Review: When Nightmares Come

If you’re into miniature wargaming and looking beyond Warhammer then Osprey are increasingly the place to go. Whether your tastes run to fantasy, sci-fi or historical 28mm scale or smaller, they’ve probably got you covered in some way. The latest game to rank up alongside the likes of Frostgrave and The Silver Bayonet is When Nightmares Come, a solo/co-op game where teams of rag-tag vigilantes prowl moonlit streets in search of scuttling terrors. Modern horror is a fairly under served area of the wargames market, so on that score Patrick Todoroff’s When Nightmares Come is to be welcomed.

It’s not just its setting’s relative novelty that stands to its credit though. We all agree that wargames and RPGs stand on a spectrum rather than existing as entirely discrete pastimes but whilst there’s been a glut of great narrative wargames of late, When Nightmares Come takes things a step further, dividing the game into two sections, Narrative Scenes and Tactical Engagements.

Before we get to that though you must build your Scooby Gang and here you have three classes to pick from, Wardens - standard bruisers, Weavers - those with some occult ability themselves, and Wrights - a mix of paranormal researcher and wayward inventor. Each hunter has three key stats, Body, Mind and Spirit between which you must assign a d10, d8 and d6 and from this you derive almost everything else, from your movement range, and the amount you can carry and Resolve, essentially hit points. Beyond that each class gets to pick from a specific set of skills, load ups on chainsaws, sawn-off shotguns, baseball bats etc and hit the streets in search of trouble.

The opening part of the game, the Narrative Scene, adds an element of light roleplaying to the game. It basically involves rolling on a set of tables to establish the Who, What, Where and When of that particular scenario, which you use to decide on a set of complications. Depending on if you resolve them or not effects the deployment in the Tactical Engagement. Its an interesting idea that I’m happy to see included but sadly feels just a little underbaked. Still, I’d like to see other games pick up and run with it, especially if they can incorporate some of the excellent ideas from the many good solo RPGs published of late.

Anyway, that is but the prelude for the wargame proper. The rules are simple enough though some odd choices in both layout and terminology might require a couple of reads to fully get. Games take place on a compact 2’ by 2’ board and last 6 quick rounds, so if you’re playing through a campaign you can reasonably expect to have everything done and dusted over a weekend with time to spare. Each round players start with a dice pool consisting of a d6, d8 & d10 that they can use to perform actions, whether that’s attacking something or interacting with the environment, requiring a four or more to succeed. There’s no class restriction of what dice you have to use for each of your actions, but a hunter does get to roll two of the chosen dice when it is related to their speciality.

During games the Hunters must search for clues to reveal a nexus and close it down, all whilst fighting off an ever respawning horde of malicious entities. As for those entities, there’s no bestiary rather creatures are just defined by their power level, with four tiers to deal with. Ranging from Vermin with 1 wound, 1 action and a D6 to perform it with, up to the end of level bosses, Abominations who have access to a full dice pool like the players, various horrific abilities and their own eldritch arsenal.

A full campaign consists of 6 encounters leading up to a fight with an Abomination, and honestly it’s... Fine. You get to upgrade your crew with better equipment and learn new skills but it suffers in comparison to a game with a similar theme but a more involved narrative structure like Majestic 13. All in all, When Nightmares Come has lots of good ideas I’d love to see developed, and it pushes narrative wargaming towards some interesting directions but right now much like my hunters it somehow just seems to miss the target.

Writer: Patrick Todoroff
Art: Boris Groh
Published by Osprey Wargames

This feature originally appeared in Wyrd Science Vol.1, Issue 6 (August '24)