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Non-Humanoid advanced combatants.

  • Battle Specter

    Long time since I posted here, so i'll get right ot the point. 

    I was one of the backers of the Hardsuits back in the day, and got a fairly decent store credit for my troubles, which I turned into some sets. I got the Space Nazis, Interstellar Dwarfs, Cosmic Brits, the Not-Catachans, Hudson Bugs redux, and some bases. Iplan on doing a more thorough review of each (and the Wargames Atlantic line as a whole) but while messing with the models, I had some thoughts. 

    I'd like to see some more non-humanoid aliens in the mix. If WGA literally pulled from some scifi stuff, I'd be totally cool with it. Some Posleen inspired aliens, or some space Ewoks (not the tribal ones- fully kitted power suited killer space teddys), or even the Alutian swamp worms. I was enjoying building the Hudseon redux Bugs and thinking about what/how an alien "bug" might think, or what kind of society they'd form. And that got me thinking of the Posleen, the Ewoks, and other alien species in science fiction. 

    Ideally, I'd like to see some stuff that wasn't just "space bugs" but ventured out from that trope into some fresh territory. power suited Ewoks is one, the Posleen themed aliens is another. Perhaps those lizards from the fantasy line redone to be more advanced. It's easy to think of bugs as alien as to us the way a bee hive thinks and acts is entirely alien- but life forms on earth are more than just bipeds and insects. There's a lot of stuf out there to draw from. 

    Six limbed predatory cat like creatures that look like Centaurs. Space Minotaurs with blasters. High G world "dwarf" <insert basic idea here>. Even if thee were just digital files for print, I think there would be a market for such things. Especially if there were a system that allowed them to be played. 

    Right now the stuff we get to see seems kinda cartoonish when it comes to the non-humans. They pull from some tropes, and as a result lose some of their punch.That being said- I see some definate possibilities for real trope breaking if they drive that way. Lot's of good elements already made, they just need ot be brought forward some. 

    "But Mike, they already have non-human stuff!"

    Yes. True. Frog men, Gorillas, a turtle, a snake, and a multi armed convict that can have a squirrel head, bug head, or snake head. And there are heads to turn humans into humanoid beings (cool for Star Trek of B5 themed stuff). 

    WGA can do better, I know it. Radical diversion from what is the norm. 

    What are other people's thoughts? And has this topic be broached before (possibly by me)? 

    Mike Uher II
    Battle Specter Blog (www.battlespecterblog.com)
    Rambling Devil Podcast

  • timbus the thirteenth

    i would love more alien kits!! i might be in the minority here but i genuinely really like the "fantasy guys in space" vibe. i had an idea a while back for a space orc that ISNT based on gw but on LOTR in space. so space sallet helmets, chainsaw halberds, machine guns with pavise, stuff like that. they could be a mutant team taken from war of the roses or something. or just aliens. (i love da boyz but gw orks just don't always scratch the right itch)

    aliens can be hard to pull off, just because of how many kinds have been imagined, but i bet there's ways to make everybody happy.

  • Battle Specter

    @timbus the thirteenth I think for me the whole "bugs" or "brutes" schtik has grown old. I want smart, non-elf like aliens. Aliens that have depth beyond "CHOMP! DAKKA DAKKA!!!" I want to see that in the models. I want to see superb culture, and something that can challenge my "obviously" superior humans on the battlefield. I'm all about mankind, but some legit competition would be awesome. 

    Mike Uher II
    Battle Specter Blog (www.battlespecterblog.com)
    Rambling Devil Podcast

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  • Yronimos Whateley

    I always enjoy any outside-the-box stuff that can be imagined, but I think most customers are going to be more about either substitute factions that can be used in popular wargames like 40K (space Orks, space Undead, and the like), and "expies" of familiar and popular stuff (popular "sci-fi soldier" movies like Starship Troopers, Aliens, Predator, or stuff from the likes of Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.), or any popular sci-fi RPG and wargame material (maybe Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Stargrave, Starfinder, etc.)

    If you don't have anything specific in mind, you might try working from prompts like these:

    • What are some sci-fi factions you can imagine that might find dual use for fantasy gaming?  (See Wargames Atlantic's Lizard Men and Spider sets, for example.)
    • The WGA Pulp Adventure line seems to be running relatively strong - what are some neglected pulp fantasy alien "tropes" that can be readily filled with a hard plastic kit?  (See the multi-use zombies set, as the flagship Pulp adventure product.)
    • What are some non-human tabletop gaming factions that really need some "love" because there aren't any/enough official models available?  (The Death Fields Space Dwarf faction is probably a popular product for some 40K gamers for exactly this reason, and much the same thing can evidentally be said for a lot of the other Death Fields factions.)
    • How might some popular sci-fi franchise aliens be boiled down to a broader archetype that might be filled with a generic sci-fi kit?  ("Space bugs" like the Harvesters set are a nice, broad archetype that can stand in for more than a few more specific sci-fi aliens, for example.)
    • What are som aliens and monster ideas you can loot from public-domain pulp and other classic literary sources?
    • Is there anything in the Atlantic Digital catalogue that you'd like to see in hard plastic?

     

    YMMV, but some possibilities that I've suggested in polls and discussions like this one:

    • War of the Worlds Martians (in early illustrations, they were oversized big-bulging-brains with tentacles dressed in Steampunk/Victorian Sci-Fi power armor; HG Wells' original concept is surely public domain by now)
    • Lovecraftian monsters (most if not all of the 100% Lovecraft stories, including many of his most bizarre monsters, are in the public domain these days, and are probably safe to model, as long as copyrighted content created for e.g. the Call of Cthulhu RPG can be avoided, which mostly comes down to certain names and a few descriptions that were created for the game where Lovecraft's originals were often left nameless and shadowy)
    • Generic 50's retro-style "pulp" sci-fi robots (see the robots from The Forbidden Planet and Lost In Space, or Doctor Who's Daleks:  the designs were beautiful works of art, and could be loosely simulated in broad strokes with some pretty simple, more or less interchangeable shapes and components suitable for a multi-part plastic kit: wheeled/tracked bases, roughly cylindrical or box-shaped bodies, domed heads, bolt-on robotic arms....)
    • heavily-armed robotic "endoskeletons" (totally not connected to the Terminator franchise!)
    • "Rubber Forehead Aliens" inspired by the minimalist makeup from "space opera like Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Doctor Who, etc.  (For practical and budgetary reasons, nearly all of these alien designs come down to militaristic space-fleet uniforms, a full or partial rubber mask or simply heavy makeup, weird weapons, and perhaps an eccentric hairstyle, all of which can be easy to build a hard plastic model kit around, simply by supplying enough different head options)
    • Generic Bug-Eyed Monsters (loosely inspired by the sort of monsters you might have found on any mid-century sci-fi B-Movie poster or paperback sci-fi novel cover or pulp magazine, carrying off struggling space-girls in space-miniskirts and space-helmets, because Mars Needs Women)
    • (Ridiculously) Humanoid Robots (there are a couple Digital-only sets that I'd gladly buy in hard plastic, if they were available, including the "S.N.A.C.K.-Bot" vendors for Death Fields, which would make fine retro-scifi killer robots with minimal modification!  The Farstrike and Arena Security robots are also some great Atlantic Digital robot models I'd love to see in plastic)

     

  • timbus the thirteenth

    @Battle Specter Yeah, I'm not sure if I made it clear but that's exactly what I mean. I love the idea of 'orcs in space', but to me orcs are regimented, disciplined monsters with a semi-industrial aesthetic. I'd love more high-tech aliens, I'm as far from a 'humanity fuck yeah' person as you can get. 

    @Yronimos Whateley The starfinder rpg has some aliens with really cool designs that I always thought would look cool in a wargame. For the people who haven't played, starfinder is set in a far-future version of a standard rpg world, so you get some really batshit designs. Devil-worshipping space slugs! Dragons with gatling guns! Sentient beehives! I used to play 1e in middle-high school, so it has a lot of nostalgia value for me.

    I think WGA makes a lot of money off GW alternatives, even if they're not my favorite models. With that in mind, the main xenos who don't have good proxies on the market rn would be:

     - Tau (pretty easy to make, just high-tech tactical guys with reverse joints and four fingers)

    - Aeldari (most fans seem pretty happy with the models they have, doubt they'd go for proxies)

    - Necrons (same as aeldari)

    - Genestealer cults (again really easy to make, just likely mutant cannon fodder)

    Races - Archives of Nethys: Starfinder RPG Database894 × 768

     

    Aliens - Archives of Nethys: Starfinder RPG Database468 × 842

    also look at how cool these starfinder guys are!!

  • SS

    Are you familiar with Mantic's Deadzone/Warpath Firefight range? Their space-Orcs are more aligned with what you describe, and they have a vaguely Cthuloid sub-aquatic themed faction called the Nameless, and the sumo-wrestler-space-lizard Matsudan, that may be worth checking out. Do any of those scratch your itch, or were you looking for something more specific? 

  • timbus the thirteenth

    I've definitely checked them out, but I've heard pretty bad things about their plastic quality. That said, the nightstalkers are so directly up my alley I might need to just bite already.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    I forgot there was an eldritch fish-man kit, I might check into a box of those one day!

    I've bought a box of the nightstalkers before, my only complaint is that they're a bit pricey compared to Wargames Atlantic kits, where I'm at.  The plastic quality seemed about normal for these sorts of kits, and was pretty easy to work with:  detail is fair enough and seems about in line with kits of Oathmark, Stargrave, or Frostgrave miniatures, for example, and the plastic doesn't seem any more or less brittle than that.  The sculpting seemed pretty good as well; maybe not a lot of variety to the bits, but the bits that it did include mostly looked great to me.

    The Nightstalkers are maybe a head taller than human figures in this scale, with long arms and big hands (for example), but it suits the bogeyman theme they run on.  The arms and heads fit to the body on some unusual ball-and-socket joints, which would make kit-bashing a little tricky.  I think one might be able to get Oathmark goblin heads to fit these guys, and maybe Frostgrave gnoll heads, and nightstalker heads might fit those bodies, and one might be able to make use of the arms on other kits with a little work, but the fit might look a bit weird.  

    Here's a couple of monsters I cooked up for The Last War from nightstalker bits, and bits from a couple Wargames Atlantic kits (Dead Animal Bits, Lizard Men, Zombies), and some Evergreen plasticard (the scratch-built box); most of Jack-in-the-Box's body is sculpted by hand from cheap "model magic" air-dry sculpting foam:

    The work was pretty easy and the modifications fun to do - 10/10 would do it again.

     

    Note the nightstalkers are one of he hard plastic kits - Mantic also makes "Terrain Crate" kits and some miniatures sets from some sort of soft resin, which can also be a bit pricey where I'm at.  That soft resin is a material I'm ambivalent about:  it seems kinda durable, I guess, but the detail is maybe a little vague, it's not a lot of fun for me to work with in customizations, and I didn't care a whole lot for the sculpts on the soft Mantic miniatures I worked with (they were from a set of fantasy monsters and adventurers.)  I don't mind this material for scenic bits, though, and I think the funiture and so on from the Terrain Crates looked pretty good after painting.

     

    I like the look of those Starfinder aliens, too.  I'm not familiar with the game itself, beyond knowing vaguely that it exists, so it's my first time seeing them, great find! 

    They also reminded me of Spelljammer, which I haven't thought about in years - apparently Spelljammer was recently updated for the 5th edition of D&D, which I didn't know about, and I'm pretty suspicious of (I've lost a lot of patience with modern D&D), but maybe there's some room for kits of "not-Spelljammer" proxies for classic Spelljammer monsters like the thri-kreen, neogi or githyanki. 

    "Not-Thri-kreen", at least, should be pretty lawyer-friendly as a Classic Fantasy, Pulp Adventure, or Death Fields faction:  kinda tough to sue over generic anthropomorphized insect-men!  Maybe call them "Selenites" after Jules Verne's moon-dwelling insect people?  What would Professor Quatermass do???

     

  • SS

    @timbus the thirteenth 
    You've probaby heard about the "restic" they were using around a decade ago. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, but couldn't be ground or filed; shaving with a sharp blade was the only option for cleaning up the models. It did provide some good casts, but their modern resin is much better. Their hard plastics have always been pretty good quality; originally they were produced by Renedra, I think a bunch of them come out of China nowadays and I believe their most recent kits are being made by Archon, or at least some of them. The value proposition definitely isn't quite as good as WGA, but don't be afraid of their materials unless you're severely allergic to the few PVC models in their range. 

    I just recalled that Khurasan do a squad of 5 models that are humanoid, but identifiably alien and quite high-tech looking that could be worth taking a look at. (I know WGA occasionally licenses an IP like Spacenam or Iron Core) Ferox mercenaries, I believe. 

    Hasslefree have that one anthropomorphic Pitbull sci-fi model. My memory (and their website) fails me; I think I recall something else similar from them, but it might just have been a helmeted variant of the same thing. 

  • BV

    @Stephen Sutton Lol, there are tons of metal manufacturers doing good blaster Aliens models, you just have to look out for them (Badger Games did some nice truely original design "not Tau" in metal). Reaper has even turned a few of their own xenos into Bones at this point.

    @Battle Specter I would wait for the Iron Core Shadowkesh warriors to come out. Both in design and lore the featherless psychic avians are the best and most original non-human blaster gun aliens I have come across in wargaming thus far (like they are are almost Lovecraften but fall just short enough they could be played either as that or the Saturday morning villians, sort of like Heinlin's book version bugs and skinnies, Alien but not unbeatable). 

  • timbus the thirteenth

    @Brian Van De Walker I've been dipping my toes into reaper a bit recently, there's some really good kitbash fodder. Plastic is kinda soft but I'm used to reinforcing wobbly bits.

    @Yronimos Whateley I later found out that Starfinder's setting got some flak when it came out, because it's really just a mashup of Every Scifi Setting Ever. It's got plenty of "these guys are humans but skinny and blue," or "animal+human bits".That said, I think there's some REALLY REALLY cool aliens buried in there. Some other favorites of mine are the Endbringer Devil, which is a giant world-ending demon that turn into a spaceship. There's a whole planet ruled by liches, so all their spaceships are open to the void (because skeletons don't need to breath. A personal favorite of mine these ugly spider guys whose names I forgot, who worship kytons (think hellraiser). Now that I think about it, I bet I could make some out of the WGA arachnid kit. Anyhow, if I keep yapping about this, I'll never stop. But yeah, I think kits based on this 'magitech' style could go insanely fucking hard. After all, advanced enough science is basically just magic.

     

    New Aliens to Be and Fight and Befriend | Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy560 × 560

     

  • Yronimos Whateley

    @timbus the thirteenth "Anyhow, if I keep yapping about this, I'll never stop. But yeah, I think kits based on this 'magitech' style could go insanely fucking hard. After all, advanced enough science is basically just magic."

     

    YES - it's the stuff that sci-fi ran on, especially in the pulps, for much of the 20th century, when the genre was still largely informed by Theosophy, the legend of Atlantis, and fringe science of the sort that Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods was written on:  lost advanced civilizations, ancient astronauts, psychic powers, Martian canals, and all sorts of that sort of thing. 

    Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars/Barsoom stories, Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, Robert E. Howard's Hyborean Age and other fantasy stories (Conan the Barbarian, Kull of Atlantis, Bran Mak Morn the Celt, etc.), Clark Ashton Smith's far-future dying Earth Xothique setting, and so on reveled in that sort of thing.  Superhero comic books at least implied it, the hippies loved the psychedelic and New-Agey qualities if it, and you could still find elements of it running wild in the '80s with Dungeons & Dragons ("Expedition to Barrier Peak", the Spelljammer setting, etc.), the Masters of the Universe, Stephen King's The Talisman and The Dark Tower, movies like Bakshi's Wizards, Yor: Hunter from the Future, and the Star Wars movies (space opera and pop sci-fi loves the magitech thing, you'll also find it in Star Trek, Doctor Who, Lost in Space, Babylon 5....)  And even after it fell out of fashion for generation, you could still find it hanging around until it made a proper comeback in time for Warhammer 40K, D&D's Eberon setting, and so on.  Maybe not quite as psychedelic and not really played quite as straight anymore as it was in the '60s, '70s, or '80s, but it's still alive and well!

    Anyway, the magitech thing would be quite welcome in my book, with pleny of room to do it just a little differently from the handful of gaming properties making use of it these days.  Variation on the magitech thing are what I think of when I hear phrases like "pulp sci-fi" and "soft sci-fi".

    Sci-fi gaming still has plenty of room for things like space wizards, post-apocalyptic barbarian swordsmen, psychic alien vampires, astral projection to other times and worlds, undying masters of the universe conspiring to psychically guide the fates of worlds, and so on!

  • BV

    @Yronimos Whateley Actually when I think of magitech I think of Final Fantasy,  Wild Arms, Wareblades and  other JRPGs/anime with stuff like complix mechalike golems, elemental blasting tanks, impossible Airships (lots of impossible airships😆), machine gun totting humoncuili, etc. Basicly high fantasy settings that are not SciFi in the least to maybe science fantasy at the closest with stuff like steampunk (though I have heard arguements for "hard science" fantasy). 

    Soft/pulp scifi on the other hand would be stuff like Robotech, Back to the Future, or Startrek where there are one or more Mcguffines (such as wormholes or FTL) but magic isn't real or its limited to various psionics that aliens have, and said aliens maybe interbreedable without the use of body rebuild machines. Also the science tends to be either outdated, tropy,  nonsense or combonation of all three generally on purpose😆, though real theorictical science  is often mixed as well (both FTL and aliens are theoritical but unlikely).

    Science Fantasy is where you have stuff like magic, elder gods/demons/spirites, superheros, orcs and other fantasy races as aliens, etc. along with the soft/pulp scifi tropes and maybe some hard ones done badly. i.e. WH40k and  the Marvel multiverse are examples of Science fantasy, unlike pulp you can do Science Fantasy as for either bright happy adventure land or the grimdarkness where there is only drip. Also it does not need to be a "clone" of our universe it can be Middle earth in space with lasers. 

     

    To clarifiy hard scifi from other subgenres (since Hammerheads do seem to think 40k is this when its SO NOT🙄), Hard SciFi is generally our own world where a particular aspect of real world science has developed or blossemed into something that either could according to the math happen a decade to century later or even now if it where not so dang pricey and/or a stupied/bad idea in real life (the cyber brains from Ghost in the Shell while at least thoeritically highly possible to make are a remarkably bad pricey idea🤣). While Hard SciFi is mostly near future, it can also be used for far future SciFi which relies on theoritical science that has really good math backing it (Glass House).     Normally its linked with Cybepunk and Biopunk with dark socital themes, though quntuim tech ficition also counts and light Hard SciFi does exist oddly enough mostly as what could best be described as "adventures in gaming fiction" that leans towards "cyber punk light". 

     

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