Twilight: 2000 – A Look Back at GDW’s Gritty Post-Apocalyptic Masterpiece

Time to print a lot of character sheets...You'll need them

 

Time to review and reflect on another of the games that I played as a teenager, but this time, sadly, no longer have the books for:

This offering by Games Designer Workshop is a great, great game with a gritty realism. For some reason, out of all the games I had back in the day, I sold these… and I can’t really remember why I did, either… ahhh, foolish youth.

For those not in the know, the game covers the events of World War III, starting with the (then) current timeline of the late 80s and the Cold War. From there it branches off to the start of a Sino-Soviet war and then a war breaking out in Europe between the Warsaw Pact forces and NATO. “Limited” nuclear exchanges happen and the war spreads to form a truly world war as industrial capacity breaks down, food becomes scarce, and command and control of the various armies disintegrates. The conflict grows and eventually engulfs most of North America from invasion from the south. In short, the shit hits the fan everywhere.

The players are cast in the roles (most often) of US Army soldiers trying to survive the falling apart of their unit/division as they are left to fend for themselves. In most cases the main overall theme is to try and make it back to Western Europe and get a transport back to the US.

Two main points stick out in my mind from my time playing Twilight: 2000: 

One, combat is downright deadly as would be imagined. Body armor helps, but not enough if the hit happens in the right location. Because of this, we were never that attached to our characters, because death was too common of an occurrence. This is the biggest departure I think that players of Fantasy RPGs struggled with. Armor is there but doesn’t save you like in D&D. Plus there aren’t any clerics to reattach your severed arm…

Two, we quickly learned the value of two weapons that still stand out in my mind nearly 20 years later. For close-in combat, nothing beat the H&K CAW (Combat Assault Weapon), an automatic shotgun. We learned through a few characters to sling the

Speaking of which, we learned that an even better tactic than using a CAW at close range was using an M-19 grenade launcher from a distance. We would stand back and fire from our vehicles at a target, only venturing in after the smoke had cleared.

Another interesting point is the scarcity of gas and diesel. Stills helped offset this (ours seemed to get shot up regularly), and we learned to leave them camouflaged and go back to them after the firefight. We had a couple of HMMWVs and once had an LAV-25.

The problem was the LAV became a burden, as it required so much fuel. Better yet was when we got FAVs (with M-19 grenade launchers, ‘natch). It was much more fun, as speed was a huge advantage compared to the larger vehicles. This represented the setting well — only large installations with solid logistical support could field tanks. Even with a few TOWs or other rocket systems, we avoided fighting them whenever possible.

Another interesting point is the scarcity of gas/diesel. Stills offset this (ours seemed to get shot up regularly...as in EVERY session) and we learned to leave it camouflaged and go back to it after the firefight.  We have a couple of HMMVs and once had a LAV-25. Problem was the LAV became a burden, as it required so much fuel. Better yet was when we got FAVs (with M-19 grenade launchers ‘natch). It was much fun as it would have been for the larger vehicles, speed was much better. This represented the setting well as only large installations with a logistical support could field tanks. Which even with a few TOWs or other rocket systems we avoided fighting.

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Equipment lists and weaponry were up-to-date as of the early 90s and would need some updates if you played the 1st Edition rules. The supplements to the game, like the

Which brings up a related point: trying to figure out vehicle combat was overly complex and frustrating as all hell.

In terms of characters, none were particularly memorable except one that I played in a tournament. The GM ruled that a flash-bang grenade had blown off my Welsh gunner’s leg… mind you, I was on the outer edge of the effect radius. Basically he didn’t understand the rules or what that type of grenade actually did. That incident, along with some neckbeard historical gamers at the same con, turned me off to open gaming for a long time.

The character creation process was good and flowed well, allowing for various nationalities, genders, and areas of responsibility across the service branches. Rank is hardly an issue — outside of your own squad, NCOs and officers can’t just boss you around. The army is falling to pieces and command and control is non-existent.

I only had minimal experience with the 2nd Edition rules. We took our characters from 1st Edition and tried them out. Later on we used the 2nd Edition rules in a modern-day “brush fire wars” type rather than the World War III angle (before GDW did it). We jet-setted around in our Learjet for the highest bidder. Not much came of that, and college beckoned for all of us shortly thereafter, and not long after college, GDW folded in 1996.

The only other thing that I think did not work well in the game system are the hesitation rules. Basically everyone had a factor that governed (more or less) your actions in a firefight, and hesitations required pauses reflecting the PC’s ability to keep it together under fire. While realistic, it was also a drag on the game — you had to wait while everyone else was doing something. One lucky roll during character creation and you were infinitely better in combat than your foes or teammates. If you are like me and roll crappy for your PCs (that’s any system), then this was a source of frustration as well.

Summation: The entire line was well done with very good artwork and an abundance of supplements. We never used the modules all that much, but there certainly was a wide range of them.

In short, a great game — lots of fun. Just don’t play it if you can’t handle the concept of your character dying, because the likelihood of it if you go into every combat like it’s D&D is very high.

Warhammer Siege: The Most Promising Supplement That Was Utterly Unplayable

"Such a cool cover for such a flawed book."

Ahh, the good old Warhammer Siege supplement for 3rd Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Was there ever something so promising, but ultimately unplayable?

When I was in high school I can’t begin to tell you how much we looked forward to playing this, how much effort we put into creating scale model stone throwers, siege towers, drills, sheds, catapults, and other siege equipment, to say nothing of the scratch-built castle I made that was huge. I don’t think there has ever been a bigger letdown in the history of man…ever. I don’t say this lightly either. Read on to find out why.

My friends and I (Dave and Jeff) spent a great deal of time playing Warhammer 3rd Edition in 1989–92ish, with a fair amount of Warhammer before college beckoned in the Fall of 1991. We were all pretty well versed in the rules and how it played by then and were looking forward to the new challenges that Siege offered. We had progressed rapidly from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to Fantasy Battles to Siege. Each of us had large armies and were some of GW’s biggest fans this side of the pond.

An assault underway on the Might Fortress

As mentioned above, we got our supplies, armies, and terrain together and gathered in the basement of Dave’s house. I think we prepped for several days before the game actually began (incidentally, Dave’s ping pong table was perfect for a Warhammer table). We pointed out our respective armies: Jeff playing his Orcs and Goblins were the defenders of the castle, and I was playing my Empire army as the attackers. (I recall we rolled randomly to see who attacked and who defended.)

After noticing some interesting loopholes (I had units of Landstrum (levies) that I never intended to bring onto the main board, continuously in the remote zones scavenging for supplies to reduce my point costs) is one that came to mind. Mind you, I didn’t actually have the models either, but they were never coming on the board. We finally got the main game rolling.

I’m not going to bore you with half-recollections, but skip to the meat of this post.

As mentioned above, we got our supplies, armies, and terrain together and gathered in the basement of Dave’s house. I think we prepped for several days before the game actually began (incidentally, Dave’s ping pong table was perfect for a Warhammer table). We pointed out our respective armies: Jeff playing his Orcs and Goblins were the defenders of the castle, and I was playing my Empire army as the attackers. (I recall we rolled randomly to see who attacked and who defended.)

After noticing some interesting loopholes (I had units of Landstrum (levies) that I never intended to bring onto the main board, continuously in the remote zones scavenging for supplies to reduce my point costs) is one that came to mind. Mind you, I didn’t actually have the models either, but they were never coming on the board. We finally got the main game rolling.

I’m not going to bore you with half-recollections, but skip to the meat of this post.

Finally, the strategic phase, foraging, strategic time, etc., was over and we got to firing. Now, in order to save points I had skimped on ammo for the siege weapons, figuring I could scavenge for them. We looked through the rules and… nope, no go. I was horrified: I had made such a huge blunder. You can forage for supplies but not ammo. Immediately, one thought: do I have enough ammo? As it turned out I had plenty. (Makes no sense for stone throwers, but I digress.) I tried to hide it and grabbed for my dice.

Reluctantly, I have my catapult fire: it launches and it does middling damage to the wall it’s facing. Next up, the 10-man cannon with barely any ammo. I figure that I’m not going to have enough ammo to do anything to the castle and will have to fall back on a futile ladder and ropes assault. The dice roll a pretty good result, we then flip to the section with wall damage and look on in horror as one shot blows away the section of wall it’s firing at and does so much damage that the secondary collapse blows up the entire facing, to say nothing of the Orcs that it vaporizes in the resulting collapses.

We then stare at each other dumbfounded. Did that really just happen? Did we miss something in the rules?

I can’t stress this enough: the three of us literally stopped the game, looked at each other, then we huddled around the rule book, looking at the relevant rule sections. Now the three of us had each taken turns reading it and it’s still “What the Hell?” We also figured we had the rules down pat, but nope.

We had read the rules right and the castle wall was history from one shot. A nanosecond later we all come to the same conclusion. Did they play-test this at all? And that pretty much ended that game right there. We tried a couple more scenarios and the results were pretty much the same.

What a disappointment, one of the greatest of my thirty years of gaming. 

Now sure, the rules have some notes about how the GM can increase the walls statistics but the wasn't the point. As written they were pretty wobbly. Perhaps the envisioned that people would take the top end artillery? 

Siege rules were written with the models ACTUAL foam walls in mind?

 

The back portion of the book had rules for 40K, but we weren’t into 40K, so we never tried the 40K rules for it. One would imagine that if gunpowder weapons could blow up a fortification with one shot, then what lasers, bombs, siege dreadnoughts, etc. would do to it? Sure, the energy fields might have made them last a tad bit longer, but ugh, who wants to game that out?

So that was my first (and pretty much only) brush with Warhammer Siege, and it sticks out in my mind like a sore thumb. The rules could not have been conceivably tested in any way, shape, or form. It’s probably fitting that the large (as in 3-foot castle), counters, siege engines, and the like are mostly long gone now. It would be too painful to look at the time and effort put in for such an enormous letdown. Certainly a low point for me in terms of gaming.

As a quick aside, I always wanted to create 10-man cannon and crew. Maybe I will as homage reminder of the game. 

There you have it. What were your experiences with Warhammer Siege?