Review: Tomorrow’s War

Tomorrow’s War Review

Tomorrow’s War is the newest game from Ambush Alley (the folks who brought your Force on Force). Since the book has been out for about six months, I want my review to focus on how the game plays since I’ve had the chance to play half a dozen games since it picking it up about two months ago.

Tomorrow’s War is scale neutral so players can use any set of miniatures they like. From a cost standpoint Tomorrow’s War has a low investment cost since you can run anything alien, modern or futuristic looking. All you need is the rulebook and D6, D8, D10 & D12 dice.

Unlike the majority of games on the market, Tomorrow’s War is hard sci-fi game with the premise that while technology may change people are the deciding factor in combat.  Gamers used to fluffy systems and hero driven battles will find playing Tomorrow’s War a big adjustment. There are no points, the game is scenario driven and the rule book is meant to be flexible manual. It is game that requires you to work with the person you are playing to develop a scenario and make sure your forces are balanced (or maybe not) for the objectives the game. While winning is important the scenario drives the real outcome so if you need reinforcements, talk to the other player and decide if they should come in. My gaming group has house rules that we use in every game because we’ve found they work better.  

The core mechanics are very similar to Force on Force so players from that system will find Tomorrow’s War easy to pick up. Ambush Alley has done a great job off adding in futuristic concepts body armor/power armor, tech levels, electronic warfare, and futuristic weapons, aliens which impact roles onto their core system without bogging down the game.

For readers who aren’t familiar with Force on Force, the core mechanics of the game revolve around the idea of troop quality/morale represented by different die types and a dynamic reaction system. Troops in the game are rated between a D6 and D12 which determine the type of die the use for their actions. So a D12 trooper is a super elite badass while a D6 is some lowly trained conscript. The game uses a dynamic reaction system that allows the non-initiative player to respond to the actions of initiative player. I really think the genius of the system is that each time a player reacts; they need to test to see if they can keep reacting but also lose some of their firepower. Even if a unit keeps reacting, eventually it will run out of firepower for the turn.

The die type representing troop quality makes it easy to build and balance forces. In my games, I’ve found that for a truly balanced game, the Troop Quality across forces needs to be roughly the same. If player is D6 and D8, that will work as well but the D6 player may need a few more units. In general, the idea of running D10 & D12 forces will appeal to many players. D10 and D12, units are a great supplement but as units, they don’t make for fun games when run in a unit larger then 2. The reason is simple, the game works on a universal mechanic of anything succeeds on a 4+. With a D12, it becomes so rare that the units fail tests or lower dice can beat them that these units are nearly unstoppable when fielded in units bigger then 2.

I’ve had one major challenge with Tomorrow’s War which is the book lacks an in-in-depth section on how to build forces and scenarios. There is a great section on how to build an alien force. The authors do a great job of posing questions and walking readers through the thought process of building an alien force that is fun to play and uses the existing rules without the need to create special rules.  Unfortunately, they also need one for building a human army and how structure scenarios.  So much of the game is built on Force on Force where forces are either regular or irregular, and scenarios in that book and it’s supplements give players a good idea of how to build and balance scenarios.  This approach doesn’t work in Tomorrow’s War because of concepts like tech levels, the grid/ECM and advanced armor which can skew the game. It’s hard to understand when drop troops would make sense in a scenario or why you would field a low tech vs high tech force.

Tomorrow’s War is not a Space Opera. The basic premise of the game is that while the technology may change, people (or aliens and robots) are the deciding factor in what actually happens so training and quality are the most important. The game has lots of random elements and Troop Quality/Morale system means that your units won’t always be able to do everything expected of them which makes for fund and challenging scenarios. The game has a steep learning curve and the book isn’t always laid out in a user friendly fashion. For gamers, who want the flexibility of building and designing their own armies with a rule set that based on modern warfare combats in a sci-fi setting, Tomorrow’s War is a great game.

Pictures of the game were taken from http://beastgaming.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/a-good-day-to-die-a-tomorrows-war-aar/ which was demo game I participated in.