A Fistful of TOWs
A Fistful of TOWs (FFT) is a series of modern warfare miniatures wargames designed by Percy Tyrone Beard, with contributions by Dave Burnett, Paul Minson, and Bob Mackenzie. Version 2 (FFT2) covers battles from 1946 through 2010, while version 3 (FFT3) covers combined arms combat from 1915 to 2010.
The latest edition is A Fistful of TOWs 3, published in print and e-book format in 2011.
History
Beard designed FFT to be faster and less focused on minutiae than existing modern wargames like Combined Arms by Game Designers' Workshop. Beard decided to design his own game after an eight-hour game of Combined Arms that resolved only four turns before a draw was declared so that the players could go home.
Beard’s design process focused on the idea that there is a finite amount of detail before a game becomes unplayable. He designed FFT by rationing the amount of detail and abstracting anything not critical to the game. The result was that the vehicle combat system of FFT is fairly detailed, while the rules for artillery fire are abstract. He also focused design effort streamlining the game's subsystems to improve speed of play.
Future planned additions to the series are FFT:2030, covering the hypothetical wars of the mid-21st century, and Railgun: 2100, covering science fiction armored combat.
Design
FFT is nominally a 1/285 or 1/300 scale game with a ground scale of 1":100 meters. Units are represented by stands of four to six vehicles or guns, or one platoon or squad of infantry, with an option to play with one stand representing one vehicle. Each turn represent four to six minutes of combat.
Turns in FFT take about 10 minutes to play, and the design accommodates multiple players on a side to allow for larger battles to be played in the same amount of time as a two-player battle. A two-player battle between a US battalion task force and a Soviet regiment takes about one to three hours.