So, apparently there is another range WGA is helping to set up called Marcher: Empires at War. And I am personally excited for this one, I've already contributed a bit to the pledge for the U.S. Infantry kit, and its getting close to unlocking a second plastic kit.
I was introduced to this through Tabletop Time, and I wanted to share the vid. I like the idea of a more dieselpunk aesthetic, especially for a alt-history game that isn't just WW2 with sci fi tech.
Marcher - The Dieselpunk Alternative to Warhammer... (youtube.com)
@Charles Tottington Yeah I backed that for one set so I could loot it for parts, may upgrade to add another later. I think the setting is cool enough, though I would say it still leans to WW1/2 in space design wise like Iron Core does though less futuristic anime way. I am more intrested in the power armor, tank and walker designs since I can use those for either steam/dieselpunk fantasy or SciFi. If I had a 3D printer I would have pledged for those.
with the unlocking of the power armor plastic set i find myself wishing i had budget for this. sadly i won't get a paycheck for another month and probably won't have any free budget until at least two months from now. :(
i have been reading their website talking about their setting. i'm not entirely sure i understand all of it properly, but it is creative, i'll give them that. as a historian i'm not sure how beleiveable some of the tech progression would be, but given they're using weird science like cavorite as a basis for some of it, i'm willign to give them a pass. i'm just surprised they didn't decided to go full H.G. wells with a habitable moon and Selenites, tripods piloted by tentacled martians, and so on.
@Mithril2098 Its honestly about as realistic as space 1989, but thats true of alot alt-history, particularly since the alterations to tech development would realisticlylikely lead to a look completly alien to the current timeline (I.E.America may still be America culturaly, but suddenly all the tanks, guns, armor,etc. might look like more what Kilgons would do in WW1/2 as far as design goes😆).
yeah, i never expect realism from alt-history projects like this. especially when weird science is invovled. and i'm willing to stretch verismilitude a fair bit. (the WW2 aesthetics as you say are unlikely with that alt-history. but they'll sell plenty of models. :) )
mostly i'm just surprised they didn't go more down the line of Space 1889. they are already postulating 19th century space programs with full FTL, using a variant of a concept from proto-scifi published in 1901 to enable spaceflgiht. so them not going full pulp-scifi with it by having mars and venus be habitable and filled with their own life just seems odd. colonialism within our own star system would have added an interesting element to the dynamics, and would give a lot more variety to the battlefields. from the lore pages they have, the impression i get is that there isn't much crossover of the different nation's extra-solar colonies. that you wouldn't see say, a HRE invasion of the british offworld colony. because they can't access it without taking the british FTL gate. which seems to be a substantial limiting factor to the stories that can be told.
compare this to the idea of say, a HRE invasion of britian's portion of colonial Mars, in analog to the german african campaigns of WW1 and WW2.
@Mithril2098 Yeah, though there are work arounds once you add FTL to a setting such as 2 gates going to the same place (which is ironicly believable given its realistically unlikely for there to be that many habitable planets within reaching distance😆) or perhaps more than one method of FTL, plus I get the feeling the lore and game is more an excuse to make cool heroic scale tanks besides Russ, etc. clones, none of the vehicles seem to be getting plastic sets which is too bad since some like the Jeep, bikes, and light mechs would have been great to have with the Damned on the way.
As to them not fantasy pulping the planets in our own solar system, I sort of get that since its been done quite a bit for table top gaming and almost always feels like either a Burroughs' novel or a "what if War of the Worlds wasn't just a communist soap box" type setting, I don't even see a "Zenna Henderson's The People but with war" which would be another to do it.
@Brian Van De Walker Yeah, its a shame that we don't have more plastic vehicles. However, I am happy with the three sets we got unlocked in the campaign. I'm just hoping my new card comes soon so I can pay it (long story).
what was the third kit that got unlocked? it started with the basic american infantry, and then unlocked the robot-suits (which i can see a lot of 40K and OPR players grabbing to use as Ogryn)
@Brian Van De Walker part of the lore they set up is that only one gate can go to each world. it's set up as a treaty kind of thing rather than a technical limitation, but they also went out of their way to establish that each faction only had one gate (and thus one offworld system under their control)
it's one of those ideas that probably seemed neat when written, but heavily constrains a combat centric game. it means that to have campaigns occuring outside of earth itself, you are going to have to do some very convoluted writing to justify an enemy faction being able to acess the abiltiy to get to that world.
@Mithril2098 could throw Aliens in the mix, have the treaty be broken (vote for France or the US doing it) or simply do a lore rewrite. We are talking a in the works franchise and a small detail rewrite now would not be an unforgivable sin under these circumstances.
Oh, and I think the 3rd set is a command set.
honestly lore rewrite would be easiest i think. perhaps have the portals not be tied to specific systems, but rather be more general purpose FTL hubs? then if you want to invade another country's colonies you could just redirect your portal to one of their systems. the lore page's description make it sound like they're fixed corridors, like wormholes, between two systems. but given they talk about the first expedition needing to build a gate to return back to earth, you could easily just change them to being more of a 'FTL catapult' kind of deal, and make the destination steerable. you'd still need a 2nd gate to get back, but it would allow for sending fleets to any system. which would help explain the need for a treaty limiting access to claimed systems during the more peaceful times. plus with gates for return to earth in each colonized system, it opens up options for invasion forces to be built up at colony worlds under greater secrecy before they get sent to another colony world. it would also allow for the offworld colonies to be expanded to include more than one system for each faction. though oviously the first colony would no doubt be the biggest and most important, probably forming into a hub other colonies route their shipments through.
