For What Remains

Stranger Things: The War Game?

Imagine if post-war history had gone very differently. If the first nuclear tests had led to the discovery of a world parallel to our own. One with new resources and strange, hostile beings. Instead of a Cold war between superpowers, imagine the scramble to find ways to explore and exploit this new realm while slowly realising the threat from powerful and sinister creatures. The year is now 2035 and the world has been brought to the brink of destruction following a nuclear attack on the alternate dimension known also as “The Basement”. Definitely not “the Upside down”, okay? The remnants of Humanity are split into various factions fighting for control of the apocalyptic wasteland. All the while, the forces of the Basement (now allied with North Korea for… reasons) are plotting to finish the job and eradicate our species.

In For What Remains: Streets of Ruin, from DVG games, you have the choice of two of these factions. Streets of Ruin is one of a trilogy of skirmish games set in this world, each focusing on two different factions that can be played as standalone games or as expansions to mix and match. The other two games are Blood on the Rails and Out of the Basement. While all factions have different abilities and skill sets, all three use the same setting, combat system and rules to allow either one off games or an ongoing campaign. Most impressively, all can be played either two-player or as a solo experience, and it was the prospect of a decent solo war game that drew me to this in the first place.

Shall We Play A Game?

For What Remains: Streets of Ruin introduces us to two, broadly human factions in this world- The Combine, who have mechanical and cybernetically enhanced shock troops; and the Freemen who are a loose collective of human freedom fighters specialising more in hit and run tactics.

The game is played on a 3×3 grid of terrain tiles which you assemble before each game. These tiles slot together to offer a variety of features, such as water hazards, buildings and difficult terrain such as rubble to ensure each game can be slightly different and means that players aren’t limited by one board to play on. Each tile is marked into one inch squares which are used to determine movement, range and damage for ranged attacks etc. The Factions themselves are highly asymmetric with different unit types with varying abilities and characteristics which in turn encourages a different style of play. The Freemen tend to be quick, mobile units who are more flexible in terms of what they can do and where they can go. They have some fire power but their key units will be scouts or snipers depending on the scenario. The Combine, on the other hand, are generally slower, more limited units for specific tasks but they are also much tougher and hit harder. They also have access to mechanical heavy weapons which can do a lot of damage to multiple targets. The other two box sets available have different factions available all of which favour different styles of warfare and tactics and players are encouraged to mix and match factions between the scenarios.

Rules Of Engagement

As with any wargame the rules can make or break a game. Thankfully, the balance between depth and ease of play is one of the strengths of For What Remains. Each player has a number of units in their side determined either by one of the available campaign scenarios or players can choose a points value for armies and choose their units accordingly.

Each unit has three levels, Recruit, Veteran or Elite which offer increasingly better abilities but increase the cost. So players can decide not only which troops to bring but also whether to run a small cadre of elite fighters or have high numbers of less experienced and less effective soldiers to try and overrun the enemy.

During play, each unit is represented by square counters with an injured and non-injured side. The Veteran tokens and Elite tokens stack on the lower value versions of themselves. Hence an elite troop counter is placed on the veteran and then on the recruit. Every time it is injured the top counter flips and if injured again it’s removed. When the last injured counter is removed that unit is out of the game. As the counters are taken off they lose their corresponding abilities too- so an Elite will eventually become a Veteran when injured enough and then a Recruit. This is an elegant way of easily keeping track of injuries during the game. It also effectively represents how much more durable experienced fighters as well as how troops lose their effectiveness as they become more injured.

Movement is very simple. A unit can move as many squares as indicated on their information card for their rank. Terrain can make a difference, however the key focus of For What Remains is ease of play so the rules never get bogged down with charts or measuring. The information you need is clearly marked on the included unit cards and Faction sheets so up-keep is never a headache. Combat is also streamlined- pick a target in range and roll as many dice as your weapons strength. If you beat their toughness, you’ve hit them. Only one hit can be done no matter how many dice are rolled so keeping track of damage is very simple: You got hit? Turn the unit’s counter over to damaged. Already damaged? Then take it off and reveal the next one. No more counters underneath? Then your war is over, soldier- your sacrifice will not go unavenged!

All units have special abilities in keeping with the type of troop they are- for example Medics, unsurprisingly can heal other troops while a Scout can move without being affected by terrain. Using your abilities well can turn a game if used correctly but there is nothing too complex or game breaking that it gets in the way of learning, or keeping the game flowing.

About Turn!

The turn structure is another highlight which gives the game a distinct feel as it relies on a chit pull system. At the start of each turn, players choose unit activation tokens based on the number of troops they have on the board and place these into the same activation bag. Then units are pulled out one by one and activated by the appropriate player. So if you have 6 fighters remaining on the field, you can have 6 tokens and will therefore activate 6 times in that turn. However the crucial part is that you don’t know when they will activate or in what order. Also, you are not forced to use every unit each turn and can activate the same one more than once giving a little tactical flexibility to even out the randomness of the bag pull. Each unit has three activation tokens available to use but there is a “cool down” period of one turn once drawn out of the bag. So while you may activate a unit up to three times in one turn, sometimes with devastating effect, they will most likely be useless for the next turn and that may make them a potential sitting duck. This dilemma of what to activate and when is at the heart of For What Remains and becomes more crucial as the game progresses.

How About A Nice Game Of Chess?

For What Remains was developed as a passion project by designer David Thompson, who is no stranger to skirmish game design. In addition to Pavlov’s House and Warchest, Thompson’s most well-known game credit by far is the hugely popular Undaunted series co-developed with Trevor Benjamin. While a very different beast, some of the Undaunted design elements are present in For What remains; ten-sided dice for combat resolution, well balanced scenarios and the use of terrain tiles to build different maps. There is nothing quite as innovative as Undaunted’s deck building or initiative phase here, but For What Remains still stand out from many other war games. For example, the Chit Pull activation system detailed above manages to inject just the right amount of uncertainty into the game which, though your avid chess players may not approve, any war game needs. Using random tokens to determine turn order succeeds in simply abstracting a couple of key concepts from more complex war gaming, namely the “fog of war” and order delay. That is to say, it simulates some of the chaos of the battlefield: No commander can ever be fully aware of when or how their opponent will act, nor be completely sure of when their orders have filtered through to the troops on the front line. Drawing counters randomly to determine which units activate next means there is always the chance your opponent will get to move several units before you get to react and while it feels painful, it adds much needed tension to a game which is otherwise moving counters on a 2 dimensional board. While you can attempt to skew the odds in your favour to ensure a specific units activates early by loading the bag with their tokens, this comes at a cost and is never guaranteed to be effective. A smart commander will always have a back up plan. This is so simple, but gives the game a more dynamic feel than simply “you go, I go”.

Quality Streets

With the designer’s pedigree, For What Remains: Streets of Ruin was always going to be a clever game, but the real question remains, is it a good game? And the truth is it really is in so many ways, but let down by a couple of frustrating production issues.

Starting with the positive, For What Remains is testament to the huge amount of thought and planning that has gone in to making a war game that is actually approachable for new players yet still challenging. The world building is particularly impressive and it is clear a lot of time has gone into the setting, world history and most importantly into balancing the Factions to make them feel and play differently. I can’t yet speak of the factions in Blood on the Rails or Out of the Basement, but the effort to make the Combine and Freemen different, yet equally matched is clear from the off. Initially when you look in the box and see the giant tokens for the Mechs it would be easy to imagine that the Combine has the clear advantage. Yet the superior firepower they offer is balanced by the Freemen mobility and their Snipers. In fact I soon started to feel that it was the Freemen who had the upper hand… until they face some concentrated fire and go over in a stiff breeze. The truth is that both factions need to be played well and to their strengths and this is something you will learn quickly. Exactly as you would want from a starter game. The 5 scenario campaign included in the game also help to build up the challenge for players and increase the complexity in a way which will help new players to adapt. The Campaign rules allow each side to tweak their army between battles and increase the abilities and units as players see fit. Again, there is not a huge amount of choice or multiple load outs for troops but this isn’t necessary and helps to keep things manageable and move things along at a good pace. In fact my only gripe here is that, compared to the likes of the Undaunted series, a measly 5 scenarios is a very disappointed, good though these are.

The second element where the quality of design really shines here is in the solo mode. The Artificial Intelligence system for determining the way in which opponents (and you can play against either faction) move and choose actions is excellent. One of the problems with solo modes in this kind of game is that it can take a lot of upkeep, consulting flow charts and tables along with dice rolls etc- to provide an opponent of sufficient challenge.

For What Remains avoids most of this with the inclusion of simple individual unit cards that will determine how it acts on its activation based on a 10 sided dice roll. Certain actions may be scenario dependent, but running the Artificial Intelligence, choosing targets, when to move etc is a matter of a die roll and a small amount of applied common sense which makes the process quick and easy but challenging to play against.

There is also a very logical way to scale up the challenge simply by allowing the AI opponent to have more activations in a turn. It all results in a solo experience that feels like playing a game, not slogging through admin.

The Cost Of War

So does For What Remains get everything right? Well, unfortunately not. The game design is excellent but some of the component quality is frankly a let-down. For What remains is a deliberately simple in design- There are no plastic miniatures or double layered playing boards here and apart from a bag for the activation chits, the majority of the components are paper or cardboard. And to be clear this is not a bad thing at all. Simple and streamlined is absolutely how this game should be. But simple does not have to equate to cheap. The carboard used for the unit cards is pretty poor stock and very flimsy. Even more disappointingly the same stock is used for the map tiles. There are twelve 8 inches square tiles included which are double sided with a gloss finish. Unlike the tiles in Undaunted however (which in fairness are considerably smaller) these are not much thicker than paper and are already starting to bend. Putting these together on a table to form a map is very frustrating as they slide around easily and can be knocked apart or potentially even blown apart in a drafty room mid game. This means that it is easy to upset your map and force a reset if you have particularly clumsy or excitable players. Just as frustrating, the map tiles are designed not to be flush to each other, but to be overlapping slightly. This combined with the slippery, easily bent feel made putting the map together an infuriating experience. I was constantly adjusting and readjusting to try and get straight edges both at the beginning and throughout the game as you move counters around the map. If you had a glass or Perspex sheet to go over the top this would instantly solve the problem (although would still need to be fitted carefully) but as it is I found setting the game up took far too long due to messing with the tiles. I will admit that this may well be a “me” problem here- but I suspect I’m not the only one! Does this make the game unplayable? Is it likely to impact on the game play much once you get started? No, not if you are careful, but given the price of each of the three sets, it feels such a misstep to have included such poor quality tiles in the game given how important they are to play. And I have to be honest and say that there have been times when it has put me off playing.

War Is Over?

So I can’t wholeheartedly recommend For What Remains, despite the many excellent design points. I just feel that there are other more affordable options out there, especially if you are thinking of playing with two players. While the campaign is good it is very short and I don’t think it would take two players very long to tire of the options in the box. There are of course the other factions to discover and if the setting and world grabs you then I can see some gamers wanting to get everything. I am not sure that I am one of them, though.

But I can say that as a solo experience, For What Remains has been excellent and if it weren’t for my issues with trying to get the tiles to fit nicely together I would play far more often. If you are looking for a light skirmish game to play on your own, or occasionally bring out for friends who are not die hard wargamers then you genuinely can’t go far wrong with this one. It may not be up there with some of his other designs, but David Thompson has once again shown that he doesn’t know how to design a bad game. If you do take the plunge and get past the flimsy feel of some of the components, you will find an engaging little war game here and an apocalyptic world well worth exploring.