Fistful of TOWs
A Fistful of TOWs (FFT) is a miniatures wargame covering the "modern period", usually defined as the period from the end of World War II to the present. Version 2 (FFT2) covers battles from 1946 through 2010. A Fistful of TOWs 3 (FFT3) was published in both paper and e-book format on March 5, 2011. It covers combined arms combat from 1915 to 2010.
Proposed cover for A Fistful of TOWS 3
Design theory
Ty Beard designed FFT after becoming frustrated with existing modern wargames like Combined Arms by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW). He felt that most were too slow and tended to focus on minutiae rather than on the important concepts. After an eight-hour game of Combined Arms that only resolved four turns and ended in a draw when the players all had to go home, Ty decided to design his own game.
In Beard’s game design paradigm, there is a finite amount of detail that can be put into a game before it becomes unplayable. This means that game designers must ration the amount of detail and abstract anything that is not critical to the game. Meaning that, in the case of FFT, the vehicle combat system is fairly detailed, while the rules for artillery fire are abstract.
In addition, he believed that speed of play was critical in any simulation of modern warfare, so he streamlined every FFT subsystem to speed up play. As a result, turns typically take only 10 minutes or so. A two-player battle between a US battalion task force and a Soviet regiment usually takes one to three hours. And since Beard designed FFT to easily accommodate multiple players on a side, it usually takes the same amount of time to fight much larger battles.
Hundreds of players have provided feedback but the three major contributors are: Dave Burnett, Paul Minson, and Bob Mackenzie.
Future
The game has proven very popular with players who share Beard’s design biases, particularly those who want reasonably detailed wargames that can be played in a reasonable time.
Following the publication of FFT3, some futuristic titles are in development. FFT:2030 is planned to cover the hypothetical wars of the mid-21st century. Railgun: 2100 is planned to cover science fiction armored combat.
FFT2 specifications
- Ground scale: 1" = 100 meters
- Time scale: one turn = four to six minutes
- Unit scale: one stand = four to six vehicles; four to six guns; one infantry platoon or squad. The rules contain conversions for playing at a 1:1 scale (i.e. one stand is one vehicle or infantry squad).
- Miniature scale: nominally 1/285 or 1/300. However, Beard plays with 15 mm miniatures