# Two-Hour Wargames *Created:* 2023-12-15, *Modified:* 2026-10-19 Two Hour Wargames' whole pitch is that your troops don't actually need you to tell them what to do, and it's been getting a game out of that one idea since 2000. Ed Teixeira built a company out of a refusal to wait for your turn — the famous rejection of IGOUGO — and let the **Reaction System** do the pacing instead: figures react to seeing the enemy, to taking fire, to a man dropping next to them, and the battle plays out like a firefight rather than a chess clock. It's the rare wargame line that talks about solo play like it's a feature and not a compromise, because nearly everything they publish runs alone or cooperatively as happily as it does across a table. ## Setting There is no single world — that's rather the point. THW is less a setting than an engine shopping for homes. The same d6-versus-Reputation core turns up in the zombie apocalypse of **[[All Things Zombie]]**, the Vietnam-era **[[FNG]]**, the space-faring **[[5150]]** line, the Old West of **[[Six Gun Sound]]**, and the World War II of **[[NUTS!]]**. And off to one side, the toad-riding, tusk-wielding fantasy crossover **[[Flintloques & Muskets Redux]]** grafts the older 95th engine onto Alternative Armies' Flintloque world — THW's Napoleonic bones doing business inside someone else's setting. Then there's the racing line: **[[Machinas]]**, the post-apocalyptic death-racer that swaps the reaction table for its own card-built racing engine, and its stock-car stablemate **[[Win or Go Home!]]**, which runs the same boardless pack-of-cars idea on the oval — proof the family's never met a genre it couldn't repaint. Even the Mythos gets a seat, in **[[Lovecraft's Revenge]]**, where a Reaction test doing double duty as a nerve check is the whole point. If there's a genre THW hasn't pointed the reaction engine at yet, it's mostly because it's been too busy selling you the last one. ## The reaction system Everything hangs off the **Reaction System**. There's no initiative in the traditional sense; figures simply react. See the enemy and you roll their nerve; take fire and you roll it again; watch a friend drop and the whole squad checks itself. **Reputation** is the yardstick and the d6 pool does the talking, with results like Carry On, Duck Back, and Out of the Fight deciding who's actually still standing. It's light, it's fast, and it's why a THW game can be set up, fought, and packed away inside a couple of hours. ## The gateway The free **[[Chain Reaction]]** — current edition **Chain Reaction 2026** — is both the introduction and a standalone game, and it's the whole philosophy in one slim book. Everything else in the catalogue is, in one sense or another, Chain Reaction wearing a new coat and a new era. ## Links **URL:** https://twohourwargames.com/