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Military skirmish game using minis from all sorts of games


Stonewolf

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..including beasts and undead from Conan!

 

Moved post here as much more suitable

 

Kathulus and I were discussing using other minis in Conan and vice versa

 

Which got me onto a long posting:

 

Me too, I run a steampunk rpg game for the wife and have always had an underlying thread of mythos behind the scenes, never needed any major minis as they mostly work through human thralls and avoid any chance of the general public glimpsing anything unexplainable. Trouble is when I finally save enough to grab a copy with the expansions I'll fail to exercise restraint and her plucky band will face Nyarlethotep most days    ;0)

 

I'm really looking forward to using them for skirmish games tho, some of the most fun I've had in recent years is running supernatural skirmishes. I began with a system that's a patchwork of firefight/skirmish house rules having wargamed for years. I was making it up as I went along but none of them ever realised. It is huge fun but now they know I'm planning to buy Lobotomy and Deep madness they're getting very very scared. There's so much potential in minis and gameboards/aids from the recent glut of horror/SF/fantasy games that contain these great minis, I haven't seen them in the flesh yet but really hope the Dr Who minis are in a useable scale, at least the clockwork robots and the screaming statues..  

I've already ruled out Skynet sending back future altering agents given I hate the minis on offer

 

The old XCom games led to the central idea, the campain structure and the pattern of adventures. I run tabletop games using boards from Dust Tactics and Zombicide etc, or my tiny range of 28mm tabletop buildings (add a sandpaper carpark and it's surprising how you can fill up the table!). We often start out in the wilderness due to a friend's really good home made Vietnam terrain, switching to game boards when they get into a factory or underground base.

 

I began with a system that's a patchwork of firefight/skirmish house rules having wargamed for years. I was making it up as I went along but none of them ever realised. It is huge fun but now they know I'm planning to buy Lobotomy and Deep madness they're getting very very scared.

 

My players each have a persistant large regular force, or a much more highly skilled small special forces team that get tasked to face wildly differing supernatural incursions. Campaign development for individual characters is tailored for each team. They love their guys and the storm of panic fire when they see their first tentacled horror will be "Fire and fury" like Trump has never imagined heh.

 

Using everything from my son's plastic dinosaurs - I had no idea he had a full drawer of them, to tyranids (bizarrely evolved future species breaking through time rifts to reach the past - straight steal from the Primeval UK TV programme). From psychic teenage gangs to invisible hauntings (no models used all that session just whisps of grey cotton wool on 25mm bases, fire and movement versus sporadic possession and (un)friendly fire). John Carpenter's The Thing - not quite as carniverous and stashed the character it substituted for when it joined the team heh. When one of my friends begged to join the price was to make me 20 Triffids, they're gorgeous and led to the memorable lighthouse scenario where the players were convinced the threat would come from the sea....  psych!

One of the best games ran to 3 sessions each playthrough, it started with three packets of slightly out of scale plastic baboons I picked up on a visit to the zoo .Undercoat, inkwash, eyes and mouth with a fine sharpie - get them on the table!

With "Ceasar" being largely indistinguishable from the rest I had a secret genetics research project where the baboons appeared to have developed near human level intelligence and had taken over. They led the incursion teams through the motor pool buildings where they'd released the giant rattlesnake project, then fooled most of them into venturing down into the small underground power and water plant, where the various giant spider species held rein. The baboons kept up a steady guerilla (pun intended) action through the labs and out into the forest and it turned out that Ceaser was no smarter than the others, but he did have a small genius white labrat in his jacket pocket that given a couple of weeks could break down and psychicly take over the weak minded.   

Yes... he was trying to take over the world...

How else could you meld Planet of the apes, Arachnaphobia, Anaconda and finish off with Pinky and the Brain???????   Usually the rat got away

 

I've painted some of the suitable zombicide mob as if they were just humans just behaving oddly to introduce HRT and civilian casualty rules (They  still work  just as well as fresh zombies for zombicide games (which my 8yr old loves and it's gotten him past the zombie night terrors that came of me watching pirates of the carribean with him - bad idea).

I've painted up any figure that looked like it was wearing a labcoat (even some victorian era well dressed minis look great with the coat painted white, the top hat removed and the waistcoat painted garishly).

 

I'd always worried about subsequent players knowing what was coming once someone else had played but this is now really competetive and you couldn't beat the secrets out of them heh

We play it infrequently whenever I get a good idea. Nowadays with 9 players having developed teams (some of the originals have restarted and have 2 teams  (only allowed one active team), it's more like a fantasy football league. When I come up with a new premise I'll be running it over and over and to help with that we now have multi-teamed co-op adventures that are insane but twice as much fun.

 

The North Carolina National Guard were way, way out ahead (to the point where I felt the team mechanics were broken), until that deeply regrettable retreat under cover of grenades - who knew swamp gas was such a hazard. Most of the smaller teams set off small pockets with gunfire and quickly adapted but the guard are still recruiting to refill the rifle teams with panicky teenagers and nervous dentists.

So far I've resisted a hellboy team as they'd all want it heh

 

My 2 favourites teams have to be the

1. The Death Row volunteers (orange jumpsuits and much use of pain collars for motivational purposes and not so good at the  investigational side of things)

2.the Misfits (tiny team combining special forces training and some usable psychic potential - mostly sensitives but with a developing pyrokinetic  and a lady that  among other things,once each game can roll the game back 2d2 rounds (double cointoss) and a random consequence (headache, dice mods for the replayed duration etc) but with a fail and random unpleasant consequence if she rolls 4 (unconsciousness 2d3 rounds if treated else rest of game, coma - roll for recovery each game, demonic possession..) 

 

Have a team going inactive due to an overworked player with an unexpected patter of tiny feet, so I'm working out recruitment mechanics for a new team the Radicalised Asylumists, mostly batman minis, asylum as in hospital not humanitarian refuge - we were drunk and the name stuck. Control options/points depend on the nurse/orderly/patient ratio, some of the orderlies are pretty handy too. The more worrying the patient, the more powerful but then if an effective level of sedation isn't chosen (limits ability) or perish the thought he's been hiding his meds all week instead of taking them... 

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