I know this section of the forum is filled with people pitching ideas for fantasy boxes that didn't make it past round 2 of the big community vote that we did a while back, and while I don't claim that this idea is any different, I ask that you hear me out.
Myconids. They're present in so many settings yet still so underrepresented. There is a lot of ambiguity over how they look and feel from setting to setting which gives WGA more freedom to make them as they wish. I personally love the desgns and feel of the myconids from the 2008 Wii game "Mushroom men" (some concept art can be found HERE ) Myconids are often seen as having no tech but I think the idea of them having salvaged technology and even tech which is bassed off their biology, like eating wood which could be used as armor, would be perfect. a sprue with 4 or 5 bodies, a series of heads with different caps for different mushroom species (say 5 morel heads, 5 heads with normal gilled caps, and 5 heads that feel more like toad from mario) options for stone axes, bows, or spears, and even a few wooden shields and a staff for a leader or wizard
I'd love to see it, personally.
I would buy a box. I like my Gnomes to have Myconid allies in a fantasy setting and I like the idea of Myconids in a Fallout-esque post-Apoc wasteland. I have Myconids from various companies already but have not gotten around to painting any just yet.
I love the ideia, I would also buy at least a box for my Underdark Army.
Actually, given we are talking fantasy mushroom men here, all we really need is spears, single hand melee weapons and some claw hands. Maybe some sort of range weapon (for wizards staff just cut spear heads off and glue something else on), maybe some shield arms but they likely wouldn't use shields since they would spore after being cut down so I wouldn't bother adding actual shields.
Anything else would be an optional add on since just as is they could work for most settings (fantasy, SF, and Pulp/VSF), if we are talking just fantasy or SciFi mindless hoard of horror would be the simple way to go. If we are talking apoc though, I think it would be cool give a short mushroom man one a bazooka type weapon and bandoliers to make a plucky side kit.
Could add biological implant weapons if we want something more intelligent, though I think this guy would be going to far:
I think it would be a fun and different box.
Pulp sci-fi/horror mushroom-things? Reminds me of the William Hope Hodgson-inspired Japanese horror classic, "MATANGO: Attack of the Mushroom People!"
The crew and passangers of a yacht stranded on a mysterious, uncharted island in the mist encounter the titular horror on a seemingly deserted shipwreck. One of several '50s or '60s era movies that bear an uncanny resemblance to Alien or Carpenter's The Thing, our heroes are pretty quickly infested with fungal body horror....
A skirmish game of (say) Cannon Fodder against a box of Myconids on a game table with shipwreck and mushroom forest scenery would be absolutely a blast to see....
speaking of 'fungal body horror', you could also take a tack similar to The Last of Us and have the fungal badguys being more of a "zombie" type enemy, looking like infected humans with fungal growths of various types growing off them.
even better, they could be marketed as a dual fantasy/deathfields set, and you could engineer the parts to be combineable with other WGA human sets to make fungal infected armies of any theme you want.
@Brian Van De Walker I get what you mean, just spears would work alright and people can use whatever left arms with extra shields if they really wanted to have a more traditional army. They could mix sci fi stuff in the box like the lizardmen but my biggest gripe about that set is that I feel like its doing a little bit of ebverything alright and not really doing anything super well, except muskets.
Is that a screenshot from the video game Kenshi?
I think the lizard men shared a similar difficulty to other early Wargames Atlantic sets: a big idea, fit onto a small frame. Compromises need to be made, and the biggest compromise was in what it could do well. It's remarkable what the Halflings or Lizard Men do in such small frames, but they do suffer from lack of variety in terms of what they ought to have been able to do with a larger frame size, or multiple frames! Newer WGA sets - like the Conquistadores - give WGA a bigger canvas to work with.
I REALLY like the Myconid Zombie idea!
Certainly an orginal idea that hasn't been done in plastic before... why not?
@Ethan Gilbert @Yronimos Whateley
Hmm, I actually have to disagree with you about the lizard men. In fact I would say the only thing the lizard men really didn't do well for me is ironically is fitting into classic fantasy (not enough melee weapon options and the ones in the box while usable are a little too love/hate, if they had made those a little more sturdy and ditched the pointy hand in favor of a left hand sword, club or even knife it would have more or less fixed that), the fantasy muskets actually fit in pretty dang well for most Sci-Fi settings (particularly 40k) and them and the AK like guns along with the gasmasks work great for pulp and industrial fantasy game settings as well.
Also to be honest I think they where trying to do to much with the Conquistadores and that they should have just planned on doing a "war of Religion" Pikemen set later on, instead of cramming a bunch of pikes and great swords into Conquistadore box, (particularly since people started asking for "war of Religion" Pikemen even with them marketing the Conquistadores as doubling for that).
Anyway the picture is of an action figure of the big bad Zeiram from the "Iria: Zeiram" franchise (it was Japanese pop idol vehicle that spawned at least one film, some videogames, and most famously in the states an animated OVA series). He is kind of a horror film monster like John Carpenter’s "The Thing".
@Brian Van De Walker I understand what you mean with the lizardmen, I suppose I find the muskets to be really weird because I don't play any pulp Victorian games. That might just be a me thing but I feel like those are very far from common. I almost feel like the automatic weapons would be best if you wanted to do 40K since you could easily run them as cultists or MAYBE a kroot auxillary... Actually i suppose lizardmen with muskets serving as kroot really is the best "mainstream" use that box could have.
That's cool I'll give the OVA a look. Thank you
@Ethan Gilbert To me the muskets actually made it the go to "non-human Sludge army" core set recommend, and "guns and magic" games like Sludge are actually becoming more common both for wargames and TRPGs, I actually kinda of wish they had been braver and used Prussian Dersye Needle Guns instead of the european flintlocks since I just recived my copy of Skies Over Tolindia.
@Brian Van De Walker - the relatively skimpy selection of fantasy/melee options is exactly what I had in mind. It's not a deal-breaker for me: the lizard-men set is still one of my favorites, particularly for the nice mix of guns from a wide range of eras - the VSF/pulp-scifi options make me really happy to see, for the variety.
I can always raid the bitz bins to expand my melee/fantasy weapon/gear options, too, but I don't think I've ever seen a set that does "too much" - I always appreciate the variety, especially when the variety is something I wouldn't see anywhere else.
