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Kanluwen and I have, as of last night, begun planning and brainstorming ideas for a new Skirmish game set in the near future. WWIII has broken out, and the nations of the world have begun mobilizing their forces. Flashpoints flare up around the globe as additional nations join their allies in the fray. Battles will usually be measured by fireteam, squad, and platoon sizes, but rules and scenarios for larger scale battles will try to be worked out.

The game will be played on a 1/35 scale, using traditional minis from companies like Tamiya, AFV: Twn, and Trumpeter. At it's current stage, we're going through a large selection of minis, and figuring out what will fit into the game, and what should be left out, either indefinately or until a later time.

Some of the minis we've been looking at include:

http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=TM35133
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=TM89779
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=TR00424
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=TR00422
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=TR00421
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=CO0034
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=TR00419
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=RG3042
http://www.squadron.com/images/large/MHR2197-1.jpg
http://www.squadron.com/images/large/MH2217-1.jpg
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=LF1200
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=LF1038
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=ICM35501
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=HY82421
http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=AC35130

Larger vehicles like Helicopters and MBTs won't usually be employed in a battle unless the scenario mentions using one, but again there are plans for an expanded ruleset featuring them.

Anyway, what we need right now are just people that want to help out. We need folks for everything - Storywriters, people to help work on the rules, playtesters, artists (It's going to be a free-to-download .PDF, but that doesn't mean we should skip cool drawings and maps), and really just anyone else that thinks their skills, whatever they would be, could be useful in making this a reality.

If anyone wants more info, send me a PM, and I'll tell you what Kanluwen and I have tossed together so far (Which isn't much, like I said, we're working on gathering a list of minis/ranges to employ).

I still vote we have dinosaur riding Russians.

Settling for a project or product name might help garner more attention.

That involves us having to sober up and come up with a name.

Working title is "Holy Crap, the World's Gone in the Crapper!"

Why not call it..."Any Given Morning" the?

Like I said, we're taking people for everything. Even naming the game, scenarios, and such.

If anyone has a suggestion for a name, we'd love to hear it.

I have a idea for a name.

Ragnarok?

World Long Gone?

World in flames? (Might be hard cause of Mercenaries.)

If you're after inspiration for platoon level action I can recommend Stargrunt. It has some really nice mechanisms that I haven't ever seen in any other game.

As far as names go, what about "99 Red Balloons"

Flinty, you're hired!

Pay is booze and midget strippers.

Can I go for midget booze and full size strippers?

Kanluwen wrote:I still vote we have dinosaur riding Russians.

If included, you guys would be gods amongst mortals.

Edit:

Ok, I be interested in helping write the story, It's what I love to do.

I just need to know several things:

How "realistic" is it going to be? Are we looking at medical advances so that we have 125 year olds looking like 30 year olds? Genetically enhanced Super soldiers? Normal people with guns?

How many armies/countries are going to be represented?

How big is 1/35? Smaller than Warhammer? Epic Sized?

Edit 2: Oh, and what year is it in?

It's going to be quite realistic, albeit not so much as to ruin the fun. Obviously, realism has to ride shotgun while enjoyment drives, but we're looking to merge the two as seamlessly as possible.

The culture/army you choose will define which vehicles, offmap/support abilities, weapons, and so on, that you will have access to. You can make your force out to be any nation of your choice, just as long as you select one of these army choices as your basis.

They are (At this point) as follows:

US
NATO (Canada, most of Western Europe)
Russia/Eastern Bloc
Arab Nations
Extremists
African Nations
African Rebels
Communist Asia
Capitalist Asia
Oceanic Nations
Mercenaries/Private Military Firms

Note that it's unlikely -all- of these factions will be in the initial release. More likely, we'll be releasing rules for them as the storyline progresses, so as not to swamp people with too many choices. It'll also nicely represent that faction's move in joining the conflict.

1/35 is (IIRC) About twice the size of a 40K mini. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's about 28mm to 1 scale metre. As your average human is about 2m tall, they should be roughly 2 times the size of GW's product.

As for the year, we're thinking very near future. 5-15 years or so. There will be some new technology, but most of the stuff you'll see is the same equipment that's in use right now.

Right now, we're looking at it being set within 10-15 years.

Countries/armies are looking to be an EU force, North America, a resurgent "Soviet bloc"(just think of Russia reclaiming its old stomping grounds), China, an Oceanic force, a Latin-American "alliance", some kind of centralized Arabic government which also encompasses North Africa and Turkey.

Looking at two distinctive "forces" for each, wherein each will have a kind of "regular" armed forces and then their own kind of signature force, akin to say the North American forces having heavy hitting insertion forces consisting of Special Forces and Armored units, the EU having mixed forces of the SAS, KSK, French Foreign Legion, etc operating as their "vanguards"--just to give you an idea.

1/35 is bigger than Warhammer, in terms of vehicles.

I am a Modern Millitary Tech-Junky so let me know if you need anthing.

I laughed at the picture of the minis in the first link you provided, talk about haveing chicken legs.

As far as writting fluff goes, I have a hard time writting about current/realistic senarios. Basically the fantastic is more intresting to me than the ordinary.

That being said, if the dino rideing Russians show up (In soviet Russia dino rides you!) I will so be there.

Yea those Tamiya ones weren't the best example. They don't actually look that bad (I had some years ago when I did military dioramas) but their legs are a bit small.

And we're going to get the core game down first, and then I promised Kanluwen we'd do a goofy spinoff with dinosaurs, zombies, and space aliens

But -only- after we get the main game down and done with.

I've already started thinking of the wackiest, farthest out scenarios possible for the Space Alien expansion.

Including "Probe THIS!"--an escape from alien perverts.

That just gave me the best idea for a Scenario for the core game...

An extraction mission called "Get to the Chopper!"

metallifan wrote:They are (At this point) as follows:

US
NATO (Canada, most of Western Europe)
Russia/Eastern Bloc
Arab Nations
Extremists
African Nations
African Rebels
Communist Asia
Capitalist Asia
Oceanic Nations
Mercenaries/Private Military Firms

Ok, I'm going to list two basic ideas and I want you to tell me which one you like:

1) The Extremist group bombs the US, and in return the US goes and invades the area they came from (Not sure if you want these to be the current muslim extremists or not). After several years of fighting with the US, the Extremists bomb Russia, which in turn causes THEM to invade the same area. However, the Russians do not make any distinction between extremist and bystander, and their cruel methods cause the US to get into several skirmishes. Neither side is willing to leave, and WWIII breaks out in the extremist front.

2) A communist country (Russia, China, whichever) starts a political campaign to convert several African countries to communism. The US, like always, decides that they don't want Communism to spread more than it has, so they fund and organize the Rebellion (FYI, I am terrible at naming things, so yeah...). Russia, wanting to support it's new allies, send military aid, which the US counters with Black Ops. It's very hush hush, with the US denying all accusations and censoring the media.

Hi dudes,
as soon as I started reading this I thought of this game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_Evolution which I took an interest in a few years ago but have never played. it's a bit bigger scale than yours, having MBT's aplenty, which is why I'm also wracking my brain trying to remember a skirmish wargame I was told about once which could be applied to any system and incorporated rules for trying to rescue wounded comrades, and morale being very important. wikipedia and google just had too much info for me to be able to single it out. I think it had the word red in the title, but that's all I can remember.

Anyway, sounds like a fun idea, I don't have that much time I can devote to it but I'd be happy to proof-read and edit other people's stories from time to time.

Tar,
Cap'n R.

Are you counting Japan as part of communist asia?

So this is simply squad based with no vehicles?

Captain Roderick wrote:Hi dudes,
as soon as I started reading this I thought of this game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_Evolution which I took an interest in a few years ago but have never played. it's a bit bigger scale than yours, having MBT's aplenty, which is why I'm also wracking my brain trying to remember a skirmish wargame I was told about once which could be applied to any system and incorporated rules for trying to rescue wounded comrades, and morale being very important. wikipedia and google just had too much info for me to be able to single it out. I think it had the word red in the title, but that's all I can remember.

Anyway, sounds like a fun idea, I don't have that much time I can devote to it but I'd be happy to proof-read and edit other people's stories from time to time.

Tar,
Cap'n R.

I have played it. It is a very fun game with some unique ways of ding things.

I would love to help out on story building.

VikingScott wrote:Are you counting Japan as part of communist asia?

So this is simply squad based with no vehicles?

Japan will be "Capitalist Asia", though players could always build a rebel "Japanese People's Militia" using a Communist Asia faction base, to simulate a Communist uprising funded (mainly) by China. Also, note that these groupings only act as guidelines as to what equipment nations in that group will use. These aren't the nations themselves. What nation a player chooses is entirely up to him/her. The "Factions" only designate what they'll have access to.

I didn't notice capitalist asia.

So is this at squad level with vehicle and such only in some missions/rare?

Serious too?

We're as serious as two mildly inebriated gamers can be...

And it's looking to be more of a squad/fireteam level game with light+medium vehicles being prevalent("light" being hummers, GMVs, medium being Strykers, LAVs, etc)--and things of the weight class of Abrams/T-90s being far far rarer.

Oh, and to anyone volunteering for Story work, I'll PM you tonight with more on that.

Hmm.... African armies... seems like a kinda silly idea unless we're going into the heart of darkest Africa (when was the last time you've seen an African army outside of Africa, yes?) and then of course, there's not much reason to be there besides protecting diamond deposits and stuff. Ya know, keep to your own turf and destroy it all you like, maybe force some Nigerian princes to come to America with the help of American bank accounts.

And of course, any sort of Brazilian or Indian occupation allows for 1-2 story high hive city effect (Sao Paulo or pretty much anywhere in India). Boom.

Anyway, elsewise beyond that, what sort of war is this that hasn't involved everyone getting out their nuklear fists to do the talking?Considering even North Korea and Iran are pretty close to being nucular powers, just seems as though what Einstien sez: WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones. IDK what WWIII will be. Therefore: Germany discovers some old Nazi laboratories devoted to bringing soldiers back from the dead. Switzerland remains eerily neutral. Japan unveils massive humanoid weapons platforms and the US has some self automated drone soldiers, prototypes built by private corporations, for use in privately owned wars (USA is down- gov't crumbling, the country becomes completely capitalist, splitting into corporate empires with only a facade of unity).

Now how's that for some backstory?

Lord Kaesar II wrote:Hmm.... African armies... seems like a kinda silly idea unless we're going into the heart of darkest Africa (when was the last time you've seen an African army outside of Africa, yes?) and then of course, there's not much reason to be there besides protecting diamond deposits and stuff. Ya know, keep to your own turf and destroy it all you like, maybe force some Nigerian princes to come to America with the help of American bank accounts.

Well considering Africa will be facing Russian invasion, as well as Pro-Russian and/or Anti-American rebel uprisings, African militaries will still have a place in the game. They won't be playing much of an offensive role (At least, for the near future), but they'll still play a pretty pivotal role in the game and the story.

Anyway, elsewise beyond that, what sort of war is this that hasn't involved everyone getting out their nuklear fists to do the talking?Considering even North Korea and Iran are pretty close to being nucular powers, just seems as though what Einstien sez: WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones. IDK what WWIII will be. Therefore: Germany discovers some old Nazi laboratories devoted to bringing soldiers back from the dead. Switzerland remains eerily neutral. Japan unveils massive humanoid weapons platforms and the US has some self automated drone soldiers, prototypes built by private corporations, for use in privately owned wars (USA is down- gov't crumbling, the country becomes completely capitalist, splitting into corporate empires with only a facade of unity).

Now how's that for some backstory?

Except even if the world went to war, most civilized nations would not use nuclear weapons despite the ease. More extreme, senseless nations like NK and the like might try, but considering how fast technology is advancing, I'm pretty sure that in 10 years or so, it's likely that ICBMs will be outpaced by the defenses set up against them. Nuclear warfare is becoming less and less likely as the world constantly comes up with new countermeasures against it.

As for your story idea, feel free to use our platform for it if you'd like. It's just going to be a free PDF file, so anyone that wants to use it as a basis for their own free-to-use design will be clear to do so as long as credit is acknowledged.