The Way of War

Essentially, The Way of War (TWIW) promotes itself as being a "universal miniatures system" but upon playing it a bit with some generic figures I've come to the conclusion that this might be a grandiose statement. TWIW is serviceable for small scale actions, say, of company level or lower. In this framework, TWIW is perfect serviceable, albeit somewhat bland and very complicated for the level of conflict being simulated. I've seen attempts at universal miniatures rules before, the most notable being Piquet, which requires the purchase of historical modules to replicate any given period using the basic mechanics as an overlay. TWIW dispenses with a modular approach and allows for truly polyglot concept; lasers fight swords, arrows fight giant robots. In this respect, TWIW might be a victim of its setting. The authors are obviously charmed with the idea of a gaming universe where, literally, ANYTHING can happen, and have written rules to that effect. The setting of TWIW actually promotes such lopsided encounters as giant intelligent bugs fighting cybernetic knights, fighting insane clowns, fighting Napoleonic Legions... The setting promotes a real "Oh Gee Whiz" attitude on behalf of the players, as well as a healthy suspension of disbelief.

And such a setting. Combine a healthy main course of Philip Jose Farmer's RIVERWORLD with Jerry Pournelle's JANNISSARIES, throw in a soupcon of Fortschen's THE LOST REGIMENT and Turtledove's VIDESSOS series, and you might have an inkling of where this game takes place. Essentially the setting takes place along a giant highway, called "The Way." The Way is sometimes described as being a mud track, sometimes a superhighway. The setting changes with the groups encountered along the way. The Way is more or less a giant rift between different universes and times, where small groups of people wander in from time to time. These are the "armies" (though that might be an over-exaggerated term for what is, essentially, company level elements). These small groups of people form settlements on either side of the Way, which has arable lands on either side for roughly 1000 miles or so. There's a convenient impassable mountain range up North and an equally convenient trackless ocean down South. What you end up with (and this is what the designers intended, I'm sure) is a setting where ANYbody could fight ANYbody. In the basic rulebook, the following races are described:

• The 312th Armored infantry: a futuristic African infantry unit.
• The Anthropod order: a gang of intelligent insects.
• The Aztecs
• The Church of Personality: a weird group of characters that "channel" famous dead celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe, Richard Nixon, and, of course, Elvis.
• The Circus of Terror: A travelling circus of crime and savage violence, presided over by the villainous Kount Klown and the Ringmaster (The Cabal's first miniatures release is of the Circus of Terror).
• The Crawling: Creatures of Myth, Magic and Horror fiction, everything from the Wolfman, to Centaurs, to Count Dracula.
• Demons of Springfield: A warped vision of 1950s America, with Demons instead of humans.
• The Grangers: Cybernetic Cowboys riding robot horses.
• Homelanders: A multi-tribal Indian homeland.
• The Horde: Descendants of the various hordes that overrun Rome in the Dark Ages.
• The House of War: Descendants of Arab Desert Warrirors
• Knights of Wodenburg: Teutonic Knights subtly altered by crude cybernetic enhancements (parenthetical note: the illustration of one of the knights shows a character with a cyber-shovel grafted on in place of an arm. Ever wonder how these guys with weapons instead of arms take care of... er... basic hygiene requirements? They still eat, don't they?)
• The Logical Revolution: a race of robots and androids that have made a proselytizing religion out of pure logic.
• Monotremes: Intelligent, upright platypuses... or is it platypi?
• Nueva Roma: The Roman Empire reborn... sort of.
• Quebec Guard: A loose amalgam of Napoleon's Grande Armee (remnants), Dutch Traders, and Iriquois Indians.
• Terrapins: Warlike giant turtle pirates? Gotta throw that in too.
• Tiger's Paw: Samurai and Ashigaru.
• Verdun Victors: Apparently, a large chunk of a Franco-American force lifted from the Trenches during WWI.
• Wastelanders: This universe's barbarians... they dwell on the rims of habitable civilization.

How it Plays

SLOWLY! Having about 200+ painted cowboys and a big stinkin' lot of classic horror creatures painted up, I attempted to have a small scale skirmish with a design-my-own army of cowboys vs. The Crawling (described above). Even using the Quick Rules (pages 6-7), I was in for a slog. I tried creating a small force of mounted cowboys led by a model called Zeke, the Trail Boss. I ran into snags creating their weapons (six shooters and rifles), as described by the create a weapon rules. First of all, you need to plug data into this equation:

(Range in inches/3)(4*Damage +8*Attack)
________________________________
(Actions/2)

to create a new weapon type. The design approach was NOT to create a series of archetypes from which you can extrapolate your weapons (as I often do with GURPS), but to have the algorithms available for the player to create his own. That's definitely a "universal" approach but not one that I have patience for. If I need a calculator to figure out a game, I start to glaze, big time. Each figure (model) needs individual stats for the game to work. These are:

Initiative	The Model's Reaction Rating
Movement	Range of Movement, in inches
Personal	Personal Combat Rating
Range	Ranged Combat Value
Speed	Number of ACTIONS
Defense	Defensive Rating
Damage	Damage this Model can Inflict
Soldiery	A "Quality" Rating
Unnatural	All-inclusive term for Magickal Stuff

Keep in mind that units can be individual characters or units. Characters equate to single man leaders or special troops. Units equate to Squads. See why I think the term "Army" might be a tad excessive?

Weapons also have their own stats:

Range	Range of the weapon
Damage	How much damage it does
Actions	How many actions it takes to wield it
Attack	Attack Modifiers

Every stat has a point cost, which goes up the more proficient you would like a model to be. I couldn't find a table or information anywhere about relative size of battles crossindexed to point cost budgets, which would have been useful. I'd like to have a pretty good idea of just what 500 build pts. would buy me vs. 1000.

Due to my confusion and a need to get something done, I bailed on creating cowboys and just called them "Cyber Cowboys" and used the stats from the Grangers, above. Works for me. I could (roughly) figure out the character creation process but didn't have the time or desire to do it.

The Game turn sequence was (in my opinion) reasonable enough:

Army Initiative: Roll 1D10 to see which side goes first per turn.

Movement: Move Forces, Init Roll winner first (half of his guys), Init Roll Loser next (half of his guys), then the Winner again, then the Loser, until everyone who can (or is desired to) has moved this turn.

Personal Combat: Any models within 1" of each other on opposing sides may attack. Init roll winner first.

Range Combat: Any distant combat (guns, arrows, throwing rocks, etc.) takes place in this segment.

Unusual Combat: Aka "unnatural" combat... the weird things like magick spells get thrown here.

Soldiery: Basically, a morale and cohesion check.

The main concepts of TWOW conflict are relatively simple: combine the relative statistic (personal or range) + 1d10 + and modfiers, and compare it to the target defense attribute + 1d10 + any applicable modifiers. If the Attack is higher, the attacker wins. If the Defense is higher, the defense wins. There's a ton of chrome, of course, but that's essentially it.

In my sample game, the Cyber Cowboys dismembered the Crawling in nothing flat.

Concluding

My impressions are a little negative. There's a good tactical game in here somewhere, but it's so laden down with exceptions to the rules, special circumstances and most important, POOR RULES EDITING. I had a tremendously hard time figuring this game out. It's not as if the rules I needed weren't in the text, it's just that aren't presented in a very coherent manner. A really decent index will help this game tremendously, as well as some decent rules summary charts in the center of the book presented as handouts. I genuinely like the notion and setting of TWOW, it's just that I don't think the Cabil really thought this one through sufficiently to have the forces presented to be even remotely balanced-- and the designers seem to place a great deal of importance to the notion of balacing forces against each other for a fair fight . Given, the world isn't balanced and is never fair, it's not so unlikely that a low tech group would fight a higher tech group (see ZULU if you want a historical example) -- you just shouldn't expect anything but a foregone conclusion. The designer spend so much time trying to create an artificial medium between high and low tech armies that it gets tedious. Such is the problem with "universal" rules... you have to be universal with them. I sincerely hope the Cabil considers doing a second edition, or at least starting a giant FAQ file to clarify this mess.

The Verdict

Slow, Poorly Edited but containing some interesting chrome and a half decent combat system. NOT recommended for large scale enagemeents.

A line of miniatures has been released with TWOW; they will be reviewed next week.