After having the grand idea to play some Fallout as a miniature game, AWB FINALLY managed to live the dream last Friday by putting on a small game in 15mm for the Butchers of the Bell Curve gaming group.
System was Tomorrow's War, which was the reason AWB purchased these rules in the first place, and figures from GZG. The game had a raiding party of nine Super Mutants vs a Science type team from one of the Vaults numbering in at eleven. Inspiration was mainly from Fallout:3 for, as fans of the game probably know, West and East Coast Super Mutants are slightly different.
For those playing along at home, the Super Mutants were classed as D8 quality and morale with one Super Mutant Brute as leader which was morale D10. The Brute was classed as 'Hard to Kill' as per the Tomorrow's War rules and the rank and file were given 'Tricky to Kill', a variation to this rule where a D4 is rolled as the saving dice instead of the normal D6. There was a two mutant weapons team with a minigun (+1D support weapon) that was also classed as Intimidating, all others had stand weapons and none had armour.
The humans had a two man 'Science Team' armed with pistols, a 'Security' team of four figures in armour (1D), a 'hero' (D10 quality/morale and armour, Designated Marksman skill) and a four figure squad of 'Hangers On' armed with SMG/Shotguns. All except the 'hero' were D8 quality/morale and the side's Confidence was rated as Poor based on the rational ground that their mission was rather risky for little 'real' reward.
The humans were tasked with retrieving as much 'science' (read VP) as they could from a small shack they had found in the middle of the wasteland without getting killed and the Super Mutants had the more straight forward task of wiping out the PUNY HUMANS!!!! Hence the humans got no VP for killing Super Mutants, while our favourite big yellow skinned idiots had no interest in the 'science'. Both sides therefore could obtain victory here...
Although (spoilers), the Super Mutants ended up getting butchered.
The humans were gone for all money at one stage. The 'Security' team was being forced back, the 'hero' had been last seen collapsing under a hail of minigun fire and what's more, a Molerat had just popped up randomly to be annoying.
Then, having also randomly found enough loot to increase the 'Security' teams supply level for the rest of the game (which under the rules gives that team a very useful +1 dice to roll when firing), the luck swung back, the Super Mutants were falling like Bloatflies and by turn seven the humans were casually finishing off the wounded.
All good fun really and completely justified all the time the last two years spent, on and off, painting figures for this project. Neither of the two players were experienced with the source game and probably missed some of the deliberate references (as well as referring to the Super Mutants as 'Ninja Turtles' for most of the game) which was a mild pity. There was also a few of the 'house rules' that probably need a little more Beta testing. The vault dwellers all had PIPBoys for example, which as players of Fallout:3 and Fallout New Vegas will know, allow use of the VATS system. Sliding VATS into Tomorrow's War without making it a game breaker is still a work in progress. Current version/theory has PIPBoy equipped teams being able to reroll failed reaction tests with the chance to take a VATS shot coming up via the set of home made Fog of War cards. These random event cards also include such 'Fallout' type events as the Mysterious Stranger and the appearance of various non friendly animals.
So, still a bit of tweaking to do with the house rules for this project (as well as a LOT of painting still to finish) but overall a very entertaining Friday night using a reasonable straight forward game engine that provided an amusing dialogue to the night's events.
Good fun, with the only real failure of the night being the complete failure to remember to take any photos.
