A Weird War* - A Xenos Rampant project, part 2.

 

This is another introduction post to the Weird War Project, this time we run down Cardboard Fortress's plans for his force and what he's looking at collecting.

As per the rules, his list comes out to 40 points**, and includes one armoured vehicle, ready for our mini-November vehicular challenge.

Now he already has a sizeable Bolt Action German force as far as I'm aware, so when we were discussing things, he wanted something to either field alongside, or as an antagonist for smaller games.

Enter the Finnish Survivors, we haven't decided just how things have changed in our world yet, but the remaining Finnish forces, along with some Germans, are hard-bitten survivors of everything which has been thrown at them, and they keep on defending against everything...

The list:

A squad of Elite Infantry:

The cream of the German elements of the force, definitely the Heavy Armoured troopers. The Heavy Weapons upgrade represents their firepower.

A Greater Xenomorph:

Now this is awesome, but definitely a blindside move. As far as I am aware, this is the only Xenomorph unit in all three forces!

When we were discussing ideas, a Finnish Bear God, Otso was mentioned, and then I was linked the above image from Etsy***.

Is this the spirit of the land rising up to defend itself alongside the troopers? Is it just a bear which has been experimented on and escaped?

Who knows, but it's awesome.

Obviously it has the Fearsome rule because who wouldn't have second thoughts trying to fight a normal bear, nevermind one wielding swords?

High Powered blades allows it to attack tanks and regeneration is self explanatory, both suitable things for a 'god'.

This though proves one of the things I love about the Rampant games, you can take a miniature and add it to your force by tweaking rules around it, you're not limited to the prescribed themes of the bigger games.

Onto the regular troops:

A ten man unit of Finnish veterans, normal rifles, but the Armour Piercing rule represents their increased accuracy.

A ten man unit of German Grenadiers:

These soldiers have the stabilised weapons rule to represent their StG44 Assault Rifles.

Finally a recon team with Sniper Rifles:

Because you HAVE to have a Sniper unit in a Finnish force, it is the law. Given the legends about the snipers of the era against the Soviet army, this is a stereotype which I fully support.

The bottom two models are the K'47 snipers from the German range, which I felt could be suitable additions to the Finnish boys above.

Finally, the armoured vehicle:

The second focal point of the force, the Bear is definitely the main focus, the Walker is a chunky model which fits well with the ideas behind the force in general.

Whereas I wanted a tank in my OSE, here we went full "Weird" and added one of the cool walker models from Warlord Games.

Obviously it uses the Walker upgrade, as well as Armour Piercing (Fortress has chosen a lot of AP for the force...hmmm...).

Having seen his German tanks, I am really looking forward to seeing this painted up.

So a preview of what's to come from Cardboard Fortress, just Chris's German's to preview now, and we collect bits for the kick off in October.

I am really looking forward to this project, as it's a setting which I've always wanted to explore but never had the inclination until the Xenos Rampant rules came out.

Sure there have been other games, but I've either never been able to generate interest, or had a look at the rulebook and said "nope".

Not to sing the praises of XR again, but the agnostic, simple, old school approach to the rules is their best selling point in my opinion.

The fact that I can use one book to represent forces from WW2 all the way up to 40k and anything I can think of is a major selling point to me****.

Well until next time, have nice day...

*A personal favourite pulp style setting.

**Some may be wondering, why we are building to 40 points, when the game usually runs at around 24 points.

I chose the higher points total so that we could include a varied amount of gear AND a vehicle, without us just having a squad, a character and a vehicle for the force. This is mainly a painting/modelling project, and the ability to play the force is a bonus.

But as these forces will spend a fair amount of their life sitting on the display shelf, they HAD to look good at the end of it to justify the expense/effort.

***Not only is the though of a Bear God awesome, but that is a great model. I'm not going to begrudge someone buying cool toys to use on the tabletop!

****In fact, I'm going to use XR for my various Iron Kingdoms project's, a fact I've mentioned before, but messing around on Battlescribe has shown how easy it is to sort Warmachine forces for the game!