclear Renaissance, the post-apocalyptic skirmish game from Ramshackle Games. We're pretty excited about this game, as it gives us an excuse to use our prodigious collection of post-apoc vehicles and figures in a fast-playing skirmish ruleset.

Our first game, a 5-player affair played out on a 4x8 foot tabletop, was a bit too large to really get into the nitty-gritty of the rules, so we were glad to get an opportunity to try out a one-on-one game on a 4x6 foot tabletop. We bumped up the point total to 1000 to get more figures and vehicles on the battlefield. Here's the table at the start of the game.

Karl's task was to move across the battlefield and seize two objectives: the blue fuel pump on the right side of the map, and the fueling station itself on the far side of the table (the building with the vertical slats). He deployed most of his guys aboard a big, armored truck and roared across the shattered cityscape toward the fueling station, while a smaller contingent of foot soldiers hoofed it to the fuel pump (which was much closer to his deployment zone).

I deployed my post-apoc raiders (Kolony Ferals from Pig Iron Productions, if you're interested) near the fueling station, and my intent was to send them into the ruins and stop Karl's advance somewhere in the middle of the table.

Alas, it didn't work out that way. We quickly learned that Karl's truck (with a driver and gunner in the armored cab and 4 gun-wielding gangers perched in the back) was a virtually impregnable rolling fortress, capable of motoring at top speed across the map while everyone aboard sprayed bullets in all directions. This is exactly what happened in our game.

In Nuclear Renaissance, it doesn't matter how fast you're moving -- all passengers can fire out of a vehicle, and they can also claim a cover bonus when targeted by return fire. In practice, this meant that Karl could race his truck forward each turn, while it served a mobile bunker for the guys aboard.

I tried attacking his truck piecemeal with my few guys who had firearms, only to watch it shrug off the damage. I also tried charging into combat with the various passengers which, despite looking cool in photos, didn't even slow the truck down.

Finally I mobilized my buggy (converted from a G.I. Joe toy) and moved in close to use my flame cannon against the truck. At last I scored a decent hit! But by this point my guys were fairly decimated and Karl had seized the fuel pump, so we called the game.

I'll have to chalk this one up to a poorly designed scenario (by me). Because we played on a 4x6 foot battlefield, my guys never even got close to the secondary objective on the other side of the map. The entire game came down to a small two-foot-square area around the fueling station.

When we play Nuclear Renaissance again, we'll need to really compress the battlefield (4x4 feet square, maybe?) to encourage mobility. Either that, or convert all the ranges from centimeters to inches.

Also, we only had 1 melee combat in the entire game, and it was a guy versus a truck. This game was dominated by shooting. This seems to be the norm for our games even though it seems to run contrary to the design philosophies of Nuclear Renaissance, which makes firearms extremely expensive to encourage fisticuffs. We've even talked about some formal house rules to limit the more powerful firearms, like the vehicle-mounted heavy machinegun, which basically splattered any target without much effort each turn.

After the game, Karl and I agreed that Nuke Ren works best within the framework of a club that can self-moderate so ultra-shooty gangs and munchkin characters don't dominate. Most any generic system with unit creation mechanics can fall prey to this phenomenon; it's not unique to Nuke Ren.

We also agreed that Nuke Ren is best suited for casual gaming or campaigning where scenarios and narrative gaming are paramount. For a competitive campaign or a tournament, the game might well devolve into an arms race. And of course, this scenario would have played out completely differently if we had added a third (or fourth!) player. Doubtless we'll continue to tinker with the rules to find the right balance for an ideal game. So far Nuclear Renaissance is a very decent framework with endless room to explore and experiment.

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

[SBH] Arcane and Deadly Objects

CSW comrade Mattias, whose grim hunchymen faced off against Pat's dwarves in a Song of Blades & Heroes game late last year, recently published a wondrous two-page supplement that's sure to jazz up your fantasy games. Arcane and Deadly Objects is a random table of wily, vile and downright delicious equipment to use in your SBH games. And if you happen to use another ruleset for skirmish gaming, fear  not! You'll find plenty of flavor and inspiration in this trim little supplement. Do yourself a favor and check it out post-haste!

Play Report: Neutron York 3000 for Post-Apocalyptic Gaming

This week the club got together to playtest Neutron York 3000 as a potential ruleset for our post-apocalyptic campaign.

NY3K is a fast paced warband-size skirmish game set in a pulpy post-apocalyptic future. It has it's own fluff, factions and even a small miniatures line, but also has a unit creation mechanic that allows you to use any miniatures you wish. You can find out more about the game, rules and figures here.

A total of six games were played among the six of us. We met at my house, so I prepared three different battlefields. The first was an industrial corridor that's become a border between two gang territories. This was a great chance to use the urban terrain table that I made last month.

The second setup allowed gangs to battle for an oasis.

The third battlefield was a showdown in a border town.

Look for upcoming articles on the distillery building as see in the border town, as well as the car stacks from the urban layout.

I had prepared four gangs for players to use.

Eastern Tribe 

Rob's Raiders 

Hat Scavs 

Dead Skulls biker gang

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get pics of the other gangs, or much in-game action, as my camera was running out of juice.

 Tom brought a robot army made of Legions of Steel figures, and Jon brought a Japanese cyber-samurai robot army from various manufacturers (as usual, painted to top standard) and a group of elite soldiers made from Warzone Bauhaus troops.

Here's a couple other pics of the battles.

As for the rules themselves, we were torn. We liked the fast play and easy to understand nature of the basic game mechanics. There also is a very nicely designed advancement chart for each character, so it's ideal for campaign play. The differences between factions are subtle, but effective.

The ruleset also has plenty of scenarios and deployment methods, so it's unlikely that a campaign would get stale. Though we would be using our own setting, the NY3K setting is entertaining and written in a good tongue-in-cheek style with flavorful art throughout the book.

Some mechanics continually frustrated us. When folks began reserving actions (a necessity for survival), we found that we had to spend a lot of effort tracking reserved actions, as well as how many bonuses each figure had left. Also, we found that it was pretty common for certain weapons to hit automatically. Combine that with some weaker figures that had no defense roll, and we found that the game had more auto kills than we would have liked.

Oddly, the games felt almost too short. It's the author's intention for several games to be played in a row, but this game was considerably shorter even than Song of Blades and Heroes.

Lastly, there were a few other ambiguous areas of the rules where we would have to house rule for. In the end the club wasn't sure they wanted to invest the time in house-ruling and tweaking the rules. We may still end up using them, but next week we'll be trying out another ruleset that we've played before: In The Emperor's Name.

I would still give NY3K a cautious nod as a ruleset that wasn't to our taste, but is still worth looking at when considering post-apocalyptic gaming. It will probably require a bit of houseruling, but at $7 it's not an expensive experiment.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Warpath: Battle report and game review

At last week's club game night, Jon and I had a chance to try out the Warpath ruleset by Mantic Games. We completely forgot a few things (such as modifiers for shooting at units that have moved, etc), but in general we got a pretty good handle on the rules. After the game report, I'll review the rules.

Like Mantic's Kings of War fantasy game, the rules and force lists for Warpath are free! Our game pitted the Forgefathers (Mantic's space dwarves, represented in this game by my Blood Angels Space Marines) against the Corporation (represented by my Imperial Guard).

We found that the Forgefathers and Corporation army lists were a good fit for the Space Marines and Imperial Guard units in my collection. Each side had approximately 1,000 points.

Forge Fathers (Blood Angels Space Marines)

• Huscarl (Commander Tycho)
• Steel Warriors section with BFG and special melee weapon (10 marines with missile launcher)
• 2x Drakkarim teams each with flamer and special melee weapon (two 5 marine assault squads). We gave this unit jump packs at a cost of 20 points per figure. This is not a standard option in the rules, but we borrowed a similar upgrade from the Marauder Orx force list.
• Stormrage veterans team (5-marine devastator squad) with 4 BFGs (yes, this is how Warpath handles heavy weapons...they're all BFGs)
• Heavy Drakkar (Land Raider tank) with 3 BFGs

The Corporation (Imperial Guard)

• Commander (Commissar) with special melee weapon
• Sniper (Ratling)
• 3x Corporation marine sections each with BFG and special melee weapon (10 Guardsmen with autocannon)
• Heavy weapons section with light laser cannon (3 lascannon teams)
• Striders with burst lasers (3 Sentinel walkers)
• MBT-01 Pulverizer tank with heavy laser cannon and light laser cannon (Leman Russ Demolisher)

We each deployed our forces along a table edge and agreed to play a kill-em-all/meatgrinder scenario. Here's how the deployment looked for each side of the table.



We used our first moves to advance into cover, either in buildings or behind hills. However, two lucky rounds of fire killed off my Steel Warriors section and one of Jon's Marine sections before they even had a chance to get into combat. Our tanks fired away at each other with little effect. Jon's MBT-01 did a little damage, and I realized that my Heavy Drakkar did not have the firepower necessary to damage his Tank with anything other than a very lucky rear shot.

By the middle of turn 2, one of my Drakkarim teams (assault squad) had already leapt into close combat with Jon's Marine section. The other team would have done so as well, but Jon's heavy weapon section suppressed them and they dove for cover.

Realizing the futility of firing on Jon's MBT-01, my Heavy Drakkar moved to engage his right flank, where it destroyed his heavy weapons section in a barrage of fire from three Hailstorm Autocannons. The MBT-01 fired on the Stormrage Veterans (devastator squad) but somehow the tank missed with both weapons.


In turn 3 the Drakkarim team wiped out the marine section in close combat. However, the second marine section took up positions in a ruined rotunda and eliminated the second Drakkarim team before it had a chance to recover from suppression.


On the far flank, the Heavy Drakkar destroyed all three Striders (Sentinel walkers). The Stormrage Veterans and their commander advanced, but were now in full view of the MBT-01 tank. They managed to do some damage to the tank.


In turn 4, the MBT-01 drives over the Stormrage veterans (giving us a chance to try out the rules for running down pedestrians with vehicles) and then turns to chase the flank of the Heavy Drakkar. The veterans stay in the fight but only after sustaining heavy damage. The Corporation commander (commissar) charges into the remaining Draakkarim Team.


By turn 5, it was all over. The Corporation commander's fury routed the Drakkarim team, and the marine section in the rotunda finished off the Stormrage veteran squad. The commander of the Forgefather force and his remaining tank quit the field in defeat.


Warpath Reviewed

Warpath does little to conceal its roots as a Warhammer 40,000 knock-off game. In many ways, it is 40k stripped to the bare essentials and then modified even further with a few mechanics that speed up gameplay. Thus, I'll be making many of my observations by comparing it to 40k.

The most obvious change from 40k is that squads take damage as a single unit, not as a collection of miniatures. When the squad takes damage, figures are not removed — instead, the damage is accumulated by making notes next to the squad's army roster sheet. Every turn that damage is taken, the squad makes a roll to see if the amount of damage accumulated thus far is enough to surpress the unit or take it out of the fight. This means that many games might not see any figures removed in the first turn or two, even though damage is being taken. Some 40k players might find this disconcerting, but testing for destruction only once a turn speeds up gameplay and forces the opposing player to judge how much firepower he or she wants to concentrate on a particular unit.

Like damage, combat is determined on a squad-versus-squad basis, with almost no emphasis on individual figures. The exceptions are heavy weapons (BFGs) that can fire separately from the rest of the squad. Warpath differs significantly from 40k in that unless suppressed, a squad's combat abilities do not degrade as it takes damage. This is a big abstraction compared to 40k, but as with other changes, it does massively speed up gameplay as the combat capabilities of the unit are contained in its statline and do not change from turn to turn.

I was pleasantly surprised that Warpath has a movement stat. This simple change provides a bit more variation between units and is a welcome change compared to 40k, which which has one baseline movement rate for most infantry.


Vehicles seem to be handled well, if somewhat simply. There are provisions for firing arcs, overunning enemy units, collisions, transport and ordinance weapons. Notably absent are differing armor ratings for side, front and rear. Vehicles take damage in the same manner as other units, but units with "penetrating" weapons get a bonus when firing at the rear and side arcs.

Other notable features of the rules:

• Pre-measuring is allowed at any time
• Rules are included for aircraft strafing runs
• A section of 25 special rules provides just enough variation to give units a bit of flavor. Many entries will be familiar to 40k players, such as rules for individual characters, jump jets, steadfastness, armor piercing, and crushing strength.

Warpath will not be my go-to ruleset for all sci-fi gaming, as I have a few major reservations about the game. First of all, calls for each player to field a very large army. After our game, 1,000 points seemed like the minimum amount necessary for an enjoyable match — Warpath is clearly made for gaming at 2,000 or more points per side. It's simply too abstract to function well for a small skirmish of just a few units per side.

I'm not entirely sure it has enough tactical possibilities to make it a game that I would play every week in the way some folks play 40k. Creative scenario generation could fix this, but it's not going to offer the kind of granularity and unit customizability that keep people forever re-reading their codices and tweaking their 40k army lists.

Warpath does not have a unit creation mechanic. Mantic has planned for 8 races (3 have been released so far) and they seem thus far to be extremely analagous to 40k races. However, if your sci-fi army doesn't fit one of those force lists, you will have to do a bit of adaptation on your own. I don't see this as a big downside, as the available army lists seem to have enough unit variation that only minor changes seem necessary.

Lastly, I feel obligated to compare Warpath to my favorite sci-fantasy game WarEngine. I see them both as fulfilling different roles. WarEngine offers more granularity and tactical options: it has a reaction/overwatch mechanic along with more customization. Like Warpath, WarEngine isn't well suited for very small battles, but unlike Warpath, it also isn't a good choice for very large battles with lots of vehicles and tanks. I would use WarEngine for battles with 5-7 squads and a small vehicle or two per side, whereas Warpath seems to work best with 8 squads or more and lots of vehicles.

Despite the reservations above, I really enjoyed this game. Having never played Warpath before, it took about 2 hours, but both Jon and I agreed that a game of this size would typically be completed in an hour or less. Our enjoyment of the game was probably colored by what we were hoping to get out of the game: a quick, enjoyable game of "40k lite" full of familiar rules, big armies and streamlined gameplay.

And of course, we were delighted to get our 40k armies on the table. Both of us have big 40k collections that we really like but just don't get much play anymore.

Warpath delivered on all counts. As a disaffected 40k player who still loves the miniatures and background — but who no longer has the desire to play games that take longer than an hour or so — I will definitely be using Warpath again to get my 40k figs back on the table.

So is Warpath for you? That depends. As mentioned before, the game is a streamlined 40k-clone that makes no pretentions about being realistic in scope, rules or background. According to Mantic, it's about "big battles," and if commanding a company of troops and a tank platoon on a battlefield the size of a soccer pitch (like 40k...) with a fast-playing and very streamlined ruleset (not like 40k) is your thing, then Warpath will probably deliver.

— Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Review: Tomorrow's War by Ambush Alley Games

Tomorrow's War, the new hard sci-fi tabletop wargame from Ambush Alley Games and Osprey Publishing, is something of a hybrid. It's not a skirmish game where individually armed soldiers move around the battlefield on their own initiative, nor is it a stand-based game like Alien Squad Leader, where the smallest unit is a base of 3-5 figures representing a single squad or fireteam.

Rather, Tomorrow's War uses individually based figures (of any scale, though the book uses plenty of 15mm and 28mm example photos) to simulate squad-based actions. Single figures don't fire at single targets; instead, squads add up their firepower based on the number of effective troopers plus any support weapons. They roll these attack dice against a similar handful of defense dice representing the opposing squad and any cover modifiers.

This basic engine forms the nucleus of a very innovative, playable sci-fi game. It's clearly designed to model gritty, near-future sci-fi, rather than the zany, far-future hijinx that other games cover all too well. The rules don't differentiate between basic trooper weapons — an assault rifle = laser rifle = heat ray. But that's OK ... Tomorrow's War rewards common sense tactics, which is refreshing to say the least.

Our club tried out Tomorrow's War last month after receiving a preview copy from Osprey. Having played 5150 from Two Hour Wargames, we were pleased to see that Tomorrow's War's reaction/overwatch system forms an integral part of the game. Each turn, the player who wins initiative can choose to place some or all of his fire teams (the smallest unit building block in the game) on overwatch, thus giving them the chance to interrupt enemy actions later in the turn. Then, non-overwatching units get to move and shoot like normal — but the enemy can attempt to react to these actions with reactions of his own. It's the rare turn where you'll be sitting on your hands, waiting for your opponent to finish moving his dudes.

Unlike 5150, these action/reaction cycles don't go on forever. There is a clear stopping point, which TW defines as a "round of fire." Our club liked this a lot, as we'd gotten caught up in several seemingly endless chain reactions during our last game of 5150.

Some games offer a super-granular approach to weaponry (think lots of +1 bonuses, different range bands, templates, etc) but TW deliberately ignores all this. Basic soldier weapons can see and shoot anywhere on the table within line of sight. Every piece of open ground is a potential kill zone.

Differentiation comes in the form of various troop stats, which are generally shared by everyone in a given unit. Troop Quality is the most common stat rolled, but there's also Morale (how inspired the troops are on this particular day), Tech Level (better tech = more firepower), Supply (well supplied troops can afford to waste ammo), Confidence (do you trust your logistics supply chain and senior leadership?) and Combat Stress.

Frankly, the number of individual stats here seem a bit overwhelming. Why differentiate between Morale and Confidence? Semantically they mean about the same thing, and I don't think the game would suffer much if they were just rolled into one stat. Thankfully, most firefights will involve just Troop Quality and Morale.

It's also clear that the authors LOVE their acronyms, especially as it pertains to weaponry. I can't tell you how many times I struggled with abbreviations such as RGL, NOE, SAGP and SLAM. Often these abbreviations showed up in sentences, only to be defined in a pullout box three pages later. Not good, especially when the reader (me) is flipping pages trying to find the definition so he can properly get his game up and running! The writing assumes a level of military tech-speak that I don't yet possess.

Another quibble is the wound system. When a unit takes casualties, the figures may be 1) dead 2) lightly wounded or 3) severely wounded. If it's the last two options, the figure stays on the board but reduces the combat effectiveness of the squad (as they administer first aid and move more slowly with the wounded trooper). The rules for this are fantastic, but the execution pretty much requires you to place a bunch of little counters, chits or markers next to lots of individual figures throughout the game.

In our game, 3 of 4 figures in a fireteam had taken wounds, which meant that there were 3 individual tokens attached to the team, for a total of 7 little doodads that needed to be moved whenever the squad moved. This resulted in a very cluttered tabletop, which we didn't like because we enjoy taking lots of photos of our game (requiring the regular removal of tape measures, dice, counters, chits and tokens prior to the photos). We're already looking into some alternative and/or aesthetically pleasing ways to track wounds. Again, the rules for wounded figures are top notch, but the tabletop logistics are tough to deal with.

The game lacks a point system, which is perfectly fine for my club but which may turn off other players. I enjoy the challenge that comes with creating a balanced scenario or adapting something I found elsewhere for Tomorrow's War. The web is full of inspirational material, plus most of the scenarios written for Force on Force, Ambush Alley's flagship title, can be easily ported over to Tomorrow's War.

Individual chapters deal with vehicles, air support, artillery, robots and cyber-warfare. Power armor is suitably epic in TW — gone are the days of vanilla space marines fighting and dying in droves. If you field a 3-man fireteam of power armored infantry in TW, you can expect them to dominate their section of the battlefield. Power armor feels like power armor should, and that is a wonderful thing.

The section on asymmetric warfare is particularly interesting, as it includes a set of balanced rules for playing games with very imbalanced forces. A squad of basic troopers might look powerful on paper, but the game ensures a fair fight if they try to tangle with a nest of colonial rebels on some far-flung backwater planet, for example. You've really got to read over this section yourself to truly grasp the potential for asymmetric scenarios in Tomorrow's War.

The best part of Tomorrow's War is that most of the game is highly intuitive. The players instantly grasped the spirit of what the writers were trying to convey: that is, the explosive action that comes with a desperate, futuristic firefight. You want to move your guys? OK, well that chaingun team is going to fire off a belt of ammo if you do. Maybe you want to put that squad on overwatch to keep an eye out for insurgents? Well, the rebels might appear suddenly on your flank without warning.

What didn't I go over? Production values are top notch, but you've probably read that in other reviews. The official fluff is well and good, but our club probably won't be using it. There are rules for aliens, but the authors suggest that they not be all that different from human troopers, which is fine by me.

To sum up, Tomorrow's War is a great exciting product that has injected a big dose of hard sci-fi excitement into our local club. We're eagerly anticipating the commercial release so we can try our hand at crafting some scenarios.

— PatrickWR, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member