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Hey everyone. I've spend the last couple of weeks reading over a host of new and different games much of you can read on my blog Pensacola Warhammer, It has been an exciting and eye opening period. The games that I'm particularly interested in right now are Full Thrust, Bolt Action, and Tomorrow's War. I've played a few games of Full Thrust and I have nothing but good things to say about it. I have not had a chance to give Bolt Action a try yet, but I'm looking forward to it after reading the rules. Plus, I'm keen on adding my own "weird" tastes to it. Finally, there's Tomorrow's War. I don't know what to think of this game. There seems to be something special there, but there are things that I'm having a hard time getting over: no guidelines or rules for creating your own scenario or army, no points system, and no real detail that something like Full Thrust gives. I'm eager to hear from the community on this one.

Thanks for the comments, and I look forward to the discussions.

Hey there! Its cool you've picked up a few more games to play, could you explain Full Thrust a bit more? I've never personally heard of it, but would be interested to add a fleet-based game to my own (growing) repertoire of games. Does it play fairly quickly? I think that is the quality I've come to appreciate in games I enjoy, because otherwise it usually isn't fun to slug through a several hour match (Especially when turns are IGOUGO).

My own experience with Force on Force and Tomorrow's War is that usually its fun to play a scenario where one side is at a disadvantage to see how your maneuvering and planning abilities can help you succeed. Also my own advice is not to get hung up on balancing like I did when I first started playing, instead accept that you won't be able to perfectly balance the game. Instead of trying to balance the opposing forces I think its easier to balance the scenario so that the disadvantaged force has an easier objective to complete, while the advantaged team has a much more difficult one. Have you picked up Tomorrow's War source book, By Talon and Dagger? It is supposed to be mainly about power armor and alien forces if you're interested in that aspect.

Another thought I have is that because of Tomorrow's war great amount of customization when it comes to armies, then it is easy to create whatever sort of army you had in your head, for example I've made stats for Tau Fireteams, Space Marine Kill Teams, Colonial Marines (from the movie aliens), Terminators, and more. And the awesome thing is that those groups then play like you want them to. My Tau have Tech Level 3 equipment and a high empasis on small unit actions, Terminators are near impossible to keep down thanks to some of the special traits(I can't think of their name right now), etc.

So I suppose Tomorrow's War is really what you want to make it. I'll give you more advice if you have any specific questions!

Thanks for the feed back.

To address your first question about Full Thrust, it's a great system. Before you start a turn, you write out the course for your ships with both players then rolling a D6 to see who has the initiative. If you when the initiative, it means you are allowed to make the first move in the following phases; however, both players make movements and actions basically at the same time.

Example: Blue player and Red player have finished writing their orders and roll for Initiative. Red player succeeds and launches his first wave of fighters. Now both players move their ships at the same time. Red player fires his first ship followed by Blue player firing one of his ships. This continues until both players have fired all their ships and the turn ends.

Given the size of the game and if you are not distracted, you can knock out a game in about 2 hours. Couple this with the fact that in order to play you have to create the ship stats makes it a very fun game. Right now, I'm creating a Battlestar Galactica fleet. In my previous games, I went against a Star Trek fleet and a Babylon 5 fleet. I guess like Tomorrow's War, the rules for Full Thrust allows you to do a good job at representing the fleet you're hoping to depict.

I was told that Tomorrow's War did a good job at allowing me to develop the army I wanted. I've seen numerous reviews that show that 40k Space Marines are walking death machines in Tomorrow's War. I think it's just a very different system than what I'm used to, and I guess I was expecting more grainular detail and control. I haven't played it yet, but I hope to soon. I think the scenario mechanic is what I'm hung up on. This seems to be a hinder if I just want to meet a friend and bash some heads. I'm not really worried about balancing my opponents army. I'm just worried about balancing my own. I understand I can create Space Marines, but what's to stop me from fielding a whole army of them? I too am trying to figure out how to make a Colonial Marines army, but haven't figured out what would be the best course. It's the lack of detail that bothers me. How many men are in a squad? Can I add more men? What would be the difference between a Smart Gun for the Colonial Marines and a Heavy Bolt for 40k Space Marines? I understand I can make Black Ops units, but how many can I have? This is where I wish they have a points system. Not to build an arbertray balance system, but as a guide line for building armies. The points system can simply be used to represent the money, materiales, time, and training that goes into a particular unit. A Navy SEAL is for a fact more expensive than a standard Marine rifleman because of the time, training, and money invested in him.

Advice: I'm wanting to make a Colonial Marines army for now. As I think this will be the easiest to start with, and the most "balanced" force to play and learn the game. I'm thinking they will have a Troop Quality of D8 with normal Confidence, and D8 moral. I think they will be at a Tech Level 2. It's beyond this point that I begin to have trouble. I don't know how many men I'm allowed in a squad, how many support weapons I'm allowed, or how many squads I'm allowed. Can I just slap armor on them? What about leaders? How would they work? Is it through the use of Attributes that I really begin to pick out differences between say a regular fireteam and a special Black Ops team?

Just like what you're doing with Tomrrow's War, I'll try and return the favor with Full Thrust. Let me know what other questions you might have.

How much tactics are needed for Full Thrust? Is it more of a sit down and throw dice until someone wins or is good maneuvering and planning rewarded? Also how large should battles be for the game to work appropriately? (I'm usually more partial to lower model count games).
Does Full Thrust have a point system? And would it work well enough with more than 2 players?


Hm you're correct in that aspect, TW doesn't work well if you just want to run a skirmish with the only objective being a fight to the death, the game needs objectives for it to be successful is how I feel, not that deathmatches won't be fun it is just that the game won't work as it was designed. So in that sense I don't think TW will work well if you just want to meet up with someone and have a quick game, a little bit of planning beforehand is really needed for the game which may turn some people away from it.

I would personally try to always play TW with a scenario in mind. I'll try to walk you through creating one. A Deathwatch Kill Team is tasked with destroying an Ork super weapon and must do it within a certain amount of turns, we'll say 6 turns. The Orks objective is to defend the Super Weapon with whatever means necessary. The Orks should greatly outnumber the Kill Team so I think about 5 marines against ~25 Orks is feasible.

On a side tangent here keep in mind stats should always be relative to the opposing force, so for example Space marines compared to Orks should be D10/D12 morale quality versus's the Orks D6/D8 Morale, I'd say the Orks are T1 and Space Marines T2 as the marines technology is better, but not extremely so. A T3 compared to Orks would probably be Tau or Necrons.

Continuing to design the forces for the Death Watch I would give them one Heavy Bolter that would be a TL2 ABW AP:3 weapon, then 4 Bolter(+1 FP dice) Marines that are split into pairs. All marines should have +3 defence dice for their armor.

The Orks will be split into groups a couple groups of 5 boys armed with the traditional slugga and choppa (These groups will have 2 more dice when in close combat, slugga will count as pistols) then one or 2 groups of 5 boys who have shootas. The Orks should also use D8s in close combat.

Put lots of ruins and cover to break lines of sight, other wise the marines will sweep the Orks quickly off the board. Some special rules you could consider to make the scenario more interesting is allow the Orks to reinforce with D6 boys every turn at set points and give the Marines airsupport or artillery support.

Now to answer some of your other questions a Smart Gun and Heavy Bolter are pretty functionally similar and the only real difference would be giving the Heavy Bolter an additional tech level. As to how many men should be in a squad, squads should be broken up into fire teams of 4 or 5 soldiers for traditional forces.

I'd stick to one support weapon on each fire team, with heavy support weapons being relatively rare and usually a separate unit. Colonial Marines I think should either have 1 or 2 extra dice for their armor, leaders aren't very important for regular armies as the chain of command should allow a fairly smooth transition of command if the leader is a casualty, however for some forces like, Tyranids for example then the loss of a leader is a huge setback and you should use the irregular rules for them(not sure if theyre in TW might only be FoF).
Yes, attributes should be how you really start to set apart the differences between different unts!

I think TW is an acquired taste that takes a couple of tries to really get a feel for how a balance is achieved and how to create interesting forces that meet your expectations.

Ive tried FUBAR recently - a free Generic very simple rules system - rules on a single page !
There are supplements for different genres

http://thegamesshed.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/fubar-one-page-sfmodern-rules/

For the Colonial Marines, this book is invaluable : http://www.amazon.com/Aliens-Colonial-Marines-Technical-Manual/dp/1781161313

Contains unit organization, detailed training and armaments, favorite brands of cigars for sarges to chomp on (well maybe not, but everything else you need!)

Dynamix wrote:Ive tried FUBAR recently - a free Generic very simple rules system - rules on a single page !
There are supplements for different genres

http://thegamesshed.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/fubar-one-page-sfmodern-rules/

I have these, but haven't had a chance to go over them. I have heard they a good and interesting set of rules.

judgedoug wrote:For the Colonial Marines, this book is invaluable : http://www.amazon.com/Aliens-Colonial-Marines-Technical-Manual/dp/1781161313

Contains unit organization, detailed training and armaments, favorite brands of cigars for sarges to chomp on (well maybe not, but everything else you need!)

I think I actually still have this book.

@Sandinistato
Tactics can play a big roll in the game depending on a few factors: design of your ships, design of your opponent's ship, "combat doctrain" of your fleet, mission, random event cards, and terrain. That sounds like a lot but it really boils down to how you've designed your ships. Case in point, I have a couple of ships in my fleet that are purely used to support some of my capital ships. I have an Electronic Warfare ship that has no offensive weapons, but is used to scramble my opponent's targeting scanner and plenty of anti-fighter turrets. Planning and maneuvering does play an effect in the game since you're not 100% sure where your opponents ships are going to be. Getting in behind your opponents ships can by pass his armor and prevent him from shooting at you.

There is a points system for Full Thrust which is tied to ship creation. When you begin designing a ship, you first decided on its Mass this can represent how big or bulky the ship is. The Mass also gives you your base points cost and how much stuff you can put on your ship. From there you begin to add various systems, weapons, armor, etc. These use up Mass points while also adding to your base points cost.
Example: You start with a MASS 90 ship. It has a base cost of 180 points. After figuring a drive system, you're left with 45 mass points left. Finally, you add a couple points of armor or shields some weapons and your left with 32 mass points and a cost of 212 points. I know I probably made that sound really confusing, but when you read through the rules and find some calculators online it's actually very easy.
The system works very well with multiple players, but you'll probably have wildly different ship designs between characters. Your Battlestar Galactica may be designed very differently from my Battlestar Galactica. There's also you real guideline on how to design ships and how to determine MASS. As the guys I play with say, it's SWAG (Scientific Wild A** Guess). You'll find yourself designing a ship, playing it, and then going back to the drawing board with it, which for me is part of the fun.

If you're interested in the game, the rules are free online http://shop.groundzerogames.net/index.php?_a=viewCat&catId=130
The other nice thing is that the community is still very active with this game. Again, that's largely because it's considered the best starship fleet game out there. You'll be able to find loads of mods for it. There are Star Wars and Star Trek mods. There's a couple of expansions out called Warlord and Cross Dimensions that add a lot to the game.

The average size of a game is again determined on how you designed your ships. I played a 2,000 point game last Friday. My opponent had 5 ships, and I had 8 ships with a few squadrons of fighters. You can check out the battle report on that battle over here: http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=315022. I hope I helped. If not, just ask for clarification.

I had the feeling that Tomorrow's War would be something that I'd have to play a couple of times to really understand. I have seen that there is a points system that's in Beta out there, but haven't tried it yet. I'll try and come up with some examples and post them to see if I'm on the right track. For good or bad, reading these rules is starting to make me want to develop my own rule system.

Tommorrow's War is a scenario game, therefore there is no "balancing" in the traditional sense. Play a few games and you will get the hang of it.

If youve played older 40k eds and 28mm ww2 is what you want to play then i would recomend rules of engagement as it works very similar to 4th ed with some very nice tweeks to make it awesome for ww2

@Welsh_Furey
Interesting. I will certainly give them a look.

@Easy E
I'm coming to the understanding that playing a few games of Tomorrow's War is what I'm going to have to do, so I'm not going to give up on the game yet. It's just a different mind set and style of game that I have not come across, so it's taking awhile for my brain to figure things out.

bkiker, for Tomorrow's War, play a scenario against yourself with 2 squads on each team of the exact same troops, so you can get the rules down. Then another scenario where they have different tech level equipment, and you'll get an idea of the power balance.

I'd have to agree with judgedoug, that would be a good way to start getting a hang of the rules and learn how "balance" can be achieved with the system. Especially a good idea to not use too many special rules right away as they can be quite confusing the first few times one plays.

@bkiker
I looked over the rules you linked and they look like a blast to use! I'll have to convince a few friends that we should try them sometime. What models do you use for the game? I liked some of the models on GZG and I like how cheap it seems it would be to start Full Thrust.

By the way I've looked at a few of your blog posts and they're quite well written and enjoyable to read! Definitely going to subscribe to it.

Yeah, wrapping your head around the action/reaction system can be tricky at first too. However, it is completely worth it!

@Sandinistato
Thanks for the complament and subscribing. With all these new rules, I should have a bit more content to go over. I'll be posting a long delayed Horus Heresy Tactica later today.

As for miniatures, I use what ever I can find my hands on since I'm putting together a Battlestar Galactica fleet. Here's a list of the places I use or will be using:
Bad-Azz Resin Model Kits Scroll down some and you'll see what he has.
Ravenstar Studios You can contact him for a complete list of Battlestar Galactica models or his Cold Navy line, which if very nice.
Iron Wind Metals This are created by Jim Fox. You can contact him for an even larger collection at fox@foxminiatures.com
Federation Models. A good selection of a verity of models.
Odyssey Slipways. Good collection of Star Wars minis. I would also recommend contacting him at odysseyslipways@aol.com
Don't forget Firestorm Armada from Spartan Games and Shapeways. The guy I play with some times uses toys like Micromachines and so forth.

That's the great thing about Full Thrust. You can use what ever you want. Most fleets will be on the large scale meaning capital ship would be in the order of 6+ inches in length.

As for Tomorrow's War, I am certainly going to play around with it before I cast a final judgment. I think there is something really cool and interesting there. I'm just having a hard time seeing it by just reading the book. The action/reaction mechanic doesn't bother me as it seems a lot of tabletop games are making a shift towards using it. It's the fact that I can create whatever I want for my army, to certain level of detail, and there's no points, rules, or guidelines to tell me where the ceiling is at except for whatever the scenario tells me.

Nice blog post. Looks like you've taken your first steps into a larger world.

My club plays Full Thrust a couple of times a year. It's a great generic starship game and has aged really well. I don't really like starship games, but I didn't hate it the times I've played and even scratchbuilt a small fleet for occasional use.

I feel roughly the same as you about Tomorrow's War. I've played it 3-4 times now. I really want to like it and I think I just haven't understood it yet, but I just didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. However, it did get me to paint up Platoons of Denizen Ventaurans and Khiff, so something good has come of it thus far.

You can see some of our club's experiences with both games by searching the blog linked in my sig.

Are you going to check out other indie and less-known games? I'd be happy to make some recommendations if you know what you're looking for in terms of scope, complexity and genre.

@Ellif
I hear Obi-wan's voice when I read your first sentence .

Again, I'm saving judgment on Tomorrow's War until I play it a couple of times.

As for other games, I'm really seeing what all is out there, but if I had to give a scope on things, I'm looking for games that give freedom in creating what I want army/unit wise similar in some ways to Full Thrust. For complexity, I'm looking for games has more depth in tactics and mechanics than 40k. That shouldn't mean I want an overly complecated game. For genre, I'm kind of all over the place; sci-fi; fantasy, historical, Weird War II are the ones that are tickling my fancy right now.

I plan on picking up rules for Malifaux, Infinity, and Flames of War, but a good fantasy game like Warhammer Fantasy (something that I can use Warhammer Fantasy units) I haven't hit on yet.

Load me up with suggestions. I'm eager to know and learn what more is out there.

Have you tried Kings of War? It's vastly simpler than WHFB, and plays quicker, but seems quite tactical, and very much not magic-focused. Just played my first game last week and am looking forward to more. Armies of Arcana is another option that is well regarded, but I haven't played it.

You've probably seen my other praises for Song of Blades and Heroes, so I won't repeat them here, but if you're looking for a generic fantasy skirmish game it's a beeeoooot.

I also recommend joining the WarEngine (Shockforce) yahoo group if only to get the free download for the WarEngine rules. It does not handle anything larger than a light vehicles, but I think it's a much better ruleset than 40k with more tactical options, but fewer rules.

"No Limits" (free online) is an option for a game that will do everything 40k does without the limitations of the 40k game engine. It's basically the freeware version of VOR.

I saw also that you are looking at Apocalypse. If you don't mind doing a bit of work, the Warpath 1.0 rules (they're still out there somewhere online) are brilliant for huge battles that have a 40k feel, but play at about double the speed. You'd have to make your own stats for larger vehicles, but you could easily play an apocalypse size game in an afternoon rather than an entire day.

Oh, and I was indeed quoting Obi Wan. Best of luck on your gaming exploration.

Thanks for the recommendations, I saw Kings of War when I checked out your blog. Honestly, I didn't know it was a game; just thought the company sold miniatures. I will certainly be looking over some of these.

By the way everyone, If your interested, I posted a new tactica on the Horus Heresy, so check it out.

I would also recommend dropzone commander, urban war/metropolis and battlegroup kursk.

Stargrunt II and Dirtside II are fun and seem to fit what you ar elooking for as well. I think they were made by the same people as Full Thrust.

 Easy E wrote:
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II are fun and seem to fit what you ar elooking for as well. I think they were made by the same people as Full Thrust.

You are correct. They can all be downloaded for free at the Ground Zero Games website.

Stargrunt 2 is ideal for 15, 25 or 28mm engagements, while Dirtside is aimed at larger battles with smaller scale miniatures.

I have both Dirtside and Stargrunt, just haven't read them yet. I'm finishing Tomorrow's War, and I'm planning to read either Bolt Action, Infinity, Warhammer Fantasy, or Carnevale next.

@Ellif
Do the games you mentioned have quick start rules that I can download or do I have to buy the rules?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I've also got a better handle on Tomorrow's War. Basically, my thinking is that I create my army and units and then let the scenario dictate how they will react, what units I can take, and what modifiers I will have.

 bkiker wrote:
Thanks for the recommendations, I saw Kings of War when I checked out your blog. Honestly, I didn't know it was a game; just thought the company sold miniatures. I will certainly be looking over some of these.

I have been a huge convert to KoW in the past year. It's fast, fun, and free. The rules are very easy to learn but have an immense tactical depth. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

 bkiker wrote:

@Ellif
Do the games you mentioned have quick start rules that I can download or do I have to buy the rules?

I don't think any of them have quick-start rules, but none of them are particularly complex.

Warpath1.0 and army lists Free to download here:
http://forum.manticblog.com/showthread.php?18-Compilation-of-Warpath-Army-lists-and-rules

No Limits Free to Download here (along with similar fantasy and starship games)
http://www.wargamesunlimited.net/nolimits/

Shockforce. Free to download if you join this yahoo group
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/WarEngine/

Kings of War. Free to Download here:
http://www.manticgames.com/Hobby/Gaming.html

Song of Blades and heroes. $8 to download here (I strongly recommend this, my favorite game):
http://www.ganeshagames.net/product_info.php?cPath=1_6&products_id=7