Tomorrow's War post-game thoughts

quozl

I played two games of Tomorrow's War (the Sci-Fi incarnation of Force on Force) last night.
The scenario is one of the rulebook ones - 40 ravening xenomorph (straight out of Alien) plus their big bad queen and king, attempting to eat unarmed colonists.

The only thing standing between the colonists and certain nyoming is the small forces of local militia, their converted harvester (with a jerry-rigged gun), and by handy coincidence, a platoon of Foreign Legion troops on R&R in the vicinity - who show up turn 1 from the spot marked in the photo.

Here's the initial setup:


We played two great games in 3 hours, with one win by the aliens and one by the humans - the first game wasn't too close as we'd no idea what we were doing, but the 2nd game was really close with my opponent escaping off the board-edge with 15 colonists from inside assault range of a unit of my aliens. Fortunately he'd left too many colonists and dead soldiers behind (inside alien stomachs) and so lost on scenario.

I really like:
- the scenario based nature of all the games. The scenarios provided are really detailed and cool, not the very basic scenarios used in 40k or warmachine. The wins are all scenario based - so you have to think about your objectives not just killing the other guy. Although killing the other guy usually -but not always - makes your objectives easier to achieve.

- constant interaction - there's no point in the game where you're not playing. If your opponent has initiative then you're reacting to his actions, and vice versa. Realised after the 2nd game that my legs were wrecked as hadn't sat down in over 3 hours. It's even more constant involvement than Infinity is, as the play speed is faster.

- fast play speed. Fire-team based, and some abstractions - like LOS being from the middle of your fire-team not from individual models - lets the game move very quickly.

- good tactical decisions to make. Bounding over-watch works like in real life - ie, one team over-watches while a 2nd team moves, then swap roles. My opponent got tempted into trying to save a group of colonists that I was using as bait to get his soldiers, that cost him badly. I also used the alien King as bullet-bait - getting my opponent to put him down repeatedly (thanks to his we'll be back like rule) and leave the more fragile drones alone. My opponent was equally sneaky! Also we both had to choose which colonists to abdandon to the alien horde to try and save more colonists as a whole - fun

- great use of terrain - check out the photo. Terrain really affects gameplay. If you can see something, you can shoot it, as the games are played in spaces that are a fraction of the lethal range of modern firearms, so manoeuvre is crucial.

- model and scale agnostic. You could play this scenario with Tyranids for the aliens and Marines, IG, Tau, whatever on the human side. Save money, use the figures you like.

I prefer the sci-fi setting to their modern warfare setting of Force on Force. It's not a replacement for my beloved Infinity , more an in-parallel game - as it's quite different, but it has a lot of the same stuff that I love - no down-time for players, detailed tactical decisions to make.

a fat guy

Sounds pretty cool Quoz, I was thrown off by it's description as whenever someone uses the term "Sci-Fi", I always picture stupid-looking aliens from the 80's, but you've shone a brighter light on the subject.

Did you get it online?

What models did you use?

For such a game, I'd use my Ultra-Modern soldiers from the Assault Group site as soldiers and Tyranids as aliens.

quozl

Thanks

Yep, I got it from http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ . The Arkham gaming centre up North sell it, if you're going to be visiting them any time soon.

I was using my 20mm US army force (Elhiem miniatures) as the properly trained military force, my 20mm Taliban (Elhiem, Wartime and Underfire) as the local militia and Khurasan Space Demons as the aliens. The Khurasan are allegedly 15mm but as they're meant to tower over 15mm humans they work really nicely with 20mm models.

You could definitely play that mission with the models you suggested.

All the other missions in the book are human versus human BTW - they give a hard sci-fi background that you can use if you like it, or not. However if you wanted to do stupid 80s Aliens, you could too ;P