The Last War - Session #0

Welcome to my first of posts I am making about my experiences playing The Last War, a WWI hack of Forbidden Psalm. I’ve written about Forbidden Psalm in the past and it is a great game for TTRPG players who want to explore skirmish wargames using minis and terrain.

The Last War is set in an alternate history of WWI, where a pandemic kills most of the world’s population (Presumably Spanish Flu) during the war. Now, roving bands of soldiers fight over the ashes for supplies, weapons, and machinery.

It has been a few months since I’ve last posted. I had not been playing solo RPGs during this period let alone writing about them. But I had not retired from tabletop gaming entirely.

In many ways I felt disconnected from the physical world. Especially getting stuck in doom scrolling loops regarding this world’s version of Nechrubel’s Calendar. Sometimes dealing with enough uncertainty makes it so that you don’t feel like interpreting oracles. Or figuring out how to resurrect the dead dry bones of a campaign buried by time and dust. All while you’re wondering “The world is going to hell, will continue to burn, and I’ll still have to clock in and pretend its not”. All so you can pay your mortgage and maybe buy some zines you’ll hopefully get to.

I needed a change of pace.

So I touched grass. Got my hands dirty. Went on daily hexcrawls in the woods behind my house while listening to dungeon synth music like Gnoll, Radaghast, Mountain Realm. On one of my walks, I realized I wanted to play a WWI RPG. Both Farewell to Arms and Last War could be played episodically instead of continuously like most RPGs. I chose Last War.

It had a similar vibe to Farewell to Arms but less crunchy and more miniatures based. I also didn’t need potentially 20+ enemy minis prepared to run missions. Yes, I could use unpainted minis. But if I’m going to play some grimdark WWI games, I want my minis to be painted and textured with equal parts mud, blood, and grime.

When I got back to my house, I went to the garage and began to clear off my worktable and looked for the XPS foamboards I had covered in sand and construction adhesive and dented up with my knuckles and balls of tin foil. I primed them black and dry brushed brown paint on them. Within a weekend, I had made a 2 x 2 battleboard covered in mud and I had an excellent foundation for modular trench pieces.

Next came the coffee stirrers and corrugated cardboard that I used to make the retaining walls.

These were a labor of love...

For a time.

After spending several hours snipping stirrers and glueing them, I used corrugated cardboard strips instead and made them look like sheet metal retaining walls. I got the other 2/3 of these pieces finished in the time it took me to cut and glue the coffee stirrers. Granted, the coffee stirrers look better to me, but I’d rather pay $33 for a 4 star product than $100 for a 5 star product. Besides, soldiers in trenches have more pressing things to worry about than two-tone retaining walls.

After 3d printing a bunch of oil drums and sandbags, I bought a bunch of scatter terrain for city ruins, tanks, artillery guns, and sniper towers from Temu. This all but set the stage to make my modular trench raiders from Knucklebones Miniatures.

I am used to printing minis (minus the base) as one piece. Often as a result, I end up choosing minis for my characters that mostly match how I envision them. The weapons might vary but I try to at least go for how I imagine their physical build would look.

But with modular pieces, I had the luxury of procedurally generating my characters and piecing them together into a more accurate version of how they’d look.

And sometimes when they didn’t print 100% peachy clean, it ended up being a source of inspiration into how I perceived that character.

After putting together these modular trench raiders, I can definitely see the appeal of Kitbashing!

Building the Warband

I planted each seed for my warband members by rolling Flaws and Feats first. These are usually bonuses and penalties for your Warband member and they give you a good idea of what their stats should be. You are supposed to choose your stats from 2 different arrays first but my method saved me the effort of trying to force a certain type of character just to be undone by rolling Flaws and Feats after.

People tend to create ways to get around their limitations while focusing on what they’re good at. And understanding that is practically half of roleplaying a character convincingly.

I decided to roll for their nationality (d4)

1 - German
2 - French
3 - English
4 - American

My warcrew ended up being German trench scavengers.

This doesn’t affect their stats in any way. It helps me understand how they view their world. Any new warband members will get nationalities depending on their results.

Once I had my stat arrays placed for each warband member, I requisitioned gear for them.

I only had 50 Resources to start which meant only one member could have a firearm and everyone had light armor (-1 DMG).

Let Me Introduce You To My Warband

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Tollpatsch (Clumsy)

HP: 10
Movement: 4 inches

Strength: -2
Agility: -1
Presence: 2
Toughness: 2

Flaw: Drop Weapon on 3 or less

Feat: Give up action so another ally within 3 inches can use it.
Did not remember this until after the session, but it created a pretty awesome story.

Equipment

• Pistol (d6)

• Hard Leather Armor (-1 DMG)

I pictured him as a newly minted military academy graduate that got promoted quickly after his commanding officer was killed. In the academy, he was mocked for his pitiful attempts at fencing and in all of the athletic endeavors that were forced on him. Weapons also jammed around him during fire drills constantly. But when his gun didn’t jam, he was a respectable shot.

His true strength was in academics. He excelled especially in understanding military strategy and applying theory onto the battlefield. For every enemy soldier he couldn’t take down, he saw an opportunity a stronger comrade could exploit thanks to him.

He made up for his lack of strength and agility through sheer toughness and a sharp mind. He kept calm and stood resolute when fear and exhaustion claimed the lives and sanity of more seemingly imposing soldiers.

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Geist (Ghost)

Strength: 2
Agility: -2
Presence: 2
Toughness: -1

Flaw: Unlucky. Reroll Nat 20s

Feat: Select one Piece of Equipment for free to bring to a Scenario.

Class: Witch

Equipment:

• Entrenching Tool (d6)

• Hard Leather Armor (-1)

Scrolls

• Booby Trap: Caster selects a piece of terrain within 12 inches. If any model approaches within 1 inch they take 1D10 damage as a trap is triggered.

• Let There Be Light: The Fog is pushed back from the battlefield. All ranged weapons have a range of 24 inches.

I envisioned him as the Second in Command with an uncanny ability to scrounge the right tool out of thin air either because he can improvise well or because he calls in favors and barters constantly.

Decent with melee and ranged weapons. Though it would be better if he was kept at a distance because he is slower and less resilient.

Since he has lower HP and cannot ever enjoy the satisfaction of a Natural 20, he is going to be more cautious and also more resourceful.

Since he can’t get to cover very well, he will need to make his own by digging it. Not to mention, a digging tool is a great weapon if the enemy gets past his spells and gunshots.

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Knusprig (Crispy)

HP: 9
Movement: 5 inches

Strength: 1
Agility: 0
Presence: -3
Toughness: 3

Flaw: Test PRES against explosions

Feat: Ignore burn

Equipment

• Makeshift Weapon (Femur) (d4)

• Hard Leather (-1)

• Gas Mask

• Whiskey

• Bandage

For Knusprig, the burns that covered his body hurt less then mental anguish he suffered when an incendiary shell landed into his trench.

At least, the burns on his skin killed the nerve endings, making him seemingly immune to things that would make anyone scream.

But each night, he relives that fateful shelling in his dreams.

He constantly wears bandages and gasmask over his face to hide his face and to give himself respite from the shelling in the distance.

And on the days the shelling gets too close, he has bottle of whiskey handy.

---

Erwin

HP: 6
Morale: 7

Strength: 2
Agility: 2
Presence: -1
Toughness: -2

Flaw: Takes double damage on Critical Hit

Feat: Always passes Morale

Equipment

• Lance (d6)

• Hard Leather (-1)

I pictured Erwin as a young soldier with more fighting ability than sense.

Comes from a Prussian family where the men are expected to become soldiers and appreciating Wagner was a cultural requirement.

Was raised on stories from his family that go back to the Crusades.

He could not tell you which one.

Academics were never his forte.

He at least knows he is vulnerable and more brittle which is why he uses a lance to keep his enemies at bay.

But his insecurities often keep him from trying to leave fights that he cannot hope to win.

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Wolfgang

HP: 8
Movement: 6

Strength: 3
Agility: 1
Presence: -3
Toughness: 0

Flaw: Cannot unjam guns

Feat: Starts each Scenario with makeshift explosive

Equipment

• Woodaxe (d8)

• Makeshift Explosive

• Hard Leather (-1)

• Whiskey

• Bandage

I originally envisioned him as a trench raider that would throw explosives and molotovs into trenches.

He could run faster across no-man’s land and learned to not trust pistols after they jammed on him too many times.

In a trench, you do not have time to clear a jam.

When I printed a set of modular trench raider minis, I saw that one had printed with a gash on the side of his face.

I decided that this one would be Wolfgang.

My story for him is that he killed the man that gave him that gash on his face and carried the axe that gave him that scar.

He turned into the guy who has been “in the shit” the longest.

He has the capacity to do the most damage but he is also one of the more mentally scarred in the squad.

Given the opportunity, he is more likely to use the Whiskey to make a molotov cocktail to incinerate an enemy before using it to soothe his fear and rage.

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Character creation is the easy part.

The trenches will decide who these men really are.

Find out with me in my next session report!

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