# After the Horsemen *Created:* 2025-11-29, *Modified:* 2026-10-05 ![[After the Horsemen (cover).jpg|600]] The apocalypse, but nobody shows up for it — no zombies, no aliens, just the Four Horsemen passing through and leaving the cleanup to us. **After the Horsemen** is Two Hour Wargames' post-apocalyptic game where the only monsters are the people who survived, and you're one of them: scraping by in a wasteland of armed gangs and the deeply depressed, gunning for the one quiet win the setting allows — retire before you die. It's a deliberately human end of everything, and it's more honest than most. ## Setting The Four Horsemen have come and gone, the dead don't rise, and what's left of humanity picks through the wreckage and settles old scores. You play a **Star** — the protagonist with the plot armor — trying to survive in a world of **Grunts**. You wander the wasteland (the 2nd edition centers it on the Lake Havasu City area), dealing with the local fauna: armed gangs and the deeply depressed. You can be a **Sheep** (a follower), a **Pack Wolf** (a gang member), or a **Lone Wolf** (the brooding anti-hero type you secretly fancy yourself to be). The goal? Retire before you die — a quaint aspiration, given the alternative is usually ending up as a smear on the pavement. ## Mechanics The system runs on the standard Two Hour Wargames **Chain Reaction** engine, designed to take the control out of your hands, because in a firefight you rarely have it anyway. ### Reputation & The Reaction Test **Reputation (Rep)** is the singular stat that defines a figure — experience, morale, and skill folded into one number, usually 3 (incompetent) to 6 (legendary). Core resolution is **taken versus Rep**: roll **2d6**, compare each die individually to your Rep. Pass 2 dice and you succeed wildly; pass 0 and you fail miserably; pass 1 and you get the "meh" middle — success with complications, or a stall. ### In Sight and Agency The game doesn't run on I-go-you-go. When a figure comes **In Sight** of an enemy, a reaction test triggers immediately, and the side that rolls better reacts first. Your brilliant plan to charge across the street can die three inches in, shot in the face. As a **Star** you have a pool of **Star Power** dice equal to your Rep to burn reducing damage — because the universe favors the protagonist — while Grunts just fall over and die when shot. ### Will to Fight When things go south, characters test their **Will to Fight**. Sheep tend to run away immediately; Wolves stick around until it's statistically unwise. ## Editions - **After the Horsemen** (1st edition, 2012). *In the library.* - **After the Horsemen, 2nd Edition** (2016) — the current edition: consolidated reaction tables, a light-bookkeeping campaign system built around the Lake Havasu setting, and tighter integration of the Sheep/Pack Wolf/Lone Wolf behavior into the AI. *In the library.* ## Related - **Win or Die** ("Racing the Wasteland") — a post-apocalyptic high-stakes car-racing standalone, set in the same end-of-days world as the Horsemen's. *In the library.* ## References - [After the Horsemen (2nd Edition) — Rebel Minis](https://rebelminispress.com/products/after-the-horsemen-the-game-of-the-apocalypse-2nd-edition-pdf)