Pouring One Out: AT-43

 I was going to write a long, possibly rambling. diatribe about how a certain "new" game that everyone is busy jizzing their pants over is little more than a soulless, nostalgia bait cash grab by being little more than a warts and all rehash of a game that got shit canned over a decade ago. But then I decided, no, I want to write about something I actually care about. And thus, I shall, and I won't even give a certain game company the satisfaction of feeding into the Google algorithm by mentioning them or their blatant dick move to their customers by name.

So welcome to the first in what may become a regular staple here: Pouring One Out. In these posts I'm gonna wax nostalgic for a moment and talk about dead games that mean something to me, and maybe deserve a little more respect than they got or currently get.

But already we've come to a problem. What is a dead game? If you ask some braindead troglodytes, they'll tell you any game that isn't immediately as popular and widespread as the biggest game in the industry is dead. Those people, however, are stupider than a rock, so their definition can fuck right off. In this context, a dead game is any game that is simply no longer in production. I'm going to try and avoid things like discussing out of print editions of games for the most part, because even if the game has changed drastically it's still available on the market under the same name. 

And where better to start than the game that got me back into gaming, and got me my first published work, the gem that is AT-43.

Roll up, bitches.

AT-43 was the brainchild of Jean Bey, and produced by legendary French game company Rackham Entertainment. Rackham was already pretty well established, at least in Europe, with their fantasy game Confrontation. Thus in 2007 they decided to throw their hat into the ring of sci-fi games, and AT-43 was born.

The origins of the game are a bit muddy, and my memory isn't what it used to be, so forgive me if some of my details are a bit off. I believe the game originally started as a weird war 2 game, with the title being Alternate Timeline '43. At some point it was changed to AT-43, and moved to sci-fi (with the AT referring to the in universe timeline of After Trauma), hence why two of the factions, the UNA and Red Blok, scream weird war 2 minis. The game also featured art from several noted artists, but top among them was the one and only Palo Parente, who would then go on to make a game in his weird war 2 setting DUST which only adds to the mystery.

So instead of fighting Nazi zombies, thank god, we got to fight freaky ass aliens like the Therians and my beloved army the Cogs.

Still some of the best aliens in any game.

The game was pretty slick, even if not totally without sin these days. But as I said, it got me back into gaming. It used a fun card based activation system where you basically had to plan out your activations in advance, and the combat resolution mechanic was pretty fun if perhaps a tad clunky as times. it used what it dubbed the Universal Table of Resolutions. How it worked, basically, was that you took one stat, subtracted another stat or modifier (such as range) and checked the table for the result and it would tell you what you needed to roll. Sometimes you could auto-pass, sometimes you could auto-fail (a pistol ain't doing jack shit to a tank). Looking back at it it probably could have been handled a little better, but it never felt as bad as some other games.

One thing that it did that doesn't sit so close my heart anymore was the range ruler. The game used a specialized tape measure, with centimeters on one side, and dedicated range bands on the other. In theory this could work pretty well, but the ranges weren't an exact science, which meant if you tried to play without the proprietary tape measure you were sort of boned. I'm sure someone, at some point, figured out the exact ranges, but it still just feels wrong to me now.

In my experience, those guys are fucked.

AT-43's biggest gimmick, however, wasn't related to the game play at all. No, it was the miniatures. See, AT-43 used pre-painted miniatures. This caused no shortages of uproars and bitchfests from neckbeards who decried it as "not respecting the hobby" and just being "cheap toys instead of real miniatures." I could get it when Confrontation went pre-painted, as the original models were beautiful, true works of art, and the plastics that came out for the Ragnarok edition...weren't.

But AT-43 was pre-painted from the word go, so the whining seemed far less genuine and more of a "I'm never going to try this game, so I can't comment on the gameplay, but I must bash it somehow!" The thing is, though, that I liked it being pre-painted. I'm no great painter, and I admit to sometimes finding the hobby aspect of wargaming to be tedious, aggravating and needlessly cruel. Things were different when I jumped into AT-43, though. At that time I was living with a buddy of mine and his mom after having moved back to Maryland, and my entire life in the house we were in was confined to what I estimated to be a 10x12 bedroom. I had nowhere to set up to build and paint minis, every inch of surface space was already spoken for. Finding a game where that wasn't an issue was a godsend. Sure I still needed to store the models, but I could fit a box or two in my closet way easier than I could clear off a large swath of my dresser to set up to build and paint. And the models were durable, so just tossing them in a box I didn't really worry about them breaking. Hell, between the two armies I collected I had one, maybe two breakages the whole time.

Okay, yes, the paintjobs weren't exactly the best, but they were totally acceptable as gaming pieces. And it wasn't even hard to paint over them as many people did, or add extra details as some did, or even just hit them with a wash and make some of the sculpting pop a little more. Of course, being pre-painted they were a little more costly than some of their contemporaries, but not enough to be a deterrent.

At least, not for me.

SMG vs. anti-tank cannon. Wonder who wins?

I took a risk on AT-43. I bought the Operation Damocles starter box for somewhere around $80ish back in 2008, and fell absolutely in love with the game and it's setting. 

The setting of AT-43 was a real treat. It took some of the tired tropes of sci-fi and turned them on their heads. The humans weren't really humans as we know them, the big bads, the Therians were the actual humans from Earth who had uploaded themselves to a digital world and were making dyson spheres while seeding life on other planets to continue to make new dyson spheres in some insane attempted to stop entropy, there's an entire god damned faction of hyper intelligent gorillas in power armor. How isn't this fucking awesome?

This is at least eight years before Overwatch blatantly stole the design.

It was a nice combination of WW2, cold war, retro future sci-fi and transhumanism nightmares mixed together in a fairly cohesive way. And it wasn't presented as grimdark, there was still hope in the universe and not everything was so bloody miserable.

As I said, I had two fairly decent sized armies. I had a UNA army, my regular human dudes with their cool utilitarian walkers and laser guns a plenty. I also had my Cogs, those tall, freaky, cloned weirdos with quantum weapons and zero fucks to give. These two armies played very different, offered different feels and looks and I just adored them. Sadly, my models are in a box sitting in a house 2,000 miles away. If I could I would love to get them back, should they not be destroyed, and stat them up for use in Grimdark Future. The styles just hold so much appeal to me, and the Cogs are still some of the weirdest shit I've seen in terms of aliens.

I will not apologize for Monke.

The game had a decent run, ending in 2010 when Rackham went out of business. It sold well enough, but people were put off by the changes to Confrontation, and wouldn't even give AT-43 a fair shake as being it's own thing. Still, in that time the game expanded from the original four factions (UNA, Red Blok, Therians and Karmans) to add the Cogs and ONI Corp, and the expansion book Operation Frostbite that released in 2008 gave the original four factions new toys and added a small campaign for people to play.

But I will always remember AT-43 fondly for the good things it did. Alternating activations, no bullshit phase system that says I can't move after shooting, fairly slick resolution that only required basic math skills (good for me since I'm a dumbass), a fun setting with all sorts of wild stuff and a creative streak that I don't think we've really seen since in sci-fi wargaming. 

Was it perfect? Of course not, no game is. But was it fun? You're damn right it was. And it got me to where I am today as a gamer, so I will always have fond memories of it. 

But that brings us to a question: do I want AT-43 back? To be honest, I don't know. There was rumor some time back of someone buying the rights and making a new game with it, and when I heard that I was beyond excited. I still maintain that AT-43 was a fantastic game, regardless of people's gripes about the pre-painted nature of the models, but now, as I near 40, I wonder if I want it back. Having seen what's happened to Warzone so many times, do I want to see another game I love go through that? 

Yes, I'd love to see a new range of models using the old designs. I'd love to be able to buy more Cogs for reasonable prices (fuck you eBay scalpers), or grab the handful of units I lacked for my UNA army. But I don't know that I want AT-43 as a whole back. Maybe it being dead is part of why it means so much to me. It's part of my history, as I am part of it's. I got to see the game grow, I got to meet and work with the people behind it, AT-43 is the reason I went to my first, and only thus far, GenCon. As I said, it got me my first paid writing gig. All those find memories would somehow feel lessened if it came back, I think.

This art makes me nostalgic.

But it's impossible to give a straight answer because I simply do not know. If it came back I'd probably follow it intently like I am with Warzone Eternal. Maybe I would be elated and rush to buy in, maybe not. 

What I do know for certain, though, is that I owe a lot to AT-43 and the folks who made it happen. Even if it never exists outside those few years, those were some of the best years of my wargaming life and I am immensely grateful for everything this game did for me.

So, let's pour one out for the greatness that was AT-43.