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Greetings all,

After a dream about 4 years ago, I set about writing a game for the post-Martian invasion of Orson Welles. Plus, I wanted a new reason to use all my cool All Quiet on the Martian Front models and Copplestone Castings gangster miniatures I had painted up. Under the Martian Yoke was born!

Below are some images I have of the game....



Here some survivors try to fend off a Martian Tripod! Things do not look good for them!



Enemies are not just Tripods though. Through their advanced tech, the Martians have re-animated dead bodies to act as their proxies. These horrors roam the ruins of the East Coast flushing out prey for the Martians at feast on!



Here is an assortment of Martian baddies. However, the game has a large bestiary with various forms of cadaver troops, wild dogs, drones, tripods, and other gribblies to fight off.

If you are interested and inclined to learn more, you can read the designer notes on the Blood and Spectacles blog:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2022/07/wargame-design-under-martian-yoke.html

For those interested in how the game actually plays on the table, here is a quick battle report here:

http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2022/07/battle-report-under-martian-yoke.html

Read through both the Designer Notes and the Batrep.

I love the theme and the thought put into the survival horror aesthetics.

The Batrep was really interesting and I would suggest doing a follow-up to show the how the campaign develops, as so much of the theme seems to come from the higher-level narrative.

Can’t think what I would use for Martians now that AQotMF stuff is so scarce.

Necron Doomstalkers.

I love the idea for Under the Martian Yoke! Skirmish gaming is a world of possibilities.

Thanks guys! I plan on continuing the campaign, but my time has been focused on "real-life" and Castles in the Sky at the moment.

I did scratch build some more "Martian" enemies. In addition, a friend made some 3D printable "Ferals" to use as enemies. Ferals are basically ordinary animals made into death-dealing cyborgs by Martian tech. They can be found here:

www.thingiverse.com/cookandrewb/designs

Oh my word are those chickens on mini-pods?

On the Blood and Spectacles blog this week is the finished cadaver troops for Under the Martian Yoke



I made this with some left-over resin, printed parts, bitz, greenstuff, and Wargames Atlantic Dark Age Irish. I painted them with Army Painter Paints.

You can read more about them at the blog:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-painting-table-under-martian-yoke.html

Look what I managed to print!



Cookandrewb made a posted this Feral Martian cow to Thingiverse. He has a whole barnyard of terror including two types of cow, a set of goats, and even chickens infused with Martian Tech!

You can find them here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=cookandrewb&page=1&type=things&sort=relevant

Hey I really like your hero statline.

Thanks! I tried to make it as simple as possible, with the widest possible applications.





Welcome back to my Solo campaign for the survival horror game Under the Martian Yoke. This game is currently available on the Blood and Spectacles Wargame Vault Page. It can be played solo, co-op, or Versus and any combination in-between!

Under the Martian Yoke is set after Orson Welles' broadcast of War of the Worlds. In this game, this was no hoax; but an actual news broadcast. The Martian invasion has laid waste to the East Coast of the United States, and only a handful of survivors are left. It is up to them to make it back to survive as long as they can! If they survive long enough, they might escape out from Under the Martian Yoke!

Annie looked up from the tattered and worn Bible she had found in the farmhouse. She and her fellow survivors had been using the place as a hide-out, its inhabitants long gone. Where they ended up, was anyone's guess? Perhaps they had been vaporized by a heat ray, choked to death on Black Dust, dissolved by Green Gas, or perhaps they were still out there somewhere hungry and thirsty?

"We still got some canned peaches from Shyville if your hungry?"

Annie had found Luke hiding here in the Farmhouse when she and Tommy stumbled across it. Luke hadn't been alone. Some slick wily named John was here with him. Luke seemed the decent sort, but she did not trust John as far as she could throw him. The good book had warned her about people like John.

Annie reached out and took the can from Luke's hand. The labelled was faded, and partially torn off. On the front was a drawing of a happy housewife grinning like a fool and holding aloft a Georgia peach. Annie pulled out a can opener from her apron, and with a newly practiced ease tore into the can.

John wandered into the room, "Maybe we should head back to Shyville and see if we can find more supplies? Your gun's still out of ammo Luke?"

"Yup. Shyville's too red though."

"Huh. Well, there has to be somewhere else we can get some eats?"

Timmy's little voice squeaked up, "I was lookin' for Martians and I saw another farmhouse out yonder, Not too far. Maybe there?"

"We could scoot out there and back in no time. Maybe they got some ammo for ya' Luke?"

"I reckon' so."

Annie nodded along. She wanted to stay put, hide, and take comfort in prayer. However, what she wanted was no longer important. They had to keep food, water, and supplies up. Unlike the Israelites, she did not expect Mana to appear from the heavens to sustain them.... not unless it was canned.

Survivor Band
In today's battle we have the following 4 survivors. All survivor bands start with only 4 members. Most humans were killed or horribly injured in the initial Martian assault, so small bands of survivors are all that is left.



On the left is Handsome John. He is a criminal archetype and survived by running for the hills when things went south.

Activation Aimed Suppression Fight Brawn Brains Nerve
5+/2 6+ 3+ 4+ 8+ 9+ 7+
Cool Customer
- Pistol, Knife, Canteen of Alcohol
- Duck and Weave- Shooting attacks have a -1 TN when he has moved.

Next is Tommy Wilkins. He is just a kid, and survived when a building collapsed on his family. He managed to dig his way out, but no one else did.

Activation Aimed Suppression Fight Brawn Brains Nerve
3+/2 9+ 8+ 6+ 4+ 7+ 5+
Pitter Patter of little feet, Fear of Enclosed Spaces
- Improvised Fight weapon, Satchel, Good Shoes

The lady is Annie. Annie McCall is a devout believer, trying to process what exactly is going on. She was part of an ambushed evacuation, and forced to flee.

Activation Aimed Suppression Fight Brawn Brains Nerve
6+/2 7+ 5+ 9+ 8+ 4+ 3+
Pray, +3 Experience
- Pistol, Map, Bandages, and Knife

Last up is Luke Goodson, the leader of this little band of survivors. He survived when he was suddenly knocked unconscious.

Activation Aimed Suppression Fight Brawn Brains Nerve
5+/2 7+ 6+ 4+ 8+ 9+ 3+
Do As I Say, Do Not Be Afraid
- Knife, Canteen of Water, Flares
- Revolver is out of ammo and left at Hide-out

Scenario
The survivors were able to see another farmhouse in the distance that they could walk to easily. Hopefully, their would be some scraps left over, but they might also be Martian traps.

This scenario has 5 loot markers randomly placed on the board. When a survivor picks up a marker, you roll a 10. On an even it is Loot that can be picked up. On an Odd it is a Martian Trap! A Trap brings on a Martian foe within 6 MU.

The objective is to gather as much loot as you can before you are forced to scatter, all go unconscious and possibly dead, or the danger level gets too high.

Set-up
The area to be searched for scraps is a lone farmhouse at the end of a dusty roadway. Next to it is a weed choked ruined out-building. There is a nearby dying field, and a barren orchard. There is also a small pond in the area. There are 5 loot markers scattered randomly from the center of the board.



The board itself is 36MU by 36MU. 1 MU equals 1 inch in today's scenario. There are no Martian foes starting on the board. The survivors decide to deploy on the west side, near the destroyed out-building. Annie and Tommy stick together, while John and Luke stay together on the opposite corner. They start 6 MU in from the deployment edge.

The group also decided to set off just before dusk, and arrive at their destination at dusk. However, poor timing also means that bad weather has rolled into town with wind, rain, and thunder. This automatically starts the danger at 11! That stinks!

If you are interested and so inclined, you can read the full report on the Blood and Spectacles blog:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2022/10/battle-report-under-martian-yoke.html

Would you say a Mars Attacks reskin would work?

I am not super familiar with what came in the Mars Attacks boxed set, so I am not 100% sure.

You would probably just need to rejigger some of the Martian enemy stats and generation lists, but the core mechanics should stay the same.

There would be a lot less dark comedy than Mars Attacks though.

Those Chicken tripods are wonderfully insane.

Thanks!

I have been working on various projects to help support the releases of my own games on the Wargame Vault. Today, I am focusing on creating adversaries for my game Under the Martian Yoke. It is a survival horror game set after the Martian Invasion of the Orson Wells' broadcast. The game is designed to be a solo/co-op/versus experience as the survivor's of the Martian attack struggle to escape Martian territory and to freedom.



The game has a number of adversaries that survivor's may encounter. The biggest and most dangerous are the Martian Tripods of various types. Thankfully, I have a variety of Tripod models from the now defunct All Quiet on the Martian Front. However, there are a variety of other tripod models available on the market as well.

In addition to the the Martian Tripods, there are smaller foes as well. That includes various drones, animated human corpses, modified animals, and even wild, feral dogs to face off against. I have a few drones from Alien Dungeon and plenty of Irish Wolfhounds thanks to my Dark Age Irish army from Wargames Atlantic.

Last time, you may recall that I was working on building up my adversaries, and created various cadaver troops to oppose the human survivors. These foes are re-animated human corpses operating on Martian technology. These undead troopers roam the Martian control zones to track down and kill lone or small groups of humans. Worse, they can flush out humans for the Martians to capture for their own nefarious purposes later.

In addition to reanimated humans, the Martians also reanimated various animals using their advanced, Martian technology. It is unclear if the Martians actually know the difference between humans and animals, and if they even care. These re-animated animals are known as Ferals. They will viscously attack any humans they come across!

You may recall that I made two Ferals out of Irish Wolfhounds from the Wargames Atlantic Dark Age Irish kit. Plus, I also use these as wild dogs. With some green stuff, and paint they ended up looking like this....



My initial plan to expand my Feral collection was to get a box of plastic barnyard animals and convert them in a similar manner. However, a fellow hobbyist was taken by the idea of barnyard astro-zombies and decided to design some for 3D printing! You can find them on CookAndrewB's Thingiverse page here. There is a ton of cool stuff, so check it out.

You can see the entire barnyard of terror and how they were created on my blog here:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2022/11/on-painting-desk-ferals-for-under.html

Thanks for checking it out!

I have been feeling a bit anti-social lately, so decided to play a few solo-games of Under the Martian Yoke. It has been a while, but I wanted to revisit the solo-campaign I had started for Under the Martian Yoke. We have been following our plucky survivors of the Martian assault. You may recall, that in this world, the Martian Invasion of Orson Welles in 1938 was real! The East Coast of the United States was soon devastated by the invaders. Our unlucky band managed to survive the initial invasion and have now been left to survive in the blasted remains of the Martian controlled territory.

Luke had heard them moving around all night long. He and his companions had gone out into the night to search for food, water, or anything else they could use. They had slunk out of their cozy farmhouse and went searching. They couldn't see much in the darkness, but it seemed safer. The Martian had been active in the area. He had seen Tripods moving on the horizon, and heard the strange hooting of their war horns in the air.

As dawn came, he knew they had to find some cover to hole up for the day. It was too hot for them to be moving across country in the daylight. They were not going to make it back to the farmhouse yet. He had planned the route with Annie's map to take them near a speck of a civilization. Just a little cluster of buildings on the map. Not even a town.

He crouched in the bushes and scanned the area. The main building looked like a good place to hole up. No sign of Martians, but the line-of-sight wasn't great in the early breaking dawn. He glanced up and down the shrub line, and saw Tommy, Annie, and John all looking at him expectedly.

He gave a big gulp, decide to try to look as confident as he could, and gave the signal to move out.

The Survivor Band

This game only allows you a band of 4 survivors. Mine is made up of Copplestone Castings Gangster range. They make great pre-war civilian figures for this.



Scenario
The survivors left their farmhouse to go gather supplies. However, Martian forces suddenly became active in the area and the group needed to get to cover quickly. Using Annie's map, they found a small cluster of local buildings and made a break for it.

There is 1 marker in the center of the board. It is inside the tire store building. All survivors need to be within 4 MU of the marker by the end of the game. The game also starts at a higher danger level.

This game is happening at Dawn.

Finally, there are 2 Green Gas clouds in the area floating around the table. The game is starting at Danger Level 9!

Set-up
The area is 36 by 36 MU with 1 MU equaling 1 inch.

There are three buildings clustered around the center of the board with a road cutting diagonally across the game play area. There are also scattered trees encroaching on from the board edge in the upper corner, and some groves near the house.

The survivors decide to deploy along the west board edge nearest to the house.

I am not going to go over every turn, but a high level overview of the game as it progressed. It is too hard to play and record on a turn-by-turn basis without breaking some of the immersion and fun!



You can read all about this disaster on the blog here:
https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2024/09/battle-report-under-martian-yoke-holed.html

Just stumbled across this, looks ace!

After that catastrophic last game, my little band of survivors is back at it. They are in pretty dire shape going into this game.



As they tried to hole up in a nearby corner store, a Martian Tripod ambushed them and quickly downed the whole party! To make matters worse, their farmhouse base was over run and their stash was destroyed! Everyone went hungry and got some sort of injury from the encounter!

Now, they find themselves deep in Martian territory and on the run. As they sneak through the forested area, they run across some Martian sentinels and need to sneak past.

Thankfully, it wasn't winter yet. Even though, the darkest parts of night were still chilly. Luke blew on his hands, but the tingling in his right hand was not going away. He was starting to think it was more than just the cold.

Annie and Tommy were hunkered up together trying to stay warm. Luke and John had laid down their jackets, but the two were still mostly sleeping on the ground. Luke knew that could drain your body heat real fast. They did not dare to make a fire to ward of the chill.

John had tried to keep a watch, but he was swinging his gun at every shadow. Luke got up and relieved him as soon as possible. Luke had never seen John act so hysterical. He kept pacing around and swinging his pistol around wildly. It was only a matter of time before he was going to accidentally fire, and that would bring the Martians. The man settled himself by a tree and quickly fell asleep.

As the first pink of sunrise glinted on the horizon, Luke got everyone moving. They were out of food, out of water, and had no protection from the elements. The Martians were crawling all over the area. They had to get moving and find some fresh supplies or they would never make it West.

The small group headed out, using Annie's map as best they could in the pre-dawn light. As they cleared a patch of trees, Luke caught a glimpse of movement. He quickly signaled everyone down, and they went silent. Annie's good eye bulged as she tried to see what Luke was gesturing at.

A flash of red metal in the pre-dawn light, the rustling of leaves. It Luke to like like a mini-tripod, just about man-sized moving through the undergrowth. It hadn't spotted them, and if he had his way it never would. The survivor's watched for a long time as it shuffled and shambled around the area. It did not look like it planned to leave. The only option was to try to sneak past it.



John, Tommy, Annie, and Luke. Their stash was taken out last game, and none of them could scavenge due to injury. Therefore, they are all in a state of deprivation that makes everything harder. Oh dear!

Scenario
I followed the process for setting up a scenario as outlined in the main rulebook. We rolled up the Running From Danger scenario, but Annie used her map to move it to Sneak Past. Perhaps less dangerous and still thematically appropriate for the situation.

The survivors had a restless night out in the wilderness after their hide-out was destroyed by Martians. Therefore, they got up early to try and head westward. This scenario will take place at dawn! That might help our heroes sneak past the Martian foes.

For complications, we rolled Dangerous Terrain. Any terrain we enter could end up being "Dangerous" on a die roll.

Lastly, I rolled up what Martian foe the group had to sneak past. Oh dear, and 8. I hope it is not another Tripod all ready! Thankfully, it was not a Tripod. However, it is still a Martian Whip Drone. Those are still pretty nasty, especially with my team all messed up at the moment.

Set-up
This will be played on a 36 x 36 MU board with each MU equal to 1 inch.

This time, I wanted a very "rural" board. I.e. no buildings. Just trees, rocks, hills, etc. After all, the survivors just spent the night out in the elements. They were forced out of the small bit of humanity they had been in last game. Therefore, lots of trees and the like.

We placed the Whip drone, and then the survivor's decided they were going across East to West.



We needed someone to survive and go scavenging desperately this game! You can see the outcome of this perilous day on my blog.

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2024/11/battle-report-under-martian-yoke-sneak.html

Here we are at game 6 out of the 10 games I wanted to play in the campaign. Can my survivors make it out of Martian territory? So far, it has been a rough campaign. After early successes, things went downhill rapidly! Now, they are battered, bruised, and dying of thirst. Far from the plucky band of heroes they started as! Let's see if they finally catch a break? However, this is a horror game so don't count on it!

The group just found a new hide-out after their last one and its stash got destroyed. They have been out of food, water, and scrap for the last two games now. This is a make of break game, because without water people are going to die at the end of this one.

His throat was burning. It had been a long time, and it was best not to think about it. John limped along with the group. He knew as much as anyone that they needed to find water, but his leg was killing him. He was too tired to be ornery, but his body was aching.

Luke glanced down at the map Annie had. He didn't want to get too far away from their new hide-out. All around them was just blank space on the map. A whole lot of nothing and woods.

Tommy signaled to the group, and they all crouched down. He scooted back and reported in, "There is a shack up ahead."

"Anyone in it?" The young boy shrugged his shoulders.

"Okay, good work. Let's spread out and approach from the woods. Be cautious, and don't get ahead of your boots," Luke said.

The small group approached, but before they could get inside an loot the place, things took a turn for the worst. A Tripod reared up from the woods on the opposite side of the house. It's war horns trilled as the sunset glinted off it's reddish hull. In response, dogs howled nearby.

Annie's eyes went wide, "By Christ, let's get outta here!" Luke found his feet moving before he could respond.

Our Survivor Band

Right now, our plucky band is 4 survivors. I am using Copplestone Casting gangster range for the miniatures.



John, Tommy, Annie, and Luke. Their stash was taken out last game, and none of them could scavenge due to injury. Therefore, they are all in a state of deprivation that makes everything harder. If we do not find water at the end of this scenario, Survivors are going to die!

Scenario

We followed the scenario generation method in the rules. I was very disappointed to roll up a 1, Martian Swarm! Oh dear. Annie has a map, and that allowed me to move it to the next higher scenario and only slightly less dangerous, the Running From Danger scenario. These guys really need a Scavenge or Loot scenario about now!

This scenario starts with 3 Dangers on the table. We randomly roll up 4 Wild Dogs, a Jolter, and ..... oh man..... a Tripod! That is not a great way to start the scenario! This one is going to take place at dusk. That will help reduce Line-of-sight BUT Handsome John is afraid of the Dark since a bad encounter with Black Dust.

In addition, we rolled up 3 Green Gas Clouds that are hovering around the area. This will make things just a bit more dangerous for our heroes.

Set-up

This will be played on a 36 x 36 MU board with each MU equal to 1 inch.

I used the method to place terrain outlined in the rules. This gave me a decent mix of terrain for this board. Hopefully, it will give my survivor's chance. However, with the Green Gas Clouds and a Tripod to start with, things are going to be tough for turn 1!

The Survivor's chose their deployment zone and started per the scenario, then we deployed the Martian pursuers. In the end, the board looked like this.....



As usual, you can find out the fate of our battered, bruised, starving, and thirsty survivors on the blog here:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2024/11/battle-report-under-martian-yoke.html