Chicago Skirmish Wargames

Here's the battle report from the second of two games of Tomorrow's War we played last weekend. My opponent in this game was Josh, who fielded his Dark Angels space marines as heavily armored shock troops against my platoon of mercenary soldiers from Col. Markham's Thunderbolts.

In my previous game, these mercenaries had been badly mauled by Karl's Ventaurans, forcing them to withdraw from their defended positions deep inside Geirrod City. In this game, Josh's Dark Angels were attempting to exploit the general disarray of the Thunderbolts by taking out a key casualty evac site (the titular "Evac Zone Fulcrum") that the mercenaries were using to process and evacuate their wounded. Here's how the battlefield looked at the outset.

As this was a learning game for Josh, we proceeded slowly and didn't worry too much about the scenario objectives until we both got a handle on the rules. Josh took the initiative early and sent his space marines into the crumbling rubble of Geirrod City.

My Thunderbolts had stats that were pretty average for Tomorrow's War. To differentiate the Dark Angels, we decided that they had better troop quality, improved morale and better armor (power armor, actually, which turned out to be quite a force multiplier). To balance this, we capped his fireteams at 3 figures each, so he didn't have nearly as many troopers on the table compared to my side.

It definitely made the game feel like an elite group of shock troopers (Josh's Dark Angels) squaring off against a "regular" army of rank-and-file troopers (my Thunderbolts).

For my part, I began the game with three fireteams on the table and two more in reserve. As Josh advanced, my guys hunkered down and opened fire from cover, trying to slow the advance of the implacable space marines.

Josh adjusted his tactics as his fireteams were quickly met by intense firepower. He was still figuring out the flow of the game, but he was also learning the value of power armor. It's really potent, especially when combined with higher-quality troopers!

My reserves were arriving, but my on-table fireteams were under pressure from Josh's advancing space marines.

This sector of Geirrod City was a sort of high-tech shantytown, packed with tumbledown slums and shacks. As my mercenaries fell back through the city, my command fireteam holed up inside one reinforced building and tried to direct the defense.

Unfortunately, this is what they saw across the battlefield: Dark Angels fireteams advancing amid a hail of gunfire, most sparking off the heavy plates of their power armor.

I never managed to muster quite the critical mass of firepower to stop his power armored marines. My mercs fought valiantly but were overrun by the end of the final turn, when Josh sent his marines charging into my casualty evac site.

Josh definitely liked the game, though he remarked that quite a few of the rules ran counter to similar rules in games like Warhammer 40k. For example, in 40k some units get a defensive bonus for moving quickly across the battlefield -- the logic is that they're harder to hit when running. The exact opposite is true in Tomorrow's War -- units that move rapidly suffer a defense penalty because they're assumed to be hauling ass in haphazard fashion. It's always interesting to see how different games handle these situations.

There's already interest in more games of Tomorrow's War, so look for more battle reports soon!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member