Last week I picked up a copy of When Nightmares Come by Patrick Todoroff.  It is a game of modern supernatural investigation.   Think Ghostbusters, Stranger Things, Scooby Doo.  The concept seems fun, and the rules seem pretty simple.   

There are three character types, a warrior, a wizard, and a tinker/mechanic.  It uses a dice pool mechanic consisting on d6, d8 and d10.  Everything works off a success of 4+, and you can use the dice as you see fit to make sure your actions succeed. 

There were a few errors here and there,  my favorite being 288mm scale.  I am of course now tempted to print a figure at that scale.  Maybe I can use some busts.  Anyways, this is a common complaint about the Blue Book series, the minor typos here and there.  They don’t bother me too much.  

I think the rules look fun, I think the game will play well.  I am excited to print and paint some new models as always.  I am also excited to add some more modern terrain to my collection.  

I think this is a great little game to play with non-wargamers.  There is a narrative (RPG-esque) phase, and then the wargame phase.  I am not sold on how the narrative portion works.  I think it’s a fine idea, I’m waiting on this to sell some proper copies, so it can get a hardback edition, so some of the rules can get fleshed out.  

So of course, being a Christian wargamer, I have to point out that I hate the Rule of 666.  Not sure why that needs to be a thing.  I get it, the author is trying to be cutesies, but come on, evil is real, and should not be celebrated.

The game consists of 6 missions with ever increasing difficulty of monsters.  I believe I read somewhere you need roughly 30 miniatures to play.  I can’t remember where I found that reference, maybe on the Osprey website.

The artwork is decent, but I would have enjoyed pictures of some miniatures. I am also a little disappointed in the lack of details for scenarios.   It is pick some miniatures, build some bad guys (with various traits), pick some terrain and play.  As a “beginner” wargame, I think it would have benefited from a full 6 game scenario, like the various McCullough games.  You don’t have to lay out how to set up all the terrain, but giving me some concrete examples of terrain would have helped.  

But I guess that gives us, as content creators, something to do. Hopefully, I can get it on the table in the next few weeks.